Warlord known as "The Vampire" stalks Afghanistan Posted by Scott Manning on June 12, 2002 | Comments (0)

Years after driving him out of the country, the people of Kabul still know him as “the Vampire.” Even by the hellish standards of other Afghan warlords, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s brutality stands out.

During the Decadelong Soviet occupation, he became possibly the biggest beneficiary of the multibillion-dollar U.S.-Pakistani program to arm the Afghan resistance—although his troops often seemed more interested in ambushing other mujahedin factions than in fighting the Russians. From the Pakistani town of Peshawar, he directed mafia-style hits against more than a dozen rival factions’ leaders. His men had a reputation for tortures like igniting gunpowder on the eyeballs of captured enemies. After the Soviet-backed regime fell in 1992, he intensified his war against mujahedin rivals (many of whom would later form the Northern Alliance). At one point they made him prime minister, but he refused to share power. Instead he spent months blasting Kabul into ruins, escaping to Iran before the Taliban rolled over the rubble to power.Full Story...