Ninth in a series

There is some doubt about how the man died and where and when. We know that he was “questioned” and then executed. But was it by hanging with his body then used for swaying small-arms target practice, or was he shot in cold blood in a prison courtyard? It was in eastern Afghanistan – but Jalalabad or Kabul? It was two weeks ago – but late Thursday or early Friday? There’s some doubt about who sent him and who betrayed him. There could even be confusion about his name were it not so well known: Born Humayoun Arsala 44 years ago, he became “Abdul Haq” – Servant of Justice – in the crucible of our Cold War’s most decisive battleground.

Let there be no doubt about what kind of man he was.

To hear them talk in Washington and Islamabad, you’d think there was some doubt. In fact, you’d think his death no great loss. Listen carefully. It’s scared talk, the kind of stuff you hear from bureaucrats whose backsides are exposed. Abdul Haq, they rush to insist, was on a mission of his own. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. Either way, it’s shameful to demean him.

“Delusional” was the epitaph from one American operative whose hospitality I appreciated more than a decade ago – and whose assessments I questioned then and question now. Another observer – who had helped engineer U.S. strategy of “fighting to the last Afghan” against the USSR – dismissed the dead man as “Hollywood Haq.” And this from a congressional aide who should know better…and maybe does: “Abdul Haq was bogus. He didn’t have support of his peers.” We’ll get to that

“Irascible scoundrel” pronounced a senior State Department official and valued friend of mine. Then this accurate coda: “He was never afraid to tell the United States the truth, and to tell us when we were screwing up.” We’ll get to that.

As for the Pakistanis – please note this paragraph with special care – President Musharraf, whose support we like to tell ourselves we have won with lifted sanctions and other bribes, called Abdul Haq incidental to coalition efforts and vowed that these would proceed unaffected. A Pakistani intelligence agent, characteristically unnamed, termed him “cocky” and added: “This was not our operation. We were never privy to the details.” We’ll get to that.

Finally, from a pair of New York Times reporters: “a middle-aged man on a mule, a privately financed free-lancer trying to overthrow the Taliban.” We won’t bother to get to that cheap Sancho Panza cliche … except to note that Abdul Haq was on a horse, not a mule. Why? Because he’d been wounded more than a dozen times in defense of his country and our Cold War interests. Among other losses – we’ll get to those – he’d lost one foot to a Soviet land mine in 1987.

Human truth is notoriously and inconveniently complicated, but what follows is true about Abdul Haq. His family – among Afghans one always starts with family – has for centuries been notable among the traditional Ghilzai Pushtun leaders of eastern Afghanistan. Local people had always looked to this family for energy, courage, and organization. They were not disappointed by Abdul Haq.

When the Soviets invaded in December 1979, he raided their convoys with, as one admirer puts it, “little more than shotguns, deer-rifles and dynamite.” He opened the first Resistance front on the immediate south and west of Kabul. Other brave commanders operated elsewhere; Abdul Haq would always concentrate on the capital city itself. He blew the Naghlu power station outside Kabul after months of meticulous preparation. He blew a seven-level underground Soviet ammunition dump in nearby Paghman. The subsequent five-hour firestorm was famously videotaped 10 miles away from the roof of the British embassy.

In the holy war’s aftermath, he helped organize a multi-party shura (committee of Resistance commanders) in an attempt to avoid civil war. It wasn’t because of Abdul Haq that such efforts failed. Look elsewhere for the culprits: among ambitious and self-aggrandizing Afghan “leaders” but even more among the Islamist cadres of Pakistan’s ISI. While you’re looking, ask yourself where the Americans were (ungratefully gone from the scene) and to whom America had entrusted Afghanistan’s future (Pakistan’s ISI).

Fast-forward to September 2001. Abdul Haq returned from exile in Dubai to Peshawar, Pakistan – to the same house where a Taliban hit squad had killed his wife and son two years earlier. His mission: to induce defections from the Taliban in the crucial Pushtun area around Kabul. Was this mission entirely self-appointed and self-supported?

Back to “maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t.” If Abdul Haq wasn’t actively supported by the United States, why wasn’t he? Because he was too independent? Because our Pakistani “allies” didn’t trust him – as, with excellent reason, he didn’t trust them? Or perhaps because our own planners didn’t think of it first? Our Afghanistan planners haven’t been too good at their task for quite some time, so let’s give them a hand.

Only by such efforts as Abdul Haq’s – this much is increasingly, glaringly clear – can U.S. objectives be achieved in the nexus of Afghan national power south of the Hindu Kush. Bombing can’t. U.S. troops can’t. Northern Alliance troops (non-Pushtuns) can’t. Turkish troops (ethnically more akin to the hated Northern Alliance Uzbeks) can’t. Only the Pushtuns themselves – the groups from which the Taliban sprang and which now harbor Osama bin Laden – can get this job done. At least one other prominent Pushtun has now gone incommunicado on a similar mission to foment Taliban defections near Kandahar. Are we to think that he too is entirely on his own? If so, why is he? We need him.

We don’t know for sure what happened when Abdul Haq left Peshawar two weeks ago and crossed into Afghanistan. There are many unknown details, many doubts about the official story. Just who was with him? Just what promises had been made and by whom? Just who betrayed him to the Taliban and why? We don’t know – just yet. Inshallah (the Muslim “God willing”) we’ll get to that. Meanwhile here are six

hard truths:

1. The United States still has no competent intelligence of its own in this war and thus must depend on Pakistan’s secret service.

2. Pakistan’s secret service is still riddled with Taliban sympathizers, which is to say bin Laden sympathizers.

3. Ergo, U.S. covert operations based in Pakistan are blown before they start.

4. Correctly or otherwise, Abdul Haq was widely perceived as an American operative.

5. His capture seriously erodes U.S. credibility among potential Pushtun defectors from the Taliban.

6. Ergo, our strategy for southern Afghanistan – epicenter of national power – is now in disarray.

Finally, the obituaries. From Washington have come expressions of regret finely balanced by ridicule and, of course, official disclaimer. From the spokesman of Zahir Shah in Rome comes this statement: “Afghanistan has lost one of its finest and greatest sons, and I and my family have lost a great friend.”

As for the sentiments of family and friends in Peshawar, I quote again from the New York Times. “This does not make us afraid,” said din Mohammed, the dead man’s brother. “We renew our promise to fight for Afghanistan and the people of Afghanistan.”

The Times also records the sentiments of one Dad Mohammed, an Afghan patriot who lost a leg in the anti-Soviet struggle but who was ready to go again if Abdul Haq needed him. Here Dad Mohammed speaks of my own country to which I pledge allegiance, the United States of America: “They always want to use us and our people, and then they abandon us.”

Did the Times finally get that last one right?

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world.