Afghan Warlord Pledges to Back Bin Laden

An Afghan police officers poses for the camera as he guards the area of the destroyed former Russian Culture House in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, May 1, 2006. The culture house was built during the Russian occupation in Afghanistan, then destroyed by different armed militias as being one of the front lines during the civil war, later occupied by hundreds of refugees that moved to Kabul after the end of the Taliban regime, and now it was pacifically evicted by the actual government. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) (Rodrigo Abd - AP)

KABUL, Afghanistan -- An Afghan warlord wanted by the United States declared his support Thursday for Osama bin Laden, a pledge security experts say will increase the threat against U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces.

But American and Afghan military officials dismissed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's action as propaganda, saying his fighters are increasingly isolated by military operations in the country's volatile east.

Speaking in a videotape aired on the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera, Hekmatyar said: "We hope to participate with ... (al-Qaida) in a battle that they lead."

"They hold the banner and we stand alongside them as supporters," said the white-bearded Hekmatyar, speaking Arabic and wearing a black turban.

The tape appeared less than two weeks after top militants, including bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, released messages to rally Muslims to fight U.S. and allied forces. Like al-Zawahri, Hekmatyar criticized Pakistan for aiding the United States in its anti-terror campaign along the Pakistan-Afghan border.

It also comes amid a spike in Taliban-led suicide attacks against coalition and Afghan forces in southern Afghanistan, and a U.S.-Afghan operation in eastern Kunar province, bordering militant hotbeds in Pakistan's tribal regions.

Like bin Laden, Hekmatyar is believed to be hiding in the mountainous territory along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Hekmatyar has previously released video and written statements urging Afghans to support al-Qaida and wage jihad, or "holy war," against U.S.-led forces.

But his latest tape was the first committing his forces to follow bin Laden. Such support would be valuable to al-Qaida's Arab leaders, who don't speak the myriad Afghan languages, particularly the Pashtu dialect spoken by Taliban militants and allied Afghan extremists.

"We know that there has been some kind of alliance between Hekmatyar and al-Qaida, but saying he will fight under (bin Laden's) command is new and significant," said Mustafa Alani, a military analyst with the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. "After almost five years since the occupation of Afghanistan, it shows that al-Qaida is still leading the fight here."

However, Lt. Col. Paul Fitzpatrick, a U.S. military spokesman at the U.S. base in Bagram, north of Kabul, described Hekmatyar's remarks as "posturing" and his fighters as "criminal elements trying to protect their smuggling operations."

"Hekmatyar is no more a threat now than he would be tomorrow," said Fitzpatrick, who believes the warlord is hiding in northern Pakistan. "They are an element that is not supportive of the government of Afghanistan, which makes him an enemy of the coalition. But this call for an alliance with al-Qaida won't have any effect."