Robert Gates said that Karzai had warned him about the disobedience of the northern leaders and that it was possible to negotiate with the Taliban, but not with the leaders of the north.
Author: Zahed Mostafa, Subhe Kobul, April 26, 2021
Note: This article is based on an interview I conducted with Homayoun Fawzi, former Deputy Minister of Defense of Afghanistan, using another available information.
Homayoun Fawzi confirms that the war in the north was systematically postponed by the central government. According to him, as in the days of Abdulrahmankhan and then Minister Gulmuhammadkhan, representatives of one ethnic group from Ghazni, Gardez, Paktia, Helmand, Kandahar and some other provinces of the south were resettled in the northern provinces, including Kunduz, Baghlan, Mazar, Faryab and Takhar , to the border with the Soviet Union.
During Karzai's time this policy was continued and the process of destabilization in the north began with the resettlement of the so-called kuchi (nomads) in some of the northern provinces. Fawzi mentions the appointment of Sherkhan to Kunduz during the reign of Naderkhan, whose name is now called "Sherkhan Bandar" in Kunduz, the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
Sherkhan was one of the commanders of Naderkhan. After the defeat of Habibulla Kalakani, Naderkhan's troops from the Kharuti tribe of the Ghilzai branch of Pashtuns, led by Sherkhan, move towards the common border with Tajikistan and, in order to establish power in the north and northeast, Naderkhan gives him the order to settle in Kunduz and, as the governor of this province, will begin work. According to Fawzi, these movements resulted in thousands of acres of land in the north and northeast being given to the Pashtun naqils (transported).
Fawzi also mentions an agreement signed by the Minister of Frontier Services during the Ghani era with the people of Dand Ghori. In 2015, following the clashes in the Dand Ghori district of Baghlan province, the government sent a delegation led by Minister of Tribal and Border Affairs Gulab Mangal, and after negotiations with the elders of the district, an agreement was signed between the government and them. In accordance with the agreement, the elders of Dand Gori promised that no one from the area would shoot at the security forces, no mines would be planted on the Kabul-North highway, and security on the Baghlan-Mazar highway would be ensured. In return, the government promised that security forces would not be allowed to open fire on people's homes without permission from tribal elders, and intelligence would not be able to detain or interrogate people. The agreement at that time caused a violent reaction among the people and in the House of Representatives (the lower house of Parliament), the scope of this reaction reached such a point that there were physical clashes between the deputies.
The deal, Fawzi (in the photo) said, was to establish a Taliban center at Dand Gori and spread the war north. Dand Gori and some areas of Baghlan, since the time of Abdulrahmankhan, have witnessed several migrations of Nakils. They became the Taliban's main source of income in the north. In recent years, they have received large sums of money from commercial and passenger transport. Money that is spent on the purchase of weapons and military equipment and involves more territories in the war.
Homayoun Fawzi confirms that circles in Arg (the Afghan president's palace) sought to destabilize the situation in the north and kill powerful political and military figures in this part of Afghanistan. Confirming the words of former Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his book, Mr. Fawzi said that Karzai was asking the Americans to give him to rule by suppressing northern leaders. He writes that officials in Arg were afraid of the northern front, sought to liquidate influential people one at a time so that they could easily carry out their policies. Fawzi said there were circles within the regime behind the targeted killings in the north that led to the deaths of Burhanuddin Rabbani, Commander Seyedkheli, General Daud Daud and other influential figures in the north. Fawzi said that the purpose of killing these figures was to destroy popular figures and destabilize the situation in the northern provinces, which were systematically designed and enforced by the central authorities. Robert Gates said that Karzai had warned him about the uprising of the northern leaders and that it was possible to negotiate with the Taliban, but not with the leaders of the north.
Fawzi also confirms the role of some personalities, who intented to kill Dostum in the Ghormach district, Faryab province, but says that General Muradali Murad (in the photo), who at the time claimed that Arg wanted to kill Dostum in Ghormach, has more information about this. When the Taliban besieged Dostum and his troops in Ghormach a few years ago, Fawzi said, the central authorities cut off contact with him to prevent air forces from being sent to save him.
Following the Taliban's siege of Dostum and his troops in Ghormach, retired General Muradali Murad, a four-star general in the Afghan army, claimed that Ashraf Ghani and the National Security Council planned to assassinate Dostum, but their plan failed. In one of his speeches, General Murad mentions a conversation where one of Ashraf Ghani's friends says to him: “Isn’t he ashamed that he gathered around him a malisha (an informal armed person) - Dostum - Uzbeks and Hazaras as his deputies?” Ashraf Ghani, in response to these words of his friend, says: "Kill General Dostum so that his blood does not flow."
In 2016, General Dostum, who had not yet received the rank of marshal, was sent to the Gormach district of Faryab province to suppress the Taliban, where he came under siege by them. In a speech in Bamiyan, General Muradali Murad said that after Dostum was besieged, no one in Arg or the Ministry of Defense answered his phone calls until he contacted him, who was fighting in Kunduz. General Dostum informs General Murad that no one is answering his phone calls and that if he does not rescue him, he will be killed in a few hours. General Murad, without the consent of Kabul, sends two military planes to Mazar-i-Sharif to rescue Dostum, from where they take fuel and fly to Faryab. After the leadership of the Ministry of Defense was informed about the departure of two aircraft in Mazar-i-Sharif, they ordered the army corps in Mazar-i-Sharif to prevent them from entering Faryab. Under the pretext that the planes were returning to Kunduz, General Murad ordered the pilots to take off from Mazar, and then ordered his soldiers to cut off communications and, according to the order received, go to Gormach to rescue Dostum. As a result, two planes sent by this general of the army reach Gormach, and, having killed almost a hundred Taliban, they manage to remove Dostum from the siege and deliver him to his house.
