Afghan militant says he wants to join battle led by bin Laden

An Afghan warlord wanted by the United States declared support for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in a videotape broadcast today by Al-Jazeera television.

The move by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Afghanistan’s prime minister in 1993-94, indicates his Hezb-e-Islami militant faction would be willing to shelter bin Laden and other al Qaida leaders from the US-led coalition and Afghan government forces.

Such support would be valuable to al Qaida’s leaders who are Arabs and do not speak the Afghan languages.

“We hope to participate with them (al-Qaida) in a battle that they lead,” Hekmatyar said in the tape aired by the Qatari-based Al-Jazeera. “They hold the banner and we stand alongside them as supporters.”

A warlord who helped end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1989, Hekmatyar served as Afghan prime minister from June 1993 to June 1994 but got involved in fighting his rival, Defence Minister Ahmed Shah Masood.

The Taliban chased both factions out of Kabul in 1996.

His Hezb-e-Islami group has been blamed for several recent attacks against US-led coalition forces and Afghan forces who are waging a campaign against the Taliban in the rugged eastern part of Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan.

It is thought that the network of support that Hekmatyar commands in east Afghanistan could shelter bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders.

The Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said last month he believed bin Laden and his number two, Ayman al-Zawahri, may be hiding in eastern Afghanistan.

Hekmatyar has issued videotapes previously, but not since 2004.

A senior editor at Al-Jazeera said the channel received the tape today and believed it was recorded in late April. The editor declined to say how and where the station received the tape.

Wearing a black turban, glasses and long white and grey beard, Hekmatyar criticised Afghanistan’s neighbours, Pakistan and Iran, accusing them of supporting the United States in its military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“If it weren’t for the Pakistani and Iranian support, the Americans wouldn’t have been able to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq as quickly and as easily. They wouldn’t have been able to stay until now if (Pakistan and Iran) hadn’t helped the occupying American forces control Kabul and Baghdad,” he said.

“Unfortunately, they helped the Americans control Afghanistan, and then they repeated the same crime in the Iraq invasion. The worst part was that they didn’t try to hide this hideous crime,” added Hekmatyar, who spoke in front of a plain grey backdrop with an automatic rifle leaning against it.

While Pakistani support for the US military campaign in Afghanistan is well-known, Iran support was much more limited.

Iran is believed to have agreed to cooperate with the US government if any American pilots bailed out over Iranian territory.

However, Iran strongly opposed the US invasion of Iraq and has been repeatedly accused by Washington of aiding Iraqi insurgents.

Today’s tape appeared less than two weeks after three al-Qaida leaders issued messages. Bin Laden, al-Zawahri and head of al Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, broadcast their opinions of what they called a “war against Islam” and the political and security situation in Iraq.