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Warlords Stake Their Future on Anarchy
Thursday, February 21, 2002
By Syed Saleem Shahazad
Asia Times Online

It is also said that a recent attack on Kandahar airport was carried out by Hizb-i-Islami forces, who are gaining strength with every passing day in the southern city.

KARACHI -- ATO
A new game has begun in Afghanistan with Russia and Iran meddling to sideline the pro-Zahir Shah elements who are emerging as the leading political force in the country.

Former Afghan premier and Pashtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Tajik General Qasim Fahim will be the key characters in this new game.

According to informed sources, the Minister of Defense in the present interim administration in Afghanistan, Fahim, and Hekmatyar's fundamentalist Hizb-i-Islami (Islamic Party) have agreed in principle to join hands to oppose the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan and to establish an alliance against the increasingly powerful factions that support former monarch Shah.

Soon after Tehran closed down the Hizb-i-Islami offices in Iran, Hekmatyar, who had been living in exile in Iran, sent a delegation to Kabul, headed by former Afghan deputy premier Qutubuddin Hilal. Delegation members met interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai and offered their cooperation if Karzai's government announced a date for the expulsion of foreign troops from Afghan soil and the enforcement of an Islamic system of government. Karzai agreed to both terms, but linked them to a condition of peace in Afghanistan.

The members also met Fahim and repeated their demands, which, sources said, Fahim accepted, and he asked the Hizb-i-Islami to help in undermining the Shah's support centers.

According to sources, these developments indicate that re-newed infighting is in the offing as tension between pro-United States and anti-US forces grows in the two-month-old government.
(More: Asia Times Online News Source)
2002 © Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.

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