founding father of Afghanistan. In the late 1870s, Afghan Emir Sher Ali Khan escaped from Kabul to take refuge in Mazar-e Sharif, which was un-affected by the Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century between Afghanistan and then British India.
Mazar-e Sharif remained peaceful for the next one hundred years until 1979, when then neighboring Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. During the 1980s Soviet war, Mazari Sharif was a strategic base for the Soviet Army, as they used its airport to launch air strikes on Afghan mujahideen. In the early 1990s, after the Soviet withdraw from Afghanistan, control of Mazar was contested by the Hazara milita Hezbe Wahdat,led by Hajji Mohammed Mohaqiq, the Tajik militia Jamiat-e Islami, led by Ahmad Shah Massoud and Burhanuddin Rabbani, and the Uzbek militia Jumbesh-e Melli led by Abdul Rashid Dostum. As a garrison for the Soviet-backed Afghan army, the city was under the command of Dostum, who mutinied against Najibullah's government in 1992.
Under Dostum's 5 year rule from the early 1990s to early 1997, Mazar was an oasis of peace. As the rest of the nation disintegrated and was slowly taken over by the Taliban, Dostum strengthened political ties with the newly independent Uzbekistan as well as Turkey. He printed his own currency and established his own airline. This peace was shattered in May 1997, when he was betrayed by one of his generals, Abdul Malik Pahlawan, forcing him to flee from Mazar as the Taliban were getting ready to take the city.
Taliban conquest
Between May and July 1997, the Taliban unsuccessfully attempted to take Mazar, leading to approximately 3,000 Taliban soldiers being executed or massacred by Abdul Malik and his Shia followers. In retaliation for this incident, the Taliban on August 8, 1998, returned and led a six-day killing frenzy of Hazaras, a report the Taliban denied at that time. Soon after, the city was occupied and taken over by the Taliban. It was this capture of
