Word: uzbeks
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...echoing the Gettysburg Address as he spoke recently to a large political gathering in northern Afganistan. His speech was a booming appeal for a future that offered Afghans "government by the people, for the people." To accompany his new rhetoric, Dostum also has a new look. The powerfully built Uzbek general has shaved his beard--his thick trademark moustache remains--bought some new neckties and found a good tailor...
Born to a poor Uzbek farming family, Dostum had little formal education and worked in the natural-gas fields near Shibarghan before joining the military during communist rule in Afghanistan. By the mid-1980s he was in command first of a militia battalion, then of a division. His big break came with the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan in 1988-89. As the troop convoys headed home and the rebel mujahedin sharpened their knives, Dostum and his Soviet-funded army of tough Uzbek and Turkmen irregulars emerged as the only real mobile outfit the communist regime of President Najibullah could count...
MAZAR-I-SHARIF The country's most celebrated warlord, Uzbek ABDUL RASHID DOSTUM has long been a strongman in the north. Though he still commands some 7,000 troops, lately his influence has been eroded by the rising power of Tajik USTAD ATTA MOHAMMED, whose force of 5,000 controls much of Mazar. Sporadic clashes between the rival factions have been temporarily defused...
...Dostum truly has evolved, there's no doubt a strong element of realpolitik behind the transformation. Since the defeat of the Taliban, Dostum has reasserted control over his home turf, the ethnically Uzbek and Turkmen provinces of Jowzjan and Faryab. But the onetime master of the north now finds his position challenged by the growing power of his erstwhile ally in the Northern Alliance, the mainly Tajik Jamiat-i-Islami faction. Jamiat's ascension has prompted an unlikely alignment between Dostum and Hamid Karzai, the patrician Pashtun tribal leader who heads Kabul's interim government. In December Karzai appointed Dostum...
...Born to a poor Uzbek farming family, Dostum had little formal education and worked in the natural-gas fields near Shibarghan before joining the military during communist rule in Afghanistan. By the mid-1980s he was in command first of a militia battalion, then of a division. His big break came with the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan in 1988-89. As the troop convoys headed home and the rebel mujahedin sharpened their knives, Dostum and his Soviet-funded army of tough Uzbek and Turkmen irregulars emerged as the only real mobile outfit the communist regime of President Najibullah could count...