HEZB-E-ISLAMI CONFERENCE; MOVING BEYOND HEKMATYAR

C O N F I D E N T I A L KABUL 001812 SIPDIS STATE FOR SCA/A, NSC FOR WOOD OSD FOR SHIVERS CENTCOM FOR CG CJTF-101 POLAD E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/12/2013 TAGS: PGOV PREL AF SUBJECT: HEZB-E-ISLAMI CONFERENCE; MOVING BEYOND HEKMATYAR REF: A. 07 KABUL 4179 ¶B. KABUL 259 Classified By: A/POLCOUNS Jeremiah Howard for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) ¶1. (C//REL UK) SUMMARY: Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan's (HIA) three-day conference in Kabul last week assembled more than 1,000 members from all 34 provinces and most of the country's ethnic groups to elect Abdul Hadi Arghandewal to his second one-year term as party chairman. The party's leadership hoped the conference would showcase their decades-old movement's transformation from violent conspiratorial organization into a relatively transparent political party guided by democratic principles. That transformation will be a difficult one. The conference's rank-and-file still exhibit a strong affinity for banned founder Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Shaping a Modern Political Party -------------- ¶2. (SBU) Arghandewal's acceptance speech avoided any mention of Hekmatyar. It broadly outlined a nascent political platform that could have been drafted by a European Christian Democrat, supporting democratic national elections, inviting foreign investment, urging deregulation, and calling for more governmental provision of HEALTH services and education. It also recalled HIA's Muslim Brotherhood influences, demanding Islamic social justice and reconciliation between the constitutional government and politically alienated Afghans. HIA MP Al-Haj Mamur Abdul Jabar Shulgarai (Pashtun, Ghazni) later told POLOFFs the party is drafting a written policy platform for public release within a few weeks. ¶3. (SBU) HIA leaders took pains to highlight membership growth among non-Pashtuns. Shulgarai said the party had set up offices in all 34 provinces (Ref B). A cross-section of Afghan society cheered loudly throughout a day of speeches delivered in Dari, Pashto, and Uzbek. Arghandewal, a detribalized Ghilzai Pashtun, gave his speech in Dari. ¶4. (U) Few women participated in the conference. Among the four female MPs present, MP Aryan Yoon (Pashtun, Nangarhar), formerly a supporter of the Afghan Millat party, commended Hezb-e-Islami's contribution to the anti-Soviet jihad. She asserted, with reasonable historical justification, that Hezb-e-Islami, not the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, was the true inspiration behind the Afghan independence movement. Senior HIA leaders told POLOFFs that most of the party's female membership stayed away from the conference because of security concerns aroused by the July 7 suicide car bombing at the Indian Embassy. The Problem of Hekmatyar -------------- ¶5. (SBU) Despite the HIA leadership's efforts to transcend their movement's past, several speakers praised Hekmatyar by name, provoking cries of "Allahu akbar!" from the audience. Qazi Mohammad Amin Wadaq, a former Hekmatyar lieutenant, referred to "political and social constraints" preventing "our true leader from being here today." Praise for Hekmatyar continued well into the night at a lavish banquet held in a Kabul hotel. Hekmatyar's son-in-law, Dr. Ghairat Batir, attended the banquet, just weeks after being released from USG custody at Bagram Air Base. ¶6. (C//REL UK) Speculation about Hekmatyar's possible reconciliation with the constitutional government ebbs and flows. Arghandewal has told us privately he realizes the HIG leader's return would eclipse his own chairmanship of Hezb-e-Islami. The founder's return would also likely stall the modernizers' effort to reconstruct their movement into a pan-national political party that could aspire to the loyalty of Afghans of all ethnicities. WOOD