In the warlord years, Iran mainly supported the Hezb-i-Wahdat group, which represented the interests of Afghan Shiites and particularly the Hazara ethnic minority.
Another controversial figure from the warlord years, Abdul Rashid Dostum, is the vice-presidential running mate of Ashraf Ghani - a former finance minister, who otherwise had cultivated a reputation as an anti-corruption technocrat.
But a parallel with the chaotic warlord-dominated years of the mid-1990s inescapableble.
No one was fooled, least of all the judge at an international criminal court near The Hague who gave the former warlord 50 years in prison for his role in instigating murder, mutilation, rape, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers in Sierra Leone's horrifying civil war during the 1990s.
The court, based in The Hague, has also been attacked over its limited number of successful prosecutions – two convictions, both of Congolese warlords, in 13 years – and over the cost of its operations, estimated at $1bn.
In Afghanistan before 9/11, Mr. Bout had long supplied Ahmed Shah Massoud, the ethnic Tajik warlord who spent years fighting the Taliban.
The only conviction the court has secured, against a Congolese warlord, came six years after he arrived at the court.
The Security Council imposed an embargo on Somalia in 1992 to cut the flow of weapons to feuding warlords, who a year earlier ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Cornered by this fierce, well-armed insurgency, Mr. Taylor, a warlord for seven years and president for six, has promised to give up his office.
In March an American soldier was charged with 16 counts of murder, including of nine children, after allegedly going on a shooting rampage in two villages.The International Criminal Court handed down its first-ever verdict and sentenced Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese warlord, to 14 years in prison.
