Will a U.S.-Backed Warlord Pose a Threat to Afghan President's Re-election Campaign?

The crimes are not new: Afghans and the rest of the world have known about the deaths of up to 2,000 Taliban prisoners of war immediately following their surrender to General Abdul Rashid Dostum in November 2001.

Nor is there any doubt that Dostum was then a partner of the United States in its successful attempt to topple the Taliban government.

But recent statements by President Barack Obama that he may be prepared to re-examine the deaths, have raised a furore in the highly-charged, pre-election atmosphere of the Afghan capital.

“The indications that this had not been properly investigated just recently was [sic] brought to my attention,” Obama said in a July 13 interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “So what I’ve asked my national security team to do is to collect the facts for me that are known, and we’ll probably make a decision in terms of how to approach it once we have all of the facts gathered up.”

Dostum is a colorful and controversial figure in Afghanistan. He is widely revered among his fellow ethnic Uzbeks for his bravery and fighting spirit, while being just as widely reviled by others, especially Pashtuns, for his brutality.

He is also a key ally of the incumbent president, Hamed Karzai, in his bid for re-election.

Dostum has long come in handy during Afghanistan’s decades of conflict and has danced in and out of alliances, his loyalty often seen as more a matter of realpolitik than genuine conviction.

When the U.S. decided to invade Afghanistan in October 2001, it turned to Dostum, among other former commanders, for help. In the northern city of Kunduz, after a carefully brokered agreement, 8,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters laid down their arms and waited for the transport that had been promised.

As many as 2,000 were shoved into metal containers with no ventilation, and left to suffocate, an investigation by Physicians for Human Rights under United Nations auspices concluded. They were then buried in mass graves in the Dasht-e-Leili, a desert in Dostum’s home province of Jowzjan.

Dostum’s alleged involvement in the deaths has been investigated by Afghan and international human rights groups, which have claimed that the burly general bears the bulk of the responsibility for what amounts to a war crime. But to date there has been no official inquiry and he has denied it happened.

When Karzai was elected president in 2004, he sought to bring many of the former warlords into his government. Dostum was given the largely symbolic post of chief of staff to the commander in chief.

But he went into exile last year, after a widely publicized brawl with a former ally, Mohammad Akbar Bai.

Saying he needed medical attention – Dostum suffers from diabetes – the general left for Turkey, where he now lives in the capital, Ankara.

But he wants to come home. Observers say that his support for Karzai was predicated on a promise that he would be allowed to return to Afghanistan, where he has a power base in the north.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, the State Department has been working to block Dostum’s return to Afghanistan. The piece quoted U.S. officials saying that the administration “might not be hostile to an inquiry”.

The timing of the Times piece, as well as Obama’s remarks, have many observers in Kabul scratching their heads. They see this as part of an ongoing campaign to unseat the Afghan president.

“The Americans think that if the current situation continues, the crisis in Afghanistan will expand,” said political analyst Amad Saeedy. “So they want to place the burden [of government] on somebody else.”

Dostum himself has reacted angrily to what he sees as a politically motivated attack.