Islamabad, Pakistan ? In his first video message since returning to Afghanistan last year, rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar urged Afghans to “cut off the hands of the foreign meddlers” and drive all U.S. and other foreign troops from the country.

Hekmatyar, who led one of the factions in Afghanistan’s civil war a decade ago, mocked the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai as unscrupulous opportunists who were “fighting their own people under the command of foreigners.”

“I invite all Afghan factions to come and forget our differences … and oust the foreign troops, cut off the hands of the foreign meddlers,” the gray-bearded Hekmatyar said, speaking in Pashtu.

The video, on a compact disc received Tuesday by The Associated Press, underlines the resistance still facing U.S. troops as they try to bring order to Afghanistan a year and a half after the Taliban regime and its al-Qaida allies collapsed.

Hekmatyar has been suspected of being behind many attacks on foreign troops, including a June 7 suicide bombing in Kabul that killed four German peacekeepers and wounded 29 others.

Western intelligence agencies have long suspected him of trying to recruit members of the Taliban and al-Qaida into Hezb-i-Islami for a war with the Karzai government and the foreign troops in Afghanistan.