Gov’t Sings Peace Deal With Warlord Hekmatyar

Afghanistan’s government signed a draft peace deal on Thursday with Hezb-e Islami party led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, after lengthy negotiations that could pave the way for a similar accord with the Taliban, who have been waging war on Kabul for 15 years.

A government delegation and a team representing Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami militant group signed the document at a press conference in Kabul on September 22.

The final agreement is expected to be signed by Hekmatyar and President Ashraf Ghani in the coming days. That is expected to be a mere formality.

The signing ceremony was broadcast live on Ariananews TV Network. The agreement was signed by the head of Kabul’s High Peace Council, Ahmad Gilani, national security adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar, and Hekmatyar’s representative Amin Karim. Hekmatyar’s son Habiburahman sat with an audience of officials.

“Fortunately, after two years of negotiations between Afghanistan’s High Peace Council and the Hezb-e Islami, the peace negotiations have been successfully completed, and an agreement between both sides has been finalized,” the Afghan High Peace Council, the presidentially appointed body tasked with pursuing a peace settlement with militant groups, said in a statement.

The peace agreement allows for the release of Hezb-i-Islami prisoners, and obligates the Afghan government to pay for security in two or three locations inside Afghanistan where the group can choose to settle its leadership.

Human Rights Watch called the deal “an affront to victims of grave abuses”.

“[Hekmatyar’s] return will compound the culture of impunity that the Afghan government and its foreign donors have fostered by not pursuing accountability for the many victims of forces commanded by Hekmatyar and other warlords that laid waste to much of the country in the 1990s,” the organisation said in a statement.

Hekmatyar, derided widely as the “butcher of Kabul”, was a prominent anti-Soviet commander in the 1980s who stands accused of killing thousands of people in the Afghan capital during the 1992-1996 civil war.

Hezb-i-Islami has been largely inactive in recent years, with its last big attack in Afghanistan in 2013. That killed 15 people including five Americans.