By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Afghanistan has a distinguished culture and social and political order in which one of the most prominent features is that whoever, from Mughal rulers to former king Zahir Shah, leaves the country for exile, has never been able to regain his writ. Legendary Afghan resistance leader in the jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is no exception.
| Hek? The most evil man in the entire world? |
Those who know the mujahideen commander closely affirm that the firebrand Hekmatyar of the mid-1970s at Kabul University is no different from the Hekmatyar of today. In one sense this is true - he still vehemently believes in armed struggle against foreign forces in the country, and he is still intimately involved in political wheeling and dealing, in cahoots with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), just like in the mid-1970s.
| Luckily for all concerned except him, Hek's much better at wheeling and dealing than he is at actual military leadership... |
However, his many years in exile in Iran - he left the country as prime minister when the Taliban came to power in 1996 - seriously undermined his command structure in Afghanistan, and except for carrying out a few sporadic attacks against US forces, his role at present in the resistance is minimal.
| A few rockets here, an occasional grenade there... |
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