‘Butcher of Kabul’ calls for peace, signs agreement

Kabul:notorious Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar called for peace as he appeared by video to sign a deal with President Ashraf Ghani on Thursday, marking a symbolic victory in Kabul’s struggle to revive talks with the Taliban.

The deal paves the way for Hekmatyar, who heads the now largely dormant Hezb-i-islami militant group but has been in hiding for years, to make a potential political comeback despite a history of war crimes.

But analysts have said it represents a practical success in Afghanistan’s 15-year bid to negotiate peace with militant groups, and comes as a boost for President Ashraf Ghani ahead of a development aid conference in Brussels next week. “Now is the time for the Taliban to think about whether they want to continue the war or come for peace,” Ghani said as he signed the deal at the presidential palace in Kabul.

Security was tight in the capital, with the road to the palace blocked. Chief executive Abdullah Abdullah, former president Hamid Karzai, delegates from Hezb-i-islami and other politicians also attended the ceremony. Hekmatyar, derided widely as the “butcher of Kabul”, offered his congratulations to the government and “all those DOHA: The death of an Indian labourer in Qatar who had complained about not being paid and later committed suicide on a building site has focused attention on migrant workers struggling amid an economic downturn in the Gulf state ahead of the 2022 World Cup.

Scaffolder Ajaya Behara, 44, hanged himself in the basement of the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center on September 7, weeks after asking his employer to pay outstanding wages and renew his expired visa, according to his family and co-workers.

Behara’s employer has said the suicide was not related to work conditions. But his death on a flagship Qatar project has raised concern about how an oil slump is putting pressure on thousands of vulnerable migrants on whom the economy depends.

After pictures of Behara were shared on social media last week hundreds of labourers and taxi drivers held a vigil and signed petitions demanding an investigation which police have said they are carrying out.

Indian community leaders are appealing to the government to address suicide among low-income labourers often driven to despair by abusive employers and the pressure of providing for families back home.

Across the Gulf, companies have halted or slowed projects being built by millions of foreign workers recruited from Asia and Africa and delayed salary payments to cushion the impact of falling energy revenues.

In Saudi Arabia last month thousands of laid-off workers stranded in the kingdom without enough money for food or plane tickets staged rare public protests. Qatar has weathered the global oil price slump since mid2014 better than many of its neighbours partly because of its huge offshore gas reserves and small population.

But the decline in state energy income comes at a time when Doha is pursuing a $200 billion infrastructure upgrade for the 2022 soccer World Cup and building ports and hospitals, squeezing finances and leading to budget cuts.

Foreign workers recruited from countries including India, Nepal and Bangladesh, and who make up the bulk of Qatar’s 2.3 million population, have borne the brunt of cutbacks.

Thousands have lost their jobs as the government has sought to shield its citizens from the impact of austerity.