The Last Warlord: The Life and Legend of Dostum, the Afghan Warrior Who Led US Special Forces To Topple the Taliban Regime

Contemporary Afghanistan is characterized by several ethnic, ideological, religious, and geographic divisions. Over the past 30 years, several strongmen or "warlords" have played important roles in shaping Afghanistan's destiny. This book is a highly readable account of the meteoric rise of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan of Uzbek ethnicity and one of the most colorful and powerful "warlords" to have emerged in recent decades. Williams (Islamic history, Univ. of Massachusetts, Dartmouth) chronicles Dostum's central role in the various iterations of Afghan crisis from the late 1970s to the present. Through extensive interviews with the warlord and his family, as well as with various local chieftains, Muslim clerics, women's rights activists, and even Taliban prisoners, Williams provides a fascinating description of Dostum's political maneuvering and the alliances he formed through the years. In some ways, Dostum has been a political survivor, aligning himself first against the Afghan Mujahedin fighting the Soviet army, then siding with them in what was later called the "Northern Alliance" to fight against the Taliban, both before and after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.