ISLAMABAD, 26 December 2002 — An Afghan rebel leader yesterday said his forces had allied with Taleban and Al-Qaeda fugitives and that a "holy war" would be stepped up to target international forces and peacekeepers.
"We are together" with the fugitive fighters, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said in a Pashto-language message distributed in Pakistan by his followers.
European intelligence sources say Hekmatyar’s operatives have purchased vehicles that may be used for bomb attacks to try to destabilize Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government.
Hekmatyar was a key guerrilla commander during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan. In the civil war that paved the way for the Taleban takeover, Hekmatyar’s men pounded the capital of Kabul with daily rocket barrages. He lived in exile in Iran during the five years of the Taleban rule. He returned after US-led forces ousted the hard-line militia.
His following among ethnic Pashtuns is considered fairly significant. There is no accurate assessment of his forces but the US forces say he is a threat and consider him a target.
US Special Forces are combing the rugged mountains of Afghanistan’s northeastern Kunar province looking for fugitive Al-Qaeda and followers of Hekmatyar, who are believed to be there in significant numbers. Special forces in Kunar have come under regular rocket attacks, many of them believed to be staged by Hekmatyar’s men.
"Hezb-e-Islami will fight our jihad (holy war) until foreign troops are gone from Afghanistan and Afghans have set up an Islamic government," Hekmatyar said. Hezb-e-Islami is the name used for his forces.
International forces in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan have come under increasing fire in recent days. In Kabul, two US special forces soldiers were wounded when a grenade was hurled at their vehicle. Two Afghans died also in Kabul when grenades were thrown at a base of the international peacekeepers.
In southern Kandahar, one Afghan soldier died and several others were injured in a remote-controlled bombing last Sunday. In Kunar province, a US soldier was hurt when rockets were fired at his base.
Afghan and Pakistani sources told The Associated Press two weeks ago that attack squads were being trained in neighboring Pakistan. The nephew of Maulvi Abdul Kabir, once the number three man in the Taleban, said the training camps were in Pakistan’s Bajour region, bordering Kunar province and in Mansehra area, also in the deeply conservative North West Frontier Province.
While he wouldn’t give more details, his disclosure of training camps came just before the spate of attacks in Afghanistan and the arrests in southern Karachi of men police there said were planning attacks.
Four men, who belonged to the outlawed Jaish-e-Muhammad militant group, said they were recruited by two men of Middle Eastern origin, given money to buy explosives and weapons in Pakistan’s tribal regions where such material is readily available.
"There will be more attacks, not just in Afghanistan but here. In the tribal regions there has been a lot of buying of weapons in recent months," said Kabir’s nephew.
In the tribal belt, owners of several arms shops, who did not want their names used, said large quantities of Kalashnikov rifles and grenades have been purchased in recent months by both Afghans and Pakistanis. (AP)
