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Afghanistan
ABC interview with Abdul Haq
2001-10-05
  • ABC
    In the 1980s when Afghans were fighting to push the Soviets out of their country, Abdul Haq was one of the heroes. A commander of the Kabul front, he led his Mujahideen fighters in the first attacks on the Soviet-held capital. Today, at age 43, he is a big man with a gray beard and 16 war wounds, including a missing foot, blown off by a Soviet land mine. "I stepped on it because I was in the frontline," he said. "There was this tremendous explosion, no pain, and I didn't know what had happened until I saw my boot flying through the air with my leg in it." Now, more than a decade into retirement, Haq is preparing for another fight. Last week, after seeing the attacks in New York and Washington, he returned to Pakistan from self-exile in Dubai to gather his former, fellow commanders against the Taliban whom he says he now despises. "They don't give people rights," he said. "There's no human rights, there's no job, there's no food, there's no medicine, there's no activity and the only people that have rights is Talib."

    To defeat the Taliban, he says he has recruited tribal elders inside Afghanistan who are willing to fight with him, even some commanders in the Taliban army, he says, have promised to defect. Because he is Pashtun, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, he thinks most fighters will come over to his side instead of the Northern Alliance, which is dominated by ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks. "There are many people or commanders who are fighting with the Taliban not because they like the Taliban [but] because they are afraid of the Northern Alliance taking over," he says. "If they see another alternative coming then they will have no reason to stay fighting with the Taliban."

    Haq's plan is to capture Kabul first with just a few thousand troops. He says he and his fellow commanders have weapons buried in the mountains inside Afghanistan that they can access quickly. Once Kabul is in his hands, he says he will bring in Afghanistan's former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah and convene a loya jirga, a traditional Afghan council, to lay the groundwork for a new, democratic government.
    Haq's plan is to capture Kabul first with just a few thousand troops. He says he and his fellow commanders have weapons buried in the mountains inside Afghanistan that they can access quickly. Once Kabul is in his hands, he says he will bring in Afghanistan's former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah and convene a loya jirga, a traditional Afghan council, to lay the groundwork for a new, democratic government. He does not want a monarchy. "I think in the present situation, the people in Afghanistan would like to see him as somebody who unites the nation, who brings the country together as a fatherly figure and have a loya jirga and decide right there what the people want," Haq said. "Most Afghan people probably don't want to go back to have royalty and kings and things; they want to move forward and have a democratic type of system."

    Haq is not alone in his desire to remove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. Pakistan's border cities seem to be filled with former fighters hoping to return to fight with or against the Taliban. Haq is the best-known former commander to emerge yet and he has the blessing of the exiled king.

    The biggest obstacle Haq says would be an American attack. "If they just go bomb, kill, shoot these people that have nothing to do with that, this will make many people upset," he said. "And you will create thousands of bin Ladens. My advice to the U.S. government is let the Afghans to do it." For Haq the fight is partly personal. Two years ago while he was working to create a more moderate government in Afghanistan, professional assassins climbed over the wall around his house and killed his wife and 11-year-old son. The police never caught the killers. "Only one thing I can say; it was done through professional people because they cut off the electricity," he said. "They cut off the telephone systems and they went in within a few minutes, and they fired this silencer or used silencer weapons, and the way it was done it was through very professional people."

    Although he will not speculate on who sent the assassins, a 1999 U.S. State Department report suggests it was probably the Taliban, as part of a widespread campaign to silence dissident voices. "My wife and my son are probably one of the one million, one-and-half-million people who died in this country. Whatever I do, of course I care, I love my family, but more than anything my country and my people are important because if I make my country safe, everybody will be safe."

    Haq admits he was much more comfortable living far from Afghanistan with his children in Dubai. "But psychologically something was missing," he said. He dreams of the day he takes back Kabul again. The last time he did that the country erupted into war. This time he says it will be different.
    • Posted by:Fred Pruitt

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