Ahmed Khadr - Charitable Work Begins

Charitable Work Begins

During his 1984 summer in Pakistan, Ahmed decided to join Lajnat al Dawa, a Kuwaiti-run relief organisation seeking volunteers to help with Afghan refugees living in Pakistan. He flew back to Toronto in December with his family, to explain his decision to Maha's parents. Returning briefly to Bahrain, the family stopped in Kuwait to meet the charity's organisers. By January, they had settled down in a second-floor apartment above the Kuwait Red Crescent Society's offices in Peshawar, Pakistan.

While in Pakistan, Ahmed became increasingly known by the kunya name Abu Abdurahman al-Kanadi (Father of Abdurahman, the Canadian), due to a misunderstanding among the community about which of his sons was eldest. Refusing to abandon his western clothing, Ahmed frequently took care of the children while Maha volunteered at the Red Crescent hospital.

During his time in Pakistan, Khadr met with journalist Eric Margolis several times, who later recalled that Khadr was a "man of respect" in the city, and seemed "entirely humanitarian and not ideological at all". The family would frequently return to Canada, several times a year, visiting family while Ahmed became known as "a hero...making impassioned pleas for Afghanistan", garnering donations for his charitable work, giving speeches at mosques and community events.

During one of the visits back to Toronto, on July 6, 1985, Maha gave birth to the couple's fourth child, Ibrahim. Diagnosed with a congenital heart defect, he was transferred to the city's Hospital for Sick Children for surgery. Three months later, the family returned to Peshawar.

That year, Khadr met Abdullah Anas, an Algerian who had helped fight the Soviets in northern Afghanistan. Anas would later describe Khadr as "not a man of fighting, not a man of jihad, just a man of charity work aid". He also became acquainted with Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the founder of the Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan and a Mujahideen warlord with whom Khadr would later nurture a close relationship.

Returning to Toronto in the summer of 1986, Ibrahim underwent more surgery, and on September 19 Maha gave birth to Omar. Six days later, the 39-year old Khadr was featured in the Toronto Star decrying the lack of attention being paid to the plight of Afghanistan. He condemned the Soviets for cluster bomblets and landmines disguised to look like brightly-coloured toys, which encouraged children to pick up the munitions off the ground, often at the cost of their limbs.

In the autumn, the family returned to Peshawar, where Ahmed met Ayman al-Zawahiri, a doctor who had been convicted for arms dealing five years earlier, and now worked in the Red Crescent hospital treating wounded refugees. The two quickly became friends, and had many conversations about the need for Islamic government and the needs of the Afghan people. At this time, the family was living in a "tiny" apartment on an $800 monthly allowance.

In 1987, Khadr convinced his wife to let her parents take care of their sickly son Ibrahim in Scarborough, claiming that she could help a hundred Afghan children in Peshawar by sending one of their children back to Scarborough Hospital for care. He would often praise the bravery of the fighters in the Battle of Jaji to his children, but never suggested that he had participated.

In January 1988, Maha returned to Toronto with Omar, to look after Ibrahim so her parents could visit relatives in the Middle East. Ibrahim became sick during the visit, and was rushed to Centenary Hospital and later to Hospital for Sick Children where he was pronounced brain dead the following morning.

That year, Ahmed joined Human Concern International full-time, a Canadian-based charity operating in Peshawar with whom he had been cooperating. The charity had come under scrutiny that year after Osama bin Laden told an interviewer that "The bin Laden Establishment's aid covers 13 countries...this aid comes in particular from the Human Concern International Society" Ahmed was suspected of using the charity to move money from Pakistan into Afghanistan unnoticed. Under his leadership, Hope Village was created by HCI in Akora Khattak to house 400 orphans, and a number of unemployed refugees were given work repairing damage at the Khost airfield and gained the support of the World Food Program, and a $325,000 donation from the Canadian International Development Agency. Around this time, he also spoke with Canadian Doreen Wicks who agreed to have her own charity send medical supplies to help the Afghan orphans.

Not long after, Anas spoke to Abdullah Azzam about the need to ensure Muslim help reached northern Afghanistan, and not just that of Western NGOs. Khadr was approached by Azzam, and was placed in charge of a new charity to be affiliated with the Muslim World League NGO. Khadr also promised to help fundraise for a new Peshawar-based charity to be named al-Tahaddi (The Challenge), if Azzam would grant him a letter of endorsement to take back to Canadian mosques calling for donations. When he returned to Peshawar however, Khadr accused Azzam of "confiscating" the money he had raised, and spreading rumors that he was a Western spy. A Sharia court led by Jamal al-Fadl was convened in Osama bin Laden's compound, and Azzam was found guilty in absentia of spreading allegations against Khadr and ordered to turn the money back over to the charity for which it had been raised, though no further sentence was imposed. When Azzam was killed in 1989, Khadr was among the mourners at his funeral, "visibly distraught".

That year, Khadr was also involved in a dispute with Abu Hassan al Madani and Enaam Arnaout, leaders of the American Benevolence International.

In 1989, Maha gave birth to a fifth son, Abdulkareem. Eight months after the end of the Soviet invasion, Khadr was profiled in the Toronto Star newspaper, pleading for Western aid to help Afghanistan rebuild, pointing to the highest child mortality rate in the world. It was around this time that he began to eschew Western clothing, and adopted the kurta and pakul which had come to symbolise the Mujahideen.

Around 1990, Ahmed found The Adventures of Tintin, a favourite book of his childhood, at an Islamabad marketplace and purchased it for his children.

In September 1991, Khadr gave a fundraising lecture entitled Afghanistan: The Untold Story at the Markham Islamic Centre. Although nominally about the suffering of the widows and orphans in the wartorn country, he noticeably focused attention on the valor of the Mujahideen who had repelled the Soviets.

The following year, Khadr sustained severe shrapnel wounds which tore apart his right side, puncturing his bladder and a kidney. The exact cause of the wounds is debated, Human Concern International maintains that Khadr was inside one of their refugee camps when he stepped on a landmine, while his son Abdurahman has said that he was hurt by a bomb during the ongoing battles between warlords.

Unable to get proper medical care in Peshawar, he was taken to Karachi, but Maha convinced him to return to Toronto a month later, and he was admitted to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Although there were fears he'd never walk again, or his arm would require amputation, surgeon Terry Axelrod managed to treat Khadr successfully, and would later work the treatments into one of his medical lecture programmes. His half-brother Ahmed Faoud came up from the United States to visit Khadr, who was growing restless with his long recovery time.