A political revival in
Afghanistan By Syed Saleem
Shahzad
KABUL - About four decades ago, a
group of teachers and students, inspired by the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, joined forces in
Kabul University to launch Muslim Youth, a
movement for an Islamic revolution in Afghanistan.
This later became a national movement and a major
regional vehicle of resistance against Soviet
hegemonic designs.
By the 1990s, these
ideological mercenaries had defeated the Soviet
superpower, but the outcome was not an Islamic
revolution but factional fighting and bloodshed
that divided the north and the
south
of Afghanistan between what were seen as
power-hungry goons.
The Taliban took power
in Kabul in 1996 and the fractious mujahideen
scattered, many finding sanctuary in Iran and
Pakistan.
The US invasion of Afghanistan
in 2001 once again placed them at a crossroads.
About half of them chose the path of armed
resistance and the remainder chose to begin their
political careers afresh, right in front of Kabul
University, where the dream of an Islamic
revolution had been envisaged in the 1960s.
The Kabul administration and its Western
backers see these reborn politicians as
Islamabad's trump card in Afghanistan, after
Pakistan lost the Taliban when it entered the
United States' "war on terror".
Veteran
mujahid Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, loosely aligned with
the Taliban-led insurgency, recently proposed
dialogue with Kabul, and this coincided with a
sudden surge in the political activities of his
Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan (The Islamic Party -
HIA). This caused some consternation in the
capital, already worried because of the growing
insurgencies in the country and the gathering of
northern warlords under a new umbrella called the
United Front.
In the past few months, HIA
has opened new offices and relaunched its
newspaper, Shahadat. Questions have been raised
about HIA's financing, with some pointing to
Islamabad once again supporting its favorite group
in Afghanistan.
"So far we have only
opened three offices, but people are alarmed. One
office was in Kabul and two opened [in the past 15
days] in Jalalabad and Herat. To me it is a very
slow development, but people are talking too much
about the opening up of these offices," said Abdul
Hadi Argundwal, the new president of HIA and a
former powerful commander against the Soviets in
the 1980s in the province of Paghman.
"There is one thing, however. After
September 11 [2001], we were blamed as being
al-Qaeda, and hundreds of our innocent members
were rounded up as suspects. Several still are
languishing in Gitmo [Guantanamo Bay, Cuba]
prison. People thought that the HIA had vanished
from the Afghan horizon. But when recently I
inaugurated the Herat office, 3,500 people
attended the ceremony.
"We didn't invite
anybody, but the message went across by word of
mouth that HIA is being relaunched and people
voluntarily came forward. Of 3,500 people, 400
were women, fully covered in hijab.
Journalists questioned me about whether we had
changed our position on the question of women
participating in politics. I replied that women
are part of society and they have an equal right
to participate in politics, but they should have a
separate sphere in which to act," said Argundwal,
speaking fluent English with an American accent.
"Since it was a big gathering, their
participation in a separate corner was
permissible. The government cannot gag us in
opening up these offices because we are a
registered political party."
Many
observers believe HIA will provide the country's
next president. In the 2005 parliamentary
elections, HIA was banned from contesting as a
party, so it members stood as individuals. HIA has
subsequently been accepted as a party and has
about 35 to 40 members in the 249-seat Parliament.
"The HIA has always been the single
largest group among all ethnic sections of Afghan
society," Argundwal said. "Once we went to our old
constituencies, our supporters provided us with
money and we were able to open up our offices. We
will open more offices in the coming days in
Khost, Mazar-e-Sharif and in Kunar. We already
have a network of sub-offices and have started
emerging in the province of Nangarhar."
Undoubtedly, HIA has stirred the political
climate in Afghanistan, with the temperature
raised even further by the recent assassination of
HIA member and former interim premier Ustad Farid.
Farid was a member of the Meshrano Jirga - the
Upper House.
"There is quite a story
behind the killing of Ustad Farid," Argundwal
said. "There is some propaganda that the HIA is
only popular among Pashtuns, but we have popular
leaders like Farid, a Tajik, in Kapisa and
Kohistan [north of Kabul]. Once Brother Hekmatyar
announced the offer for dialogue with the Afghan
government, the players who consider northern
Afghanistan as their fiefdom on an ethnic basis
really felt threatened.
"They assumed that
if Hekmatyar came back to Kabul, he would
immediately win influence, not only in the south
but also in the north. So the killing was a part
of a campaign to deprive the HIA of local
leadership," Argundwal said.
The decision
by the administration of President Hamid Karzai to
allow HIA into politics was a ploy to encourage
Hekmatyar loyalists, still engaged in guerrilla
warfare against foreign forces, to shun violence
and become part of the mainstream. But this has
become a double-edged sword.
Information
coming from the border areas of southeastern
Afghanistan suggests a strong regrouping of
military commanders under the banner of Hekmatyar,
especially in Ghazni, Logar, Khost, Kunar and
Gardez. HIA is also spreading its political wings
in these regions.
Argundwal believes that
peace is the need of the hour and the government
should work hard to bring disaffected factions
together, including the Taliban and individuals
like Hekmatyar, to form a national consensus
government.
Syed Saleem Shahzad
is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He
can be reached at
saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
(Copyright
2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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