Analysis: Ex-Mujahideen Leader on the Move

P E S H A W A R, Pakistan, Feb. 27 -- Reports that former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has left Iran for another country signal a new, uncertain future for a man who was once Afghanistan's most powerful mujahideen leader.

Though his destination is unknown, there are perhaps two countries where he could be headed — his native Afghanistan or Pakistan, which in the past he has referred to as his second home. Both have said they would not let him in.

Iran's Islamic government ordered Hekmatyar to leave, despite knowing that no other country in the world was willing to accept him.

In contrast, Afghanistan's Taliban refused to expel Osama bin Laden because they knew he had nowhere else to go. In the process, they earned the enmity of the world, risked their lives and sacrificed their rule.

Afghan Arrest Threat

Afghanistan's new rulers already have announced that Hekmatyar would be arrested if he entered the country and would be tried as a war criminal. Foreign Ministry spokesman Omar Samad said Hekmatyar was part of Afghanistan's bitter and dark past and had no support among the people.

Samad belongs to the ethnic Tajik minority that fought for control of Kabul under the leadership of the late Ahmed Shah Massood against Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami. His bitterness toward Hekmatyar may stem from the long and bitter rivalry between Massood and the Hezb-i-Islami leader.

But Samad and his boss, Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, may tend to forget Kabul was largely destroyed in 1994, and more than 50,000 people were killed, primarily because of fighting that involved not only Hekmatyar and Massood, but also Uzbek warlord Abdul Rasheed Dostum and a handful of others — all of them responsible for razing parts of the capital and formulating policies that led to Afghan deaths.

Diplomatic Motives?

Hekmatyar's reported departure from Iran on the day Afghan interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai landed in Tehran on a three-day visit might coincide with Iran's efforts to assure Karzai that it was fully assisting his government. It might also have been meant to signal to the United States — which has accused Iran of seeking to destabilize the Karzai government — that Tehran backs Afghanistan's new rulers.