Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (born
1947 in
Imam Saheb,
Kunduz province,
Afghanistan) is an Afghan
warlord. He is a
Ghilzai Pashtun of the
Kharoti tribe, speaks several languages (including
English), has three wives and several children. He has stated that he prefers an Afghan civil war rather than occupation by foreigners and foreign troops.
He served as prime minister twice in the
1990s. He was described by the western media government as power hungry, ruthless and cunning. He is considered a supporter of
Taliban and has always been a Pro-Pakistani throughout his career, unlike most former Mujahideen, who have turned against
Pakistan. After siding with
Osama bin Laden, he is currently in hiding.
Gholam Serwar Nasher, Khan of the Kharoti, thought of Hekmatyar as a bright young man and sent him to a military school and then to
Kabul University's engineering department in
1968, where Hekmatyar earned the nickname of "engineer Hekmatyar" frequented among his followers.
However, on his return to Kunduz he was presumably jailed by Nasher for several days. It was Hekmatyar's father who requested Lord Nasher to do so in order to discipline the boy for toying too much with the communist ideology. At this time, Hekmatyar showed no sign of religious fundamentalism. In
1973, he joined the
Muslim Youth. He was accused in
1972 of the killing of a
Maoist student. He was found guilty and sent to jail for two years. In the crackdown on Islamists following the
Daoud coup (1973), he escaped to
Pakistan.
In Pakistan, he founded the
Hezbi Islami party (1975). It has been said that it was Hekmatyar who began the anti-
Daoud movement's resurgence in the area of
Panjshir.
What triggered his actions was presumably the fact that Daoud put
Gholam Serwar Nasher, Khan of the Kharoti (to which Hekmatyar belonged) in prison. However, members of
Hezbi Islami and Hekmatyar himself denied he was ever involved with the communists.
In
1979,
Mulavi Younas Khalis split with Hekmatyar and established his own Hezbi Islami, known as the
Khalis faction, with its powerbase in
Nangarhar.
During the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Hekmatyar received billions of dollars in military assistance from Pakistan's
ISI and funds the
CIA channeled to the
mujahadeen through the ISI.
The CIA and ISI decisions to allocate the highest percentage of covert aid to Hekmatyar were certainly based on his record as an effective anti-Soviet military commander in Afghanistan. However, as the war began to appear increasingly winnable for the mujahedeen, the Islamic fundamentalist ISI leaders became increasingly motivated by their desire to install the fundamentalist Hekmatyar as the new leader of a liberated Afghanistan.
Even during the Soviet occupation, Hekmatyar ordered frequent attacks on other rival (and more moderate) factions to weaken them in order to improve his position in the post-Soviet power vacuum.
The Hizb-i Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar espouses an extremist religious and anti-Western ideology. At various times, it has fought and allied itself with almost every other group in Afghanistan. Hizb-i Islami received some of the strongest support from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and attracted thousands of religious radicals to Afghanistan, among them Osama bin Laden. On the role of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the emergence of the Taliban, see Human Rights Watch, Backgrounder on Afghanistan: History of the War, October 2001, [
1].
After the fall of the
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Hekmatyar signed a peace agreement with
Ahmed Shah Massoud on May 25, 1992, which made him Prime Minister. However, the agreement fell apart when Hekmatyar was blamed for a rocket attack on President Mujaddidi's plane
[http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/afghan2/Afghan0701-01.htm#P325_88217]. The following day,
Burhanuddin Rabbani's and Ahmed Shah Massoud's Jamiat and
Abdul Rashid Dostum's Junbish forces resumed fighting against Hekmatyar's Hezb-i Islami forces. In 1994, Hekmatyar would shift alliances, joining with Dostum as well as
Hizb-e-Wahdat, a Hazara Shi'a party
[Harpviken, Kristian. 1998: "The Hazara of Afghanistan", in Post-Soviet Central Asia, Atabaki, T. and John O'Kane (eds)]. Together they laid siege to
Kabul, fighting Rabbani and his Defense Minister Massoud.
From
1992 to
1996, the warring factions destroyed 70% of Kabul and killed at least 50,000 people, most of them civilians during the
Afghan civil war. The devastation and factionalization allowed the
Taliban to take control in
1996, even when, a few months before the Taliban captured Kabul in September of that year, Rabbani and Hekmatyar finally formed a power-sharing government in which Hekmatyar was prime minister. Hekmatyar fled to
Iran where he continued to lead the
Hezbi Islami party.
On
September 18,
2001, Hekmatyar sided with
Osama bin Laden and soon warned Pakistan for siding with the United States. After the
U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the fall of the
Taliban, Hekmatyar rejected the
U.N.-brokered accord of
December 5,
2001, saying the pact negotiated in
Germany amounted to a U.S.-imposed government for Afghanistan.
On
February 10 2002, all the offices of Hezb-e-Islami were closed in
Iran. Hekmatyar was expelled from his Iranian exile. His whereabouts became unknown.
On
March 11, through his deputy,
Qutbuddin Hilal, Hekmatyar pledged support for
Hamid Karzai. Hekmatyar also supported the return of the king.
The United States accuse him of urging the Taliban to re-form and fight the United States. He is also accused of offering rewards for those who kill U.S. troops. He has been labeled a war criminal by members of the U.S.-backed President
Hamid Karzai's government. He is also a suspect behind the
September 5,
2002 assassination attempt on Karzai that killed more than a dozen people.
Some reports have located him inside
Tunisia, but in May
2002 the U.S. claimed that a
CIA-operated
Predator drone attacked Hekmatyar near Kabul, missing him but killing some of his followers.
In September
2002, Hekmatyar released a taped message calling for a
jihad against the United States.
On
December 25 of
2002, the news broke that
American spy organizations had discovered Hekmatyar attempting to become a member of
al-Qaeda. According to the news, he had said that he was available to aid them. However, in a video released by Hekmatyar
September 1,
2003, he denied forming alliances with the Taliban or al-Qaeda but praised attacks against U.S. and international forces.
In October 2003 he declared a ceasefire with local commanders in
Jalalabad,
Kunar,
Logar and
Sarobi, and stated that they should only fight foreigners. Later that month (
October 31) Hekmatyar and Rabbani held talks in
Badakhshan.
In May 2006 he released a video[
2] to
Al Jazeera in which he accused Iran of backing the US in the Afghan conflictand said he was ready to fight alongside
Osama bin Laden and blamed the ongoing conflicts in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan on US interference.
*
Afghans glimpse a normal life
