Washington Post
December 26
he appointment of one of Afghanistan's most powerful and ruthless warlords as deputy defense minister brings into the fold a man with the potential to undermine the fledgling government.
On Monday, Hamid Karzai, the Afghan leader, appointed General Abdul Rashid Dostum, 47, an ethnic Uzbek factional leader renowned for his shifting loyalties and his iron-fisted, often brutal, rule in northern Afghanistan, as deputy to Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim.
General Dostum's inclusion in the government is widely seen in Afghanistan as a pragmatic move by Mr. Karzai to strengthen his new administration and keep his pledge to end factional fighting and return security to a country dogged by more than two decades of bloodshed.
By drafting General Dostum, Mr. Karzai virtually guarantees security in a key section of the country around General Dostum's base of Mazar-i-Sharif. General Dostum has run Mazar-i-Sharif, the largest and most important northern city, as his personal fiefdom for much of the past decade, even printing his own money.
In addition, the move essentially neutralizes a man who briefly threatened to boycott Mr. Karzai's interim government and could have undercut the new leadership before it had a chance to get started.
"Karzai will lose a lot if there's a political mutiny or a military mutiny," said Hashmatullah Moslih, who was an aide to former President Burhanuddin Rabbani and now is a private political analyst in Kabul. "He's trying to avoid that."
Mr. Moslih said, however, that General Dostum's appointment may provide only temporary security. Putting the Uzbek leader in a powerful position, Mr. Moslih said, could lead to further resentment among Pashtuns, Afghanistan's dominant ethnic group. Even though Mr. Karzai is a Pashtun, Mr. Moslih said, Pashtuns say they are underrepresented in the military. That resentment could hurt Mr. Karzai, particularly if General Dostum makes any major missteps, Mr. Moslih said.
"From now on, any mistake of Dostum will be read as a mistake of Karzai," he said.
It also remains unclear whether General Dostum, who is used to being treated as well-armed royalty, is satisfied with being named Mr. Fahim's deputy, rather than getting a cabinet post of his own.
Mr. Fahim and General Dostum were the two most powerful generals in the Northern Alliance, the coalition of forces that drove the ruling Taliban movement out of the north with the backing of U.S. air strikes.
Relations between the two seemed to chill when General Dostum initially said he would not support the new government agreed upon by Afghan representatives who met last month near Bonn. General Dostum said he thought his supporters were underrepresented in the new administration, which will govern for six months before giving way to a transitional government chosen by a national conference of tribal leaders. General Dostum's supporters hold two of the 30 cabinet posts.
General Dostum later relented and said he would support the Karzai-led government. When the new administration took power Saturday, General Dostum arrived in his trademark military fatigues. But until he was actually seated, no one here was certain that he would come, or whether he supported the government.
"This is a great honor for me," General Dostum said Monday, emerging from a meeting with Mr. Karzai and Mr. Fahim at the presidential palace. "We promise the government that we support them, and what we can do for them, we will - not just in the north, but everywhere in Afghanistan."
General Dostum and Mr. Fahim both said that the announcement would help Afghanistan form a unified national army after more than two decades of war, often among factions led by such warlords as General Dostum.
"In Bonn, they decided that with the support of the United Nations they would rebuild the army," General Dostum said.
James Dobbins, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, said U.S. military officials have offered training to help Afghans develop a more modern force than the ragtag factional militias that now exist.
In many ways, General Dostum's career mirrors the confounding history of Afghanistan's past quarter-century.
He climbed the ranks of the Communist-backed Afghan Army during the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.
During the years of factional fighting that followed the Soviets' withdrawal, General Dostum regularly shifted allegiances and kept his enemies off balance. His well-equipped militia numbered thousands of men.
He was one of the most feared enforcers of President Najibullah, a Communist who ruled after the departure of Soviet troops. But in 1992, when anti-Communist guerrillas were on the verge of toppling Mr. Najibullah's government, General Dostum switched sides and helped the mujahidin capture Kabul. Before long, he had defected again, battling the mujahidin government in the brutal factional warfare that reduced Kabul to rubble.
When the Taliban took advantage of the chaos by driving the mujahidin from Kabul in 1996, General Dostum was among the strongest elements resisting the radical Islamic movement and keeping it from taking control of the entire country. In his stronghold of Mazar-i-Sharif, General Dostum kept the Taliban at bay and lived in a castle.
The journalist Ahmed Rashid, in his best-selling book, "Taliban," said General Dostum created his own airline to smuggle goods from Dubai to the United Arab Emirates. He collected "duty" from truck drivers in the area and kept the local bazaars well stocked with Russian vodka and French perfumes. Unlike other warlords, he also ran efficient health and education systems, which openly encouraged the participation of women.
The shifting loyalties of some of General Dostum's key lieutenants enabled the Taliban to capture Mazar-i-Sharif in 1997, lose it and capture it again, driving General Dostum into exile in Turkey. He returned this year, allied with the Northern Alliance, which was led by many of his former foes from the pre-Taliban government.
During the past few months, General Dostum's leadership was crucial to removing the Taliban from power. Fighting alongside U.S. special forces, he led the charge to retake Mazar-i-Sharif from the Taliban in mid-November. That was one of the first dominoes to fall in what became the rapid disintegration of the movement. A few days later, Northern Alliance forces retook Kabul from the fleeing Taliban.