Abdul Haq (Afghan Leader) - 9/11 and Execution

9/11 and Execution

Following the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001 against the United States, Abdul Haq entered Afghanistan from Pakistan to implement his resistance plan against the Taliban. Some sources have speculated that the CIA supported this initiative but family members and other sources have denied this claim writing that the CIA actually urged him not to enter Afghanistan. Former CIA director George Tenet reports that, at the recommendation of Bud McFarlane, CIA officials met with Abdul Haq in Pakistan and after assessing his capabilities urged him not to enter Afghanistan. After a spectacular chase, he was captured by the Taliban along with nineteen others between the towns of Hisarak and Azro, and was executed on October 26, 2001. The Guardian speculates that his capture was due to a betrayal by double agents. Some reports soon after his death blamed the CIA for siding too closely with Pakistan's ISI, which did not wish to see Afghans united across ethnic lines, and for failing to intervene to rescue him from his Taliban captors. This version was solidified by reports of tension between Haq and American agents after an interview in which he stated "...we cannot be puppet." He was one of many Afghan rebel leaders opposed to the U.S. intervention.

An obituary in The Guardian called Abdul Haq an "astute leader", and one of the few Afghans capable of working to bring together a working pan-ethnic loya jirga.