BALKH, Afghanistan, 14 October 2003 — Once known as the “mother of cities,” visited by Alexander the Great and sacked by Ghenghis Khan, what little remains of legendary Balkh is now the front-line between feuding warlords vying for control of northern Afghanistan.
Nearly 800 years on, the mudbrick fortresses dotting the plain seem little changed from the time of Ghenghis and his horde but the turbanned warriors manning them are today armed with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades rather than swords and spears.
While camels roam among the cotton bushes and cannabis, ethnic Uzbek and Tajik militiamen keep a close eye on each other across the couple of kilometers of crops which divide their territories.
The latest round of fighting between ethnic Uzbek Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostam and his Tajik rival General Atta Mohammad erupted last week after two commanders of Dostam’s Junbish faction were allegedly kidnapped by Mohammad’s Jamiat militamen.
Dozens were reportedly killed and injured in the fighting which came as far as Balkh, 20 km (12 miles) west of Mazar-e-Sharif, the city both warlords claim as their own.
Mohammad and Dostam agreed to a cease-fire and withdrew most of their troops from the front-lines in Balkh district after Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali helicoptered in from Kabul to meet with the feuding warlords. While their generals have agreed to a cease-fire, Jamiat and Junbish militiamen remain on the front-line watching each other’s moves.
“It’s not up to us, it’s up to Gen. Dostam and Gen. Atta Mohammad what happens — we’re just soldiers,” said Wali Mohammad, commander of the Junbish 70th division in Charbolak just west of Balkh.
“If Dostam says ‘fight,’ we will fight,” he said sitting in his whitewashed single-story base, with portraits of the President Hamid Karzai and Dostam hanging on the wall and another of the former communist general prominently displayed on a desk.
“Atta Mohammad wants to take control of Mazar and so does Dostam — they’re both old enemies,” said Mohammad, 23, whose father is in the opposing Jamiat faction.
“If they both leave Mazar, it’s good. My idea is that both should leave and then for security we want the governor (of Balkh province) and President Karzai to take charge of Mazar,” he said. Some 1,000 Junbish militiamen had left the base and returned to Dostam’s fortress stronghold in Sherberghan city, 110 km (80 miles) to the west, after the agreement, he said.
A couple of dozen armed men wearing the traditional shalwar kameez (baggy trousers and long shirt) were still at the base, wandering around with AK-47s or manning an anti-aircraft gun. Two old field guns fixed in concrete at the base entrance appeared more for decorative than offensive use.
Just a few kilometers to the east the road to Mazar goes through the middle of the 01 division fortress, with similiar militiamen armed with machine guns but here they are Jamiat. Closer to Mazar, a police post manned by officers loyal to Jamiat is accompanied by a group of turbanned young men in a pick-up truck loaded with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles.
“We’re here because it’s our post,” said one, wielding an RPG while on a wall opposite a painted warning from the OMAR demining organization pleaded “Do not deal with explosives.” Irregular forces such as these which have weapons and loose affiliations to one or other group are the main problem facing President Karzai in the north, as Atta Mohammad’s deputy Gen. Abdul Sabor freely admits
“Because of these soldiers in Mazar we don’t have security, we don’t have law and order. It’s not just in Mazar, but the whole north of Afghanistan is like this,” he said at the headquarters of the 7th corps in Mazar.