A new book on Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

"Historic" Picture: Hikmatyar with Ahmed Shah Masood, Ijaz ul Haq (son of General Zia), and a Saudi diplomat.

Dawn, June 4, 2006
REVIEWS:
A bloody trail
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: An Afghan Trail from Jihad to Terrorism
By Ishtiaq Ahmad

Reviewed by Gloria Caleb

As a communist turned right-winger and the founder of the Hezb-i-Islami who served western interests while he fought a holy war against Soviet troops during the ‘80s, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s life is a tale of contradictions. It is a tale that has been told well by Ishtiaq Ahmad, a journalist, who has delved deep into the life of the man who has been at the forefront of Afghan politics since the anti-Dawood insurrection in the Panjshir region. In Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: An Afghan Trail from Jihad to Terror, one treads a blood-splattered road, first laid out by the US but which ultimately led into the latter’s own territory.

Hekmatyar was widely seen as a puppet manipulated by Pakistan and the United States, although the fact remains that he constantly worked towards achieving his own goals even while receiving aid from both countries. He used Pakistan and America as deftly as they used him. He had strong links with the ISI who trained him and was loathed by most Mujahideen leaders. One of them, Mujaddadi, warned in 1983 that Washington would be sorry if it did not stop supporting Hekmatyar. To him, Hekmatyar was an enemy of Afghanistan, a dangerous fundamentalist busy assassinating moderate Afghans — “a man no self-respecting nation should support.”

Since the Hezb-i-Islami leadership was ambitious, its most important goal was to gain absolute power in Afghanistan. To meet this end, more time was spent on fighting other Mujahideen groups than on killing the Soviets. As a result, he was often accused of being a Soviet spy.

Hekmatyar’s duplicity comes across in an exchange with Charlie Wilson, the “skirt-chasing” congressman, who summoned Hekmatyar to Peshawar. In a rather bizarrely worded question, he asked Hekmatyar whether Muslims would use arms if he could find the funds to procure them. Pat came the answer. “We take weapons from dead Russians to use against Russians. I don’t (see) why we can’t take them from the Israelis. Allah has many mysterious ways of providing for His faithful.”

Although he accepted US support he left no stone unturned to please his Islamic audience. Hekmatyar’s anti-West views were well-defined even in the ‘80s when US support for the Mujahideen was at its peak. An example of this came in his refusal to shake hands with the then President Ronald Reagan at the White House, when a Mujahideen alliance delegation went there to attend a meeting of the UN General Assembly. The author says that like most Afghans it was difficult for Hekmatyar to accept in public the fact that they were on a “non-Muslim” support system.

Besides the globalisation of Islamic militancy, the Afghan jihad was also responsible for the emergence of the Golden Crescent — one of Asia’s two major zones of opium production. Poppy cultivation and opium production increased as Mujahideen groups resorted to the narcotics trade to finance the war. The external sponsors of the war looked away. By 1991, Afghanistan had become the largest opium producer in the world. Hekmatyar benefited by investing in heroin processing and smuggling.

With the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, Hekmatyar’s major goal had been achieved. But political circumstances forced him into a coalition with Burhanuddin Rabbani as president supported by Ahmed Shah Massoud as defence minister. He now aligned himself with the Shia Hazara, Hezb-i-Wahdat, and Rashid Dostum’s Uzbek forces to seize power in Kabul. According to Ishtiaq Ahmad, Hekmatyar had three goals. He wanted to ensure that Rabbani and Massoud would not merge forces and gain control over more Afghan territory which he wanted to remain in the hands of small warring factions. He did not want the people of Kabul to support Rabbani. And last, he wanted Kabul to be politically unstable so that international support for post-war reconstruction in Afghanistan could not be generated. But with the rise of the Taliban, he was unable to gain control of Kabul. When US support and Saudi assistance ended after the withdrawal of the Soviets, Hekmatyar resorted to trafficking and gun-running, supplying Stingers to the Chechens and Iranians. This caused the US to engage in frenzied efforts to buy back the Missing-In-Action-Stingers (MIAS), sanctioning $10 million for the CIA-led operation.

The rise of the Taliban led Hekmatyar to flee to Iran in 1996 and live there in exile, but when the US, in concert with the Northern Alliance, unleashed its rage on Afghanistan after 9/11, Hekmatyar, hoping to fill the political vacuum created by the fall of the Taliban, didn’t lose a minute in mending fences with his former foes.

But by the end of the war, he had once again switched loyalties and entered into a “coalition of convenience” with the Taliban and the Al Qaeda. Responding to reports that Hekmatyar’s supporters, along with the Taliban, were planning to launch an operation against the Karzai government the US tried to have Hekmatyar expelled from Iran. It accused Tehran of overlooking his seditious activities and alleged that it was supporting various other rebel groups against the US-led forces, the UN peace process and the Afghan interim government. Iran succumbed to the pressure and extradited Hekmatyar.

The warlord, who had always referred to Pakistan as his second home, realised that the tables had turned after 9/11 and that his friends who had once supported the jihad against the Soviets could no longer be counted on as they chose to ally themselves with Washington. Hekmatyar provided the Taliban with the skills that helped them reorganise and refine their warring tactics. He also filled in the vacuum that had been created since Osama bin Laden went into hiding. An untrustworthy leader who readily shifts alliances, Hekmatyar, remains a force to reckon with and continues to make life difficult for the Karzai regime. The book attempts to unravel the many mysteries and myths that surround Hekmatyar’s personality. In the process, it also succeeds in giving a vibrant account of the history of the war-torn country.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: An Afghan Trail from Jihad to Terrorism
By Ishtiaq Ahmad