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Northern Afghan warlords hope for ballots not bullets ahead of elections

By Emmanuel Duparcq

‘To build popular support both generals need to strive for a veneer of respectability and the international community has made it clear it would take a tougher line with recalcitrant warlords’

Two of Afghanistan’s most powerful northern warlords have laid down their arms to enter politics as the country prepares for its first parliamentary elections.

The militias of ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostam and his Tajik rival Mohammed Atta have clashed repeatedly in and around Mazar-i-Sharif since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001.

But calm has descended on this northern city as both men look to build political power bases.

“There are always underlying tensions, but no major problems lately. Dostum and Atta wanted to be legitimate,” said Captain Tim Rawlinson of the city’s British-run Provincial Reconstruction Team, part of NATO’s peacekeeping mission in the north.

To stand in the September 18 parliamentary elections, candidates must prove they are not linked to an armed group and although commanders such as Atta and Dostam still have ties to their militias, they have disarmed most of their men as part of a UN-backed disarmament drive.

“They realised that they can’t reach their goals by fighting but by being in the political field,” Qasi Mohammed Same, director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.

Same added that Mazar residents were war-weary and tired of the constant clashes between the rival militias.

To build popular support both generals need to strive for a veneer of respectability and the international community has made it clear it would take a tougher line with recalcitrant warlords, he said.

A month ahead of the presidential election last October won by President Hamid Karzai, military strongman Ismail Khan was ousted as governor of the western province of Herat amid riots which were quelled by the US military and the fledgling Afghan army.

Since then Karzai has chosen to bring militia commanders such as Atta and Dostam — both of whom have a history of alleged human rights abuses - into the political fold, while Khan was appointed to head the Ministry of Energy..

Atta was appointed governor of Balkh province, which includes Mazar-i-Sharif, ahead of last year’s election, while Dostam was appointed chief of staff of the high command of Afghanistan’s armed forces last month.

Dostam’s appointment dismayed human rights groups but political insiders in Kabul said Dostam, who won 10 percent of the vote in the presidential election, was a political force to be reckoned with.

“It’s a case of keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Dostam needed to have a role in government because they can’t arrest him or get rid of him,” a Western diplomat in Kabul said.

Said Noorullah, Dostam’s aide in charge of his Uzbek Jumbesh party, told AFP, “We can’t say that we have no weapons. But we think we don’t need them anymore, because it’s no benefit to fight each other.”

He added that Dostam was “not a warlord, he’s a political guy. And president Karzai knows that he can do a great job.”

Dostam has changed sides many times in the past two decades, fighting with the Soviets in the 1980s and later fighting with the mujahedin against Soviet-backed President Najibullah.

Dostam’s nomination in the government, to a post that many see as symbolic, could also have been a shrewd political move.

The appointment “calmed the situation here by alleviating the concerns of militia forces who were badly aggrieved that they were excluded from Karzai’s first cabinet,” the head of a humanitarian aid agency in Mazar told AFP.

In January Dostam narrowly escaped assassination by a suicide bomber outside a mosque in his northern stronghold of Sheberghan, where he had been saying open-air prayers at a Muslim festival.

The bomb gave Dostam’s long-term rival Atta an opportunity to bridge the divide between the two men, and he has twice visited Dostam in Sheberghan, first to express his sympathy after the assassination attempt and then in February after the death of Dostam’s father.

Despite the peace overtures, however, tensions remain.

There were popular demonstrations in Mazar over land disputes, with local residents accusing Atta of handing out land to his relatives and militia loyalists.

Atta, however, pinned the blame squarely on Dostam saying it was “the general” who had given out land before the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

When the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance took control of Afghanistan in late 2001, backed by a US air campaign, Dostam was appointed as Karzai’s envoy to the north soon after the hardline Islamic regime was toppled. afp

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