[A-List] Afghanistan: the blowback continues

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

The new Afghan jihad is born
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Asia Times, September 7 2002

KARACHI - While there is some truth in reports that al-Qaeda, the
Taliban and the radical Muslim group Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA)
have formed an alliance in Afghanistan, the motivating force and
dominant player in the country is the HIA, led by former Afghan premier
and famed mujahideen warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Driven by the burning desire to see the last foreign soldier booted out
of Afghanistan, Hekmatyar, who made his name as a fighter against Soviet
occupation in the 1980s, earlier this week issued a jihad for the
expulsion of the unwanted soldiers from Afghan soil. Hekmatyar was the
strongest force during the years of Soviet occupation, largely because
his HIA was the main benefactor of the seven official mujahideen groups
recognized by Pakistan and US intelligence agencies for the channelling
of money and arms.

In the new political arrangement, a loose union has been established in
which the Taliban's religious clerics will stay on the back benches,
leaving the mujahideen commanders to orchestrate events - which they are
doing from such centers as Peshawar in Pakistan, Berlin and Tehran. At
the core of their agenda is securing international backing for a
"freedom struggle against foreign troops", rather than the pursuit of an
al-Qaeda program. In the new situation, the Taliban will play a junior
role to the HIA, which will be mastermined by Hekmatyar and another
former mujahideen and once minister in the Taliban government, Maulana
Jalaluddin Haqqani.

Thursday's assassination attempt in the southern city of Kandahar of
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is widely despised in ethnic Pashtun
circles (even though he is Pashtun) for his pro-US stance, and the fatal
car bomb attack on a Kabul market on the same day can be viewed as clear
evidence that Hekmatyar is calling the shots, and that his battle has
begun with a vengeance. The Kabul government is hated by Pashtuns for
being pro-American and dominated by rival Tajiks from the north.

Just months ago, when Hekmatyar left Iran, where he had been in exile
during the Taliban years, many Afghan analysts claimed that the moment
he set foot in his home country he would be a dead man. His bombardment
of the capital in 1994, after he fell out with the mujahideen
administration that ran the country from 1992 to 1996, is said to have
resulted in the deaths of more than 25,000 civilians.

But his support among the rank and file and veteran commanders of the
anti-Soviet jihad remains strong, and widely underestimated. And while
there have been many reports in the Western media that Hekmatyar has
been running from pillar to post trying to find a safe haven in
Afghanistan, the fact is that he has been busy organizing support among
the HIA in Logar, Ghazni, Kunar and Kandahar, which will become the
center of his guerrilla activities.

During the jihad against the Soviets the HIA set up a successful
intelligence wing comprising Afghans, Pakistanis and Arabs. Later they
cultivated many members from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and extended
their operations in these areas to put maximum pressure on the then
USSR. This is a part of their strategy, and their speciality is to
weaken their opponents internally. They are known to have a number of
key Tajik "plants" within the Karzai administration.

Sources in the Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan maintain that it has
restructured its command and control systems across Afghanistan, with
key commanders in Ghazni, Hekmatyar's home town, Gardez, Logar, Kunar
and Kandahar being given specific tasks for action against foreign
troops. Further, the local administration in eastern Afghanistan,
including the police and the Afghan army, is completely at the mercy of
these HIA commanders. Even the powerful commander of Jalalabad, Malik
Hazrat Ali, who is a confidant of Afghan Defense Minister General Qasim
Fahim, has given assurances to local HIA commanders that he will remain
neutral in the next offensive, which is likely to be launched in
Jalalabad and the southern Kabul region. The HIA is also in the process
of making contact with commanders in northern Afghanistan, where new
"activities" can be expected to start soon.

The new fight being led by the HIA will be named a freedom struggle
against the occupation of foreign troops and tyranny against Pashtuns,
and it is expected to gather widespread support among different Afghan
factions, irrespective of their political affiliations. An important
strategy will be to fan the flames of Pashtun dissatisfaction with the
Tajik ascendancy in the Kabul government.

Hekmatyar has also begun a campaign to win hearts and minds with a taped
speech released all over eastern Afghanistan in which he queries why it
is that only Pashtuns are the targets of US bombing, and not Tajiks and
Uzbeks. He says that ordinary Afghan people have been humiliated by US
and other soldiers entering their houses and taking away their personal
weapons - and even searching their women.

The tape is backed up by other literature that is being spread across
the country, much of it originating from Iran and being given a safe
passage into Afghanistan by the Governor of Herat, Ismail Khan, another
famous anti-Soviet mujahideen, even though he is Tajik.

Sources within the HIA say that the organization has recently
reestablished contact with the Chinese government. In the past, Beijing
has blamed the HIA for stirring a religious uprising in in the
northwestern Muslim region of Xinjiang, but Hekmatyar made concerted
efforts to placate China, as well as to urge the Muslim leaders in
Xinjiang to stop their separatist agitation. Beijing was said to be
appreciative of these efforts, but it is yet to be seen how far China
will go in supporting the new Afghan freedom struggle against foreign
troops, if at all.

As a part of the changing patterns in the region, in the past month
Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders have been busy reviving their links, not
only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan. For instance, recently the
former Afghan counsel general in Karachi, Maulvi Rehmatullah Kakazada, a
most-wanted Taliban leader, secretly visited Karachi to visit his ailing
father in Ziauddin Hospital. He stayed for almost 10 days until his
father's death, and he even offered funeral prayers in one of the city's
largest and best-known pro-Taliban Islamic seminaries before returning
to Afghanistan. Pakistani law enforcement agencies apparently only
learned of his visit after after he had left the country.

Al-Qaeda, meanwhile, will continue its operations with the help of the
underworld, both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But the mainstream
business in Afghanistan is now firmly in the hands of the Hezb-i-Islami
Afghanistan, not for an international agenda, but to fight for the
evacuation of foreign soldiers.