The second most powerful government official in Afghanistan was denied access to the United States, on the basis that he is a war criminal, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum was informed this month by the US that he would not be given a visa for entry on a planned trip to New York and Washington to update American officials on his government’s fight against the Taliban.
A close ally of the Bush administration, Dostum fell out of favor in 2004, after clashing with the US-installed Hamid Karzai government.
Dostum led a militia in 2001 that is alleged to have executed hundreds of Taliban detainees by locking them in wooden crates until they suffocated or were shot. Since he was under the employ of the CIA at the time, the Bush administration hesitated to investigate the matter after the charges surfaced.
The fact that Dostum was able to acquire a top post in the new Ashraf Ghani administration in 2014 highlights the lack of influence the US has on the Afghan power structure, despite enormous investments following the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. The Afghan government is still buttressed by US economic and military assistance to the tune of billions of dollars. Thousands of American troops are still actively participating in the fight against the Taliban–one that has become the longest running war in American history.
Dostum also allegedly has skimmed profit off of Afghanistan’s illicit narcotics trade, which has boomed since the US invasion, despite more than $8 billion spent by the Pentagon on interdiction efforts.
Last month, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) warned that the country is becoming a “narco-terrorist state,” and pointed to persistent corruption within the Afghan government as a significant threat to the US-led rebuilding effort.
In an interview with Voice of America after he was informed he would not be allowed to travel to the US, Dostum claimed that he still hopes to visit the states, and that he was “well acquainted” with “Pentagon friends and congressmen.”
One of those friends is Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), as The Times noted. The lawmaker has been working for years to help Dostum obtain a visa.
“I respectfully request that you use the power of your office to help protect the lives of these valuable individuals and approve visas to permit them to come to Washington in July,” Rohrabacher said in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013, referring to Dostum and other Afghan leaders. He added that Dostum “will be able to help us chart a way forward in Afghanistan.”
