Gul Hekmatyar

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar:  Dudes, he is the real Fu– deal.  He would work both sides and he got a lot of United Sates AID, I mean a lot.  We knew how to work the system and he was and is successful.  I heard he just walked out on the talks. 

 Dude:  Russell and I should have been there together but I was in Pakistan.  Russell shot Gul baby’s Photo with Rabinani and Dotsum up real close now that is FU– cool.  Now we have a 20 Million dollar bounty for him.  Wow we could have taken him out, my 338 would have done him in or my 9 MM auto up close back of the head would have been better.  I do admire him for surviving all of these years.  Nto quite as loved by his men like Masud’s followers.  Masud’s followers loved him. Ok so Gul baby on to him.  

 The Evil Sod

In a Hollywood movie Hekmatyar would be the evil foil to the heroic Masud. He would be an angry Islamic fundamentalist dressed in black, throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women and assassinating local tribal leaders that might rival his power. He would be the pawn of foreign secret service paymasters like the ISI, CIA, and Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia. He would unfeelingly sacrifice peasants for his cause, rocket the helpless civilians mixed in with his enemies, and his ruthless ambition would prevent the creation of a new peace. Unfortunately, in real life Hekmatyar was all these things.

Hekmatyar was one of the early Islamic rebels that came out of the University of Kabul. In the beginning Hekmatyar and Masud worked together. During the Soviet occupation Hekmatyar ran one of the two largest mujahideen organizations out of Peshawar in Pakistan. There he became the favorite of the Pakistani secret service, the ISI. Billions of dollars in US aid flowed through the ISI to Hekmatyar. Nervous CIA agents wondered whether Hekmatyar hated the United States as much as the Soviets, but the ISI assured them he was ok. United States money and weapons flowed to our enemy for over a decade.

When Masud finally defeated NAjibullah President installed by Cmmunist Russia in 1992, all the mujahideen factions converged on Kabul. Masud outwitted Hekmatyar and slipped into the city before him. A round robin of side-swapping, backstabbing, and massacre among Hekmatyar, Masud, Dotsum followed. The citizens and buildings of Kabul were the big losers. The problem was that Masud could not be president as he was a Tajik, not a Pashtun. Afghan kings had been Pashtun for hundreds of years. Hekmatyar was the most powerful Pashtun, and had he not been such an evil sod, Masud might have accepted some kind of deal. In the end neither prevailed. The ISI switched support from the stalemated Hekmatyar and backed Mullah Omar>  I was in Afghanistan and Pakistan then like 1989 and agin returning in 1994 . Without ISI support, Hekmatyar’s men deserted wholesale to Mullah Omar, and he was a contender no longer.

Today Hekmatyar had entered talks with the United Sates but he might have pulled out after the killing by the AMerican military of the 18 family members. He took refuge in Iran and calls for holy war against the Americans or plays both sides. A serious dude not be be messed with for certain.  Again, imagine, my friend Russell took his picture, Rabinni and Dotsum’s pictures side by side.  Russell got in on the back of a truck from Torkum.  I was a day late and a dollar short – always my story but I had fun anyway but last the chance at 20 million bounty.  I was in Pakistan.  I should scan in my photos of him and the civil war going on.