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Abdul Haq Plots Anti-Taliban Coalition
Friday, October 5, 2001
(6:52 AM ET)
Journalist Kamal Hyder in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan contributed to this report.

“If they don't attack and leave things up to us, it will only be a few months (before the Taliban are toppled).” -- Abdul Haq

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Reuters
Abdul Haq has always liked to prepare his attacks carefully, whether against a single pylon feeding electricity to Kabul or against the whole Taliban movement ruling Afghanistan.

Haq, one of the most famous of the mujahideen (holy warrior) commanders who brought the Soviet Union to its knees in Afghanistan, gave up his military career in 1989 when Moscow pulled its troops out.

His target now is a political goal, to rally fellow Pashtun commanders and tribesmen to oust the puritanical Islamic Taliban ruling Afghanistan and realize ex-King Zahir Shah's dream of calling a Loya Jirga (grand council) to select a new leadership.

“What I'm working on these days is putting all these different people together, including former commanders, not to become my army but to help the king to come back and establish peace and security,” Haq told Reuters.

It is a struggle even for Haq, one of the few commanders who kept his reputation by staying out of the factional fighting that poisoned the mujahideen victory over communism and paved the way for the Taliban to seize power in 1996.

Afghanistan is still deeply divided along ethnic lines, with the tribal Pashtun majority split among itself but united in its enmity toward the Tajik, Uzbek and other minorities in the north.

But this stocky and good-humored man, already a “white beard” at 43, thinks they are all so fed up with the Taliban that they could unite now.
(More: Afgha.com News Source)
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Dan