Ceasefire between feuding warlords holds

A ceasefire signed last week between two feuding warlords in Afghanistan's troubled north continues to hold, with rival forces withdrawing from front-line positions, according to a United Nations spokesman. "The agreement, signed on Thursday, is being implemented and we hope that this will continue to be the case for the Saturday agreement as well," the spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA), Manoel de Almeida e Silva, told IRIN in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Sunday. "However, as you know, the north does not have a very good record of implementing their agreements, so we have to keep [up] our hopes," e Silva said, adding that caution was the need of the hour. The peace agreement was brokered between Abdul Rashid Dostum's mainly Uzbek forces and rival Ata Mohammad, who heads a mainly Tajik militia, by Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali along with British Ambassador Ron Nash on Thursday. Intense fighting, the worst in six months, between the two rival factions a day earlier had claimed about 80 lives as Dostum and Mohammad, both professed allies of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, renewed their struggle for control of Afghanistan's north near Mazar-e Sharif, about 310 km north of Kabul. Under the agreement, Jalali told reporters on Thursday, all soldiers were required to pull back from the front lines and maintain a distance of at least 40 to 50 km between the two sides. Wednesday's clashes had occurred on the main road west of Mazar-e Sharif, towards Sheberghan, Dostum's stronghold, about 120 km away. Dostum, deputy defence minister in Karzai's cabinet, was once a communist general and has wrestled Mohammad and a third ethnic faction, the Hazara's Hezb-e Wahdat, for dominance over northern Afghanistan in clashes that have already claimed scores of lives. "We have to keep reminding the leadership in the north that they are responsible for their people, and their people are tired of violence. They deserve a better life and a better life can only be built if there is tranquillity, if there isn't an open conflict," e Silva stressed. Following Thurday's initial agreement and the apparent withdrawal of all rival forces from self-defined front lines, with only a few minor skirmishes reported, Mazar-e Sharif was reported to be calm, reporters were told at a UNAMA press briefing on Sunday. "A delegation led by [interior minister] Jalali arrived in Mazar on Saturday for follow-up negotiations with both generals, Dostum and Ata Mohammad," e Silva told the assemblage, adding that the meeting had resulted in the signing of another agreement. Under the new agreement, e Silva said, all the directives specified in the agreement of 9 October were to be implemented in all provinces of the North: Balkh, Samangan, Jowzjan, Sar-e Pol and Faryab. "Another meeting is planned for next week with the two generals to review the progress of both agreements of 9 and 11 October," he added. A single delegation composed of factional representatives, local authorities, the police, UNAMA and the Mazar-e Sharif-based Provincial Reconstruction Team is monitoring the initial phase of troop pull-back and withdrawal and will do the same in the other areas now added as a result of the agreement signed on Saturday, e Silva explained. "The agreement was signed by General Abdul Rashid Dostum, General Ustad Ata Mohammad, General Juma Khan Hamdard, commander of the Eighth Army Corps; Minister Jalali and Sultan Ali Sultani, representative of Wahdat Mohaqeq," e Silva said, adding that British Ambassador Nash, the US charge d'affaires, and the deputy special representative of the UN secretary-general, John Arnault, had signed as witnesses to the new agreement.