The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Haqqani founder dead, Taliban finally confirm
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — For the first time, the Taliban have confirmed the death of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a U.S. ally from the Cold War who later turned his weapons against the United States as the founder of the feared Haqqani militant network, behind some of the deadliest attacks of the 17-year Afghan war.
In their announcement Tuesday, the Taliban gave no details on the timing of Haqqani’s death. Throughout his 70s, he remained ill even as his followers continued in his name to stage huge bombings and suicide commando attacks in Afghan cities.
“Mawlawi Jalaluddin Haqqani was ill and bedridden for the past several years,” the Taliban statement said.
The Trump administration has increased pressure on Pakistan to end its support and safe haven to the leaders of the insurgency fighting in Afghanistan. Last week, the administration officially canceled $300 million in payments to Pakistan.
Haqqani’s wing of the Afghan Taliban used to be somewhat autonomous from the insurgency’s main leadership. But in recent years, any separation from the Taliban that might once have existed has been closed. Haqqani’s son, Sirajuddin Haqqani, has been the insurgency’s deputy leader in title and its military operational leader in truth since 2015.
The Haqqanis’ rise within the Afghan Taliban has also been seen as evidence of the Pakistani military’s continued influence within the insurgency next door. U.S. officials have long considered Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani to be among the closest proxies for Pakistan’s military spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, known as the ISI.
That relationship was forged in the 1980s, when Jalaluddin Haqqani and the ISI both were favored allies of the United States as it supported the mujahedeen uprising against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. CIA funding gave the Haqqani network an early boost.
But after the Americans became the invaders in Afghanistan in 2001, Haqqani, with his extensive funding networks in the Middle East intact, established his group as a feared wing of the new Taliban insurgency.
Haqqani was originally from Paktia province, in Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan. The loyalty networks he formed in the region, on both sides of the border, were a particular advantage both in criminal activities and his aid to insurgencies.
After the mujahedeen captured Kabul, Haqqani became a cabinet minister of their chaotic government. But the Taliban soon overran the anarchy, and Haqqani switched sides and has remained with them since.
Jawed Kohistani, a former Afghan intelligence official and security analyst, said Haqqani had largely taken a symbolic role since his illness grew worse in 2007.
Haqqani remained in Miram Shah, in the Pakistani tribal areas of Waziristan, where he mingled with foreign fighters affiliated with al-Qaida, provided guidance and maintained his old contacts with Arab countries as his son Sirajuddin ran dayto-day military affairs, officials say.
“In the past 10 years, Jalaluddin was an inactive person, he was not involved in decision and military issues,” Kohistani said.
Even as word of his death leaked in 2015, Afghan intelligence intercepts showed that the Taliban were telling Haqqani’s field commanders that their patriarch remained a member of their central leadership in Quetta and that he was under treatment, Afghan intelligence officials say.
As the Haqqanis have become ever more integral with the Taliban leadership, it has also caused awkwardness for the U.S. effort to restart peace talks with the insurgency. Though the Haqqani network is officially listed as a global terrorist group by the State Department, the Taliban have not been — a distinction made mostly to keep negotiation options open.
That false duality came to issue during the negotiations by the Obama administration to free a U.S. soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, who was being held by the Haqqanis. Taliban fighters delivered Bergdahl to the Americans in 2014 in return for the release of five former Taliban leaders from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. But critics of the exchange noted that the deal effectively put the administration in the position of negotiating with terrorists.