Mujahideen take up the Taliban fight


	November 16, 2001	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Mujahideen take up the Taliban fight
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - With the dramatic political and military changes in Afghanistan over the past few days it is becoming evident that a new war is beginning in which Afghanistan will be divided among Pastun and non-Pastun warlords, with the Taliban fighting a guerrilla war against the latter, and against any foreign troops that might join them.

This scenario sees the emergence of the warlords and jihadis of the Afghan resistance movement against the Soviets in the 1980s as a new and powerful force against the United States and its allies and the non-Pastun Northern Alliance.

According to well-placed sources, under an accord reached in Pakistan two weeks ago between the Taliban and the Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan, a fundamentalist faction of the mujahideen led by Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister in Afghanistan in pre-Taliban days, Hekmatyar's troops have taken control of most of the eastern provinces of Afghanistan. "We asked the Taliban leaders to leave these places, and they left, and now many of their commanders have melted into our forces," Hizb sources claimed.

These Hizb sources said that fighters under many of their former commanders, including the famous Kashmir Khan and Mutiullah, had taken control of Kunar province in the northeast of the country, and that Hekmatyar was expected to arrive soon from exile in Iran to take command.

Hekmatyar is a hard-line Muslim responsible for destroying much of Kabul in the post-Soviet (1989-1996) civil war. He was overthrown when rival militia leader Burhanuddin Rabbini assumed power. Hekmatyar was the strongest force during the years of Soviet occupation, largely because his party was the main benefactor of the seven official mujahideen groups recognized by Pakistan and US intelligence agencies for the channeling of money and arms.

The sources said that another area of Afghanistan is under the control of another faction of the Hizb-i-Islami led by Maulvi Yunus Khalis. The 80-year-old Pashtun leader had been living in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, but he is now said to be in the Jalalabad area to command forces against the Northern Alliance.

A spokesman for the Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan in Pakistan, Gharat Bahir, has stated categorically that the group would not tolerate a monopoly of the Northern Alliance in Kabul, nor the return of former monarch Zahir Shah as head of state "at any cost". "Afghanistan is a multi-ethnic country in which Pashtuns represent 67 percent [sic] of the population. Any government in the future should comprise a proportionate representation of all of them," he said.

He added that the Hizb-i-Islami has an Islamic relationship with the Taliban, and that if they become engaged in a struggle against US forces, the Hizb-i-Islami (Hekmatyar) will be with them.

These developments herald the revival of the Hizb-i-Islami, which many people thought was a spent force. Against the Soviets it was the largest fighting force, with an estimated 125,000 troops of various ethnic groups spread all over Afghanistan. The Yunus Khalis faction of the Hizb-i-Islami was the third largest force - the second biggest was the Jamiat-i-Islami Afghanistan led by Burhanuddin Rabbani, now leading the Northern Alliance.

Large numbers of the two Hizb factions melted into the Taliban when they took power in 1996, while others left for Pakistan and Iran. With this it was considered that both factions were in disarray. Even when, after the US bomb attacks on Afghanistan began and Hekmatyar extended his unconditional support to the Taliban, few believed that he had retained enough support to control the eastern areas, as he does now.

Under the Taliban's present strategy, says a Taliban source, they have vacated a number of areas, including Jalalabad, Logar, Paktia and Kunar, under agreements with local commanders and tribal leaders opposed to either the Northern Alliance or Zahir Shah. They will not launch any attacks on major cities such as Kabul, but they will defend their areas at all cost.

The Taliban, meanwhile, have established pockets around the cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat, from where they will attack the positions of the Northern Alliance. In the present situation, the Taliban will only retain a single city as their stronghold, such as Kandahar or any other city.

Behind the resurgence of the Hizb-i-Islami is believed to be the hand of Pakistani, which is bent on ensuring that there is a strong representation of pro-Pakistan elements (political and military) in any future Afghanistan setup.

Hekmatyar was among the founding fathers of a campaign to set off an Islamic revolution in Afghanistan. He and Ahmed Shah Masoud, the assassinated leader of the Northern Alliance army, were engineering students at the University of Kabul when they joined with their teacher, Burhanuddin Rabbani, in a campaign to oust the monarchy of Zahir Shah and bring about an Islamic revolution. All three and their associates were influenced by the Islamic movements of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, as well as by the writings of Syed Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-i-Islami Pakistan.

Through ties that they developed with the Jamaat-i-Islami Pakistan, they made inroads into Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Rabbani and Masoud subsequently parted ways with Hekmatyar.

Masoud and Hekmatyar were both projected in the Western media as charismatic leaders, but after 1986 when Hekmatyar refused to meet with then US president Ronald Reagan - and called US policies in the Middle East tyrannical - he was essentially blacklisted by the West.

However, he remained a favorite leader with the ISI, and continued to receive the lion's share of arms and money from them. However, when Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, a legacy of dictator General Zia ul-Haq, was removed from the ISI by the Benazir Bhutto government, the ISI's Afghan policies changed, which upset Hekmatyar, and he retired to Iran.

But he maintained his good ties with the Jamaat-i-Islami and with Gul, said to be one of the main forces behind the reemergence of the Hizb in Afghanistan.

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