Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
April 29, 2017
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one Afghanistan’s most notorious warlords, has called on the Taliban to stop fighting government troops and begin peace talks.
“I invite you to join the peace caravan and stop the pointless, meaningless and unholy war,” Hekmatyar, a former prime minister, told a gathering of Afghan politicians and his supporters in Laghman Province on April 29.
“I want a free, proud, independent, and Islamic Afghanistan,” Hekmatyar added, in his first public appearance in nearly two decades.
President Ashraf Ghani said in a statement released on April 29 that the deal with Hekmatyar “shows that Afghans have the capacity to resolve conflict through dialogue.”
Hekmatyar, the founder and current leader of the Hezb-e Islami political party, signed a peace deal with the Afghan government in September
In the deal, Hekmatyar’s fighters vowed to lay down their weapons in exchange for a prisoner release.
He also praised Afghan security forces during his speech and said fighting against them and the country’s government is “senseless and illegitimate.”
The UN Security Council ended sanctions against Hekmatyar in February, clearing the way for him to return to Afghanistan after being in exile for nearly 20 years.
The government’s deal with Hekmatyar was criticized by many Afghans and human rights groups as being too lenient for someone accused of violence and widespread abuses — he has been dubbed the “Butcher of Kabul” for fighting that led to thousands of civilian deaths in the Afghan capital in the early 1990s.
The United States had designated Hekmatyar a “global terrorist” after he declared jihad on foreign forces fighting Islamists in Afghanistan.
Based on reporting by Reuters and dpa
Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
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