Word: dostum
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...suburb outside the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif last week, Dostum was in campaign mode. Next month the country will hold its long-awaited loya jirga, or grand assembly, which will choose a transitional government. Dostum relaunched his old political party, the National Islamic Movement. Known simply as Jombesh, the group has a platform that rests on secular democracy (despite its name) and respect for minority rights, which translates to a federalist agenda. Addressing a congress of 2,000 party functionaries, Dostum hit out at "extremism" and "fundamentalism." Read: the Islamic politics of Jamiat...
...everyone is buying the warlord's new clothes. Dostum rose to power as a ruthless brawler, the Mike Tyson of Afghan politics. For a decade he moved in and out of alliances with almost every major faction on the Afghan battlefield - the Taliban included. His zest for brute strategy can be traced to his love for bozkashi, the traditional sport of the northern plains. It's not a game for the faint of heart. One team of horsemen battles to haul a dead goat to one end of a field; opponents struggle to wrest it back and drag...
...other hand, fits his bulky frame like a suit several sizes too small. With his heavy jowls and beetling eyebrows, he projects little charisma. Just how democratic politics will fare under a man whose portrait hangs in every office, shop and school across his fief remains to be seen. "Dostum fits straight into the pattern of Central Asian authoritarianism that's digging in across the region," says a Western official in Kabul. "Anyone who imagines this is some roly-poly Mr. Nice Guy who understands democratic give-and-take is making a mistake...
...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...
...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...