Yoo-hoo, Mr. Warlord?Banging on the door of Gen. Dostum’s compound in Kabul, having been assured the war criminal — uh, Afghanistan vice-president — was in there.On that day in 2008, Dostum refused to open. “I am not talking.” Which was annoying because I’d never before had a problem getting him on the phone and, seven years earlier, had trailed his personal militia as they seized back the northern stronghold of Mazar-e-Sharif from the Taliban, a swashbuckling battle fought on horseback. From Mazar it was all open highway to Kabul — Abdul Rashid Dostum first among the warlords to enter Kabul — with the Taliban in stunning collapse, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda bolting into the mountains of Tora Bora.Scarcely two months after 9/11, the U.S. would have its pound of flesh.We knew American special forces on the ground were calling in bomb strike co-ordinates. But there were yet no U.S. troops officially in the country, Washington using the warlords and their armies as proxies. For a brief moment in Afghanistan’s tortured history, nearly all the bickering warlords had allied to thrust off the Taliban. Some of the same warlords who’d reduced Kabul to rubble during the civil war that erupted after the occupying Soviets retreated across the Amu Darya River in ignominious defeat by the mujahideen.For weeks I’d watched American B-52s, their distinctive double contrails traced against the sky, dropping 500-pound bombs on Taliban formations. At that point, at the front lines, the Northern Alliance and the Taliban were separated by only a few hundred metres. Commanders from both sides, dug into World War I-style trenches, taunted each other over their radios.12 Strong, a recently released movie about the Mazar-e-Sharif campaign, got that detail right.Somewhere, Dostum must be smiling, basking in his romanticized Hollywood treatment.Actually, somewhere is Turkey. That’s where Dostum has been for the past ...
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