Ustad Atta Mohammed
Ustad Atta Muhammad was the Mazar-i-Sharif-based senior commander of the Northern Alliance opposition forces that overthrew the Taliban in 2001. He became the Commander of 7th Corps of Northern Afghanistan until July 2hen he was appointed by Hamid Karzai as the Governor of Balkh province in a calculated effort to bring wayward provinces under central government influence in the upcoming presidential elections.
Atta Muhammad was among Tajik mujahideen Islamists who fought against Abdul Rashid Dostum in the anti-Soviet struggle in the 1980s. He was allied with the Jamiat-i-Islami party of former Afghan president Burhannuddin Rabbani, Ahmed Massoud, and the powerful Kabul-based warlord, Defense Minister Muhammad Fahim Khan and shares their vision for Afghanistan's future. General Rashid Dostum became deputy defence minister in the interim government, while Fahim appointed his strong military commander, Ustad Atta Muhammad as the Corps Commander of Mazar-e-Sharif to serve as a check on the Uzbek warlord. Atta Muhammad has been described by Dostum's supporters as "too fundamentalist" for the moderate secular reform they espouse. Atta Muhammad, an ethnic Tajik, Uzbek Abdul Rashid Dostum and Shi'a Hazara Ustad Mohaqiq were allied together under the Northern Alliance and fought together against the Taliban. That alliance has fallen apart in the consequent victory and peace. Their forces have come into recent clashes involving tanks, artillery and heavy casualties. In October 2003, 60 people were reported to have been killed in skirmishes between Atta and Dostum in the Sar-i-Pul west of Mazar-i-Sharif. The clashes between these two powerful warlords, both of whom are ostensibly members of the Karzai government, have tremendous implications for the future stability of Afghanistan and the war against resurgent fundamentalism and terrorism.
