POLITICS

Viktor KORGUN

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Viktor Korgun, D.Sc. (Hist.), head of the Afghanistan Sector, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russian Federation)

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Early in 2005, the north betrayed its annoyance with the freshly formed Cabinet. On 1 January, representatives of eight northern provinces came to the Mazar-i-Sharif to declare that the number of ministers of the ethnic minorities of the north in Hamid Karzai’s new government did not correspond to their contribution to the jihad against the Soviet troops in 1979-1989 and to the counterterrorist struggle. The final resolution emphasized that the majority of the country’s ethnic groups, especially those of the north, was disappointed with the new cabinet. It also objected to the distribution of ministerial posts, the most important of them going to Pashtoons, members of the country’s largest ethnic group, and called on the president “who represented all Afghans” to revise his government’s composition.

It appears to be General Abdul Rashid Dustom, leader of the Afghan Uzbeks, who stirred up discontent in the north: at the presidential election on 9 October, 2004, he won 10 percent of the votes, which were never transformed into a government seat for himself, while his supporters obtained only two seats in the new cabinet. Late in December 2004, he voiced his displeasure about the inadequate representation of Uzbeks and other national minorities in the upper echelons of power. Mass rallies with similar slogans took place in the northern provinces of Balkh, Jauzjan, and Faryab. A power struggle was evidently gaining momentum in the ethnically split country.

This led to an aborted assassination attempt on General Dustom which took place on 20 January in the village of Sibergan, the Jauzjan provincial center and the general’s turf. Dustom, who escaped with…………….

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