Afghan Insurgent Wants To Be Facebook Friends
Dude, friend me!
While cruising through “friend requests” on my Facebook page this morning I came across a fan group for “Enginer Galbuddin Hikmatyar,” [sic] a name instantly recognizable to Af/Pak watchers, even when misspelled. Hekmatyar is a fascinating and mercurial character who studied engineering at Kabul University (hence the “Engineer” nickname,) fought bravely against the Soviets, was briefly the Afghan prime minister in the 1990’s, helped Osama bin Laden escape the US assault on Tora Bora, leads an influential political/insurgent group, has made a dramatic attempt on the life of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has flirted with the idea of joining Karzai’s government, and now apparently, is on Facebook.
His 387-strong fan group appears to be comprised of mostly Dari speakers, and their posts are rants against Israel, NATO, unobservant Muslims, etc, pretty run-of-the mill stuff for insurgents and radical crazies. There are also a few recognizable names from Afghan political life listed as fans, among them Atta Noor, the governor of Balkh province in northern Afghanistan.
Afghan Desk featured Noor last month, in this story about how Karzai’s government was funneling guns to warlords in Balkh because governor Noor backed Abdullah Abdullah in the August election.
Hekmatyar is an interesting figure because he is so hard to pin down. While men affiliated with his Hezb-e-Islami group have killed dozens of coalition soldiers in attacks over the last few years, he also has a reputation for whacking out insurgent rivals he doesn’t like. Hezb-e-Islami has bases in Pakistan, from which they launch incursions into eastern Afghanistan, but he also has political support from members of the Afghan government and many Afghans that I know actually kind of revere him.
Michael Scheuer, formerly the CIA’s top al Qaeda analyst, told the Washington Post last year that Hekmatyar sometimes “supports Karzai, sometimes he supports the Taliban. He’ll be a wild card in this. But ultimately he’s all about power.”
Yeah, power and Facebook friends.
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Mr. Tobia,
I have to thank you very much for this posting. This explains better than anything I have read on the war in Afghanistan why the NATO forces are loosing. During the Vietnam war Gen. Westmoreland and other military leaders conceived of the their enemy as something like the enemy they had fought in WW II. The Germans and Japanese armed forces were more or less mirror images of the US and British forces, with standing divisions in camps and a centralized command, control, and communications center. Westmoreland & Co. imagined that the Viet Cong were likewise mirror images of the US military which could be engaged and destroyed. They even dreamed that there was some sort of jungle Pentagon in Cambodia and if it could be overrun, it would defeat the Viet Cong. It was all a fantasy of course. Vietnamese divisions did exist but they were scattered about in small units and only coalesced into large units just before battle and would simple dissolve back into smaller units afterward.
Gen. McChrystal and Gen. Preateus seem to believe that there are a fixed number of enemy combatants in a few definite locations who can be attacked and destroyed. They do not acknowledge, at least publicly, that there is a whole spectrum of forces out there with varying degrees of opposition and cooperation to the Kabul government / NATO forces and that individuals and groups move back and forth along that spectrum depending their particular situation at any given moment. Some might be fight against the NATO forces today, be neutral tomorrow, attack other insurgent forces on their own later in the week, and even fight on NATO’s side later in the week after. There is no one enemy or one friend but many of each some of whom are both and they change into each other.
Someone was once supposed to have asked Mussolini if it was difficult to rule the Italians. He was reply was supposed to have been “It is not difficult, it is pointless”. Your posting reminded me of that. Thanks again.
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