Warlords of Afghanistan

Key Warlords in Afghanistan

Watching front lines of confrontation . . .

GULBUDDIN HEKMATYAR:
Hekmatyar is considered an ally of the former Taliban and al-Qaida and believed to be linked to fighters battling U.S. forces in southern Afghanistan since Monday. He was a major recipient of American military aid during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation. Fighting between his forces and other factions destroyed about 70 percent of Kabul after the Soviet pullout.

Hekmatyar agreed to be prime minister of a rebel government but later refused to enter Kabul, choosing instead to fight his fellow rebels. The bitter feud led to the Taliban takeover of Kabul, during which time Hekmatyar lived in Iran. Since their defeat, Hekmatyar has urged the Taliban to form a broad-based alliance to fight the United States and called for a jihad against the United States.

Hekmatyar is considered a suspect behind numerous rocket attacks and acts of terrorism over recent months. Hekmatyar, in his early 50s, is a Ghilzai Pashtun from Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan. He speaks several languages, including English.

MULLAH MOHAMMED OMAR:
Omar is the leader of the Taliban Islamic militia that seized power in 1996 and once ruled roughly 95 percent of Afghanistan.

Like most Taliban, he is Pashtun, the country’s largest ethnic group and the one that has ruled the Central Asian nation for most of its history. Omar began as a mullah, or preacher, and fought the Soviet occupiers. He and his allies formed the Taliban in 1994 and seized power in 1996.

His whereabouts since the fall of the Taliban are unknown, although some reports say he is hiding in southern Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan. MOHAMMED FAHIM:
Fahim is an ethnic Tajik who serves as defense minister and vice president in the transitional government. Widely considered the military power behind President Hamid Karzai, he assumed the legacy of murdered anti-Taliban resistance leader Ahmed Shah Massood. His forces control Kabul and much of the northwest, nominally in the name of the national government.

He has allied himself with the U.S.-backed government, but is considered to be dubious about a full transition to democracy, since that could see power shifted back to the Pashtun majority. He also has refused to hand over massive cashes of weapons in the Panjshir Valley to the national government and is also believed to receive help from Iran and Russia.

BURHANUDDIN RABBANI:
Rabbani was president of the Afghan government that preceded the Taliban. After he was driven from Kabul in 1996, he became the nominal head of the Northern Alliance, mostly minority Tajiks and Uzbeks, who swept to power in Kabul after the Taliban’s fall.
Rabbani heads the Jamiat-e-Islami political party, which counts powerful Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim among its members. A former lecturer in Islamic law at Kabul University, Rabbani is an ethnic Tajik.

GEN. RASHID DOSTUM:
Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek military commander, was a general in the communist army that ruled Afghanistan after the Soviets’ Red Army left in 1989. Dostum switched sides after Islamic groups gained the upper hand against the Kabul government around 1992, hastening the collapse of communist government and leaving Dostum in control of a large swath of northern Afghanistan where many people are Uzbeks. He returned from exile in Turkey in 2001 and resumed control over much of the country’s north, where he battles rivals, including the ethnic Tajik Atta Mohammed. Dostum is a vice defense minister in the transitional government.

ATTA MOHAMMED:
Mohammed is an ethnic Tajik who is Dostum’s biggest rival in northern Pakistan. Though Atta and Dostum have pledged to work together since the 2001 offensive against the Taliban, their forces have clashed repeatedly in recent months.
Mohammed is a member of Jamiat-e-Islami, like Rabbani and Fahim. ISMAIL KHAN: Khan is a powerful Tajik commander who governs much of the country’s west from his base in the city of Herat. He fled into exile in Iran after the Taliban consolidated their hold over the region, but returned with the militia’s fall to reclaim his former territory.
Considered an Islamic conservative, though not as extreme as the Taliban, he has battled various rivals for influence, especially Pashtun rival Ammanullah Khan. GUL AGHA

SHERZAI:
Sherzai is the Pashtun governor of the southern city of Kandahar, the former headquarters of the Taliban movement. He ruled Kandahar prior to the Taliban rise in 1994, and his corruption and feuding is said to have resulted in the formation of the Taliban. Sherzai’s men were notorious for bribery, extortion and widespread theft.
He aligned himself with the U.S. forces after Sept. 11 and became governor when the Taliban fell.

YUNUS KHALIS:
Khalis is a staunch Islamist who led a faction of the Afghan resistance during the U.S.-backed war against the Soviet army. He has at various times been allied with Hekmatyar, the Taliban and al-Qaida.

One of his subordinates is credited with welcoming Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan and Khalis accommodated al-Qaida members on his farm. His son, Anwarul Haq Mujahed, is believed to have helped numerous al-Qaida members escape Afghanistan.
His lieutenant, Din Mohammed, is currently governor of eastern Nangarhar province.