[The Afghan government hopes his return can open the door for tangible peace talks with the Taliban. But with Mr. Hekmatyar’s history as a divisive figure, many also fear that his presence in Kabul when the coalition government is struggling is a recipe for further instability at the center just as Taliban militants are increasing their control over large portions of the country.]
By Mujib Mashal
 |
|
and former Prime Minister
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, third from left,
headed to the presidential
palace in Kabul on Thursday.
Credit Pool photo by Shah
Marai
|
KABUL,
Afghanistan — The last time
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan warlord, was in Kabul more than 20 years ago, he
was the prime minister and a participant in a factional war that destroyed the
capital and claimed tens of thousands of lives.
There were days in the early 1990s when as
many as a thousand rockets landed on the city, many of them fired by men loyal
to Mr. Hekmatyar, leaving casualties and ruins comparable to the destruction in
Syria today.
On Thursday, Mr. Hekmatyar returned to Kabul,
after decades of allying with and then fighting against almost every faction in
Afghanistan, backed by a peace deal with President Ashraf Ghani. The deal gives
Mr. Hekmatyar immunity for past crimes, releases dozens of political prisoners
linked to him, and allows him to lead his party, the Hizb-e-Islami, back into
Afghan politics.
The Afghan government hopes his return can
open the door for tangible peace talks with the Taliban. But with Mr.
Hekmatyar’s history as a divisive figure, many also fear that his presence in
Kabul when the coalition government is struggling is a recipe for further
instability at the center just as Taliban militants are increasing their control
over large portions of the country.
At a gathering organized for Mr. Hekmatyar
and more than a thousand of his supporters at the presidential palace, Mr.
Ghani said the warlord’s return to the capital was a big step toward achieving
peace.
He said the peace deal had factored in that
the country had changed over the last 20 years, an apparent attempt to reassure
the public after recent comments by Mr. Hekmatyar raised fears that he would
turn back the clock on some freedoms, including the growth of independent news
media, which is viewed as a major achievement of the last decade.
“Today’s generation has different wishes,”
Mr. Ghani said, adding that free speech and difference of opinion would have to
be respected.
When Mr. Hekmatyar took the stage, he spoke
for about 45 minutes, his speech often interrupted by chants of “Allahu akbar”
from his supporters, many of whom were seeing him for the first time in 20
years.
Mr. Hekmatyar is a skillful orator who has
written dozens of books. His speech was a mix of pledges to end the war, advice
for the political leaders sitting in front of him and explanations of how their
coalition government was not working, and a call for the Taliban to join the
peace process.
Mr. Hekmatyar also addressed accusations
about past abuses, including accusations that his men had splashed acid on the
faces of women who were active in public life. He said he did not disagree with
women attending school or going to work. Officials said his wife and daughter
were at the ceremony, almost unheard-of for his generation of warlords.
“Anyone who has sprayed acid on the faces of
girls — goddamn them,” Mr. Hekmatyar said.
Mr. Hekmatyar appeared in eastern Afghanistan
last week — his previous whereabouts has yet to be explained — and then drove
to Kabul in a convoy of about 200 vehicles and hundreds of heavily armed men.
Helicopters hovered above as the convoy entered the city, the streets along the
route heavily guarded and cleared of even pedestrians, and made its way to a
residence prepared for him in the west near the Afghan Parliament and Mr.
Ghani’s residence.
Mr. Hekmatyar is not the only person with a
controversial past to return to the political arena. Many of those attending
Mr. Hekmatyar’s speech were part of factions in the civil war that have also
been accused of atrocities, but they have sanitized their images over the last
15 years by siding with the United States and the government it supports here.
Many have profited from billions of dollars in American aid and military
spending that have poured into Afghanistan.
None of the factions involved in the civil
war of the 1990s have apologized, calling it a legitimate struggle. The only
faction leader who came close to an apology was Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, who
issued a letter expressing remorse for “all who have suffered on both sides of
the wars” during the election campaign of 2013. He became vice president and is
now accused of abducting, torturing and raping a political rival.
Patricia Gossman, a senior researcher on
Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, said Mr. Hekmatyar’s return underlined the
culture of impunity in Afghanistan.
“Hekmatyar is not alone in enjoying impunity;
none of the Afghan warlords from the 1990s has been held accountable,” Ms.
Gossman said. “As the war churns on, killing an ever-increasing number of
civilians and driving desperate Afghans to join the flood of refugees fleeing
to Europe, it’s clear how high a price Afghans have paid for appeasing the
warlords.”
Mr. Hekmatyar owes his rise to the fight
against the Soviet Union and the Communist-backed government in Kabul during
the 1980s. His faction of guerrilla fighters received the bulk of arms and
money funneled in by the C.I.A. to defeat the Soviets, because he was seen as
ruthless and close to Pakistan, the conduit of the American proxy war.
In the 1990s, in the power vacuum in Kabul
that arose after the fall of the Communist government, Mr. Hekmatyar’s faction
fought others for control of the government in a four-year war that left tens
of thousands dead, millions displaced and the city in ruins. He and other
factions were pushed out by the Taliban, who swept across the country,
promising to end the anarchy. He first sought refuge in Iran, and then reportedly
in Pakistan.
At the palace ceremony on Thursday, there
were signs of a generational divide among Mr. Hekmatyar’s supporters about the
past.
Hekmatullah Hekmat, 60, who joined Mr.
Hekmatyar’s party in his 20s, said Mr. Hekmatyar’s actions in the 1990s were
taken in self-defense as other guerrilla factions were refusing to accept his
role in the government.
Sulaiman Mohmand, 30, said the party had to
appeal to the new generation and leave behind what he called “the old songs” of
the past.
“There were definitely mistakes made — my own
father may have fired a rocket,” Mr. Mohmand said. “Mistakes continue to be
made; it’s not just in the past. But we, the new generation, want to look to
the future.”
To families of those who lost loved ones
during the civil war, Mr. Hekmatyar’s return reopens old wounds. Allah
Mohammed, 32, a carpet seller in Kabul, said one of Mr. Hekmatyar’s rockets had
killed his brother, who left four young children behind.
“My hair stands when I remember those days —
rockets would strike and people would fall down like sheep,” Mr. Mohammed said.
“We want all these leaders to be punished and go through the judicial system.
We did not see a good day during civil war; now he comes back?”
Fahim Abed and Zahra Nader contributed
reporting.