 Tribute to the Victims of the
September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks
For Now, Rival Warlords Put Aside Bitter Feuds of Past
Background about the Northern
Alliance
By John Ward Anderson and
Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
November 12, 2001
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 11 -- The Afghan guerrilla commanders who captured
the city of Mazar-e Sharif for the opposition Northern Alliance, and are trying
to expand the alliance's control across northern Afghanistan, are three men with
disparate ethnic and religious backgrounds and a long history of fighting among
themselves.
The three warlords -- Abdurrashid Dostum, Attah Mohammad and Mohammad Mohaqiq
-- acknowledged that it was only by setting aside their differences and working
together that they were able to end the Taliban's three-year occupation of Mazar-e
Sharif.
"Revenge is ingrained in their minds," said Syed Fida Yunas, a Pakistani from
the Pashtun ethnic group that dominates the Taliban. Yunas, who served as a
diplomat in Afghanistan for two decades and has written histories of the
country, argued that it was unlikely the diverse cast of characters could
overcome mutual animosities to run Mazar-e Sharif -- much less the country. "I'm
sorry to say, nobody likes each other," he said.
The three commanders are among the warlords who tried to jointly rule
Afghanistan for a period in the 1990s, but instead plunged the country into a
deadly civil war fueled by ethnic hatred, personal feuds and betrayals, revenge
killings and ruthless bombings of civilians, especially in Kabul, the capital.
Their relations over the past two decades have been marked by opportunism and
treachery, although many analysts say that as long as they share a common enemy
-- such as the Taliban -- chances are they will stay united, particularly as
they try to consolidate their hold over the north. Today, for example, Dostum,
Mohammad and Mohaqiq held an extraordinary summit and agreed to replace military
rule in Mazar-e Sharif with a civilian administration.
Human rights activists warn that the United States is gradually becoming
ensnared in the politically dicey mission of backing warlords with abysmal human
rights records who may not have widespread support within Afghanistan, and who
could face prosecution by international tribunals for crimes against humanity
and other war-related offenses. Many of the warlords may eventually be opposed
by fiercely independent Afghans for aligning themselves with a foreign power,
the United States.
"The U.S. and its allies should not cooperate with commanders whose record of
brutality raises questions about their legitimacy inside Afghanistan," the
international organization Human Rights Watch said in a recent statement. It
criticized "the deplorable record of attacks on civilians" by "the various
parties that comprise the United Front," the more formal name of the Northern
Alliance.
Afghan warlords and their militias typically are identified with different
ethnic and tribal groups in different regions of Afghanistan. They frequently
have conflicting religious leanings and often are backed by competing
neighboring countries.
The militias were formed by groups of Islamic mujaheddin, "holy warriors" who
jointly fought against the Soviet Union's 1979-89 occupation of Afghanistan. But
when the communist successor regime collapsed in 1992, the militias turned their
guns on one another in a deadly power struggle to control the country and the
capital. Their ruthless fighting virtually destroyed Kabul -- 24,000 people were
killed in the city in 1994 alone -- and was instrumental in fueling the rise of
the Taliban, which won popular support in the mid-1990s by promising to end the
country's civil war and to restore law and order.
Dostum, 46, a burly former communist, high school dropout and reputedly
hard-drinking atheist, is an ethnic Uzbek who has been a key ally and enemy of
virtually every militia in Afghanistan. He returned from exile in Turkey in
April to rejoin the Northern Alliance.
Once Afghanistan's best-armed warlord and one of the few with fighter jets,
he frequently changed sides in the middle of a fight and tilted the country's
entire military equation. He has been backed by Uzbekistan, Russia and, most
recently, Turkey, but over the years he has lost much of his military equipment
and many of his forces.
In 1997, his top deputy, Gen. Abdul Malik Pahlawan, defected to the Taliban,
forcing Dostum to flee Afghanistan. After the Taliban entered Mazar-e Sharif,
Dostum's traditional stronghold, Pahlawan turned against his new allies and
allegedly killed about 3,000 Taliban soldiers. When the Taliban retook the city
the following year, they allegedly executed about 2,000 people, mostly ethnic
Hazara Shiite Muslims.
Dostum -- who used to control the region from a large mud fort near the town
of Shebergan -- was a bitter rival of both Mohaqiq and Mohammad, who joined him
last week in capturing Mazar-e Sharif. And those two warlords also reportedly
harbor deep animosities.
Mohaqiq, an ethnic Tajik, was a top leader of the Shiite Muslim fighting
force Hizb-i-Wahdat-i-Islami, when that group joined with Pahlawan in ousting
Dostum from Mazar-e Sharif in 1997. His fighters allegedly participated in the
subsequent atrocities against Taliban forces, which included dumping soldiers
into wells alive and then throwing in grenades.
Mohammad is a Sunni Muslim from the Hazara ethnic group. He is affiliated
with the strongest military and political force in the Northern Alliance,
Jamiat-i-Islami, the Tajik-dominated militia loyal to Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Rabbani himself is a divisive figure, having refused to relinquish the Afghan
presidency in 1996 as required under a power-sharing agreement with his
coalition partners.
In the war against the Soviets in the 1980s, Mohammad fought against Dostum,
who sided with the Soviets. In the recent campaign to take Mazar-e Sharif,
Mohammad's forces reportedly moved to within a few miles of the city, but were
forced to quickly withdraw after being left exposed when Dostum failed to back
up his advance. Dostum and Mohammad then reconciled and agreed to work together
under Gen. Mohammed Fahim, the Northern Alliance's defense chief.
Military analysts say that the next logical step for the alliance forces
would be to consolidate their positions around Mazar-e Sharif and secure an
overland supply route to Uzbekistan, where the United States has supply bases.
Dostum, Mohammad and representatives of the Hizb-i-Wahdat-i-Islami political
party met today and agreed to station the bulk of their forces in separate camps
outside and to the south of the Mazar-e Sharif. Each of the three forces will
send 100 men to share a garrison inside Mazar-e Sharif, which will be
administered by civil authorities under Rabbani.
The alliance is also expected to begin advancing west toward the city and
province of Herat, where another legendary warlord, Ismail Khan, is hoping to
recapture the province where he was once governor.
Khan, a 54-year-old Tajik, defended his base against Soviet forces for 10
years, then joined Rabbani's Jamiat-i-Islami when the Soviets withdrew. He
governed his fairly peaceful and prosperous province until 1995, when he was
accused of accepting payoffs to allow Herat to fall to the Taliban.
Khan escaped to neighboring Iran. He returned in late 1996 in an attempt to
reclaim Herat, but one of his commanders defected to the Taliban and surrendered
Khan to them. He spent more than a year in jail in the southern city of Kandahar
before escaping with the help of sympathetic local soldiers. He fled again to
Iran and was drawn back to Afghanistan only within the last year.
Following the traditional Afghan belief that whoever rules Kabul rules the
country, the Northern Alliance leaders are anxiously planning their return to
Kabul. Their ultimate test will be expelling the Taliban from the city and
declaring a truce among themselves while an interim government is established.
That challenge proved too much for them after the Soviets withdrew from
Afghanistan in 1989.
Mindful of the intense factional differences, both President Bush and
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said last week they hoped the Northern
Alliance, which is made up predominantly of ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks, would not
try to take Kabul. Powell said the capital should be a neutral "open city,"
devoid of armed groups, until an interim government is established.
A key challenge will be finding a charismatic Pashtun leader willing to join
the Northern Alliance who can rally his ethnic group behind him. Pashtuns make
up about 40 percent of Afghanistan, Tajiks about 25 percent, Hazaras 19 percent
and Uzbeks about 8 percent.
One top Pashtun, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a brutal warlord who received huge
amounts of aid from the United States and Pakistan during the war against the
Soviets, and who ruthlessly attacked Kabul and enforced a strict food blockade
during the ensuing siege of the capital in the early 1990s, has been negotiating
an alliance with the Taliban in recent weeks.
Hekmatyar, who now lives in Iran, reportedly has advised the Taliban where
they can find hidden weapons caches in Afghanistan, including shoulder-launched,
surface-to-air Stinger missiles.
Another Pashtun warlord who controlled parts of Kabul and relentlessly
attacked the capital in the 1990s, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, is a top commander with
the Northern Alliance, but it is questionable how much support he has. Sayyaf, a
member of the conservative Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, was strongly backed by
Saudi Arabia during the Soviet occupation and reportedly is a bitter enemy of
some of his nominal allies in the Northern Alliance, particularly Dostum.
"It will be nothing short of a miracle if an ultra Wahhabi [Sayyaf], an
orthodox Shiite [Mohaqiq] and an atheist warlord [Dostum] form a stable
government in Muslim Afghanistan," said a senior military intelligence official
from Pakistan who is monitoring events in Afghanistan. "Those who expect Rasul
Sayyaf to join hands with . . . Mohaqiq or Gen. Dostum don't know the ground
realities in that country."
Correspondent Doug Struck in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and special
correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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