Jalaluddin Haqqani - Mujahideen Commander

Mujahideen Commander

In the 1980s, Jalaluddin Haqqani was cultivated as a "unilateral" asset of the CIA and received tens of thousands of dollars in cash for his work in fighting the Soviet-led Afghan forces in Afghanistan, according to an account in The Bin Ladens, a 2008 book by Steve Coll. He reputedly attracted generous support from prosperous Arab countries compared to other resistance leaders. At that time, Haqqani helped and protected Osama bin Laden, who was building his own militia (al Qaida) to fight Soviet-backed Afghanistan.

The influential U.S. Congressman, Charlie Wilson, who helped to direct tens of millions dollars to the Afghan resistance, was so enamored of Haqqani that he referred to him as "goodness personified". He was a key US and Pakistani ally in resisting the Soviet-backed Afghanistan. Some news media outlets report that Haqqani even received an invitation to, and perhaps even visited, President Ronald Reagan's White House, although photographs erroneously reported to show evidence of this meeting have cast doubt that Haqqani ever visited the US. (The pictures originally purporting to show this meeting are, in fact, of Mohammad Yunus Khalis.)

During the rule of Najibullah in 1991, Haqqani was the first resistance leader to capture the city of Khost from the Afghan government. After the fall of Kabul to the Mujahideen forces in 1992, he was appointed Justice Minister of the Islamic State of Afghanistan.