Our Man in Kabul?
The sadistic Afghan warlord who wants to be our friend.
Michael Crowley
TNR
March 9, 2010
“Let’s talk about why you plan to kill me.” It was March 1987, and Milt Bearden was sitting in a spare interview room at the Islamabad headquarters of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Bearden was then the CIA’s station chief in Islamabad, serving as the link between Washington and the U.S.-funded Afghan rebels bleeding the Soviets in Afghanistan. He had come to see the mujahedin’s most lethal warlord, a radical Islamist named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. No other Afghan leader had received more money from the United States than Hekmatyar, yet he showed his Western patrons precious little gratitude. He claimed to despise the United States as much as the Soviet Union, and, while visiting the United Nations two years earlier, he had refused an invitation to meet Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office. Now Bearden was hearing grumbling from Washington about why the United States was financing an anti-American zealot known for splashing acid in the faces of unveiled women. He decided it was time to confront a man he considered “the darkest” of the Afghan warlords. And Hekmatyar was convinced he’d come to snuff him.
Hekmatyar, then about 40, fingered a strand of agate prayer beads. He had been summoned by the ISI, which served as the conduit for U.S. aid to the Afghan rebels. He has a long thin face, dark eyes, and a long beard, and is typically clad in a black turban and robes. His appearance has been described as feline, but the façade is misleading. As Bearden would later recall in his memoir, The Main Enemy, Hekmatyar “thought nothing of ordering an execution for a slight breach of party discipline.” On this day, he was sullen, and the two men squabbled about Hekmatyar’s reputation for brutality, which the warlord alternately denied and dismissed as unimportant. Then Hekmatyar cut to the chase: “I know what you’re planning to do,” he said. “You’re armed. I can see that.” Bearden opened his jacket to show that he wasn’t carrying a gun. (Although he was--in the small of his back.) He asked Hekmatyar why the CIA would want to eliminate its most valuable anti-Soviet fighter. Because, Hekmatyar replied, the United States understood that the Soviets were already done for. Hekmatyar had now defeated one superpower, and the Americans feared what he might do to them. Addressing Hekmatyar by the title he had acquired from Kabul University, Bearden said: “I think the engineer flatters himself.”
Only prematurely. Fifteen years later, in May 2002, a CIA-operated aerial drone circling near Kabul shot a Hellfire anti-tank missile at a convoy on the ground. The explosion killed several men, but failed to claim its target: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. By then, the Afghan warlord was on Washington’s most-wanted list as a leader of the post-2001 Afghan insurgency. But, eight years later, circumstances have changed once again. The United States is now considering whether it’s time to stop trying to kill Hekmatyar and start negotiating with him--a choice that could have crucial implications for Barack Obama’s war in Afghanistan.
(More here.)
Michael Crowley
TNR
March 9, 2010
“Let’s talk about why you plan to kill me.” It was March 1987, and Milt Bearden was sitting in a spare interview room at the Islamabad headquarters of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Bearden was then the CIA’s station chief in Islamabad, serving as the link between Washington and the U.S.-funded Afghan rebels bleeding the Soviets in Afghanistan. He had come to see the mujahedin’s most lethal warlord, a radical Islamist named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. No other Afghan leader had received more money from the United States than Hekmatyar, yet he showed his Western patrons precious little gratitude. He claimed to despise the United States as much as the Soviet Union, and, while visiting the United Nations two years earlier, he had refused an invitation to meet Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office. Now Bearden was hearing grumbling from Washington about why the United States was financing an anti-American zealot known for splashing acid in the faces of unveiled women. He decided it was time to confront a man he considered “the darkest” of the Afghan warlords. And Hekmatyar was convinced he’d come to snuff him.
Hekmatyar, then about 40, fingered a strand of agate prayer beads. He had been summoned by the ISI, which served as the conduit for U.S. aid to the Afghan rebels. He has a long thin face, dark eyes, and a long beard, and is typically clad in a black turban and robes. His appearance has been described as feline, but the façade is misleading. As Bearden would later recall in his memoir, The Main Enemy, Hekmatyar “thought nothing of ordering an execution for a slight breach of party discipline.” On this day, he was sullen, and the two men squabbled about Hekmatyar’s reputation for brutality, which the warlord alternately denied and dismissed as unimportant. Then Hekmatyar cut to the chase: “I know what you’re planning to do,” he said. “You’re armed. I can see that.” Bearden opened his jacket to show that he wasn’t carrying a gun. (Although he was--in the small of his back.) He asked Hekmatyar why the CIA would want to eliminate its most valuable anti-Soviet fighter. Because, Hekmatyar replied, the United States understood that the Soviets were already done for. Hekmatyar had now defeated one superpower, and the Americans feared what he might do to them. Addressing Hekmatyar by the title he had acquired from Kabul University, Bearden said: “I think the engineer flatters himself.”
Only prematurely. Fifteen years later, in May 2002, a CIA-operated aerial drone circling near Kabul shot a Hellfire anti-tank missile at a convoy on the ground. The explosion killed several men, but failed to claim its target: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. By then, the Afghan warlord was on Washington’s most-wanted list as a leader of the post-2001 Afghan insurgency. But, eight years later, circumstances have changed once again. The United States is now considering whether it’s time to stop trying to kill Hekmatyar and start negotiating with him--a choice that could have crucial implications for Barack Obama’s war in Afghanistan.
(More here.)
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