The Warlord: Abdul Rashid Dostum, a Blood-Stained Chapter in the History of Afghanistan, by Abdul Qadeer Muhajir, (1997)

Abdul Qadeer Muhajir has invested twenty years of research in writing this compelling narrative, a riveting manuscript which often entailed physical hardship and personal risk while on a fact finding mission through six of Afghanistan’s northern-provinces. His lengthy journey resulted in resident interviews, as well as interviews with former associates, disaffected commanders, friends and supporters of Afghanistan’s nefarious traitor…Abdul Rashid Dostum. His findings therefore, will come as no surprise to those amongst us with a profound interest in Afghanistan’s history, to learn that the details of treason and genocide surrounding the persona of this impious, sadistic and brutal leader from the north of Afghanistan…were and are inspired by an insatiable lure of power and foreign gold. (1)

Can there be any question concerning the gravity of the deadly, treasonous contribution made by Dostum to the overall war effort by Moscow in their attempt to achieve political, economic and strategic supremacy in Afghanistan? Or for that matter, to his participation in the current strife and bloodletting at the behest of foreign (US/NATO/ISAF) sponsors? And can there be any doubt of the incalculable cost to the Afghan people both in human and economic terms as a result of his collaboration with the former USSR, and can there be any amongst us who would question the veracity of his alleged, self-serving relationship with Russia, Iran, Uzbekistan and more recently, the United States invasion and occupation of Afghanistan? A fact confirmed by The Moscow Times recently when they reported that Russian troops from the 201^st Motorized Rifle Regiment (MRR) based in Tajikistan and clad in the attire of Northern Alliance regulars in order to mask their identity, fought with and alongside Northern Alliance (Dostum’s) troops against the Taliban. Russian participation was said to be in exchange for US support for what Russia characterizes as a war against ‘Chechen terrorists’. (2)

These and other issues and characterizations are addressed by the author in this exhaustive, highly authoritative documentation of the American, Soviet, Iranian, and Russian ‘game’ in Afghanistan. This is undoubtedly the most engagingly comprehensive and informed book ever published on the history of this beleaguered nation that addresses in lucid detail the sordid role of one of Afghanistan’s notorious Quislings. (3)

The War Lord asserts that collaboration, treason and genocide is not a sporadic event or random event, nor is it necessarily linked to economic development, national psychosis or social decay. The actions of Abdul Rashid Dostum are a special sort of mass destruction conducted for personal gain, and with the unwritten approval of the international community. As the author states succinctly, life and death are uniquely fundamental, since they alone serve as a precondition for the examination of all other issues. This compelling study alleges Dostum’s participation and guilt in what social scientists term ‘democide’…the intentional killing by governments and their agents through genocide, politicide, massacre and terror. Muhajir illustrates authoritatively, the enormity of the slaughter in Afghanistan and the role Dostum played in it. (4)

The author properly examines the incestuous role of the propagandists, a critical role initiated by CIA supported feminists’ organizations, media personalities, government spokespersons, deposed bureaucrats, Members of the United States Congress, and other tireless supporters of the so-called Northern Alliance.  Supporters who endeavor to create diversions through sophistry and by espousing dis-information, fabrications and outright propaganda to the mass media on such topics as ‘women’s rights’ and the alleged brutality of the Taliban while ignoring documented atrocities committed by the Northern Alliance…and in so doing thereby seek to return or justify the elevation of Afghanistan’s notorious war criminals and collaborators to the highest government portfolios in the land. (5)

In a cruel twist of irony, Abdul Qadeer Muhajir notes as to how Abdul Rashid Dostum and his subordinates knowingly subverted and brutalized Afghanistan, killing…raping, killing, and looting his country and his people who had compassionately provided asylum to his forbears at a perilous time in the bloody history of Russia. A time when the alternative to emigration to Afghanistan was certain death as Tsarist Russia embarked on an unprecedented campaign of murder and terror against the citizens of Muslim Central Asia. This work is unhesitatingly scholarly, clear and tough-minded. (6)

The War Lord therefore is a fundamental work for political scientists, sociologists, jurists, and all those concerned with human rights abuse, unbridled foreign interference in a sovereign nation, and with the hopes and prayers of the prospect of the adjudication of war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), crimes as committed by factional personalities’ propensity towards evil; Those of Rashid Dostum, Ahmad Shah Massoud, Mohammad Fahim, Saleh, Abdullah Abdullah, Atta, Muhaqiq, Malik, etc. And for those as well who revere individual freedoms as enumerated in Afghanistan’s Constitution and thereby challenge the unmitigated question of outside interference in and with the elevation of certified (Northern Alliance) war criminals as heir apparent to assume the mantle of power to succeed the American-appointed Karzai Administration as the next government of Afghanistan. Personality profiles are therefore of immediate and imperative value to the future of a well-informed Afghan electorate. For the purpose of this paper, outside interference as defined in and as a codified violation of existing international law, and as manifest in and with unilateral interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation by self-anointed and self-styled international institutions such as the Aspen Institute who recently hosted an assemblage of Afghanistan’s notorious war criminals juxtaposed as a legitimate choice for a succeeding government. However, the Aspen Institute as with the many and varied UN chapters and other international institutions, are often hailed dishonestly and or masquerading as…unbiased conflict resolution conferences, but in reality are covert, agenda-based, subterfuge and contributing extensions or components of the ever-present and manipulative foreign (CIA, MI6, SVB, ISI, and Savak) intelligence apparatus, motivated by interests inimical and alien to those of Afghanistan. (7)    

 As for further corroboration and or citations/sources for the above text please note the verbatim quotation presented below taken from the internationally-acclaimed work: American Raj, Liberation or Domination, Resolving the Conflict between the West and the Muslim World, by Eric S. Margolis, 2008, p.199.  

Eric S. Margolis:

‘Some of the leaders of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, notably former Afghan Communist Secret police Chief Mohammad Fahim and Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum, had been responsible for frightful massacres and the most abominable crimes against real and fancied opponents, including flaying, impalement, burning and buried alive, acid baths, freezing to death in refrigerators, as well as more conventional torture of electrocution, beatings, drowning, and the ripping out of eyes, beards and fingernails’. (8)

Notes:

(1)   The Warlord: Abdul Rashid Dostum, a Bloodstained Chapter in the History of Afghanistan, by Abdul Qadeer Muhajir, 1997.     

(2)   ‘Shattering the Al-Qaeda Myth’, Part (1), Chechen Weekly, 4.35, Jamestown Foundation Monitor, by Brian Glyn Williams, 11/10/11, and ‘America’s Hunt for Chechens in Afghanistan’, by Chris Ottony, 3/22/11, Agence France Press (AFP), and ‘Russia’s Secret wars’, the Moscow Times, by Pavel Felgenhauer, 9/27/11.

(3)   The Warlord: Abdul Rashid Dostum, a Bloodstained Chapter in the History of Afghanistan, by Abdul Qadeer Muhajir, 1997.

(4)   Ibid.

(5)   American Raj, Liberation of Domination? Resolving the Conflict between the West and the Muslim World, by Eric S. Margolis, 2008, p.199, and ‘Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance Makes a Dangerous Friend’, Baltimore Sun, Christian Science Monitor, by S. Frederick Starr, Chairman, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Silk Road Studies Program, 10/17/01.

(6)   Afghanistan, Political Frailty and External Interference, by Nabi Misdaq, 2006, pp. 198-223.

(7)   Afghanistan, a Search for Truth, by Bruce G. Richardson, 2008, pp.59-71, 381-382

(8)   American Raj, Liberation or Domination? Resolving the Conflict between the West and the Muslim World, by Eric S. Margolis, 2008, p. 199.

Bruce G. Richardson

 

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