KABUL, 4 May 2004 — The radical Hizb-e-Islami movement of wanted Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has announced it will abandon violence and work with the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
However, fugitive former party leader Hekmatyar is not part of the peace offer. Hekmatyar, a former Afghan premier whom Washington has declared a terrorist, has issued repeated calls for a jihad against foreign troops in Afghanistan.
“We are not representing one individual but we are talking on behalf of Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan which includes people from throughout Afghanistan,” a member of an 11-man delegation, claiming to be from Hizb-e-Islami’s “decision-making council” told reporters in Kabul.
The group issued a statement Sunday declaring they want “to play an effective role in bringing about peace.”
The party’s executive council has decided Hizb-e-Islami, “working within the framework of the new constitution, will play an active role in the consolidation of peace and in guaranteeing security,” it said.
The faction, whose militant network is believed to launch regular attacks against Afghan and US-led troops here, said it had been in contact with Karzai’s government to allow it to return to mainstream politics.
“We have been engaged for some time in discussions with the Islamic transitional state to allow Hizb-e-Islami to participate in the political process as an independent, lawful organization that can play a positive role through a peaceful, political, cultural and social effort in support of electing a national government,” it said.
The delegation, led by senior party official Khalid Farooqi, met Karzai and other government officials including Defense Minister Mohammed Qasim Fahim on Sunday.
Members said they have had no contact with Hekmatyar since the ouster of the Taleban regime in late 2001.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan has agreed to form a new national military force, separate to the war-shattered country’s fledgling army being trained by US soldiers, an official said yesterday. Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammed Zahir Azimi told AFP the government had given its support to the creation of a 2,000-strong Afghan National Guard.
The guard would take part in operations against militants along with US-led coalition troops and the newly formed Afghan National Army, Azimi said. “They would go anywhere there is unrest or fighting,” Azimi said, without specifying when the force would be formed. The ANA currently numbers 7,000 soldiers with another 2,400 in basic training, according to the US military.
On the violence front, at least six people were killed and several wounded at the weekend in a restive southern Afghan province where remnants of the ousted Taleban have stepped up their attacks in recent weeks, officials said. Four government soldiers were killed and two wounded when their vehicle hit a land mine in Soori district of Zabul province on Sunday, they said.
Also at the weekend, a bomb blast killed two civilians and wounded two in the Dai Chopan district of the same province, said provincial governor Kheyal Mohammad Husseini. He blamed the Taleban for the blast and said Afghan forces had foiled yet another attack by the militants in Mizan district, also in Zabul.
In another development, the death toll from a horrific gas tanker explosion in a busy marketplace in western Afghanistan has risen to at least 45, aid workers told AFP yesterday.
A truck carrying thousands of liters of gas exploded Sunday afternoon in the village of Azizabad, in Shindand district about 100 km south of the western city of Herat.
A spokesman for World Vision in Herat, Geno Teofilo, said the figure was at least 45, adding that “at least 35 people were killed on the spot”.
“Three wounded died as they were being transported to Herat,” he said, adding that seven more severely burned people died during the night at Herat Public Hospital.
