44 Facts About Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an Afghan politician, former mujahideen leader and drug trafficker.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is the founder and current leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin political party, so called after Mohammad Yunus Khalis split from Hezbi Islami in 1979 to found Hezb-i Islami Khalis.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has twice served as Prime Minister during the 1990s.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received more CIA funding than any other mujahideen leader during the Soviet-Afghan War.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar established himself and his group amongst the leading heroin suppliers in the Middle East.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was accused of bearing the most responsibility for the rocket attacks on the city.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was born in 1949 in Imam Saheb, Kunduz province, in the north of what was then the Kingdom of Afghanistan, a member of the Kharoti tribe of Ghilji Pashtuns.

Afghan businessman and Kharoti tribal leader Gholam Serwar Nasher deemed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to be a bright young man and sent him to the Mahtab Qala military academy in 1968, but he was expelled due to his political views two years later.

From 1969 to 1972, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar attended Kabul University's engineering department.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was one of the foundational members of the organization.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's radicalism put him in confrontation with elements in the Muslim Youth surrounding Ahmad Shah Massoud, an engineering student at Kabul University.

The other movement, called Hezb-i Islami, was led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who favored a radical approach in the form of violent armed conflict.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami was formed as an elitist avant-garde based on a strictly disciplined Islamist ideology within a homogeneous organization that Olivier Roy described as "Leninist", and employed the rhetoric of the Iranian Revolution.

Bhutto's support to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar continued and when Bhutto was removed from power in Pakistan by Zia-ul-Haq in 1977, Zia continued supporting Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar gained the support of the British MI6 and even met Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's party had the dubious distinction of never winning a significant battle during the war, training a variety of militant Islamists from around the world, killing significant numbers of mujahideen from other parties, and taking a virulently anti-Western line.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar first became involved in the narcotics trade in the summer of 1988, as it became apparent that the Soviets were intending to withdraw.

Later Massoud and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar agreed to stage a takeover operation in the Panjshir valley.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's faction attacked non-combatants such as British cameraman Andy Skrzypkowiak, who was killed in 1987 while carrying footage of Massoud's successes to the West.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar made an unlikely alliance with hardline communist and Minister of Defence Shahnawaz Tanai who launched a failed coup attempt in March 1990 against President Najibullah.

Many senior members of his party resigned in protest of the coalition, and other Mujahideen groups ridiculed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar for uniting with Khalqists to oust the Parcham government.

All the different parties participated in the destruction, but Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's group was responsible for most of the damage, because of his practice of deliberately targeting civilian areas.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is thought to have bombarded Kabul in retaliation for what he considered its inhabitants' collaboration with the Soviets, and out of religious conviction.

Nonetheless, in May 1996, Rabbani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar finally formed a power-sharing government in which Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was made prime minister.

However, the Mahipar agreement did not bring any such benefits to him as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar had little grassroots support, but did have many adverse effects: it caused outrage among Jamiat supporters, and among the population of Kabul, who had endured Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's attacks for the last four years.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar then fled to Massoud's stronghold in Panjshir who, despite Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's history of animosity towards him, helped him flee to Iran in 1997, where he is said to have resided for almost six years.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was distrusted by the Iranian Government, who found him too unpredictable, unreliable, and an unnecessary liability, considering its tense relations at the time with the Taliban and the Pakistani government.

The United States accused Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of urging Taliban fighters to re-form and fight against Coalition troops in Afghanistan.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was accused of offering bounties for those who kill US troops.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has been labeled a war criminal by members of the US-backed President Hamid Karzai's government.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was a suspect behind the 5 September 2002 assassination attempt on Karzai in Kandahar and a bomb the same day that killed more than a dozen people in Kabul.

On 25 December 2002, news broke that American spy organizations had discovered Gulbuddin Hekmatyar attempting to join al-Qaeda.

On 10 February 2003, the Afghan government reported that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was planning an alliance with Taliban and al-Qaeda factions.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's group was involved in an intense battle with the US army near Spin Boldak.

At the time, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was believed to shuttle between hideouts in Pakistan's mountainous tribal areas and northeast Afghanistan.

On 22 September 2016, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was pardoned by the Afghan government as part of a peace deal between Hezb-i-Islami and the government.

Hezb-i-Islami agreed to cease hostilities, cut ties to extremist groups and respect the Afghan Constitution in exchange for government recognition of the group and support for the removal of United Nations and American sanctions against Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was promised an honorary post in the government.

The agreement was formalised on 29 September 2016 with both Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who appeared via a video link in the presidential palace, signing the agreement.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has then called on the Taliban to end their insurgency and lay down arms.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar ran in the 2019 Afghan presidential election and finished a distant third.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar voiced his support of the Taliban in September 2021 even if he and his party will not be included in governance.

In October 2022, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar told a sermon in Kabul that the talks of Bonn and Doha failed to bring peace to Afghanistan because of the influence of "foreigners".

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar proposed intra-Afghan talks to form an inclusive government to replace the current interim Taliban government.

Some of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's relatives have served or are suspected of serving as his deputies.