Afghan police lifted a brief siege of the house of former ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum in Kabul on Sunday after he and a group of around 50 armed men beat up a former ally, a police chief said. Dostum beat up his former election manager Akbar Bay late on Saturday, said Kabul police chief Salem Hasaas. One of BayÂ’s bodyguards was shot and Dostum and his men fled to the warlordÂ’s house, Hasaas said. Bay was taken to hospital. Dozens of police armed with assault rifles and machine guns mounted on pick-up trucks surrounded DostumÂ’s house in a relatively upmarket part of Kabul and other officers took up positions on the roofs of neighbouring houses. One shot was fired, but it was unclear where it came from.
Shortly afterwards, police began to withdraw. “We have received orders to hand the case over to the judiciary for investigation,” said the head of the Kabul police criminal investigations Ali Shah Paktiawal. The burly Dostum rose to command ethnic Uzbek fighters allied to the Soviet Union during the 1979-89 occupation, then switched sides as Soviet troops withdrew. He then formed and broke alliances several times during the civil war, meanwhile running much of northern Afghanistan as his personal fiefdom. Police officers outside Dostum’s house said the former warlord briefly appeared on the roof of his residence and abused them before his guards pulled him indoors. A spokesman for Dostum said there was no truth in the accusations against the former warlord and warned of unrest if police tried to arrest him. “This is a plot against General Dostum, the government is trying to undermine him,” said spokesman and member of parliament Mohammad Alem Sayeh. “The government should know that if it tries to capture Dostum, then seven or eight provinces in the north will turn against the government.”