JEDDAH, 31 October — The unexpected death of Abdul Haq, a veteran Afghan Mujahedeen commander recently captured and executed by the Taleban forces, is a major setback for efforts to find a Pushtu alternative in southern Afghanistan.
The Americans must now regret — and be reviewing — their mistakes. They know very little of Afghanistan and have virtually no understanding of its people, their ethnic differences and allegiances. They should have coordinated with Pakistani military intelligence, ISI, despite their unwillingness and lack of confidence in it. Americans accused the ISI being close to fundamentalist circles in Pakistan. But the fact is that the ISI, who has been dealing with Afghanistan for more than a quarter of a century, has accumulated more information and expertise about the country than any other agency anywhere. The Taleban have succeeded, intentionally or unintentionally, in sidelining most former Mujahedeen leaders who were involved in the war against the Russians and who were highly regarded by the Afghan people.
In the aftermath of the Taleban’s advances and its capture of territories in the middle of 1990s, a number of prominent Afghan commanders were killed under suspicious and unexplained circumstances. Many were jailed. One was even thrown from a helicopter. Many were pushed to one side and were asked to choose between exile in Peshawar or remaining where they were without any role in the new dispensation. Abdul Haq was one of those who chose to leave the country. He settled in Dubai. He had been responsible for security in Kabul for a short period after the Mujahedeen captured the capital city. When he left Peshawar, his house was attacked and his wife killed. Nobody knows who was behind the crime although the Taleban is the prime suspect.
When I met Abdul Haq in his office in Peshawar in 1990, he seemed very optimistic and ambitious. He captivated foreign journalists by his charisma and charm as he spoke English well — a rare accomplishment for Afghan commanders. In addition, he was unusually cheerful; Rare indeed are Afghan commanders with all these qualities. Abdul Haq was well-organized and discussed with his guests a number of topics, illustrating his points with maps of Kabul.
He tried his best to assure his interviewer of his professionalism and his intelligence network still in the capital. Nonetheless, when the moment of truth came, it was Ahmad Shah Masood, a prominent commander from the north, who conquered Kabul for the Mujahedeen. At that time Abdul Haq was one of the commanders positioned around Kabul, as was Muhammad Siddique Tashkeri — who works with the party of former President Burhanuddin Rabbani — and Bilal Nairam who works for the party of Sibghatallah Mujaddidi who served as interim president.
Today after a full decade, loyalties have changed, except in the case of Tashkeri who is still with Rabbani. Abdul Haq chose to join the side of the king who has now the support of more than one party and represents the new Afghan elite including technocrats, traders and landowners. They live in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf and Europe, but they don’t have actual influence inside Afghanistan and because they are not fighters and they don’t have many good fighters on the ground, the death of Abdul Haq is indeed a big loss for them.
As irony would have it, Abdul Haq and his alleged killer, Mulla Muhammad Omar, were military comrades in the same party. In fact, Abdul Haq held a higher rank than Mulla Omar, who was then an unknown commander in Kandahar.
Abdul Haq got that post because of his outstanding work in the south of Kabul and thanks to his brother, Haji Deen Muhammad, who was vice president of the Islamic Party-Khalis Group to which the brothers belonged. That party disappeared with the emergence of the Taleban. It had been a party of religious scholars who mostly switched sides to Taleban. Those who refused to join the Taleban stayed in Peshawar. Among them were Abdul Haq and his brother who later chose to join the king’s supporters.
There were other changes in Abdul Haq’s political convictions. Some were doubtless due to the disappearance of his revolutionary ardor and loss of enthusiasm as a result of frustrations suffered by his Islamic movement. In the end, Abdul Haq and his oldest brother returned to their roots as they belonged to a feudal family.
The Americans rushed Abdul Haq to Afghanistan. The one important lesson they will learn from this fiasco is that the Taleban still control the rural areas. This is an advantage the Soviets and their communist allies in Afghanistan never had during their 15 years control of the government. They ultimately had to contend themselves with controlling Afghanistan’s major cities and towns only. Will the Americans settle for the same?
