Afghanistan: Dostum waited in Kabul after a year of exile

Kabul – General Abdul Rashid Dostum, feared warlord of northern Afghanistan and first vice-president, is expected Sunday in Kabul after a year of exile in Turkey officially for health reasons.
  

Accused of raping a rival late 2016, Dostum left the country in May 2017 to escape justice. He will be greeted by a delegation of Afghan officials at Kabul airport, the authorities said.

" At 16:00 today (1130 GMT), General Dostum will land at Kabul International Airport ," his spokesman Jamal Nasir Farahmand told AFP.

His arrival was also announced to the press by the spokesman of the president, Haroon Chakhansuri.

His portrait sits prominently on Sunday morning in the streets of Kabul, along the airport road and around the presidential palace: in military uniform, in " chapan " traditional (padded coat ) and turban, or in suit and tie – which he rarely wears – his pictures are accompanied by " Welcome " in Dari and English.

Of Uzbek ethnicity, Dostum has been collecting for decades the facts of war and the worst abuses – like the death of 2,000 Taliban locked up in containers in 2001.

He is the second Afghan warlord to return to the capital with honors.

In May 2017, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, nicknamed by the press " the butcher of Kabul " for having martyred by merciless bombing, had returned to the Afghan capital after 20 years of absence at the end an agreement with Ashraf Ghani's government guaranteeing impunity.

The Afghan government is in a delicate situation in the north with the push of the Islamic State group in Jawzjan province, the stronghold of Dostum and the Taliban stronghold in the province of Faryab.

Civil unrest has also recently broken out, resulting in several deaths, following the arrest of Dostum's close relative, Nizamuddin Qaisari, a local police commander who also led a militia of several thousand men.

Accused of insults and death threats against the authorities he was transferred to Kabul.

From Turkey, General Dostum denounced the arrest of his ally " on the basis of false accusations " and warned that the defense of the north and that of the province of Faryab " now risk collapse "in the face of Taliban insurgents and IS.

In the run-up to the October parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for 2019, Ashraf Ghani needs to bring a minimum of stability to the country, but his offers of peace to the Taliban have so far been ineffective.