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The new Afghan jihad is born
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
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.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/DI07Ag02.html
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