Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
| Gulbuddin Hekmatyar | |
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| In office 17 June 1993 – 28 June 1994 |
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| Preceded by | Abdul Sabur Farid Kuhestani |
| Succeeded by | Arsala Rahmani |
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| Born | 1947 Kunduz, Afghanistan |
| Political party | Hezbi Islami |
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (born 1947) is an Afghan Mujahideen leader, warlord and on two occasions the Prime Minister of Afghanistan. He is currently wanted by the United States for attempting to overthrow the Hamid Karzai-led government. Hekmatyar speaks several languages, including English.
He served as a rebel military commander during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, fighting the invading Soviet Red Army. Later, after the Soviet Union withdrew, he held the office of prime minister twice in the 1990s and led forces during the country's civil war in the post-Soviet period.
On February 19, 2003, the US State Department blacklisted Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's party as a terrorist group. [1]
Early life
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was born in 1947, in the northern Kunduz province of Afghanistan, bordering Tajikistan. Ethnically, he is a Ghilzai Pashtun of the Kharoti tribe.[1]
Afghan businessman and Kharoti tribal leader Gholam Serwar Nasher deemed Hekmatyar to be a bright young man and sent him to a military school and then to Kabul University to join the engineering department in 1968. Hekmatyar thus earned the nickname of "Engineer Hekmatyar," a term frequently used by his followers and allies.[citation needed]
Hekmatyar joined the underground Muslim Youth group in 1970. He also joined the leftist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), the future ruling party of the country under Soviet domination. He remained active until a 1972 incident in which he found guilty of killing a rival left-wing student and sent to jail for two years. When Daoud Khan seized power from King Zahir in 1973, Hekmatyar escaped and fled to Pakistan, where he and other Afghan exiles regrouped and established contacts with Pakistani intelligence.
Exile in Pakistan
While in Pakistan, Hekmatyar founded the Hezbi Islami Party in 1975 to oppose Daoud's rule in Afghanistan. Hezbi Islami's operational base was located in the Nasir Bagh, Worsak and Shamshatoo refugee camps. In these camps, Hezbi Islami formed a social and political network and operated everything from schools to prisons, reportedly with the blessing of the Pakistani government and its ISI intelligence services. [2]
Soviet invasion and Soviet war
The Hizb-i Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar espouses strict Islamist ideology. At various times, it has both fought against 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 worked with thousands of foreign mujahideen who came to Afghanistan.[2]
During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Hekmatyar received millions of dollars from the CIA through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Reagan was quoted as calling him and other Afghan leaders "the moral equivalent of the founding fathers." [3] According to some, ISI's decision to allocate the highest percentage of covert aid to Hekmatyar was based on his record as an effective anti-Soviet military commander in Afghanistan.[4] Others describe his position as the result of having "almost no grassroots support and no military base inside Afghanistan," and thus being the much more "dependent on Zia's protection and financial largess" than other mujahideen factions.[5]
Hekmatyar has been harshly criticized for his behavior during the Soviet and civil war. He ordered frequent attacks on other rival factions to weaken them in order to improve his position in the post-Soviet power vacuum. An example of his tendency for internecine rivalry was his arranging the arrest of Ahmed Shah Massoud in Pakistan in 1976 on spying charges.[6]
The Paris based group Medecins sans Frontieres reported that Hekmatyar's guerrillas hijacked a 96 horse caravan bringing aid into northern Afghanistan in 1987, stealing a year's supply of medicine and cash that was to be distributed to villagers to buy food with. French relief officials also asserted that Thierry Niquet, an aid coordinator bringing cash to Afghan villagers, was killed by one of Hekmatyar's commanders in 1986. It is thought that two American journalists traveling with Hekmatyar in 1987, Lee Shapiro and Jim Lindalos, were killed not by the Soviets, as Hekmatyar's men claimed, but during a firefight initiated by Hekmatyar's forces against another mujahidin group. In addition, there were frequent reports throughout the war of Hekmatyar's commanders negotiating and dealing with pro-Communist local militias in northern Afghanistan.[7]
As the war began to appear increasingly winnable for the Mujahideen, Islamic fundamentalist elements in ISI became increasingly motivated by their desire to install the fundamentalist Hekmatyar as the new leader of a liberated Afghanistan.
Post-DRA civil war
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 Mojaddedi's plane.[8] 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.[9] Together they laid siege to Kabul, fighting Rabbani and his Defense Minister Massoud mainly to prevent the country from division.
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. This devastation and factionalization discredited the warlords in the eyes of most Afghans. Nonetheless, in June of 1996, Rabbani and Hekmatyar finally formed a power-sharing government in which Hekmatyar was prime minister. This lasted only a few months before a new fundamentalist warlord force, the Taliban, took control of Kabul in September. Hekmatyar then fled to Iran where he continued to lead the Hezbi Islami party.
Post-September 11 activities
After September 11, 2001 Hekmatyar declared his opposition to the US campaign in Afghanistan and criticized Pakistan for assisting 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 negotiated in Germany as 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 by his Iranian hosts, and his whereabouts became unknown. Some reports have pointed towards Tunisia as a possible present location.
On May 6, 2002 the U.S. CIA fired on his vehicle convoy using a Lockheed Martin manufactured AGM-114 Hellfire missile launched from an MQ-1 Predator aircraft. The missile missed its target and hit a local madrassa instead, causing several civilian casualties.[10][11]
The United States accuse Hekmatyar of urging Taliban fighters to re-form and fight against Coalition troops in Afghanistan. He is also accused of offering bounties 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.
In September 2002, Hekmatyar released a taped message calling for a jihad against the United States.
On December 25, 2002 the news broke that American spy organizations had discovered Hekmatyar attempting to join 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.
On February 19 2003 the United States State Department and the United States Treasury Department jointly designated Hekmatyar a "global terrorist".[12] This designation meant that any assets Hekmatyar held in the USA, or held through companies based in the US, would be seized. The US also requested the United Nations Committee on Terrorism to follow suit, and designate Hekmatyar an associate of Osama bin Laden.
In October 2003, he declared a ceasefire with local commanders in Jalalabad, Kunar, Logar and Sarobi, and stated that they should only fight foreigners.
In May 2006, he released a video to Al Jazeera in which he accused Iran of backing the US in the Afghan conflict and said he was ready to fight alongside Osama bin Laden and blamed the ongoing conflicts in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan on US interference.[13]
In September 2006, he was reported as captured, but the report was later retracted.[14]
In December 2006, a video was released in Pakistan, where Gulbuddin Hekmatyar claimed "the fate Soviet Union faced is awaiting America as well."
In January 2007 CNN reported that Hekmatyar claimed "that his fighters helped Osama bin Laden escape from the mountains of Tora Bora five years ago." and BBC news reported a quote from a December 2006 interview broadcast on GEO TV, "We helped them [bin Laden and Zawahiri] get out of the caves and led them to a safe place."[15]
References
- ^ The Gem Hunter: The Adventures of an American in Afghanistan, page 293
- ^ Backgrounder on Afghanistan: History of the War. Human Rights Watch (October 2001). Retrieved on March 17, 2007.
- ^ Afghanistan: a Tale of never ending Tragedy. Global Research (July 19, 2006). Retrieved on July 31, 2007.
- ^ Yousaf, Mohammad, 2002. The Bear Trap
- ^ Kaplan, Robert, Soldiers of God : With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan, New York : Vintage Departures, 2001, Kaplan, Soldiers of God (2001), p.69
- ^ Hussain, Rizwan, 2005. Pakistan and the emergence of Islamic militancy in Afghanistan, Aldershot: Ashgate. p167
- ^ Kaplan, Robert, Soldiers of God : With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan, New York : Vintage Departures, 2001, p.170
- ^ Afghanistan's Civil Wars: Violations by United Front Factions. Human Rights Watch. Retrieved on March 17, 2007.
- ^ Harpviken, Kristian. 1998: "The Hazara of Afghanistan", in Post-Soviet Central Asia, Atabaki, T. and John O'Kane (eds)
- ^ http://www.cursor.org/stories/dronesyndrome.htm
- ^ http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp02142003.html
- ^ "US designates Hekmatyar as a terrorist", Dawn Internet Edition, Thursday, February 20, 2003. Retrieved on March 18.
- ^ "Aljazeera airs Hikmatyar video", Al Jazeera, Saturday, May 06, 2006. Retrieved on March 17.
- ^ Bill Roggio (September 11, 2006). Gulbuddin Hekmatyar Reported Captured. The Fourth Rail. Retrieved on March 17, 2007.
- ^ "Afghan warlord 'aided Bin Laden'", BBC, January 11 2007. Retrieved on March 17.
External links
- Afghans glimpse a normal life
- Warlords of Afghanistan: Hekmatyar
- A. Jamali; Gulbudin Hekmayar: the rise and fall of an Afghan warlord; www.jamestown.org
- Gulbuddin Hekmatyar at the Notable Names Database
| Preceded by Abdul Sabur Farid Kuhestani |
Prime Minister of
Afghanistan June 1993 – June 1994 |
Succeeded by Arsala Rahmani |
| Preceded by Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai |
Prime Minister of
Afghanistan June 1996 – September 1996 |
Succeeded by Muhammad Rabbani |
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