Do a Google News search on the name of Afghan warlord Rashid Dostum and the odds are sterling that the results will include bad news from Afghanistan.

The Dostum factor was the subject of one of my first BTC News posts, back in October of 2003. The search that week turned up a BBC News story about the fragile state of security in the country.

Taleban forces are retaking parts of Afghanistan as the post-war government shows signs of weakening, the UN’s top peacekeeping official has said.

In a regular briefing to the Security Council, Under Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guehenno said many causes of insecurity “remain unresolved”.

“In several border districts (near Kandahar and Paktika), Taleban have been able to establish de facto control over district administration,” he said.

Mr. Guehenno also noted that “insecurity has without question slowed the delivery of reconstruction, if not outright prevented it in the most insecure areas.” Fortunately, we’ve come a long way since then.

President Hamid Karzai began his second term Thursday under international pressure to select a Cabinet that can regain the trust of disillusioned Afghans, quash widespread government corruption and build a reliable military that can take charge of his country’s defense.

However, the competition between foreign demands and domestic political IOUs was on display in the palace hall, where 800 invited guests attended Karzai’s inauguration ceremony.

On one side of the cavernous room sat Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who’s warned that the international community is losing patience with Karzai.

On the other side was Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Afghan warlord who’s become a symbol of cronyism and government corruption. Dostum was stripped of his top military post after he was accused of war crimes and investigated for enacting vigilante justice on the streets of Kabul.
[...]
In his address, Karzai said he’d like to see trained Afghan forces in charge of security within five years.

“I want Afghanistan to become a country that is capable of defending itself, and where peace reigns across the whole nation,” Karzai told an audience that included Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and British Foreign Minister David Miliband.

I recently discovered that my cell phone has little chunks of boilerplate text that pop up in connection with certain words. Somebody should do the same thing for reporters writing about Afghanistan. Type the word and up pops a few paragraphs about corruption, opium, warlords, the resurgent Taliban and the impatient international community. Pull some new quotes and you’re done. It’s the same story now as it was then and as it will be until somebody finally pulls the plug.

So that’s today’s edition of “My Favorite Warlord.” By far the most entertaining reference, though, is one that I mentioned in that post from October of 2003.

The $170,100 confiscated by federal agents from a storage locker rented by the first wife of William Leonard Pickard was money donated to a warlord from Afghanistan, then given to Pickard for safekeeping, Pickard testified Thursday in U.S. District Court.

Pickard, 57, and Clyde Apperson, 47, are charged with conspiracy and possession of LSD with intent to distribute more than 10 grams. The two men were arrested in November 2000, Apperson just after he drove a truck containing an LSD laboratory from a converted missile silo at Wamego and Pickard the next day at a farm several miles west of Wamego.

As of Thursday, Pickard had been on the witness stand answering questions by his defense attorney, William Rork, for 6 1/2 days.

In 1996, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, now the deputy defense minister of Afghanistan, visited the United States and received many cash donations while in this country, Pickard testified. Pickard had advised an associate of Dostum’s not to pay cash to buy a home in the United States, and eventually Pickard received a briefcase containing the money to keep for Dostum, Pickard said. Giving the money to Pickard was a reflection of the trust the associate felt for Pickard, Pickard testified.

You just can’t make this shit up.

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