Word: hekmatyar
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...past eight years, Afghan rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has been a phantom presence on the edges of the Afghan insurgency. His Hezb-i-Islami militia - said to number between 2,000 and 3,000 fighters, and which operates independently of the Taliban - has carried out scores of ambushes on coalition forces in the northeastern mountains of Afghanistan and has claimed credit for two attempts on the life of President Hamid Karzai...
...seems, the veteran warlord wants to come in from the cold - as a peace broker between Karzai and the Taliban. Hekmatyar last week dispatched a 10-man delegation to Kabul to name an offer: If NATO agreed to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan starting by this summer, Hezb-i-Islami would cease hostilities and urge the Taliban to do the same. The mid-2010 withdrawal demand is flexible, according to delegation spokesman Mohammad Daoud Abedi, who told journalists in Kabul that the deadline "is a start. This is not the word of the Koran that we cannot change...
...play a part to try and bring in people that may be supporting the Taliban but are not ideologues." Such a solution would probably not involve Mullah Omar and the Afghan Taliban directly but would perhaps include the notorious Haqqani network based in Pakistan's North Waziristan and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of Hizb-e-Islami - both of which have enjoyed extensive contacts with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency...
...Pakistani military officials say limited resources force them to prioritize going after the Pakistani Taliban, while leaving militant groups focused on Afghanistan largely unmolested. But observers say that, in fact, the Pakistani military views the Afghan Taliban leadership and groups such as Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami and the Haqqanis as a means of securing its interests in Afghanistan. "It's leverage in the sense that it allows them to have a government in Kabul that is neutral, if not pro-Pakistan," says Nawaz. "That's why they've always hedged on the Afghan Taliban...
...Afghanistan, the national Taliban movement co-opted local grievances. (Taliban, these days, no longer refers just to the regime that once ruled the country; the word has become synonymous with any number of antigovernment forces.) Tribal elders say the fight in the Korengal is directed and funded by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord who was once backed by the U.S. and has links to al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, says valley elder Sham Sher Khan, the way to counter the insurgency hasn't changed. He thinks reopening the timber trade would help. "The Taliban say they are fighting because there are Americans here...