Islamist Infighting--Reason to Cheer?

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his faction of Hezb-i-Islami, which has been, rather confusingly called both Hezb-e-Islami and Hezb-i-Islami-Gulbuddin (HIG) are a major pain in the rear end. (This sort of morass of initials is a long standing phenom as one can recall from the days of the alphabet soup of secular Arab terror groups in the Seventies and Eighties. But, the Geek digresses.)

The man and his lads are a royal pain for the US and the rest of the ISAF. The man and his lads are just as much a distraction (or worse) for the Kabul regime. And, now, the man and his collection of gunslingers have become a major problem for the Taliban in northern Afghanistan.

The degree of problem presented by Hekmatyar and HIG is well shown by the weekend shootout between HIG and Taliban trigger-pullers, which left a bunch of bodies, more HIG than Talib, untidily littering the landscape near Baghlan. In a sequel which may have more potential significance than the shootout itself, a large number of HIG and related personnel have reportedly rallied to the government. According to the local security wallahs more than a hundred men have come over to the government from the insurgents.

So far it is completely unclear as to whether the firefight and its aftermath are a purely local expression of local antipathies or even personality conflicts between the Taliban chieftain(s) and HIG capos such as Mamor Malang who came in from the cold at the head of his posse or, (drum roll, please) the latest in Hekmatyar's turns of coat.

If the move is the result of Hekmatyar deciding that the Kabul regime has legs and he wants (as always) to be counted among the winners, the shootout and defections are quite important as an indicator of the direction in which the winds of war are shifting. Should the northern commander of HIG, the millionaire businessman turned jihadist, "Commander Mirwais" follow the lead of his purported subordinates, one will not "have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing."

If the HIG jefes such as "Commander Kalakub" are to be taken at their words, HIG in the north has over three thousand men under arms including an undeclared number of foreigners from the Central Asian Republics and Caucasus. If a force of this size were to abandon the alliance with Taliban and come to an understanding with the government, it would not just be a shift in the wind, but a move in the tectonic plates of the war.

Hekmatyar has a very long record of seeking power through a combination of brutal warfighting and astute changing of sides. He was one of the Reagan administration's chief beneficiaries during the proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hekmatyar came out on the winning side when the Soviets pulled out, but blew it completely with his bloody actions in and around Kabul during the nasty internal war which ended with Taliban's victory.

Pushed out of his final stronghold south of Kabul, Hekmatyar beat feet to Iran where he lived from 1996 to 2002. At the time of his return to Afghanistan in the wake of Taliban's toppling, it is quite possible that Tehran saw the shifty one time guerrilla leader as the Mullahs' Man In Afghanistan. If so, they must have been disappointed when ole Heky swore fealty to Osama bin Laden in 2006.

In his statement of quasi-allegiance to al-Qaeda Heky was fulsome in his praise for the Arabs who fought so "fiercely" alongside his men in the victory over the Soviets. He neglected to mention either the massive aid received from the US or the repeated and highly disparaging comments he made in those heady days of combat concerning the ineptitude and cowardly behavior of the Arabs. Oh well, time and money heal all wounds and make memory more mutable than usual.

Subsequently Heky's original, political entity, Hezb-i-Islami, has joined the Karzai government. This development purportedly gave rise to the Hezb-e-Islami breakaway which ultimately spawned the further fracture between that group and HIG. Heky himself has made overtures to the Karzai government several times particularly following the Karzai Olive Branch Gambit a few months back.

These initial moves were succeeded by Heky's son meeting in the Maldives with representatives of Karzai's government earlier this year. So there is a context and a basis for the contention that the shootout in the north and its aftermath may be the initial sign of a deal in the works.

Both hostilities termination and the necessary follow-on, conflict resolution, require that Heky play a role. He hauls too much freight to be ignored. And, his HIG is too large a force to be suppressed militarily without an unacceptable drain on the US and ISAF units committed to Helmand and (soon) Kandahar.

Bringing Hekmartyar and his merry men into the Karzai tent is necessary in the final suppression of Taliban as an armed threat to the central government. Fortunately Heky is eminently bribeable. The coin of the bribe must be power not money. Whether this coin is too expensive for Karzai's regime remains to be seen.

Also hard to determine is the probability that Hekmartyar's sins of fifteen years ago can be forgiven by those Afghans who suffered--or their families, clans, and tribes. Historically the Afghan memory is simultaneously long and quite flexible.

Despite the unknowns, the shootout and sort-of-mass defection in the town of Baghlan is encouraging. It hints that the combination of new operational doctrine, US and ISAF combat aggressiveness, and the Karzai Olive Branch Gambit are providing an effective mixture of coercion and invitation.

We simply have to hold our breath for the next four to six months. That is enough time to see if what has happened in the north is a straw in the wind--or the start of an earthquake.