U.S. Secretly Urging Afghan Rebels to Quit

In a series of secret gatherings, senior U.S. and other Western diplomats have met commanders of an Afghan faction that is attacking U.S.-led troops, urging the militants to dump their leader, disarm and form democratic parties.

The most recent talks, with four top commanders who fight for fugitive warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, were held in Western embassies and the presidential palace here in the last week in November, a source familiar with the talks said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

U.S. forces have tried to kill Hekmatyar with at least two airstrikes, but he escaped and is waging a self-declared holy war against U.S. troops. He openly supports Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i-Islami, or Islamic Party, is on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups.

Officials of President Hamid Karzai’s government, with the support of U.S. diplomats, are talking with some Taliban and other militant leaders Karzai considers moderate enough to participate in mainstream politics. Karzai has gradually extended central government control beyond Kabul, the capital, by replacing some renegade gov- ernors and trying to persuade his enemies to lay down their arms.

If he succeeds in splitting ethnic Pushtun guerrilla groups in southern and eastern Afghanistan such as Hekmatyar’s, and can bring some of their leaders into politics without alienating commanders from other regions and ethnic groups, Karzai could move Afghanistan much closer to real peace.

But the clandestine negotiations also could backfire and reopen deep wounds in Afghan society as Karzai tries to lead the country to national elections in June, a vote that he hopes to win.

Many Afghans doubt that any of Hekmatyar’s followers, let alone his commanders, have a moderate bone in their bodies.

“If he is in Hizb-i-Islami, he is an extremist,” Maj. Gen. Sher Karimi, chief of military operations in the Afghan Defense Ministry, said in an interview Monday. “There are no moderates in Hekmatyar’s party.”

Last month’s meetings here were the fourth round of talks between Western diplomats and Hekmatyar’s men over the last several months, said the source.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Larry Schwartz declined to comment. “We just don’t comment on ongoing diplomatic discussions,” he said.

In Washington, a State Department official said U.S. officials had been meeting with local leaders who have past military ties with Hekmatyar, urging them to disarm and demobilize their forces, and to take part in the country’s new political process. But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, denied that U.S. officials have been trying to win over commanders still fighting U.S. forces as part of Hekmatyar’s group.

Hekmatyar’s forces launch attacks daily on foreign troops, Afghan forces and civilians. His lieutenants could expect to be arrested or killed if spotted by forces of the U.S.-led coalition. However, a witness said, they were spirited from the countryside into Kabul in a four-wheel-drive vehicle with tinted windows. They reportedly received guarantees of safe passage from Karzai.

It seems unlikely that Hekmatyar’s senior commanders could meet with the diplomats without their leader finding out. Karimi said there were two possible explanations for the talks.

“Maybe they have a lot of grave differences, which means they have moved out because they don’t trust him, and don’t want to face him, and Hekmatyar is not in a position to move against them or have them followed,” Karimi said. “At one time, he could easily kill his opponents anywhere in the world. Today he’s in a very different situation.

“But the other possibility is that it may be a plot on his side to talk to these [Western] fellows and find out what their plans and policies are.”

Karzai confirmed the ongoing talks with anticoalition forces last week in an interview with state-run television. Only a minority of the Taliban movement, which once numbered in the tens of thousands, should be barred from joining a democratic government, Karzai said.

Members of Hekmatyar’s faction are welcome because they participated in the jihad, or holy war, in the 1980s to free Afghanistan from Soviet occupation, Karzai said.

“Our brothers who were in [Hekmatyar’s] Islamic Party, it was a jihadi faction and there are very good people, it is an Afghan faction,” Karzai said. “If they come to talk to us, they are welcome.”

Hekmatyar’s faction was the largest recipient of covert U.S. military aid during the war against the Soviets. The Pakistani military’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency channeled the bulk of the weapons to Hekmatyar then.

Hekmatyar was prime minister of Afghanistan during a period of vicious conflict among warlords that followed the Soviet withdrawal. The Taliban formed originally as an alternative to rule by warlords, and many Afghans initially supported the movement because they thought it could end the fighting. When the Taliban captured Kabul, Hekmatyar fled to Iran.

Karimi said the ISI continues to protect and support Hekmatyar. The general and others believe that Hekmatyar now is based in eastern Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan.

Afghan officials frequently accuse the ISI of misleading U.S. officials into supporting Pakistan’s proxies in Afghanistan, insisting it is the same mistake that allowed Afghanistan to become a base for international terrorism under the Taliban.

Karimi said he had no direct knowledge of the negotiations. But the source said the delegation from Hekmatyar’s faction included Khaled Farooqi, Hekmatyar’s commander in Paktika province, and Abdul Ghafar, who leads Hekmatyar’s forces around the city of Jalalabad, a former Taliban stronghold near the border with Pakistan.

Both areas are key battlegrounds in eastern Afghanistan, where U.S. forces have suffered casualties in operations against Hekmatyar’s guerrillas and their Taliban allies. The other two members of the delegation, which was led by Farooqi, were a commander of Hekmatyar’s forces in Parvan province, north of Kabul, and a Muslim cleric from Jalalabad.

The four men are believed to have returned to their bases to consult their supporters.

They are probably holding out for the best price, said Karimi, who rubbed his thumb and index finger together in the universal symbol of the payoff. In negotiations with Afghan commanders, “there is less politics involved than bargaining,” he said. “They are always bargaining.”

Early last month, U.S. soldiers launched Operation Mountain Resolve to target Hekmatyar’s strongholds in northeastern Afghanistan along the Pakistani border. U.S. and Afghan troops have suffered several casualties in the mission, including five U.S. soldiers who were killed and seven who were injured in the crash of a helicopter that was returning to Bagram air base north of Kabul.

At least two of Hekmatyar’s top commanders have quit since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban regime two years ago.

Wahidullah Sabaun, once a senior Hekmatyar lieutenant, has joined Karzai’s interim government and formed his own Islamist party. Qutbuddin Helal, also a former top Hekmatyar commander, is now in exile in Pakistan leading his own party.

Like many Afghans, Northern Alliance commanders who dominate the current interim government consider Hekmatyar and his lieutenants to be war criminals.

One of these subordinates, Zardad, controlled the Kabul-Jalalabad road for most of the 1990s. He and his men were accused of raping, torturing and murdering travelers at checkpoints.

Zardad, who like many Afghans uses one name, fled the country to escape the Taliban but is now on trial in Britain, charged with crimes including kidnapping and torture.

The State Department’s 2002 report on global terrorism calls Hekmatyar’s faction a terrorist organization that “has long-established ties with Bin Laden.”

“In the early 1990s, Hekmatyar ran several terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and was a pioneer in sending mercenary fighters to other Islamic conflicts,” the report says. “Hekmatyar offered to shelter Bin Laden after the latter fled Sudan in 1996.”

The report says Hekmatyar may have hundreds of veteran moujahedeen fighters to call on. Afghan military commanders regard his Hizb-i-Islami faction as more dangerous than the Taliban.

Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.