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Islamist insurgents helped Democrats

ISLAMABAD: In a rare video message, Afghan insurgent leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has claimed that American troops would be forced out of Afghanistan like the Soviets before them.

The leader of the Hizb-e-Islami militant group also touted the Republican Party defeat in last month’s US midterm elections as a victory for militants fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“It seems that every bullet that mujahideen had fired towards the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan has turned into a vote against Bush,” Hekmatyar said in the undated video statement received by Associated Press Television in Pakistan.

“There is no doubt that is a great victory and success for Afghan and Iraqi mujahideen,” he said. “I am convinced that the fate Soviet Union faced is awaiting America as well.” The bespectacled and bearded Hekmatyar, who wore a neat black turban, spoke from an undisclosed location in front of a rattan backdrop.

It was not clear where or when the three-minute video was made, but the reference to the US midterm elections indicated it was recorded after November 7. Hizb-e-Islami is active in eastern Afghanistan along the Pakistan border where US forces are deployed. Western security officials suspect Hekmatyar is hiding in the border area. This year has seen an escalation in the insurgency led by the former ruling Taliban.

“Very soon we will see that, God willing, American troops will leave Afghanistan and Iraq with their heads bowed down,” said Hekmatyar in the video.

Hekmatyar was a leader of the mujahideen that fought the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, and was briefly Afghan prime minister during the civil war of the early 1990s. ap

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