|
|
|
| October 27, 2001 | Saturday | Shaba'an 9, 1422 |
Veteran commander comes to a bad end
ISLAMABAD, Oct 26: When the Taliban executed Abdul Haq on Friday they not only killed one of Afghanistan’s most experienced mujahideen, but one of the most effective opposition leaders trying to forge an anti-Taliban alliance.
Haq was killed only hours after being captured while on a mission into eastern Afghanistan to raise rebellion.
A spokesman for the Taliban said Haq was executed because of a verdict by Ulema that anyone who helped the United States was liable to be killed.
A son of former king Zahir Shah and opposition leaders had appealed to the Taliban not to harm him.
The burly 43-year-old from a prominent ethnic Pakhtoon family was one of the fierce Jihad fighters who had helped to bring the Soviet Union to its knees in Afghanistan.
He interspersed his speech with laughter, but quickly turned serious when discussing the future of the country for which he had fought since he was teenager.
Headquartered in Peshawar, he became famous for his rocket attacks on government small-arms dumps which often lit the sky over Soviet-held Kabul and sabotage against power plants and lines that frequently plunged the capital into darkness.
After the Sept 11 attacks on the United States, he spearheaded a bid to persuade the Pakhtoons, Afghanistan’s dominant ethnic group, to switch allegiance from the Taliban to exile groups working to bring back the deposed king.
A well-built, friendly man with a greying beard, Haq did not quite fit the profile of the archetypal lean Afghan warlord with a face weathered by the searing sun and punishing winters of their mountain homes.
As a commander fighting the Russians, he was regarded as a moderate.
Later, after the Soviets left, he won widespread respect for refusing to join the squabbling and corruption that characterized the Mujahideen in government.
It was the reputation, and his own commitment to his homeland that brought him back to Peshawar, a town with painful memories since his wife, 11-year-old son and a bodyguard were murdered there in 1999 by suspected Taliban assassins.
FALLING PRISONER: He crossed the border back to Afghanistan on Oct 21, apparently to rally support against the Taliban, infiltrating along lines that would have been familiar to the veteran fighter.
Travelling with seven companions, Haq was caught at Azra in Logar province, 30km west of the NWFP.
A Taliban spokesman said Haq, who lost a foot to a mine in the 1980s, had tried to escape on horseback under cover of US air strikes early on Friday.
He had a satellite phone and dollars that he had brought to distribute to people. He was killed with two other people, the spokesman said.
Hailing from an influential family based near Jalalabad, Haq began a career of rebellion early, in 1977, when he fought against the left-wing rule.
He took on fighting full-time after the Soviet Union invaded his country two years later.
Haq laid down his arms in 1989 when the Mujahideen began to bicker among themselves following the Soviet withdrawal. He came back in 1992 when the Mujahideen finally took Kabul, and served as the city’s police chief for a few months.
But rivalries erupted again among the victorious Afghan commanders and in disgust, Haq took off once more, eventually settling down in Dubai as a businessman.
“It was like having 10 defence ministries and 10 foreign ministries, each with their own outside supporters and each wanting to be number one. That was the problem,” Haq told Reuters in a recent interview in Peshawar.
“There was nothing I could do that didn’t involve killing my own people, so I got out.”
Haq’s return to the fray in Peshawar to forge an anti-Taliban alliance was another high-profile comeback. Yet unlike others in the murky world of Afghan politics, he claimed to have no interest in power for himself.
“Honestly, there are a lot of smart people in this country who can do a better job than me. I’m sick and tired of playing these games,” he said in the interview.—Reuters
|
|
|
|
