KABUL—Afghanistan's second-largest insurgent group after the Taliban said it sent a delegation to Kabul to negotiate a peace deal with the government and coalition forces, possibly marking the biggest split in insurgent ranks since the war began.
The five-member delegation of Hezb-i-Islami, a movement led by warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has already arrived in Kabul, said the group's spokesman Haroon Zarghoon, who is based in Pakistan. The delegates plan to meet President Hamid Karzai, U.S. officials and others "to discuss Hezb-i-Islami's agenda on how to bring durable peace to Afghanistan," Zarghoon told The Wall Street Journal.
As Hezb-i-Islami's representatives held meetings in Kabul, the Taliban fired a series of rockets against the city Sunday night, hitting the military side of Kabul's international airport and the capital's Pul-e-Charki district, U.S.-led international forces said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Though the Afghan insurgency is dominated by the Taliban and the affiliated Haqqani network, Hekmatyar's group boasts thousands of fighters and has carried out hundreds of attacks against coalition forces and Afghan troops, mostly in its traditional strongholds in Afghanistan's northeastern and northern provinces.
A reconciliation between Hezb-i-Islami and the Kabul government won't end the eight-year-old war by itself. But, if achieved, it would weaken the insurgency—and likely prompt some senior Taliban commanders to cut their own deals with Karzai.
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