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New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall tells ABC News she was assaulted by plain-clothed government security agents while reporting in Quetta, a Pakistani city near the Afghan frontier where NATO suspects the Taliban hides its shadow government. Akhtar Soomro, a freelance Pakistani photographer working with Gall, was detained for five-and-a-half hours. According to Gall, the agents broke down the door to her hotel room, after she refused to let them enter, and began to seize her notebooks and laptop. When she tried to stop them, she says one of the men punched her twice in the face and head. "I...

General Rashid Dostum is a legendary and widely feared ex-warlord running for vice president alongside presidential candidate Dr. Ashraf Ghani (more on him later). Revered by fellow ethnic Uzbeks, he has been credited with having tremendous influence in Afghanistan’s previous elections. A fierce battlefield commander, Dostum is said to have been instrumental in helping the U.S. Special Forces topple the Taliban regime following the 9/11 attacks. He has strongly denied accusations of human rights abuses and other war-related atrocities throughout decades of strife across Afghanistan

The US president says he is examining an alleged massacre in Afghanistan amid allegations the Bush administration resisted efforts to investigate it. Barack Obama told CNN he had told officials to "collect the facts for me" and could order a full inquiry. The allegations concern the deaths of hundreds or even thousands of Taliban fighters who had surrendered to the US-backed Northern Alliance in late 2001. They were in the custody of a US-backed warlord, Gen Abdul Rashid Dostum. The allegations that the prisoners were deliberately left to suffocate in shipping containers, or were shot dead through the container walls,...

If you have read Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan you will be outraged by the statement that the President intends to investigate the actions of General Dostum in the death of 1,000 Taliban prisoners, while also investigating the Bush administrations unwillingness to press charges of some sort at the time. You may not know, but Dostum is a colorful General in the Northern Alliance, working on various sides of various issues and often for himself, as warlords do. This event is with respect to the prison riot that...

ACCRA, Ghana, July 12 (UPI) -- President Barack Obama said he has ordered a probe of the U.S. response to mass killings of Taliban prisoners of war by forces of an American-backed warlord. In an interview with CNN, Obama said the investigation would focus on reports the Bush administration resisted calls for a probe into the deaths of as many as 2,000 Taliban POWs in 2001, during the early days of the war in Afghanistan. "The indications that this had not been properly investigated just recently was brought to my attention," Obama said during his visit to Ghana. "So what...

President Obama has ordered national security officials to look into allegations that the Bush administration resisted efforts to investigate a CIA-backed Afghan warlord over the killings of hundreds of Taliban prisoners in 2001. In an exclusive, CNN talked with President Obama in Ghana about his order to review alleged deaths of Taliban. "The indications that this had not been properly investigated just recently was brought to my attention," Obama told CNN's Anderson Cooper in an exclusive interview during the president's visit to Ghana. The full interview will air 10 p.m. Monday. "So what I've asked my national security team to...

DASHT-E LEILI, Afghanistan — Seven years ago, a convoy of container trucks rumbled across northern Afghanistan loaded with a human cargo of suspected Taliban and al Qaida members who'd surrendered to Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord and a key U.S. ally in ousting the Taliban regime. When the trucks arrived at a prison in the town of Sheberghan, near Dostum's headquarters, they were filled with corpses. Most of the prisoners had suffocated, and others had been killed by bullets that Dostum's militiamen had fired into the metal containers. Dostum's men hauled the bodies into the nearby desert and...

Police surround Dostum's residence. 03Feb2008 February 5, 2008 (RFE/RL) -- Afghanistan's Attorney General says he plans to file criminal charges against Abdul Rashid Dostum, a powerful ethnic Uzbek militia commander in northern Afghanistan who allegedly abducted his former election campaign manager on Saturday (February 2). Abdul Jabar Sabit told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan today that Dostum -- the Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Afghan National Army -- would be charged with kidnapping, breaking and entering, assault, and other criminal charges. But Sabit says he does not think the case will go to trial because...

Excerpt - KABUL, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Afghan police left the house of former ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum after briefly surrounding it on Sunday after he and a group of around 50 armed men beat up a former ally, police officials said. Dostum, a fierce warlord who changed sides and alliances many times during Afghanistan's 30 years of war, beat up his former election manager Akbar Bay late on Saturday and shot a bodyguard, the Kabul police chief said, before escaping to Dostum's house. ~ snip ~

The deadliest suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan’s history killed over 30 people and wounded well over 100 in the peaceful northern province of Baghlan. VIP’s, including a Parliamentary Financial Committee, were visiting a sugar factory in New Baghlan, close to the larger Pul-i-Kumri city, when the blast occurred. At this hour, the city is still in the throws of carnage and chaos. The body count has fluctuated widely since the attack occurred early this morning and local officials say it may take days to pick through the burnt bodies and rubble before an accurate number is acquired. Sayed Mustafa...

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, June 3 (Pajhwok Afghan News): A legislator and member of the delegation visiting the northern Jawzan province to investigate last week's violence has expressed the fear that Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid may not return to Kabul to face the probe. Mueen Mrastial, member of the Wolesi Jirga, expressed the apprehensions after the former warlord failed to reach Kabul on Sunday as directed by the parliamentary delegation heading by President Karzai's advisor Nadir Ali Mehdavee. At least 13 people were killed and over 40 wounded when supporters of Rashid Dostum clashed with police in Shiberghan, capital of Jawzjan province...

Abdul Rashid Dostum looks like a man in search of a mission. The burly general who was once the feared strongman of the north and is now chief of staff of Afghanistan’s armed forces has been at a bit of a loose end lately. So he has decided to battle the Taleban. At a disarmament ceremony in Shiberghan in late February, during which the militia of the Junbesh-e-Milli-ye-Islami faction he used to lead handed over hundreds of weapons to the government, Dostum said that he had submitted a request for a commando unit under his leadership which would be tasked...

War brutalizes man, every afghan bears living testimony to this. If the landscape of Afghanistan bears the craters of the endless war, the political and military leadership in Afghanistan also carries war's indelible scars. It is important never to lose sight of this. Ahmed Shah Mas'ud was born to an army family in 1953 in the Panjshir Valley north of the Afghan capital Kabul. His father was a colonel in the Afghan Army and enrolled his son at Kabul's Lycee Istiqlal High School. Upon graduation Mas'ud joined Kabul's Polytechnic Institute. In 1973 King Zahir Shah was deposed and exiled by...

<p>TASHKENT, Uzbekistan — Afghan refugees who are veterans of earlier battles against the Taliban are preparing to leave their homes in Uzbekistan in an effort to link up with Northern Alliance forces and recapture Mazar-e Sharif and other northern towns. Airstrikes by U.S. and British forces on Taliban-controlled airfields, training camps and other targets around Mazar-e Sharif, Sheberghan, Samangan, Kholm and other locations have softened Taliban resistance, Northern Alliance officials say.</p>

One of Afghanistan's most notorious warlords, General Abdul Rashid Dostam, was almost killed yesterday when a suicide bomber came within metres of him at a religious celebration. He had finished prayers in Sheberghan, his stronghold in northern Afghanistan where he still holds Taliban prisoners, when a man detonated explosives strapped to his body after failing to push through his target's bodyguards. Gen Dostam escaped unhurt but his brother, the Afghan ambassador to Kazakhstan Qadir Dostam, was among the 25 bystanders caught in the blast, suffering minor face injuries. Three people were critically injured. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A powerful Afghan warlord will challenge President Hamid Karzai in the country's historic October elections, his spokesman said Thursday. Abdul Rashid Dostum decided to run after securing support across the war-riven country's deep ethnic divides, his spokesman Faizullah Zaki said. He also was feted by thousands of supporters at a rally Thursday in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. "He didn't want to depend on his own movement, he wanted more people to support him, and today the people showed that," Zaki said. "He will run for president." Dostum, like another half dozen likely challengers, lacks...

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 9 - The central government seemed to be regaining control of a provincial capital in northern Afghanistan on Friday, as hundreds of Afghan National Army troops began moving into the city 24 hours after the governor was forced to flee, government officials said. The soldiers, part of a, newly trained army of 9,000 that is loyal to the government of President Hamid Karzai, met no opposition. The city, Maimana, the capital of Faryab Province, was calm, said the presidential spokesman, Jawed Ludin. "They secured the airport and then went out into the city," Mr. Ludin told The...

Provincial Capital in Afghanistan Is Seized by a Warlord's Forces By CARLOTTA GALL Published: April 9, 2004 KABUL, Afghanistan, April 8 - Forces loyal to Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum seized control of the capital of Faryab Province in northern Afghanistan on Thursday, forcing the governor to flee and drawing a sharp rebuke from President Hamid Karzai and his ministers in Kabul. The central government ordered in troops of the Afghan National Army, along with their American trainers, but they arrived too late to prevent the takeover of power. It was more a political coup than a military clash, with just...

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has appointed the powerful northern commander, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, as his special advisor on security and military affairs. The decree announcing the move says General Dostum has been appointed to improve the security situation in the north - which has been beset by factional fighting. General Dostum, who is also deputy defence minister, will help with the demilitarisation of factional armies. Correspondents say the appointment can be seen as an attempt to enhance the authority of the central government in the north. The move follows a crisis meeting in Kabul on Tuesday when Mr Karzai...

KABUL, May 17 (Online): Security personnel have eliminated poppy crop that was cultivated on hundred of acres land in Dast-e-Laili, some 70 kilometres away from Shiberghan City in Jauzgan province in Northern- Afghanistan. It has been told that security personnel destroyed the poppy crop on the directives of General Abdal Rashid Dostum. The poppy was cultivated in Jauzgan for the first time. The security personnel have so far eliminated poppy crop from forty acres. Most of the farmers of the province had cultivated poppy crop this year. Sources said that several Americans officials and observers were present during the operation.