Makeover For A Warlord

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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 on. "In 1989 he had a budget for 45,000 troops, but we knew he had only 25,000 on his payroll," says a former Soviet diplomat. "When our advisers confronted him over it, he'd laugh and say, 'Don't worry, I'll get hold of the other 20,000 if they're needed.'" The Soviets kept paying.

Dostum's mercenary troops achieved notoriety for ruthless courage on the battlefield and wild indiscipline off it. Bearing a legacy of 200 years near the bottom of a Pashtun-dominated social order, they seemed to take a special delight in evening the historical score, killing Pashtun mujahedin of the south, and looting and terrorizing the civilians.

Dostum brought the Najibullah regime down when he mutinied in 1992 and joined forces with the northern mujahedin. He and his cohort seized Mazar and set up their Jombesh. The following years raised to national art forms both the alliance of convenience and the stab in the back, and Dostum outperformed the rest. He moved in and out of alliances with Ahmed Shah Massoud, then the Jamiat commander; with Massoud's arch-enemy, the Islamist radical Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; and finally with the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban, enemy of both. Meanwhile, differences of policy and personality at the top of the Jombesh were settled bozkashi-style, as rivals succumbed, one after the other, to helicopter crashes and other dramatic rubouts.

Driven into exile by the Taliban, first in 1997 and again in 1998, Dostum returned to Afghanistan last spring to join Jamiat commander Ustad Atta Mohammed in leading anti-Taliban forces in the hills south of Mazar. But last year's wartime alliance has soured. Tensions between Dostum and his northern rival — who also now prefers to be seen in elegantly tailored business suits — have centered on control of Mazar. Capital of the north and key to the area's agricultural, oil and gas wealth, the city once dominated by Dostum has fallen increasingly under Jamiat's sway. Failure to control Mazar has dented Dostum both politically and economically.

Rising tensions have already spilled into sporadic armed clashes. Both sides have been rearming and conscripting fresh troops. Atta enjoys the support of Defense Minister Fahim in Kabul, who recently promoted him to full general without consulting Deputy Defense Minister Dostum. Fahim has also approved moving more tanks and armor to Mazar to support Atta. In late April a full-blown fight nearly erupted as Jamiat, in preparation for a parade to mark the 1992 fall of the communist regime, moved more tanks into the city. Dostum followed suit. When clashes broke out in outlying districts to the south, the city looked poised for a major battle. Under a U.N.-brokered pact signed May 5, both sides agreed to pull back their armor and turn over security in Mazar to a 600-man police force composed of troops from all five factions in the city — Jamiat, Jombesh and three smaller Shi'ite groups. But the peace is an uncertain and provisional one. Notes a foreign military observer, speaking of Dostum and Atta: "These two will not accept sharing power. One will always want more than the other or think he's being cheated by the other." A local Shi'ite leader remarks, "The only way to solve this business is for both of them to leave the country."

That does not appear to be in Dostum's plans. With his Jombesh rejuvenated, he no doubt intends to emerge from next month's loya jirga in a stronger position. He surely hopes the assembly will erode the power of Jamiat, which today controls the three key ministries of Defense, Interior and Foreign Affairs. Whether or not that happens, Abdul Rashid Dostum is one politician who still fields an army. Whoever rules in Kabul is not apt to forget it.