KABUL, Afghanistan — A powerful warlord’s militias overran a provincial capital in Afghanistan yesterday, forcing the governor to flee in what could be the biggest challenge yet to U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai.
The takeover of Maymana could raise concerns in Washington over the stability of Afghanistan as the country prepares for national elections in September and American troops face a surge of violence in Iraq.
Forces of Abdul Rashid Dostum stormed into Maymana, the capital of Faryab province some 260 miles northwest of Kabul, Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said.
“They have control of the city,” Mr. Jalali said, adding that the “massive” force had met little opposition.
But he pledged to reinstate the Kabul-appointed governor, Enayatullah Enayat, who fled to the airport, and said Mr. Dostum would be ousted from the town.
Hashim Khan, the commander of the 200th Afghan army division, also fled Maymana, Mr. Jalali said.
It marked the second major militia clash in Afghanistan in less than a month, and raised further doubt about the war-ravaged country’s readiness for elections.
The government already has deployed 1,500 troops from its U.S.-trained Afghan National Army to the western city of Herat after bloody factional fighting last month left 16 dead, including a Cabinet minister.
In unrelated violence, two Afghan army soldiers were among seven persons killed across the insurgency-torn south and east, officials said. One died in a gunbattle during a search operation in southern Helmand province. An American soldier was wounded in the battle.
Another Afghan soldier was killed by a mine in neighboring Uruzgan. Three militants and two police officers were also reported killed in Helmand.
Mr. Jalali said 750 more soldiers would be deployed in Faryab. “Whatever is necessary for maintaining stability and peace, they are going to do it,” he said.
Mr. Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek, former communist and veteran of Afghanistan’s civil wars, controlled a swath of the country, including Faryab, as a personal fiefdom in the early 1990s.
He returned to power in the region after helping U.S. forces drive out the Taliban regime in late 2001, and has since maintained a large private army.
But he has appealed in vain for a top security job in Mr. Karzai’s administration, and his men have fought repeatedly for control of the territory with Tajik rivals allied with Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim.
Mr. Karzai’s government has vowed to disarm about 40,000 militia fighters and round up heavy weapons in the country by the September vote.
Mr. Jalali said the government pinned its hopes in a U.N.-sponsored demobilization plan to disarm fighters and reintegrate them into civilian life.
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