Abdul Raschid Dostum

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Abdul Raschid Dostum 2014

Abdul Raschid Dostum (also Rashid Dostam , Persian عبدالرشید دوستم, * 1954 in Khowja Dokoh , Juzdschan Province ) is a former Afghan militia leader and former Vice President of Afghanistan. Dostum belongs to the Uzbek minority in Afghanistan. During the Soviet occupation he became a general in the Afghan government army . After the withdrawal of the Soviets , he built up his own militia, with which he fought in changing alliances and gained control of several provinces in the north of the country. After the Taliban conquered his northern strongholds in 1997 and 1998, he fled into exile in Turkey. In 2001 he returned to Afghanistan. After the fall of the Taliban in the same year, he was a member of the government led by Hamid Karzai and was able to partially regain his old position of power in the north of the country.

Military career

Dostum was born into a simple farming family in a village near the town of Scheberghan . In 1973 he joined the army and at the same time became a member of the Democratic People's Party of Afghanistan . Since joining, he has maintained a close relationship with Babrak Karmal , the leader of the moderate Partscham faction of Afghan communists and later Afghan president. At the time of the Saur Revolution in April 1978, he commanded his own armed unit, which was stationed at the gas fields in Scheberghan. When the radical Khalq wing of the party took power after the revolution and the party leadership was purged of Partschamis, Dostum left the army. He explored contacts with the Afghan mujahideen in Pakistan, which quickly broke off. After the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Army and Karmal's appointment as president, he continued his military career. In 1980 he received six months of military training in Kazakhstan. Then he built up his own militia, which fought against the mujahedin as part of the semi-regular regional militias . His militia reached regimental and later brigade strength .

In 1987, Dostum became a general in the Afghan Army and his militia was incorporated into the regular army as the 53rd Infantry Division . Formally, it was not part of the army hierarchy, but reported directly to the new President Muhammad Najibullah . In practice, the division was a private army of Dostum, and its members were personally loyal to him. It comprised around 20,000 men, with ethnic Uzbeks from the northern provinces, especially from Dostum's home province of Juzdschan, making up the majority of the recruits, which is why the division was also called Juzdschani militia. She was known for her discipline and fighting strength, but also notorious for looting .

Role in civil war

After the withdrawal of the Soviet troops in 1989, Dostum's well-equipped militias played a decisive role in keeping the pro-Soviet government under Najibullah in power. They were also used as fire brigade militias in other parts of the country: Some units were relocated to Kandahar in 1989 to replace the withdrawing Soviet troops in the fight against the mujahedin. In addition, the Juzdschanis played a crucial role in the defense of the government positions in Jalalabad from March to June 1990. The strength of Dostum's 53rd Division rose to 40,000 to 45,000 men by 1991. In March 1990, Dostum was accepted into the Central Committee of Hizb-i Watan , the successor organization to the People's Democratic Party.

In 1992 Dostum led a rebellion by the garrison in Mazar-e Sharif against the government, which was joined by other sections of the army in the area. He and his militia took control of the city without a fight and declared himself the leader of a new party, the National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan ( Persian جنبش ملی اسلامی افقانستان Dschunbisch-i Melli-yi Islāmi-ye Afghanistan ). The Dschonbesch was not, despite their name Islamist dominated. At the same time, he joined forces with two of his former opponents of the mujahideen, the Jamiat-i Islāmi of Burhānuddin Rabbāni and Ahmad Shah Massoud, as well as the Shiite Hizb-i Wahdat of Ali Mazari , to form the anti-government Harakat-i Shomal .

In 1992 its militias, together with the Jamiat and Hizb-i Wahdat, conquered Kabul and overthrew the Najibullah government. They came before the Pashtun militias, especially the Hizb-i Islāmī of Gulbuddin Hekmatyār , with whom they subsequently fought for supremacy in Kabul. In 1994 Dostum left the alliance with the Jamiat and allied with Hekmatyārs Hizb-i Islāmī. Together with Hekmatyār he attacked the positions of the Jamiat in Kabul.

Afghanistan in autumn 1996: The areas controlled by Dostums Dschonbesch-i Melli included, for example, provinces in the north of the country

While the various militias fought for control of the capital and thus the central power, Dostum expanded his rule in the region around Mazar-e Sharif. In six northern provinces he established a pseudo-state, largely independent of the rest of the country, with its own airline, Balkh Air, and its own currency. In doing so, he was able to prevent the civil war from spreading to the provinces he controlled. The area controlled by him and closely related militia leaders included his home province of Juzdschān , the provinces of Faryāb , Sar-i Pol and Samangan as well as parts of Balkh , Kunduz and Tachar .

When the Taliban's movement gained ground in 1995, Dostum initially supported their struggle and sought a solid alliance with them. After the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 and pushed the Jamiat into the far north-east of the country, he allied himself again with Rabbāni, Massoud and the Hizb-i Wahdat, now led by Karim Chalili , and joined with them to form the united Islamic against the Taliban Front together.

In 1997 the Taliban advanced into the areas controlled by Dostum. In May, Dostum's deputy commander, Jamil Malik , mutinied and defected to the Taliban with parts of the Junbish militias. With Malik's support, the Taliban were able to conquer Dostum's core area and marched into Mazar-e Sharif. Dostum then fled to Turkey via Uzbekistan. The alliance between Malik and the Taliban broke up immediately after the city was taken, and an uprising against the Taliban broke out in the city, which was joined by the Hazara militias of the Hizb-i Wahdat. Only three days after their invasion, the Taliban were driven out of the city and had to withdraw from other areas previously ruled by Dostum. Dostum himself returned from exile in September and restored his control of the Junbish militias while Malik left the country. However, Dostum was unable to regain his sole rule against the Hazara militias, which had been strengthened by the successful uprising against the Taliban during Dostum's absence. There were repeated armed clashes between the Junbish and the Hizb-i Wahdat, which weakened their common position against the Taliban. In August 1998 the Taliban retook Masar-e Sharif, and Dostum fled again into exile in Turkey. His Djunbish militias disbanded for the time being.

Dostum in early 2002

After the fall of the Taliban

President Hamid Karzai and Raschid Dostum in December 2001

In 2001 Dostum returned to Afghanistan and reorganized the Junbisch militias. With US support, his militias and the troops of rival militia leader Atta Mohammad Noor recaptured Masar-e Sharif from the Taliban in November 2001. As part of the Petersberg Process , Dostum was appointed Deputy Defense Minister in the interim government led by Hamid Karzai in December 2001 . Karzai also appointed him military advisor for northern Afghanistan, a post that reflected his regained power in the northern provinces. This, however, was no longer unchallenged, and Dostum's ongoing rivalry with Atta repeatedly turned into open fights. Although the United Nations brokered an agreement between the two militia leaders in May 2002, battles continued after that.

His Dschunbisch converted Dostum into a political party. The state demobilization program provided for the extensive disarmament of the Afghan militias and their integration into the official Afghan national army. However, it is unclear how many Dostum militiamen were actually disarmed. In the presidential elections in autumn 2004, Dostum ran as a candidate. With 10% of the votes cast, he came fourth behind the incumbent President Hamid Karzai (55%), Junus Ghanuni (16%) and Hajji Mohammed Mohaqiq (12%). He received the majority of his votes in his northern home area; there he was able to win a majority in four provinces. The winner of the elections, Karzai appointed Dostum as military chief of staff in his new government in 2005 . This position, however, has more of a protocol significance, the appointment is seen as an attempt by Karzai to break Dostum's regional autocracy through his integration into the central government.

After allegedly attacking a competitor in 2008, Dostum spent some time in Turkey. Different media reported differently; he had visited his wife in Ankara, he had left for health reasons or he was forced into exile by Karzai. Three days before the Afghan parliamentary elections in 2009, Dostum returned at Karzai's request, with the promise to secure the Uzbeks' votes for Karzai in the upcoming parliamentary elections. The northern Afghan Uzbeks regard Dostum as their legitimate leader to this day.

At the end of 2011, Raschid Dostum, together with Ahmad Zia Massoud and Hajji Mohammed Mohaqiq, founded the National Alliance , which is fighting against a return of the Taliban to power. The alliance plans to run its own candidate in the 2014 presidential election in Afghanistan .

Alleged incitement to deprivation of liberty and rape

Ahmad Ishchi , a rival of Dostum from his own party, the National Muslim Movement of Afghanistan (Junbish-e-Milli-yi Islami), accused Dostum's bodyguard for several days on December 13, 2016 via the Afghan local broadcaster Tolo to have abducted, tortured and raped jointly. The US embassy in Kabul and the EU, Australia and Canada then requested an investigation. Ishchi is said to have been beaten and kidnapped by Dostum's bodyguards on November 25, 2016 on the sidelines of a Buzkaschi tournament in which two teams on horseback are fighting over a headless goat.

Dascht-i-Leili massacre

In December 2001 , Dostum's forces were supposed to take 8,000 Taliban prisoners from Kunduz to a prison. On the way there, around 3,000 of these people died in Dascht-i-Leili , a desert south of Scheberghan . They suffocated in shipping containers, were shot or died in grenade explosions. While various human rights organizations see the responsibility for the massacre at Dostum, Dostum denies having known of what happened.

reception

Dostum is one of the most controversial figures in recent Afghan history. Human rights organizations blame him for numerous serious war crimes, and his rule over the northern provinces he controls is considered brutal. His troops, the Junbisch-i Melli, are charged with looting and mistreating civilians in the Kabul area between 1992 and 1995. In addition, during the two recaptures of Mazar-e Sharif and the surrounding areas in 1997 and 2001, the militias are accused of the targeted displacement, mistreatment and murder of thousands of ethnic Pashtuns as well as massacres of captured Taliban. He was also notorious for his frequent ally changes: Between 1979 and 2001 he had practically every significant group in Afghanistan as both an ally and an enemy.

At the same time, however, Dostum is also credited with building an efficient administrative system in the areas he ruled: there he succeeded in creating the framework conditions for an economy that was flourishing in national comparison and, until the conquest of Mazar-e Sharif by the Taliban in 1997, the Soviet invasion to keep away any fighting taking place anywhere in the country. The city of Mazar-e Sharif was generally considered to be the last island of peace and prosperity in Afghanistan in the 1990s. This also contributed to the fact that Dostum was the only one of the militia leaders who was not influenced by Islam: Despite his authoritarian rule, his secular policy enabled the people in the areas he controlled a personal freedom unmatched in the rest of the country. When in the rest of Afghanistan women were forcibly denied any paid work and girls were banned from school under the Taliban, around 1,800 women studied at the Balkh University in Mazar-e Sharif, most of them without any veils. At the same time, famous musicians and dancers, who were no longer allowed to perform in Kabul, sought refuge in Dostum's territory.

Web links

Commons : Abdul Raschid Dostum  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Abdul Raschid Dostum in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible). Note: In some sources, 1955 is also given as the year of birth.
  2. Antonio Giustozzi: War, Politics and Society in Afghanistan, 1978-1992 . C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2000. ISBN 1-85065-396-8 , pp. 222 f
  3. Gilles Dorronsoro: Afghanistan: Revolution Unending, 1979-2002 . C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2004. ISBN 1-85065-703-3 , pp. 184 f
  4. Gilles Dorronsoro: Afghanistan: Revolution Unending, 1979-2002 . C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2004. ISBN 1-85065-683-5 , pp. 237 f
  5. Martin Ewan: Afghanistan: A New History . Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-29826-1 , pp. 129 ff
  6. ^ Akhmed Raschid : Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia. IB Tauris, 2002 ISBN 1-86064-830-4 , p. 55 ff.
  7. Kamal Matinuddin: The Taliban Phenomenon: Afghanistan 1994-1997 . Oxford University Press US, 1999. ISBN 0-19-579274-2 . P. 95 ff
  8. ^ Ivo H. Daalder, Nicole Gnesotto, Philip H. Gordon: Crescent of Crisis: US-European Strategy for the Greater Middle East . Brookings Institution Press, 2006. ISBN 0-8157-1689-3 , pp. 166 f
  9. Ben Farmer: Afghan warlord General Dostum returns home to campaign for Hamid Karzai. In: The Telegraph , August 18, 2009.
  10. Daniel-Dylan Böhmer , Michael Stürmer : These three powerful Afghans want to overthrow Karzai. In: The world . January 12, 2012, accessed January 13, 2012 .
  11. ^ Serious allegations against Afghan Vice President Dostum . In: Der Standard , December 14, 2016. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
  12. Mujib Mashal, Fahim Abed: Afghan Vice President Seen Abducting Rival. In: nytimes.com . November 27, 2016, archived from the original on December 15, 2016 ; accessed on December 13, 2019 (English, archive: full text; original: registration required).
  13. Marco Seliger: My father, the blood drunkard . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Quarterly . No. 4/2017 , November 2017 ( faz.net [accessed November 14, 2018]).
  14. ^ Frank Clements: Conflict in Afghanistan: A Historical Encyclopedia . ABC-CLIO, 2003, ISBN 1-85109-402-4 , p. 74 ff
  15. Human Rights Watch: Blood-Stained Hands: Past Atrocities in Kabul and Afghanistan's Legacy of Impunity Human Rights . 2005
  16. Human Rights Watch: World Report, 2003: Events of 2002 (November 2001 - November 2002). HRW 2003. ISBN 1-56432-285-8 . P. 189 f
  17. ^ Akhmed Raschid : Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia. IB Tauris, 2002 ISBN 1-86064-830-4 , p. 57.
  18. Angelo Rasanayagam: Afghanistan: A Modern History. IB Tauris, 2005 ISBN 1-85043-857-9 , p. 154.