Afghanistan’s Hekmatyar supports ISIL

KABUL

In this photo released on Sunday, June 28, 2015, by a website of ISIL militants, an ISIL militant waves his group's flag as he and another celebrate in Fallujah, Iraq, west of Baghdad. AP Photo

Hezb-e-Islami, the Afghan Islamist organization headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, announced its support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), International Business Times has reported. 

Hekmatyar, who is considered a “global terrorist” by the United States, urged his group’s followers to support ISIL to combat the Taliban in Afghanistan, as cited by local media reports.  

Hezb-e-Islami, created in 1977 by Hekmatyar, was sidelined from Afghan politics after the Taliban rose to power in the late 1990s. However, over the last decade, the group is believed to have regained some of its lost strength. It has claimed responsibility for several attacks in the country, most notably an attack on a team of aid workers in the Badakhshan province in 2010 and a car bomb blast that targeted a pair of U.S. military vehicles in 2013. 

Hekmatyar served as the prime minister of Afghanistan for brief periods between 1993 and 1996.