Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (born 1947) was the Prime Minister of Afghanistan from 1993-1994 and 1996 and Prime Minister of the Northern Alliance from 1996 to 1997. Formerly an ally of the Northern Alliance resistance to the Taliban, Hekmatyar's Hezbi Islami(backed by Iran) became a militant group once again during the Afghanistan War, carrying out attacks against the Afghan government and ISAF coalition forces.
Biography[]
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was born in Imam Saheb, Kunduz Province, in Afghanistan in 1947 to a Sunni Muslim family of Pashtuns. Hekmatyar founded Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin in 1977 in opposition to the communists in the country, and he was funded by Pakistani ISI during the 1980s Soviet-Afghan War. Hekmatyar commanded Mujahideen forces, but was infamous for killing more Mujahideen fighters than Soviet Army soldiers leading some to believe Hekmatyar was a KGB agent.
In 1992, with communist President Mohammed Najibullah's defeat, Hekmatyar with the help of Pashtun Khalqists fearing a non Pashtun dominated government fought in a civil wars for control over the country. He served as Prime Minister of Afghanistan from 1993 to 1994 under the Northern Alliance banner, but at the same time he had his own faction, the Hezb-i-Islami. In a three-way civil war that saw some warlords from the Northern Alliance fight each other, Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami and some Northern Alliance warlords fought/allied with the Northern Alliance and fought the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Initially, Pakistan supported him because he sought to establish a Pashtun country that would be friendly with Pakistan. But when it became clear that he would never achieve his goal, Pakistan backed Taliban instead and Hekmatyar was unsupported. After the capture of Kabul in 1996 by the Taliban, Hekmatyar was defeated and fled to Iran.
Hekmatyar in August 2020
After the 9/11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda in 2001, Hekmatyar opposed the American invasion of Afghanistan. In 2002 the US tried to kill him by bombing his convoy, but the missile missed its target and Hekmatyar survived. He allied with his former Taliban enemies and fought the United States, and he was suspected for the attempted assassination of President Hamid Karzai. By January 2010 he was one of the three main leaders of the insurgency in Afghanistan, but he held out the possibility of negotiations with Karzai in opposition to Sirajuddin Haqqani, who was opposed to talks. On 22 September 2016, he was pardoned by the Afghan government after agreeing to a peace deal, and HIG's prisoners were released and Hekmatyar allowed to return to public life. He later called on the Taliban to end their insurgency and lay down their arms, and he launched a failed 2019 presidential bid, winning just 3.85% of the vote to Abdullah Abdullah's 39.52% and Ashraf Ghani's 50.64%.