Afghan Warriors like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: Are They Still of Any Use to Pakistan
By Khaled Ahmed
October 31,
2020
An Afghan
“warrior” who will be remembered in various ways — positive and negative — was
in Islamabad from Kabul on October 19, calling on Prime Minister Imran Khan. He
was the legendary Hizb-e-Islami leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. And Khan lost no
time in putting his fears in a nutshell: “Spoilers within and outside
Afghanistan were dead set against Afghan peace negotiations for their vested
interest.”
In
this Sept. 29, 2016, photo, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, center, signs a
peace agreement with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a notorious warlord on terrorist
blacklists, at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Source: AP/PTI
photo)
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Now that
the Americans are exiting Afghanistan, and Hekmatyar has little communication
with the “unfriendly” Taliban, who will soon knock on the door of Kabul, he
must review his position. He was no doubt always charismatic, and might still
be, but his options are narrowing. He was favoured by Pakistan and was named
the first prime minister of Afghanistan after the Russians left. He didn’t
always deliver. Is he of any use in 2020?
Hekmatyar
was inflexible in his tactics and was, therefore, isolated, but in strategy he
has been infinitely flexible. This last trait might incline some to think that
he is unreliable, which has forced him to “negotiate” himself out of isolation
within the jihad in Afghanistan. He has been in Kabul after “negotiating” a
peace deal with the US-supported Ashraf Ghani government in 2016. Such was his
loneliness living on the Afghan border close to Pakistan that he made a similar
deal with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan in 2009. There was a $10
million American price on his head which was taken off after this move.
Living in
Kabul has become “iffy” for Hekmatyar after the expected exit of the Americans.
The Taliban didn’t like him and neither did Ghani’s Tajik allies — this goes
back to the days when Tajik leader Ahmad Shah Massoud and Hekmatyar were
fighting their “inset” jihad against each other. Kabul’s Tajik leader Abdullah
Abdullah had recently visited Islamabad and called on PM Khan. Now the question
is: Who will win favour in Islamabad? Note: In the recent debate in Kabul about
the post-US situation, Hekmatyar had carefully gone public against “Indian
designs” in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan warlord Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar | Wikipedia
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Pakistan’s
“jihadi” general Hameed Gul set a lot of store by Hekmatyar but was let down
when the latter didn’t join an important battle against the pro-Soviet Afghan
army across the border. A Pakistani hero of the Afghan war against the Soviets
was Colonel Imam, a commando of the ISI who had trained the Taliban in
guerrilla warfare. He knew both the Tajik warrior Ahmad Shah Massoud whom
Pakistan didn’t pick as an option in Afghanistan; and Hekmatyar, whom Pakistan
seemed to hero-worship. Ambassador (retd) Arif Ayub, who served in Kabul and
knew Imam, wrote after Imam’s death at the hands of the Taliban, in quarterly
Criterion (May 15, 2012): “Even at the time of our worst relationship with
Massoud (following his burning of our Embassy, attempted murder of our
Ambassador and Defence Attaché; and the bombing in Peshawar, in which our
Governor’s daughter was killed) Imam kept on insisting that Massoud should be
treated as a younger brother who should be brought back into the family and
never ostracised… He had no such sympathy for Hekmatyar, whom he accused of
being responsible for the destruction of Kabul and the killing of more
mujahideen commanders than the Russians.”
The dilemma
for whoever deals with post-US Afghanistan is the fragmentation of the Afghan
warriors divided into bands, Pakhtuns on the one hand and the non-Pakhtun on
the other. Afghanistan is going to be divided in multiple ways as armed gangs
sit down and decide the next “Islamic” government in Kabul. The Pakhtuns may be
the dominant ethnic community in Afghanistan, but if you put together the
non-Pakhtun Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, etc. they stand outnumbered. Moreover,
Pakhtuns tend to get divided among themselves, reducing Afghanistan to many
satrapies that negate the modern state.
Pakistan
has expressed its distance from the confusion of loyalties that Afghanistan
represents today by wire-fencing the Durand Line. It doesn’t want the “spill
over effect” that takes place every time Afghanistan fights with itself. The
latest news is that in Pakistan’s Jalalabad consulate, 15 Afghan women and men
have died in a scuffle while seeking Pakistan visas. The dream that has to
replace this chaos is a regional trading bloc of South Asia that connects India
with Afghanistan through a highway going across Pakistan, onwards to Central
Asia and Europe.
-----
Khaled Ahmed is consulting editor, Newsweek
Pakistan.
Original Headline: Hekmatyar Redux: With US
exiting Afghanistan, is the warlord of any use to Pakistan?
Source: The Indian Express
URL: https://newageislam.com/the-war-within-islam/afghan-warriors-gulbuddin-hekmatyar-they/d/123330
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