Big fish among the Afghan warlords

KABUL, Afghanistan

Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum watched an emperor angelfish swim back and forth in a large tank, competing with other brightly colored fish for a few flakes of feed drifting in the saltwater.

“Do you like my fish?” the general asked. “If I introduce new fish to the tank, the others attack it, kill it and sometimes bite out their eyes.”

It is a simple matter of “territory and survival,” the burly Uzbek explained, his bellowing laughter bouncing off the marble floors of the foyer in his heavily guarded estate in Kabul.

Seven years after the overthrow of the Taliban, the Bush administration is struggling to come up with a new strategy to salvage Afghanistan. In that effort, Gen. Dostum and the nation’s 14 other warlords are a mixed blessing. Often corrupt and clinging to 14th-century notions of justice, they are an integral part of Afghanistan’s past and present and are likely to remain so in the future.

Allied forces often rely on the warlords’ information and mastery of the tribal system to combat a growing Taliban insurgency. At the same time, they fear that the warlords’ resurgence could doom efforts to democratize the Muslim nation of 32 million and drag Afghanistan back into all-out civil war.

Afghan President Hamid “Karzai is weak so he indulges the warlords,” said Peter Tomsen, the U.S. special envoy to Afghan resistance fighters during their war against Soviet occupation two decades ago.

Many of the major warlords, including Gen. Dostum and Ismail Khan, an Iran-backed leader in western Afghanistan, have been given government jobs by Mr. Karzai in an effort to cement their allegiance.

In 2004, Mr. Karzai appointed Gen. Dostum commander in chief of the Afghan Army but had to remove him seven months ago after the general kidnapped and beat a former election manager, Akbar Bai, whom the general believed was planning to kill him. Gen. Dostum remains a member of parliament representing his Jumbesh-i-Milli Islami (Islamic National Party), which is based in the northern province of Jowzjan

Violent behavior is hardly out of character for Gen. Dostum. The quintessential warlord provided crucial help as part of a U.S.-backed Northern Alliance that toppled the Taliban in 2001, but his militia has also been accused of murdering thousands of people — charges that have not been verified.

Mr. Tomsen said that the CIA made “some cardinal errors when we went into Afghanistan by passing out millions and millions of dollars to Dostum” and other warlords without comprehending the ramifications.

“He certainly should be sidelined and if he leaves the country we’ll see greater success in reaching the people,” Mr. Tomsen said. He said the Uzbek warlord’s “Jowzjan militia” had “raped young girls in front of their families and killed thousands upon thousands of people.”

In a recent interview with The Washington Times, Gen. Dostum claimed he had been the victim — not the perpetrator — of such crimes.

He confirmed that former members of the Northern Alliance are rearming, fearing that U.S.-led forces will not be able to stop the Taliban.

“I convey my preparedness to root out Taliban and al Qaeda, and I am waiting for action by the international community, otherwise opportunities are wasted and our country will see war on a larger scale,” he said.

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