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By Hamid Shalizi

KABUL, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Afghan police briefly surrounded the luxury Kabul villa of former warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum on Sunday after he entered the house of a one-time ally with some 50 gunmen and beat him up in a drunken rage, officials said.

The standoff highlights the problem of powerful warlords who helped tear Afghanistan apart in the 1992-96 civil war and are still waiting in the wings should President Hamid Karzai fail in the fight against the Taliban, or lose his grip on government.

Dostum, a warlord with a reputation for brutality and treachery, forced his way into the house of former aide Akbar Bay with some 50 armed men and two members of parliament.

"Last night, at around 12:30, Mr. Dostum, being drunk and abnormal, stormed Akbar Bay's residence with other armed men," Interior Ministry spokesman Zaher Azimy told a news conference.

One of Bay's bodyguards was shot and Dostum and his men beat up Bay and his son and took them to the warlord's house, Kabul police chief Salem Hasaas. The pair were later freed during the night and taken to hospital.

But by morning, dozens of police armed with assault rifles and machine guns had surrounded Dostum's house, one of many glass and gaudy concrete villas of a type favoured by warlords and drugs barons that have sprung up in the Afghan capital.

One shot was fired, but it was unclear where it came from.

Shortly afterwards, police began to withdraw.

"We have received orders to hand the case over to the judiciary for investigation," said the head of the Kabul police criminal investigation, Ali Shah Paktiawal.

A spokesman for Dostum said there was no truth in the accusations and warned of unrest if police tried to arrest him.

The burly Dostum rose to command ethnic Uzbek fighters allied to the Soviet Union during the 1979-89 occupation, then switched sides as Soviet troops withdrew. He then formed and broke alliances several times during the civil war, while running much of northern Afghanistan as his personal fiefdom.

"ABUSED OFFICERS"

At the height of his power, the burly, moustached fighter ran a mini-state in the north and his well-equipped army kept even the Taliban at bay until 1997. He printed his own money, set up his own airline, drove an armoured Cadillac and vowed never to bow to a government that banned whisky and music.

Police officers outside Dostum's house said the former warlord briefly appeared on the roof of his residence and seemed drunk as he abused them before his guards pulled him indoors.

Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun from the south, is struggling to assert his authority faced with a resurgent Taliban campaign of guerrilla warfare in the south and east and suicide bombings the length and breadth of the country.

Karzai has also lost the backing of the Northern Alliance former mujahideen commanders, including Dostum, that helped U.S.-led troops overthrow the Taliban government after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Dostum ran for president in the 2004 election gaining 10 percent of the vote. Afterwards, Karzai named him armed forces chief of staff, a largely ceremonial post seen as an attempt at co-opting a powerful and unpredictable figure. (Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

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