Rebel Leader Issues New Threat to Afghan Peace : Asia: Radical Muslim Gulbuddin Hekmatyar says he’ll attack Kabul if former regime militiamen remain.

As radical Muslim leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar issued a new ultimatum of destruction to Kabul’s ruling coalition Sunday, a young coalition commander pointed to a trail of bloodstains at the lion pit in the Kabul Zoo that vividly illustrated the fears Hekmatyar has inspired that help fuel Afghanistan’s crisis.

The bloodstains came from an almost biblical episode reported to have occurred at the height of Kabul’s urban warfare last week, as the moderate coalition of Islamic rebels and former regime militiamen now in power drove Hekmatyar’s fundamentalist forces out of the capital.

“Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami forces had taken the zoo,” explained Mohammed Qasim, a young, moderate rebel commander, as he walked through the scene of Thursday’s battle for the zoo.

“During the fighting, Hekmatyar’s people caught two of our men. First, they shot them. Then, they dragged them here to the lion’s den. And then, they fed them to the lion.”

Qasim led his visitors over a bloodstained trail along the wall surrounding the pit and pointed angrily inside the lion’s cave, where a large, although unidentifiable, bone was visible.

“The lion was hungry,” Qasim said. “He had not eaten for 10 days. Now, do you see what these people are like?”

Such has been Hekmatyar’s image of evil during 13 years of guerrilla war. The image has been carefully crafted--first by the American CIA, which backed the Islamic moujahedeen with $2 billion in arms for the rebels’ successful crusade to drive out Soviet invaders in 1989, and then by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Muslim nations in their efforts to bring an Islamic government to power in Kabul.

And now, Hekmatyar’s image hangs like the proverbial sword of Damocles over Kabul as an interim Islamic council--headed by moderate rebel leader Sibghatullah Mojaddidi and backed by a military partnership between moderate guerrilla factions and former regime militias--desperately tries to bring order to the capital.

Hekmatyar’s latest threat to attack this city came Sunday during his first public comments since embattled President Najibullah’s regime crumbled last month, paving the way for a mad race by the Islamic rebels to claim the capital more than a week ago.

Speaking to reporters who tracked him down in a military stronghold bristling with tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and long-range rocket launchers just south of the capital, Hekmatyar insisted that he has only one demand: that former regime militias who have joined the moujahedeen coalition led by moderate rebel commander Ahmed Shah Masoud must leave the capital within the next few days.

“If they are not peacefully withdrawn from Kabul, then we will have to force them to withdraw,” the gray-bearded fundamentalist leader said.

“I am able to bombard Kabul,” he said, when asked what he will do in the likely event that the coalition’s equally feared tribal militias do not withdraw.

“I am able to bombard any place in Kabul. We are able to fire any type of missile on any place in Kabul. We are able to prevent even a single airplane from flying. But we do not want to do this.

“If you have doubts, we can prove it.”

In fact, Hekmatyar already has made the point, having shelled Kabul’s airport and, errantly, several nearby residential neighborhoods in the days since the heavily armed coalition backing Mojaddidi drove Hekmatyar’s fundamentalist forces out of the city’s presidential palace and the many strategic positions they had occupied during the previous weekend’s free-for-all.

Hekmatyar insisted that he supports the 51-member interim ruling council that named Mojaddidi to be leader, and a representative of Hekmatyar’s party to be prime minister, under a compromise reached before the shooting started.

In a rambling rewrite of history, Hekmatyar insisted that a popular revolution in the streets of Kabul had overthrown the regime. Hekmatyar then asserted that Kabul is still in the hands of “a few regime generals” and militias opposed to Islamic rule and that all of them must leave before the rebels’ jihad, or holy war, is complete. He concluded, “I can enter Kabul anytime, but I want to enter Kabul when there are no militias.”

Clearly, Hekmatyar could do so only in the absence of the militia force that helped drive his tanks and men out of the capital last week, and he appears to be on the run, moving with his stronghold from place to place several times a day in a convoy of seven Land Cruisers.

It is also clear for the moment, at least, that Hekmatyar’s latest ultimatum will go unheeded.

The principal target of his ultimatum is the powerful Jauzjan militia under the command of former regime Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostam, whose partnership-of-convenience with guerrilla commander Masoud and several key regime political leaders toppled Najibullah and later pushed Hekmatyar’s forces out of the city.

Despite thousands of well-trained guerrilla fighters under his command, Masoud still needs Dostam’s fierce militiamen to stave off any advance by Hekmatyar’s armored columns, according to independent military analysts, who reckon that the Jauzjan force now in the capital numbers about 5,000.

“The whole world knows that, without Gen. Dostam’s forces, the new government will collapse,” declared Col. Nawab, chief spokesman for Dostam, who remained in his northern stronghold of Mazar-i-Sharif throughout the battle for Kabul.

In addition, Nawab recited demands exactly opposite to those of Hekmatyar--that Dostam’s force have strong representation in the new government and that Hekmatyar’s people be excluded. Thus, he reinforced a rival body of fear.

“Of course, they’re afraid of us,” Nawab said of the militia that has crushed the moujahedeen in confrontations throughout the country since it was created and trained as a mercenary, counterinsurgent force that killed thousands under Soviet military supervision.

“Thirteen years ago, they were afraid of us, and now they’re afraid of us. The strongest power in our country now is the personality of Gen. Rashid Dostam.”

“All groups want Rashid Dostam in Kabul, all around the city, to defend the city. Only Hekmatyar says he doesn’t want Rashid Dostam here.”

Such boasts appeared to be as far from reality as Hekmatyar’s, and most analysts said that Dostam’s forces are seen by in the capital largely as an unpleasant, though necessary, lesser evil.

Dostam’s men, and those of another tribal militia under the Ismaeli-sect commander Jaffer Nadhri, have been blamed for much of the terrorism and looting that came at the height of last week’s battle for Kabul.

“No one doubts the brutality of the militias--not even President Mojaddidi,” said one senior diplomat in the city. “Everyone, not just Hekmatyar, would like them to leave tomorrow.

“But, for now, they’re the only defense against Hekmatyar and the fundamentalists and, for now at least, they seem to be under control. It really is the balance of terror, and, for now, the coalition sees Dostam’s men as the less terrifying of the two.”