Afghan president renews bid to rein in northern warlords

Not long ago, the gates to this city bore a portrait of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the regional strongman who - despite his efforts to shake the title - is still known as one of Afghanistan's most feared warlords. Now the entrance bears double images: one of Mr. Dostum, and one of President Hamid Karzai.

The gesture is part of Dostum's effort to burnish his image as a man keen to cooperate with the central government in Kabul. But after another round of deadly fighting between Dostum's soldiers and those of his rival, Ustad Atta Mohammad, the Afghan government has lost patience with promises to turn over a new leaf.

Mr. Karzai has ordered the merger of the two men's militias, and is looking to uproot Dostum and Mr. Mohammad from their ethnic turfs by giving them jobs in Kabul. Adding weight to Karzai's push, a senior UN Security Council delegation visited the two northern strongmen last week to issue a demand for change.

The program is part of Karzai's renewed effort, backed by growing international concerns for Afghanistan's rickety security situation, to assert central government authority where his influence is weak. Tuesday, a bomb exploded in a vehicle outside a United Nations office in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. And Afghan and US forces clashed with insurgents in northeast Afghanistan in a campaign that targets Al Qaeda and Taliban forces there.

"If [the two strongmen] cooperate with the reforms in the north, then they might be offered a position here," says Shahmahmood Miakhel, senior adviser to the interior minister, who is spearheading the effort in the north. He says that along with militia reform, the government will soon install new governors in five northern provinces. The current governors harbor loyalties to each of the two well-armed power brokers, he says, prolonging problems.

"There is no reason why there can't be peace there," says Mr. Miakhel. "Replacing the governors is a way of showing that the government is following through on its promise to bring security to the north."

The on-again, off-again fighting is wearing on many Afghans and causing the once-mighty military men to lose popular support, says Esa Iftekhary of the Mazar-e Sharif office of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. "People are saying openly now, 'We don't want you,' " he says of the warring warlords.

Yet Dostum, renowned as an Uzbek militia leader during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and later as an opponent of the Taliban, does not appear eager to change his address. Dostum has been asked before to come to Kabul but has managed to stay in his stronghold. Karzai made him deputy defense minister, but Dostum is never in the capital. Instead, near the shanty homes of Shiberghan, he has recently remodeled his headquarters - a mansion painted in popsicle colors.

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