KABUL: An Afghan mujahideen commander who fought the Soviets and rose to become the country’s first president after the Red Army retreated has died aged 93, his family said on Tuesday.

Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, who commanded a mujahideen faction during the decade-long insurgency against the Soviet occupiers, passed away late on Monday in a Kabul hospital after a long illness.

Prominent Afghans, inclu­ding former president Hamid Karzai, have begun visiting the Mojaddedi family home to pay their respects. Afghanistan’s de facto prime minister Abdu­llah Abdullah extended his condolences to the respected Mojaddedi clan.

Mojaddedi’s death comes three days before the 30th anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghan­istan.

The Red Army crossed the Amu Darya river into Soviet Uzbekistan on February 15, 1989 having suffered 15,000 losses.

After the withdrawal, Afghanistan’s communist regime collapsed in 1992 and Mojaddedi, who led the Afghan National Liberation Front, was chosen as interim president. He served just two months under a power-sharing deal struck by mujahideen leaders. These factions later turned on each other and Afghanistan plunged into civil war.

But Mojaddedi continued to play a prominent role in Afghan politics, particularly after the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2019