WHO IS ABDUL RASHID DOSTUM? DEFENDING MAZAR-I-SHARIF FROM TALIBAN

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had flown to Mazar-i-Sharif on Wednesday to rally the city’s defences, meeting with several militia commanders, including Abdul Rashid Dostum.

Dostum, is one of Afghanistan’s most notorious warlords, once described by Afghan President Ghani himself as a “known killer.” Dostum was involved in a 2001 massacre that killed more than 2,000 Taliban prisoners of war.

The men were allegedly shot to death or suffocated in sealed metal truck containers after they surrendered to Dostum and the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance. The dead prisoners — some of whom had been tortured — were then buried in the northern Afghan desert.

Dostum, who was on the CIA payroll, has been widely accused of orchestrating the massacre and tampering with evidence of the mass killing. For more than a decade, human rights groups have called on the United States to conduct a full investigation into the massacre including the role of U.S. special forces and CIA operatives.

Democracy Now speak to Jamie Doran, director of the 2002 documentary “Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death,” and Susannah Sirkin, director of international policy at Physicians for Human Rights, the group that discovered the site of the mass graves of the Taliban Prisoners of war.