ginalised or actively harassed by the state or its agents in the past.
Dostam’s militia was multiethnic (Rubin, 1995a: 160), but largely
non-Pushtun. It was exceedingly brutal in combat, and this in part
accounted for its solidarity: defection was not an option for its
members, given the fate that would likely await them on account
of their past behaviour.
Dostam was to become a significant political figure in the
1990s. Born in an Uzbek peasant family near Shibarghan in 1955,
he was at no time a member of the resistance. Rather, he rose to
prominence by organising self-defence units for the northern gas-
fields. It was from these units that his militia emerged, and he
received a range of material and symbolic rewards from Kabul,
notably command of the 53rd Division in March 1990 and mem-
bership of the party Central Committee (Giustozzi, 2000: 222). In
the 1990s it was to become clear that Dostam had ambitions which
stretched beyond mere local or even regional significance.
Unfortunately, these ambitions were not allied to a long-term,
strategic, sense of direction, and Dostam was to disrupt a number
of attempts to consolidate central political institutions, but without
being able either to offer a credible national alternative, or even
protect his own power-base in Mazar-e Sharif. While he was a
moderately effective administrator in his own locality, at the coun-
trywide level, Dostam was for years to come a spoiler rather than
a builder, and his miscalculations were to cost him dearly at dif-
ferent times.
Rebadging the party
As well as relying on Soviet support and purchased loyalty,
Najibullah attempted to make full use of nationalism as a new
basis for popularity. This entailed jettisoning most of the party’s
ideological baggage, a move which Najibullah undertook with all
the subtlety of a balloon pilot seeking to lighten his load as the
burner runs low on gas. The most dramatic gesture was the mid-
1990 change in the name of the party, to Hezb-e Watan, or ‘Party
of the Fatherland’. This was preceded by an abandonment of
The Interregnum of Najibullah, 1989–1992 171