Word: hekmatyar
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...During President Barack Obama's surprise visit to Kabul on Sunday, he was briefed by Karzai on his efforts to bring insurgents like Hekmatyar into truce talks. The White House says it favors "reintegration" of mid-level commanders but has expressed doubt over Karzai's offer to extend a peace accord to senior leaders of the insurgency...
...impetus for the new peace effort may have come earlier this month, when a group of 70 Hezb-i-Islami fighters in the northern province of Baghlan found themselves on the losing end of a gunfight with the Taliban. Besieged, Hekmatyar's men opted to surrender to nearby government troops as a way to save themselves. That incident, however, underscores how abysmal Hekmatyar's relations are with the Taliban and casts doubt over his ability to deliver Taliban leaders to the negotiating table. No sooner was the new peace plan announced in Kabul than did the Taliban vigorously reject...
...Hekmatyar earned his fearsome reputation first in the fight against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, and then by shelling Kabul into rubble in a fight with rival mujahedin commanders. Having been forced into exile by the Taliban after they took over the country in 1996, he made common cause with them after the U.S. invasion of late 2001. The Taliban have always disliked Hekmatyar, and their loathing is shared by the many Kabul residents who saw thousands of innocents killed by his militia's repeated rocket barrages on the capital in his power struggle with rival mujahedin commanders...
...There may be more to Hekmatyar's outreach than simply a whipping at the hands of the Taliban in Baghlan. The warlord has kept close ties with Pakistan spy agency the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) ever since he was the main recipient of the CIA and Saudi aid that was channeled by the ISI to anti-Soviet Afghan rebels in the 1980s. And despite the fact that since 2002, the U.S. has considered Hekmatyar a terrorist, the Hezb-i-Islami chief operates more or less openly inside Pakistan. He maintains houses for his family in Peshawar and Islamabad...
...Afghan officials suspect that Hekmatyar made his peace overture to Karzai only after getting a nod from the Pakistani military establishment. Pakistani officials are keen to demonstrate to the Obama Administration that reconciliation between Karzai and the insurgents can succeed, but only if Pakistan makes it happen. That may also explain the recent arrests of 14 senior Taliban commanders in Pakistan - according to the U.N. and Afghan officials in Kabul, some of those held by Pakistan had been engaged in secret talks, and were more open to a peace deal than their hard-core brethren inside the movement...