Of natural causes: Ailing Taliban faction leader Jalaluddin Haqqani ‘dead’

Sources say the veteran Afghan resistance leader was buried in Khost province last year

PESHAWAR/ ISLAMABAD:

Jalaluddin Haqqani, the founder of the Haqqani Network, a deadly faction of the Afghan Taliban, died of natural causes last year and was buried in the Afghan province of Khost, a Pakistani militant leader told The Express Tribune on Friday.

The news comes a day after the Afghan Taliban confirmed the death of their elusive, supreme commander Mullah Omar, who is said to have died two years ago.

Just like the Taliban chief’s death, rumours about Jalaluddin’s death have also circulated for some years and still cannot be independently verified.

Jalaluddin was injured in the aerial bombing of US fighter jets in Khost when Taliban fighters were fleeing Afghanistan in 2001. The Taliban had last released a video of the Afghan guerrilla leader in 2006 to deny the reports.

On Friday, the Pakistani militant leader, who has close ties with the Afghan Taliban, confirmed Jalaluddin had died after a prolonged illness and was buried in his ancestral graveyard in the eastern Khost province near the Pakistani border.

The militant group has not officially given out a statement over his demise yet.

However, another man, who introduced himself as Samsoor Zamai, claimed Jalaluddin was still alive. He called The Express Tribune to clarify that Jalaluddin had in fact been sick and his condition has “now improved”.

Jalaluddin’s son Sirajuddin has long been installed the head of the Haqqani Network, which is said to be based in the volatile tribal regions of Pakistan and behind many coordinated attacks on Afghan and Nato forces in recent years.

Sirajuddin has been named as a deputy leader of the Taliban following the appointment of Mullah Akhtar Mansoor as militia chief.

In the 1980s, Jalaluddin was close to the American CIA and Pakistani intelligence to fight Soviet troops in Afghanistan. He allied himself to the Taliban after they took power in Kabul in 1996, serving as a cabinet minister. After the 9/11 attacks, he sought refuge in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency when the American troops invaded Afghanistan and established the infamous militant network.

Pioneer of resistance

Belonging to the Zadran tribe of Khost, he was among the pioneers of the resistance movement against the Soviet occupation. He shifted to Pakistan soon after the empowerment of Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan on July 16, 1975.

He then established a centre for his network, along with a seminary called Jamia Manba-i-Uloom in Dande Darpa Khel, North Waziristan. The seminary became an internationally famous stopover for likeminded hardliners from all over the world, including the likes of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

Owing to his old age and onset of paralysis, he handed over reins of the network to his son Sirajuddin in 2007.

In recent years, the once-powerful warlord lost three of his seven sons to US drone strikes. One of his sons was gunned down in a targeted shooting in Islamabad last year. Another son is currently imprisoned on charges of assisting and facilitating terrorists in an attack on former president and military ruler General (retd) Pervez Musharraf. His son Anas Haqqani is believed to be in a Kabul prison after he was arrested in Qatar.

The Haqqani Network has also suffered a lot recently owing to the deaths of Maulvi Bakhta Jan and Maulvi Sangeen Zadran.


Published in The Express Tribune, August 1^st, 2015.