In Afghanistan where the opposition is muzzled, a man is making a dissenting voice heard: the former warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, returned from exile in 2017 and remained in Kabul after the Taliban’s return to power.
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By calling for the organization of elections or the education of girls, the former prime minister (1996-97) and leader of the radical Islamist party Hezb-e-Islami addresses disturbing subjects for the Islamic Emirate.
“You stayed after the victory” of the Taliban in August 2021, “if you didn’t like the system, you should have left the country,” Justice Minister Abdul Hakim Sharai told him last week, exasperated.
On March 14, Hekmatyar, with a long white beard, black turban and thin glasses, threw a wrench into the pond with a speech broadcast by his party’s television station, Barya TV.
“For any decision, the presence of the people is necessary, either directly or through elected representatives,” he said.
Then, on Afghan women: “alas, women are deprived of most of the rights that Islam has granted them,” he added, while the Taliban have banned girls over 12 from education and virtually excluded women from the public sphere.
“It is not by provocation, it is to clarify what an Islamic State is for us,” explains a member of the Hezb-e-Islami leadership for AFP.
“We consider that Islam is not a dictatorship. The number one of the Taliban (Emir Hibatullah Akhundzada, editor’s note) is allergic to this speech, he continues on condition of anonymity.
Troubles
However, Hekmatyar is far from having the background of a democrat.
From the 1990s to the 2010s, his group of insurgents committed massacres of civilians, assassinations of intellectuals and attacks on women, according to human rights organizations.
The thousands of deaths from the bombings he ordered on the capital during the civil war (1992-1996) earned him the nickname “butcher of Kabul”.
And his recent positions have gotten him into trouble.
In December 2022, the Islami University belonging to his party was closed.
At the end of March, at the age of 76, he had to leave the residence granted by the old regime – the Islamic Republic – when he returned from 20 years of exile with the guarantee of his immunity.
His forced move caused a lot of noise on social networks among opponents in the diaspora.
On the 12,000 m2 of Ministry of Defense land where he had built his residence, but also a mosque, some 200 people worked.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received a lot of visitors there, sometimes hundreds of visitors, and he gave very political speeches.
He was banned from Friday sermons at the mosque.
Then, on April 16, his channel Barya TV was suspended for “violating Islamic values.”
Certainly, “these are not positive signs for him,” says a former Western diplomat familiar with Afghanistan.
But the authorities “are a bit stuck with him, because he benefits from a network of support and protection within the Taliban – some of his former commanders – and in Tehran”, where he was first exiled. .
Hope for a “start”
The former warlord seems to be driving a wedge between the two major Taliban factions in power according to experts: that of Kandahar, the stronghold of the movement in the south from where the supreme leader rules the country by decree, and that of Kabul , or the government, supposed to be a little less rigorous.
“There is a divergence of views between the people of Kabul and the Kandaharis” on how to handle Hekmatyar, said the senior official of his party. “The people of Kabul are opposed to the demands of the Taliban number one who wants him to keep quiet.”
The spokesperson for the Afghan government did not respond to requests from AFP.
But what is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar looking for?
“He positions himself. He believes he has a role to play (…) in case the government evolves,” said the ex-diplomat.
“He also sends the message to the international community that we must always reckon with him.”
Since the Afghanistan of the Taliban is not recognized by any country, Western capitals are trying to work behind the scenes to expand the government so that it is more “inclusive”.
But for Nahid, a member of the human rights association Rawa who speaks under a pseudonym, Hekmatyar “just wants to attract the attention of the West”.
“His ideology is the same as that of the Taliban: he is against democracy and women’s rights,” she continues.
The head of Hezb-e-Islami explains for his part that “it is not (Hekmatyar’s) intention to overthrow the regime.”
But he would like the Taliban “in Kabul to rise” and “for there to be a start within this regime”.
In the meantime, he assures, Hekmatyar “will not change his speech one iota. Whatever it costs.”
