Dostum
By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
September 16, 2024
Veteran Afghan warlord and former politician Abdul Rashid Dostum has urged groups that oppose the fundamentalist Taliban to unite to form a government-in-exile for Afghanistan to challenge that extremist group’s unrecognized leadership.
Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek and longtime kingmaker who along with his private army has been accused of past rights abuses, was speaking to a virtual gathering of a Turkish-based Afghan resistance group on September 15.
Dostum said last year that his fighters were prepared to take on the Taliban once the international community concluded that it cannot deal with the hard-line extremist group.
The chameleonic Dostum formerly served under the UN-backed former Afghan government as a deputy defense minister.
He also held other party and military posts in Afghanistan before the U.S.-led international forces withdrew in mid-2021.
Dostum, whose historical power bases were in northern and western Afghanistan, ran unsuccessfully for the Afghan presidency in 2004.
He was also widely thought to be a major figure in factional fighting that plagued the country for decades and sometimes pitted ostensibly allied armed forces against each another.
In 2019, when he was first vice president, Dostum was said to have narrowly escaped when his convoy was attacked by Taliban forces in a northern province.
A day later, the Taliban, which was waging a fierce insurgency against the central government in Kabul, said Dostum remained on its hit list.
The Taliban raided homes and summarily executed many perceived enemies as the group swept into de facto power after capturing most of the country in 2020-21.
The subsequent Taliban-led government has waged a campaign of discrimination and abuse against women and been accused of persecuting minority groups in Afghanistan, among other alleged wrongdoing.
Copyright (c) 2024. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
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