On Monday, media reports claimed that German forces barred plane with Afghan Vice-President Abdul Rashid Dostum on board from landing in the northern Afghan province of Balkh. Dostum's office, however, denied he had tried to enter Afghanistan.
The New York Times reports that during nearly two months of de facto exile in Turkey, Afghanistan’s embattled vice president, Abdul Rashid Dostum, hastily formed a new coalition of the discontented. On Monday, he reportedly tried to return to Afghanistan to advance their cause.
But as hundreds of supporters waited late into the night at an airport in northern Afghanistan, the small private plane carrying Dostum, an ex-warlord, was denied permission to land on orders from the central government, according to several Afghan and Western officials.
The episode will probably deepen Afghanistan’s political crisis, testing the limits of Dostum, a politician who has been volatile in the past and who has threatened to turn his wrath against President Ashraf Ghani’s government, which he helped bring to power but now accuses of marginalizing him.
President Ghani faces a host of problems. He faces a resurgent Taliban across the country, and some of the country’s major politicians, including his own supporters, have turned against him over what they consider his increasing monopolization of power.
Supporters of Dostum who gathered at the airport in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif on Monday to greet him were frustrated when he was turned away.
The episode was confirmed privately by people close to Dostum as well as officials close to Atta Muhammad Noor, the powerful governor of Balkh Province. Noor, a onetime rival of Mr. Dostum, recently joined his new alliance of politicians united in anger at Ghani’s coalition government. A Western official said Noor called the commander of NATO coalition forces in the north, seeking permission for Dostum’s aircraft to land, but was told that the matter was up to the central government, not the coalition forces.
However, the offices of both Dostum and Noor issued statements denying the incident, which were interpreted by many as face-saving rather than factual. Mr. Noor’s office said the plane’s passengers were Turkish “special guests” of the governor and did not include the vice president.
A senior government official said that the authorities in Kabul, the capital, became suspicious of the small plane, which was said to be carrying seven businessmen. The authorities requested that the plane land in Kabul for processing before going to Mazar-e Sharif, but the pilot’s reluctance to comply confirmed their suspicion that Dostum was aboard, the official said.
Meanwhile, Dostum’s office denied he had tried to enter Afghanistan, saying that a guest of the local governor had been due to land in Mazar-e Sharif, the provincial capital of Balkh Province, but had gone to Turkmenistan because of “technical issues.”
Dostum has been in conflict with the government for months, most recently over a criminal investigation into accusations that he and his bodyguards kidnapped and sexually assaulted a political rival. The vice president is becoming one of the biggest headaches of Ghani’s presidency, according to The New York Times.
