Mazar-e-Sharif

Here is some information about the recent history of Mazar-e-Sharif from Wikipedia. Meanwhile, a picture of a miserable dust storm that blew town today. Unpleasant. Very unpleasant.
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During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Mazari Sharif was a strategic base for the Soviet Army, as they used its airport to launch air strikes on Afghanmujahideen. In the early 1990s, after the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, control of Mazar was contested by the Tajik militias (Jamiat-e Islami of Ahmad Shah Massoud and Rabbani and the Uzbek militia Jumbesh-e Melli led by Abdul Rashid Dostum. As a garrison for the communist Afghan army, the city was under the command of Dostum, who mutinied against Najibullah's Kabul regime in 1992 and established the autonomous administration of North Afghanistan with the aid of Massoud.[citation needed]
Under Dostum's Uzbek Jumbesh-e Melli militia from the early 1990s to early 1997, Mazar was an oasis of peace during the civil war, and as the rest of the country disintegrated and was slowly taken over by the Taliban, Dostum strengthened political ties with the newly independent central Asian states and Turkey, 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, and he fled Mazar as the Taliban were getting ready to take the city.
Between May and July 1997, the Taliban unsuccessfully attempted to take Mazar, leading to approximately 2,500 Taliban soldiers being massacred by Abdul Malik and his Shia followers. In retaliation for this incident, the Taliban on August 8, 1998, reportedly returned and led a six-day killing frenzy of Hazaras and other local people. Soon after, the city was occupied and taken over by the Taliban. It was this capture of Mazar that prompted Pakistan's recognition of the Taliban regime.
Following 9/11, Mazar was the first Afghan city to fall to the Afghan Northern Alliance (former militias). The Taliban's retreat from Mazar quickly turned into a rout from the rest of the north and west of Afghanistan. On November 9, 2001 the city was recaptured by the Afghan Northern Alliance after the Battle of Mazar e Sharif with help from the United States. A massacre of Taliban soldiers is alleged to have occurred during the transport of captured enemy east to a prison near Sheberghan. Frontline reported the story in "A Convoy of Death".
more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazar-e-Sharif