As Afghan President Hamid Karzai reaches out to militants before next month’s peace council, some human-rights activists say they are concerned with the types of individuals who may enter the government. Earlier this week, President Karzai met with a high-level delegation from the Hezb-e-Islami insurgent group. The leader of that faction is a well-known polarizing figure.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar first rose to prominence in Afghanistan during the 1970s when he founded Hezb-e-Islami, which means “The Islamic Party.”
Despite its origins in university student groups, Hekmatyar’s organization soon became known as one of the major Afghan guerrilla factions, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
During the next decade, the United States spent billions of dollars in covert assistance to fight the Soviet forces. U.S. officials funneled the money through Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, and the lion’s share went to Hekmatyar.
The ISI director general in the 1980s, Hamid Gul, says he knows Hekmatyar well. He told me the ethnic-Pashtun mujahideen leader, who originally studied in the university to become an engineer, was an important asset for both the United States and Pakistan at the time. Read the rest of this entry »
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