Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
|
The days are gone forever when our enemies could blackmail us with nuclear bombs. This article is a stub and is in need of expansion. You can help Real-Life Villains by expanding it. |
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (born August 1949) is an Afghan politician and war lord. He was the founder of the Hezb e-IslamI, an Islamist party and served as the Prime Minister of Afghanistan twice.
|
Hekmaytar joined the Muslim Youth organization as a college student in the early 1970s, where he was known for his Islamic radicalism which was rejected by much of the organization. He spent time in Pakistan before returning to Afghanistan when the Soviet–Afghan War began in 1979, at which time the CIA began funding his rapidly growing Hezb-e Islami mujahideen organization through the Pakistani ISI. He received the most funding out of any mujahedeen leader during the war.
After refusing to join the Afghan government in 1992 after Soviet backed Najibullah fell, Hekmatyar and other warlords waged war, causing the country to go into civil war. The Taliban took power in 1996. After the invasion of Afghanistan, he fled to neighboring Pakistan, leading a paramilitary force against the government of President Hamid Karzai. He later signed a peace treaty in 2016 with the government that allowed his return to the country. He remains an influential Islamist politician to this day.