Jalaluddin Haqqani
Former CIA ally against the Soviets in Afghanistan who became one of the deadliest foes of the US
JALALUDDIN HAQQANI, who has died aged 78 or 79, was an Afghan warlord who made his name during the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when he and his clan, the Haqqanis, received funding from the CIA; after the September 11 attacks, however, he turned his weapons against the United States.
In the 1980s, furnished with Cia-supplied shoulder-fired Stingers that would devastate Soviet air power over Afghanistan, such was Haqqani’s success that he was said to have been invited to the White House to meet President Reagan (though a photograph of their “meeting” actually shows another Afghan tribesman).
His clan’s ruthlessness and fervent adherence to Islam were seen by Washington as marks of courage and faith, the Democrat congressman Charlie Wilson even going so far as to declare Haqqani “goodness personified”.
CIA officers who worked directly with Haqqani were less starry-eyed. “He was always a wild-eyed guy,’’ one was quoted as saying in 2011. “But we weren’t talking about getting these guys scholarships to Harvard or MIT. He was the scourge of the Soviets.’’
Haqqani’s devotion to Islam was such that when he was shot in the knee during the daytime fast of Ramadan, he had doctors dig the bullet out without anaesthesia rather than violate a religious tenet by swallowing pain medication.
Support from the US and from Gulf networks allowed him to create his own group from 1980 onwards. Later he became a close friend of the Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden and would remain one of his staunchest allies.
After the Soviets withdrew in 1989 and Afghanistan descended into civil war, Haqqani became a cabinet minister in the chaotic Mujahideen government. But when the Taliban took control in 1996, Haqqani deftly allied himself with the new rulers and became minister for borders and tribal affairs.
After the Us-led invasion of 2001, the Americans hoped to woo their old ally away from the Taliban, but they did not know their man. In the 1980s the Russians had been the “infidel invaders”. Now, in Haqqani’s eyes, the Americans had assumed their mantle.
The Haqqanis were subsequently blamed for a string of high-profile attacks including, in 2008, an assassination attempt on then-president Hamid Karzai, a 19-hour attack on the US embassy in 2011 in which 25 people died, a truck bomb explosion in Kabul in 2017 that killed more than 150 people, and an attack on the Kabul Intercontinental Hotel earlier this year which left 30 people dead.
Operating from the lawless tribal areas across the border in Pakistan, and supported by funding networks in the Middle East, the Haqqanis, estimated at 5,000 to 15,000 fighters, were described in the New York Times as “the Sopranos of the Afghanistan war”. They were reported to have built an empire out of kidnapping, extortion and smuggling, and running a network of commercial front companies throughout Pakistan. Many in Washington regarded the Haqqanis as little more than an arm of Pakistan’s Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) agency, which was said to value the group as an ally against Indian influence in Afghanistan.
However, the network is said to have partly relocated to Afghanistan after the Pakistani military launched operation Zarb-e-azb in 2014.
Some years ago Haqqani is said to have ceded control of his group (which was designated a terrorist organisation by the US in 2012) to his son, Sirajuddin, who is also deputy chief of the Afghan Taliban.
Mawlawi Jalaluddin Haqqani was born in 1939, the son of a wealthy landowner and member of the warrior Zadran tribe, which is based around the Afghanistanpakistan border and stretches to Khost province. He studied in a conservative madrassa in northwest Pakistan.
After the 1973 overthrow of King Zahir Shah by his reform-minded cousin Daoud Khan, Haqqani went into exile in Pakistan, where he began to plot to overthrow Khan.
After the 1978 communist coup in Afghanistan, Haqqani joined the Hezb-i Islami militant group. By the time the Soviets arrived to prop up the new government in 1979, he had become an influential figure and soon found himself courted by the CIA.
Haqqani had at least seven sons – possibly as many as 12 – of whom he lost four, in addition to a wife and several other family members, in US air strikes. Another son is in an Afghan prison under a death sentence.
In a statement issued on September 3 on Whatsapp, the Taliban claimed that Haqqani had died of “natural causes” after a long illness, though they did not specify the date of death. Afghan officials have maintained that Haqqani has been dead for at least four years and that the Taliban have waited to use the news at some opportune moment. One senior unnamed official has been quoted as suggesting that the announcement was probably related to a planned visit this week to Pakistan by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.