Afghan warlord changes conditions for peace deal
Hikmatyar not to demand withdrawal of all foreign troops
kabul — A notorious Afghan warlord who lives in hiding has dropped a key condition for ending his war of more than 40 years with Kabul, an associate said on Tuesday.
According to Amin Karim, an official of the Hezb-i-Islami Party, the party’s leader, Gulbaddin Hikmatyar, is no longer demanding that all foreign troops leave Afghanistan.
Hikmatyar is designated a “global terrorist” by the United States and blacklisted by the United Nations. He is widely believed to live in Pakistan, though his supporters say he is in Afghanistan.
Last year, he briefly came out of the shadows to set his conditions for peace that included the withdrawal of foreign forces.
Karim told The Associated Press that for Hikmatyar, the “departure of foreign troops is not a condition, it is a goal,” and added that the warlord’s followers “have no conditions, we have principles.”
The move by Hikmatyar, whose current following is hard to gauge, is likely as much an overture to the government of President Ashraf Ghani as it is an attempt to stay relevant on the Afghan political scene.
Hikmatyar has led an extreme life; his mujahedeen followers were responsible for the deaths of thousands during the devastating Afghan civil war. He is said to have offered himself as interlocutor to former President Hamid Karzai in 2008, but was deflected amid concerns over his extremist reputation and human rights abuses. The last known attack carried out by his militant group was in 2013, when at least 15 people, including six American soldiers, were killed in central Kabul.
Ghani came to power in 2014 promising to end the 15-year war with the Taleban. A diplomatic offensive aimed at getting Pakistan to bring the Taleban into peace talks has so far failed, and this year is expected to be as brutal on the battlefield as 2015, when 11,000 civilians were killed or wounded, according to UN figures. Afghan officials have said that a peace deal with Hikmatyar could be useful in potentially convincing Taleban commanders on the battlefield to join the peace process.
Hikmatyar’s move to drop the condition on foreign forces could also raise questions among Taleban leaders and commanders about their own goals. Like Hikmatyar and his followers, the Tale-
We are convinced that if Hezb-i-Islami achieves and signs a peace agreement with the government, it will open the door for the other groups, including the Taleban”
Amin Karim, an official of the Hezb-i-Islami Party
ban have long said they are waging their insurgency to expel all foreign forces from Afghanistan.
“We are convinced that if Hezbi-Islami achieves and signs a peace agreement with the government, it will open the door for the other groups, including the Taleban,” Karim said. “If we achieve agreement, then there will be no more reason for the Taleban to fight.”
Ghani’s office welcomed Hikmatyar’s move and said his cooperation with peace efforts could lead to a reduction of violence. However, peace talks between Kabul and the Taleban, which were hosted by Islamabad, fell apart last year and chances for their resumption have grown increasingly dim.
If the warlord does join the peace process, Hezb-i-Islami would be “the first group to walk through the gate” Ghani had opened, a brief statement from the president’s office said.
In Kabul, Karim is leading a small delegation of his party in discussions with senior officials that started in secret last summer. He said those discussions were launched with the expectation that all foreign troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan at the end of 2016. —