Error occured during this request! Please try again later.
Sayed Mohammad Akbar Agha, former commander of the Taliban splinter group Jaish-al Muslimeen, speaks to Rudaw in the Afghan capital Kabul, September 2019. Photo: Hassan Nikzad / Rudaw
Rudaw English correspondent Robert Edwards was in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul when the US-Taliban peace process collapsed in September.
He and a team of Afghan filmmakers documented the hopes and fears of the city’s war-weary population, spoke to those involved in peace talks, and to those who will live with the consequences.
Now, as the peace process gets back on track, this new documentary and six-part written series explores a city anxious for peace – but terrified of the cost.
Read part I, part II, and part III, and part IV
*
Part V: A date with Terry Taliban
I must have been sleeping deeply, because I don’t remember hearing the blast.
When I awake, it’s to news of a car bombing at a checkpoint in east Kabul not far from my hotel, near the NATO HQ and the offices of Afghan national security authorities. Ten civilians and two NATO soldiers, including an American and a Romanian, had been killed and more than 100 people wounded. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
The attack changed everything. US President Donald Trump would use the September 5 attack to abruptly call off peace talks with the Taliban, just as a deal appeared imminent. In reality, Trump was under pressure at home for inviting the Taliban to Camp David just days before the 9/11 anniversary.
As I hurry through the hotel lobby to meet my fixer Saleem, I pass a television screening scenes of the smouldering, debris-strewn aftermath. The receptionist urges me to stay indoors.
I am nervous – not so much about secondary attacks, but for the potentially dangerous interview I have lined up that evening.
While we wrap up the afternoon’s appointments, Saleem confirms what I’ve been waiting to hear – a meeting with Sayid Mohammed Akbar Agha, former commander of the Taliban splinter group Jaish-al Muslimeen.
As a proxy of the Taliban – or ‘Terry’ as British troops like to call them – I urgently need to hear his take on the peace process.
Akbar Agha was jailed in 2004 for his role in the kidnapping of three UN workers. He was first held in Pakistan before being moved to Pul-e-Charkhi – Afghanistan’s biggest and most notorious prison.
He was pardoned by then-president Hamid Karzai in 2014 and released. Now he heads Shura-e-Aali Rah-e-Nejat, the High Council of Salvation, agitating for a full US withdrawal, inter-Afghan talks, and an Islamic emirate under sharia law.
Visiting the home of a convicted kidnapper who fosters ties with the Taliban is not advisable at the best of times. With the peace process crumbling before our eyes, it was downright stupid.
It is already dark when we pull up outside Akbar Agha’s compound. The area is badly neglected and poorly lit, with potholes in the road so big we have to stop to reattach the rear bumper. We pass beggar children and dilapidated buildings, the odour of an open sewer so strong it practically climbs into the back seat. Saleem had called the local security chief and warned him where we are going. He’d agreed to station men nearby to watch the house.
Akbar Agha’s men greet us at the gate, cradling their aged AK-47s. I can hear children playing nearby, which puts me a little more at ease. We remove our shoes and are shown to a spartan guest room with cushions laid neatly around the circumference. The carpet is deep red and the yellow lights are dim. Although it is dark outside, I can make out the shape of an armed man patrolling outside the window looking in.
While we wait for Akbar Agha’s arrival, the mullah’s assistant brings a tray of chai in glass cups, which he distributes to our film crew. Given the strict Pathan code of hospitality, I took it as a deliberate snub when I, the farangi, was not handed a cup.
The chilly atmosphere warms a little when the man himself arrives.
Slinging his woollen patu over his shoulder, filling the room with a waft of incense and sandalwood, Akbar Agha extends a large hand for me to shake, bowing his black turbaned head respectfully, his long beard brushing his barrel chest. His tribe, the Sayid, claims to trace its ancestry back to the Prophet. A spot of yellow sauce from an earlier meal soils an otherwise immaculate salwar kameez.
With Saleem’s help, we conduct our interview in Pashto. The mullah sits rigidly in his hard wooden chair, absentmindedly thumbing a string of black prayer beads as he speaks in a slow, solemn tone.
“I am a scholar, a religious scholar. I had a big front of Taliban in the time of the jihad against the Russians. Indeed some of the current ministers of the Taliban were in my front as mujahideen,” he says.
“During the Taliban time, I spent time on the military lines and in other places. And then when the Americans came, we didn’t like their entry.”
He can barely conceal his glee at the prospect of a full US withdrawal, a prerequisite for the Taliban entering formal talks with the Afghan government. But he also feels after decades of war that the time for fighting is finished and the sides must negotiate a solution.
“I think that both the Taliban and maybe the government also know that war is not the way of solving the issue and it is required to sit down for meetings,” says Akbar Agha.
“Of course if the Taliban takes over provinces and Kabul through war, it is still required to hold a meeting. If opposition groups come and show disagreement, the Taliban are compelled to meet them. This country does not have the capacity for more war. I believe it is required and maybe the Taliban also feels this requirement.”
Click here to read Rudaw's full interview with Sayid Mohammad Akbar Agha
The question is, what kind of system would the Taliban accept in order to lay down their arms?
“There is no doubt, sharia,” Akbar Agha says with emphasis.
“Islam is our religion. We are Muslims. The Russians were opposed to our religion. We waged jihad and operations against them. We forced them to leave our country. We did all this to bring an Islamic system here for Muslims.”
“Of course Allah has supported us. The Russians had a huge military and power while Afghans had nothing.”
“This war was started for Allah and an Islamic system for Muslims. That is my belief.”
Warming to his theme, the mullah says peace can only be guaranteed under a sharia system and with the departure of foreign forces.
“Now we say for anyone who comes to Afghanistan, and we tell this government, to bring an Islamic or Muslim system or the sharia of Muhammad to this country,” he says.
“There will be no question of the Taliban proceeding with war. Because under the sharia system foreigners will leave and those people who come into government will know about sharia. A system will come according to the Muslims. For sure peace will come here and there will be no war.”
“I think the Taliban will call for a sharia system and none other.”
The Taliban emerged out of the chaos of civil war. After the Russian departure in 1989, the victorious mujahideen set its sights on the communist government of Mohammad Najibullah. Despite his isolation, Najibullah held out until 1992 when the mujahideen finally seized Kabul. He would spend the next four years hiding in the UN compound.
The mujahideen victors were divided, however, each with his own ethnic base, territories, sources of income, and foreign backers. The predominantly Tajik followers of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Uzbek fighters of ex-communist general Rashid Dostum, and the Pashto Islamists of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar battled it out in the streets, devastating the capital.
Mullah Omar, an obscure local cleric who had fought in the mujahideen before returned to his village in Kandahar, was sickened by the corruption and criminality of the warlords and their militias. Banding together a group of mullahs and religious students, he began clearing local checkpoints and seizing territory.
His movement quickly spread, welcomed by a population desperate for security and justice. Pakistan’s shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency soon switched allegiance from Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i Islami and began funding the Taliban.
In 1996, the Taliban took Kabul. The mujahideen leaders fled and established the Northern Alliance to resist further Taliban expansion. Najibullah meanwhile was seized from the UN compound by Taliban fighters who shot him, castrated him, and hanged him from a lamppost.
The new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was initially recognised by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates.
One key backer of the new regime was Osama bin Laden – a wealthy Saudi sheik who had armed, funded, and fought alongside the mujahideen. He and his Al-Qaeda outfit had initially been welcomed by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a mujahideen leader, after bin Laden’s 1996 expulsion from Sudan.
In Afghanistan’s political and geographic isolation inherited by the Taliban, bin Laden could freely plot his attacks on the US.
Already a global pariah for its brutal subjugation of women and its destruction of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, the Taliban’s refusal to hand over bin Laden after 9/11 led to its downfall.
When the US teamed up with the Northern Alliance and invaded Afghanistan in 2001, bin Laden was able to slip over the Tora Bora mountains. He wasn’t heard from again until Seal Team 6 caught up with him in 2011, over the border in Pakistan – Washington’s alleged ally in the war on terror.
Mullah Omar and the Taliban also went to ground. Confident that Western armies would eventually leave – as history shows they always do – all the Taliban had to do was survive.
Despite the billions spent by the US to bolster Afghan forces, the Taliban has continued to grow since the formal end of combat operations in 2014. Now the sides have been forced to negotiate.
I ask Akbar Agha what a deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban would mean for civil rights – for women in particular.
“Of course, women might have to give up some rights,” he says, matter-of-factly.
“For example there may be some women who want more freedom, a freedom which is out of Islam’s structure. So maybe the Taliban or another government which comes from the Islamic tradition, Islamic religion, and Islamic basis, that government will tell them according to Islam that you have invaded on the rights of others. Or for example you had no contentment in your rights and have taken more rights, which will be taken back.”
And what about suicide attacks, like the one that morning near my hotel? How does the Taliban justify the killing of civilians to meet its goals?
“It is a huge issue. Suicide, martyrdom, someone who says I am giving sacrifice is a big issue,” he says, deliberately skirting the point.
“I think until now there are many muftis who support that position. I myself have not reached a place where I can say whether it is right or wrong. The Taliban themselves have very good scholars and muftis. They may do it according to their muftis or others, I can’t say anything. It is related to them.”
I was never going to get a straight answer from him, but his failure to rule out the practice repulsed me.
“There is an idiom in Pashto. Tongue is mild and turns everywhere,” he says obscurely.
“Americans talked the other day about destroying Al-Qaida and convincing the Taliban to join talks, and I think they consider this a success.”
“But if we hear from people around the world, the real success and failure is when someone else says whether you are successful or have failed in this country.”
“I think all other people will say that America has failed.”
Saleem wants his photo taken with Akbar Agar. I oblige, but decline one of my own. I want to leave.
After awkward goodbyes, we pack up our equipment and shuffle out, not stopping to tie our bootlaces. Barreling into the car, we reverse back up the narrow street and turn a corner. Saleem hops out and with the light on his phone scans the underside of the car for explosives.
“Good to have you back,” the Park Star receptionist says as we enter the hotel lobby.
Bloody good to be back.
Click here to read part VI
He and a team of Afghan filmmakers documented the hopes and fears of the city’s war-weary population, spoke to those involved in peace talks, and to those who will live with the consequences.
Now, as the peace process gets back on track, this new documentary and six-part written series explores a city anxious for peace – but terrified of the cost.
Read part I, part II, and part III, and part IV
*
Part V: A date with Terry Taliban
I must have been sleeping deeply, because I don’t remember hearing the blast.
When I awake, it’s to news of a car bombing at a checkpoint in east Kabul not far from my hotel, near the NATO HQ and the offices of Afghan national security authorities. Ten civilians and two NATO soldiers, including an American and a Romanian, had been killed and more than 100 people wounded. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
The attack changed everything. US President Donald Trump would use the September 5 attack to abruptly call off peace talks with the Taliban, just as a deal appeared imminent. In reality, Trump was under pressure at home for inviting the Taliban to Camp David just days before the 9/11 anniversary.
As I hurry through the hotel lobby to meet my fixer Saleem, I pass a television screening scenes of the smouldering, debris-strewn aftermath. The receptionist urges me to stay indoors.
I am nervous – not so much about secondary attacks, but for the potentially dangerous interview I have lined up that evening.
While we wrap up the afternoon’s appointments, Saleem confirms what I’ve been waiting to hear – a meeting with Sayid Mohammed Akbar Agha, former commander of the Taliban splinter group Jaish-al Muslimeen.
As a proxy of the Taliban – or ‘Terry’ as British troops like to call them – I urgently need to hear his take on the peace process.
Akbar Agha was jailed in 2004 for his role in the kidnapping of three UN workers. He was first held in Pakistan before being moved to Pul-e-Charkhi – Afghanistan’s biggest and most notorious prison.
He was pardoned by then-president Hamid Karzai in 2014 and released. Now he heads Shura-e-Aali Rah-e-Nejat, the High Council of Salvation, agitating for a full US withdrawal, inter-Afghan talks, and an Islamic emirate under sharia law.
Visiting the home of a convicted kidnapper who fosters ties with the Taliban is not advisable at the best of times. With the peace process crumbling before our eyes, it was downright stupid.
It is already dark when we pull up outside Akbar Agha’s compound. The area is badly neglected and poorly lit, with potholes in the road so big we have to stop to reattach the rear bumper. We pass beggar children and dilapidated buildings, the odour of an open sewer so strong it practically climbs into the back seat. Saleem had called the local security chief and warned him where we are going. He’d agreed to station men nearby to watch the house.
Akbar Agha’s men greet us at the gate, cradling their aged AK-47s. I can hear children playing nearby, which puts me a little more at ease. We remove our shoes and are shown to a spartan guest room with cushions laid neatly around the circumference. The carpet is deep red and the yellow lights are dim. Although it is dark outside, I can make out the shape of an armed man patrolling outside the window looking in.
While we wait for Akbar Agha’s arrival, the mullah’s assistant brings a tray of chai in glass cups, which he distributes to our film crew. Given the strict Pathan code of hospitality, I took it as a deliberate snub when I, the farangi, was not handed a cup.
The chilly atmosphere warms a little when the man himself arrives.
Slinging his woollen patu over his shoulder, filling the room with a waft of incense and sandalwood, Akbar Agha extends a large hand for me to shake, bowing his black turbaned head respectfully, his long beard brushing his barrel chest. His tribe, the Sayid, claims to trace its ancestry back to the Prophet. A spot of yellow sauce from an earlier meal soils an otherwise immaculate salwar kameez.
With Saleem’s help, we conduct our interview in Pashto. The mullah sits rigidly in his hard wooden chair, absentmindedly thumbing a string of black prayer beads as he speaks in a slow, solemn tone.
“I am a scholar, a religious scholar. I had a big front of Taliban in the time of the jihad against the Russians. Indeed some of the current ministers of the Taliban were in my front as mujahideen,” he says.
“During the Taliban time, I spent time on the military lines and in other places. And then when the Americans came, we didn’t like their entry.”
He can barely conceal his glee at the prospect of a full US withdrawal, a prerequisite for the Taliban entering formal talks with the Afghan government. But he also feels after decades of war that the time for fighting is finished and the sides must negotiate a solution.
“I think that both the Taliban and maybe the government also know that war is not the way of solving the issue and it is required to sit down for meetings,” says Akbar Agha.
“Of course if the Taliban takes over provinces and Kabul through war, it is still required to hold a meeting. If opposition groups come and show disagreement, the Taliban are compelled to meet them. This country does not have the capacity for more war. I believe it is required and maybe the Taliban also feels this requirement.”
Click here to read Rudaw's full interview with Sayid Mohammad Akbar Agha
The question is, what kind of system would the Taliban accept in order to lay down their arms?
“There is no doubt, sharia,” Akbar Agha says with emphasis.
“Islam is our religion. We are Muslims. The Russians were opposed to our religion. We waged jihad and operations against them. We forced them to leave our country. We did all this to bring an Islamic system here for Muslims.”
“Of course Allah has supported us. The Russians had a huge military and power while Afghans had nothing.”
“This war was started for Allah and an Islamic system for Muslims. That is my belief.”
Warming to his theme, the mullah says peace can only be guaranteed under a sharia system and with the departure of foreign forces.
“Now we say for anyone who comes to Afghanistan, and we tell this government, to bring an Islamic or Muslim system or the sharia of Muhammad to this country,” he says.
“There will be no question of the Taliban proceeding with war. Because under the sharia system foreigners will leave and those people who come into government will know about sharia. A system will come according to the Muslims. For sure peace will come here and there will be no war.”
“I think the Taliban will call for a sharia system and none other.”
The Taliban emerged out of the chaos of civil war. After the Russian departure in 1989, the victorious mujahideen set its sights on the communist government of Mohammad Najibullah. Despite his isolation, Najibullah held out until 1992 when the mujahideen finally seized Kabul. He would spend the next four years hiding in the UN compound.
The mujahideen victors were divided, however, each with his own ethnic base, territories, sources of income, and foreign backers. The predominantly Tajik followers of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Uzbek fighters of ex-communist general Rashid Dostum, and the Pashto Islamists of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar battled it out in the streets, devastating the capital.
Mullah Omar, an obscure local cleric who had fought in the mujahideen before returned to his village in Kandahar, was sickened by the corruption and criminality of the warlords and their militias. Banding together a group of mullahs and religious students, he began clearing local checkpoints and seizing territory.
His movement quickly spread, welcomed by a population desperate for security and justice. Pakistan’s shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency soon switched allegiance from Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i Islami and began funding the Taliban.
In 1996, the Taliban took Kabul. The mujahideen leaders fled and established the Northern Alliance to resist further Taliban expansion. Najibullah meanwhile was seized from the UN compound by Taliban fighters who shot him, castrated him, and hanged him from a lamppost.
The new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was initially recognised by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates.
One key backer of the new regime was Osama bin Laden – a wealthy Saudi sheik who had armed, funded, and fought alongside the mujahideen. He and his Al-Qaeda outfit had initially been welcomed by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a mujahideen leader, after bin Laden’s 1996 expulsion from Sudan.
In Afghanistan’s political and geographic isolation inherited by the Taliban, bin Laden could freely plot his attacks on the US.
Already a global pariah for its brutal subjugation of women and its destruction of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, the Taliban’s refusal to hand over bin Laden after 9/11 led to its downfall.
When the US teamed up with the Northern Alliance and invaded Afghanistan in 2001, bin Laden was able to slip over the Tora Bora mountains. He wasn’t heard from again until Seal Team 6 caught up with him in 2011, over the border in Pakistan – Washington’s alleged ally in the war on terror.
Mullah Omar and the Taliban also went to ground. Confident that Western armies would eventually leave – as history shows they always do – all the Taliban had to do was survive.
Despite the billions spent by the US to bolster Afghan forces, the Taliban has continued to grow since the formal end of combat operations in 2014. Now the sides have been forced to negotiate.
I ask Akbar Agha what a deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban would mean for civil rights – for women in particular.
“Of course, women might have to give up some rights,” he says, matter-of-factly.
“For example there may be some women who want more freedom, a freedom which is out of Islam’s structure. So maybe the Taliban or another government which comes from the Islamic tradition, Islamic religion, and Islamic basis, that government will tell them according to Islam that you have invaded on the rights of others. Or for example you had no contentment in your rights and have taken more rights, which will be taken back.”
And what about suicide attacks, like the one that morning near my hotel? How does the Taliban justify the killing of civilians to meet its goals?
“It is a huge issue. Suicide, martyrdom, someone who says I am giving sacrifice is a big issue,” he says, deliberately skirting the point.
“I think until now there are many muftis who support that position. I myself have not reached a place where I can say whether it is right or wrong. The Taliban themselves have very good scholars and muftis. They may do it according to their muftis or others, I can’t say anything. It is related to them.”
I was never going to get a straight answer from him, but his failure to rule out the practice repulsed me.
“There is an idiom in Pashto. Tongue is mild and turns everywhere,” he says obscurely.
“Americans talked the other day about destroying Al-Qaida and convincing the Taliban to join talks, and I think they consider this a success.”
“But if we hear from people around the world, the real success and failure is when someone else says whether you are successful or have failed in this country.”
“I think all other people will say that America has failed.”
Saleem wants his photo taken with Akbar Agar. I oblige, but decline one of my own. I want to leave.
After awkward goodbyes, we pack up our equipment and shuffle out, not stopping to tie our bootlaces. Barreling into the car, we reverse back up the narrow street and turn a corner. Saleem hops out and with the light on his phone scans the underside of the car for explosives.
“Good to have you back,” the Park Star receptionist says as we enter the hotel lobby.
Bloody good to be back.
Click here to read part VI
Comments
Rudaw moderates all comments submitted on our website. We welcome comments which are relevant to the article and encourage further discussion about the issues that matter to you. We also welcome constructive criticism about Rudaw.
To be approved for publication, however, your comments must meet our community guidelines.
We will not tolerate the following: profanity, threats, personal attacks, vulgarity, abuse (such as sexism, racism, homophobia or xenophobia), or commercial or personal promotion.
Comments that do not meet our guidelines will be rejected. Comments are not edited – they are either approved or rejected.
Post a comment