Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

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Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (born 1 August 1949) is an Afghan politician, and former mujahideen commander and drug trafficker. He is the founder and current leader of the Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan political party. He twice served as prime minister during the 1990s. Born to a Ghilzai Pashtun family, Hekmatyar joined the Muslim Youth organization as a student in the early 1970s, where he was known for his Islamic radicalism rejected by much of the organization. He spent time in Pakistan before returning to Afghanistan when the Soviet–Afghan War began in 1979, at which time the CIA began funding his rapidly growing Hezb-e Islami organization through the Pakistani intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence. It was the largest of the Afghan mujahideen and Hekmatyar received more CIA funding than any other mujahideen leader during the Soviet-Afghan War. In the late 1980s, Hekmatyar and his organization used the funds and weapons provided to them by the CIA to start trafficking opium, and later...

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