Organization: The American University - University Computing Center
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 10:12:05 EDT
From: <OMARS@auvm.american.edu>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.afghanistan
Subject: Afghan News Item #5

From: clarinews@clarinet.com (RALPH JOSEPH)
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 10:24:19 PDT
Location: afghanistan, pakistan



Here is some more relating to my previous note attached to News Item #4:


        ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (UPI) -- Afghanistan accused a Pakistani Islamic
fundamentalist leader Monday of secretly supplying Afghan warlord
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar with arms and men to assist his bid to topple the
interim government.
        Afghan diplomatic sources said the arms were being smuggled across
the border to Hekmatyar's forces without the knowledge of the Pakistani
authorities, and Islamabad has pledged not to allow its territory to be
used for any kind of hostile activity against the Afghan government
headed by President Burhanuddin Rabbani.
        Rabbani, who ended a two-day visit to Islamabad Sunday, told
journalists before flying to Tehran that Qazi Hussein Ahmed, chief of
Pakistan's Jamaat-i-Islami party, was sending arms and men across the
border between the two countries.
        Afghan diplomats said Rabbani was not accusing the Jamaat-i-Islami of
being involved. The Jamaat-i-Islami, a mainly sunni Muslim
fundamentalist group, is not linked to the Afghan party of the same
name, of which the near-legendary mujahideen leader Ahmed Shah Masoud is
a member.
        The sources said Qazi Hussein Ahmed was carrying out the operation
independently of the party he headed, and against the advice of the
party's other leaders. ``He is doing this with the help of his
relatives,'' one diplomat said. ``It is more a clan matter,'' he said.
        The Jamaat-i-Islami chief was not immediately available for comment.
A party spokesman said he was now touring the Peshawar area, some 25
miles from the Afghan border.
        In his news conference Sunday, Rabbani gave no details of the type,
quantity or origin of the arms Ahmed was allegedly supplying to
Hekmatyar. Neither he, nor the Afghan diplomats said when the alleged
supply operations began.
        Hekmatyar, who heads a mujahideen gurrilla group affiliated to the
Hezbe-Islami, has been battling the forces of Kabul's interim government
almost since the day it was established in April, after communist
President Najibullah was forced from power.
        The Afghan diplomats said Hekmatyar had large quantities of arms and
ammunition hidden away in warehouses and dumps near the Pakistan border
at the time his rebellion started.
        There was no immediate explanation of why Ahmed was now allegedly
supplying him with arms, but analysts said the rebels arms stock were
apparently heavily depleted by his five-month civil war with the Kabul
governmemt.
        The Frontier Post, a daily newspaper published simultaneously in
Peshawar and Lahore, suggested the new supplies consisted mainly of
ammunition.
        Hekmatyar, whose original stock of arms, including heavy weapons,
came from the U.S. and Pakistan to assist him in the war against Soviet
forces backing Najibullah, Monday invited Peshawar-based journalists to
a news conference scheduled for Tuesday at an undisclosed point inside
Afghanistan.
        The invitation did not specify what the Hiebe-Islami chief wished to
talk about, but local journalists assumed he would answer questions
about the charges Rabbani made Sunday.
        Hekmatyar, whose majority ethnic Pushtun forces are holding territory
south of Kabul, began his rebellion against the interim government after
demanding the removal from the capital of forces loyal to Gen. Rashid
Dostam, a Tajik militia leader whose defection to the mujahideen led to
Najibullah's fall.
        Masud, now Defense Minister in Kabul, is also an ethnic Tajik and has
steadfastly refused to remove Dostam's forces from the Afghan capital.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.afghanistan