Eight months ago, it looked as though the controversial era of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, Afghanistan’s ethnic Uzbek warlord, had come to a brutal end.

After allegedly beating up a political rival, he disappeared into exile in Turkey. Yet with only three days until Afghanistan’s presidential election, General Dostum, 55, has staged a dramatic return to his homeland as part of a deal to help President Karzai to victory. After landing in Kabul late on Sunday night, he flew by helicopter yesterday to his northern stronghold of Sheberghan, where he was welcomed by 20,000 supporters in the local stadium. “Everyone who supports Karzai, raise your hand!” cried the leader of Afghanistan’s one million Uzbeks on the last day of campaigning.

His followers duly complied.

But elsewhere in Afghanistan, and especially in the international community, people were horrified.

General Dostum is arguably the most notorious of Afghanistan’s warlords, regional barons who fought a bloody civil war after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.

Like most of them, he is accused of widespread human rights abuses, including the massacre of up to 2,000 Taleban who suffocated in cargo containers in late 2001. He is also alleged to have crushed one of his own soldiers to death by tying him to the tracks of a tank. Yet he is now one of several warlords with whom Mr Karzai has forged alliances before Thursday’s election.

In May, Mr Karzai chose Mohammad Qasim Fahim, an ethnic Tajik warlord who fought against the Russians and the Taleban, as one of his two vice presidential candidates.

Better known as Marshal Fahim, he is accused of murdering prisoners of war during the 1990s, and of running private armed militias, and involvement in kidnapping and other crimes after 2001.

Mr Karzai has also enlisted the support of Mohammad Mohaqiq and Karim Khalili, two former Mujahidin leaders from the Hazara ethnic minority who are also accused of multiple rights abuses.

Last week, the President won the backing of Ismail Khan, a Tajik former Mujahidin commander from the western city of Herat who has an equally poor rights record.

Mr Karzai is also being advised by Abdul Rab Sayyaf, an ethnic Pashtun former Mujahid who is said to have first invited Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan and has lobbied for an amnesty for warlords.

Analysts say that Mr Karzai’s strategy is to rely on these men to deliver large blocs of votes in exchange for positions in his new government.

“Karzai feels he’s been abandoned by the US and Britain, so he’s trying to consolidate his internal allies,” said Haroun Mir, of the Afghanistan Centre for Research and Policy Studies. “People in the cities might choose for themselves how to vote, but the bulk of people live in rural areas and will be influenced by traditional leaders.” In particular, Mr Karzai hopes to neutralise the threat from Dr Abdullah Abdullah, his main rival, who is half-Tajik and has strong support in the Tajik-dominated north, as well as among some Uzbeks.

“Dostum’s arrival shows how worried Karzai is,” said Martine van Bijlert, of the Afghan Analysts’ Network.

“He could have diversified. He could have gone for new leaders, but the campaign guidance he receives is from the old religious and jihadi and ethnic networks.”

Mr Karzai’s strategy may well pay off, especially if General Dostum can rein in a youth wing of his party that had backed Dr Abdullah. The danger, however, is that he lays the ground for another unstable government in which he has no power to sack ministers representing his warlord allies.

He also risks losing support in the international community, which has lobbied to sideline the warlords. The US has already expressed its “serious concerns about the prospective role of General Dostum in today’s Afghanistan”.

The US Embassy said: “Among other concerns, his reputed past actions raise questions of his culpability for massive human rights violations.”

Last month, President Obama ordered a new investigation into General Dostum’s alleged Taleban massacre.

Aleem Siddique, a UN spokesman in Kabul, said that Afghanistan “needs more competent politicians and fewer warlords”.

Few at the rally in Sheberghan would agree, however. Scuffles broke out backstage before General Dostum arrived, as a choir sang “Our King is coming”.

The general is not quite the man who once challenged a foreign reporter to wrestle him during an interview.

On arriving at the rally, he was so exhausted by the heat that he had to sit down and be fanned by his aides for several minutes. Once he started to speak, however, he was as defiant as ever, denying any rights abuses and accusing the United States of undermining Afghanistan’s independence.

“I am always fighting for the peace and independence of Afghanistan,” he said. “If anyone is against General Dostum, they are against the people.”

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