Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA) Leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: ‘We Urge The Supporters Of Hizb-i-Islami To Prepare For Another War; The Heavy Trust [Responsibility] Of This Jihad Is On Your Shoulders’

The emir of Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA) and former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has warned of an imminent new war in Afghanistan and urged his supporters and party members to begin preparations for “another war.”

In his first sermon following the failed coordinated attack on his party’s headquarters in Kabul, which also hosts a mosque where the former warlord delivers sermons every Friday, Hekmatyar said: “We urge the supporters of Hizb-i-Islami to prepare for another war. The heavy trust [responsibility] of this jihad is on your shoulders.”

“You are capable of getting the nation rid of this criminal, country-seller, traitor and faith-seller group and accepting [this responsibility],” said the former prime minister, who is known as “the Butcher of Kabul” for HIA’s attacks on rival factions during the civil war in the 1990s that followed the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan.

In the sermon, a recording of which is available on YouTube, Hekmatyar tells his party’s supporters and members that Allah is with them, and they will succeed in the new war as they had succeeded in the previous two wars.[1] “We believe that the Hizb-i-Islami mujahideen can defeat this disgraced enemy by having trust in Allah. The same enemy that the others have failed to fight and defeat,” he said.

Hekmatyar criticized the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the ruling Taliban jihadi organization) for closing a Hizb-i-Islami-affiliated university in Kabul and forcing its students to shift to other universities, along with cutting off the supply of electricity to the HIA headquarters, mosque, television, and other facilities provided by the previous government.

On December 2, 2022, two gunmen, each wearing 11-kilogram explosive vests, attacked the central office of Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan in Kabul, seeking to reach the mosque inside the compound where Hekmatyar and other leaders of his party pray on Friday.

The Hizb-i-Islami emir said security guards at his headquarters killed both the suicide bombers, adding that preliminary investigations revealed that both the attackers were from Tajikistan and a black flag of Islamic State (ISIS) was recovered from the bombers’ facilitator.