| Submit your comments on this article |
| Afghanistan |
| Hekmatyar joins al Qaida, Taliban |
| 2002-12-26 |
| A prominent Afghan guerrilla commander announced Wednesday that he has formed an alliance with Taliban and al Qaida forces hiding in Afghanistan. Gulbadin Hekmatyar played a key role in the war against Soviet occupation forces in the 1980s and is still believed to have many supporters in Afghanistan's majority Pashtun ethnic group. A message distributed among Afghan refugees in Peshawar says, "The three forces will now jointly fight the American occupation forces in Afghanistan." "I'll fight until the last Afghan.....wait, that didn't sound right" Peshawar borders Afghanistan and is home to hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees who settled here in the 1980s. In early November, a joint FBI and Pakistani police team arrested several Hekmatyar supporters from an Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar for instigating people against the United States. The latest message also urges the Afghan people to "step up their struggle against the American occupiers." "How can you be free if they won't let me be in charge?" Hekmatyar was a major player in Afghan politics in the early 1990s, when he was also elected Afghanistan's prime minister. But the Taliban leaders forced him to leave the country when they captured the Afghan capital, Kabul, in the mid-1990s. Hekmatyar fled to Iran where he stayed under government protection till late last year when Tehran expelled him for opposing the U.S. war against the Taliban. Although Iran is opposed to the U.S. presence in the region, it never approved of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and provided weapons and financial assistance to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. It also welcomed the U.S. military action against the Taliban. Hekmatyar disappeared somewhere in Afghanistan after his expulsion from Iran and is believed to have established contacts with the Taliban and al Qaida forces hiding in the southern and eastern parts of the country. Found a hole and pulled it over him Diplomatic observers in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, say that despite his alliance with the Taliban and al Qaida, Hekmatyar may not prove to be very effective against the Americans. They say that he lost most of his supporters while hiding in Iran and it would be difficult for him to reassemble his force. Now that's he's come out and openly joined the Taliban and al-Qaida, I'd say he's getting pretty desperate to find anyone to support him |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #4 Wasn't Hek backed by Iran, when he went into exile? And isn't Khatami in Pakistan, as I write? And wasn't the Ambassador of Iran to Pakistan, Qazi's first visitor when he was released from jail, last February? Not too many degrees of separation between the Sunnis and the Shias here. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2002-12-26 21:02:07 |
| #3 at the very least you will find out he is an entertaining arsehole :) |
| Posted by: flash91 2002-12-26 16:12:10 |
| #2 Stick around for awhile. Once hyou get used to the smell you might learn something. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2002-12-26 09:44:49 |
| #1 The guy with the yellow marker seems to be an arsehole |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2002-12-26 09:21:22 |