Kabul, Sept 1 (UNI): Former Afghan prime minister and Hezb-e-Islami party leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has said he will support the new Taliban government in Kabul even if his party does not take part in the administration.
“We do not have any preconditions to participate in the government other than the assignment of competent persons,” the veteran Afghan Mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar told Turkey’s Anadolu news agency.
Hekmatyar said, “We are not very willing to be a partner in the new government, but we support the Taliban in whatever way they form a government, unconditionally.”
He said he does not believe in the benefit of coalition governments because they have always failed, and added, “We are brothers with the Taliban, and there is a consensus between us.”
Asked whether there is a Pashtun nationalist agenda in Afghanistan, he said “nationalism and discrimination have no place in Islam” and “nationalism will not find a place” in the new government.
He said if the world does not allow the establishment of a new administration in Afghanistan and tries to bring an administration close to them, this may lead to war.
“We now want the will of the Afghans to be respected,” he said, suggesting that many countries would recognize this if a government that complies with the wishes of Afghans is formed.
Asked how dangerous the Daesh/ISIS terrorist group is for Afghanistan, he said it does not pose a threat anymore.
“There was also false propaganda about al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters in Afghanistan. Their numbers were very few in the past and even less today. It is impossible to consider them as a threat at all,” he added.
Hekmatyar founded the Hezb-e-Islami party in 1977 and stood out as one of the figures that resisted the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
He served as prime minister for a short time during the civil war.
