Abdul Haq (Afghan leader)
Abdul Haq (born Humayoun Arsala; April 23, 1958 – October 26, 2001) was an Afghan mujahideen commander who fought against the Soviet-backed People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, the de facto Afghan government in the 1980s. He was killed by the Taliban in October 2001 while trying to create a popular uprising against the Taliban in Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11th attacks. Early life Haq was born in Seydan, Afghanistan, a small village in Nangarhar province, into a Pashtun family. He moved with his family to Helmand early on in his life. His father, Mohammed Aman, was the representative in Helmand for a Nangarhar construction company, and was relatively wealthy by Afghan standards. His family was well connected, part of the Arsala Khel family, which is a part of the Jabar Khel (a subtribe of the land-owning Ahmadzai tribe). They are all ethnic Pashtuns. His paternal great-grandfather, Wazir Arsala Khan, had once been the foreign minister of Afghanistan; a cousin, Hedayat Arsala, was a World Bank director working in Washington, D.C. who later became Vice President of Afghanistan in Hamid Karzai's administration. Haq also had two older brothers (Haji Din Mohammad and Abdul Qadir), and one younger brother (Nasrullah Baryalai Arsalai). An early backer of Hamid Karzai, Abdul Qadir was rewarded with a cabinet position before he was assassinated in 2002. Haji Din Muhammad is the leader of the Hezb-e Islami Khalis party. From his own account, Haq was an unruly child, who after persuading his father to register him for school at the early age of five, once hit a teacher who was sleeping on the job. A year after that his 51-year-old father died of kidney disease, prompting Din Mohammad to assume leadership of the family, and prompting the family to move back to their extended family in Nangarhar. Back in Fatehabad, Haq began attending a Madrasah under the tutelage of local mullahs, and once reaching the age of eight, began studying at the Lycée. It was here where he started challenging the Communist ideology of some of his teachers. Mujahideen years Haq first engaged in the fight against the Afghan government in 1978, initially without external support, then with the Hizb-i-Islami faction led by Mohammad Yunus Khalis—not to be mistaken with the Hezb-i-Islami faction of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. During the Soviet–Afghan War, Haq coordinated Mujahideen activities in the province of Kabul. Haq also defended the use of long-range rockets against Kabul despite the fact that those rocket attacks were causing casualties among the civilians. Haq said: Haq was one of the CIA's few Afghan contacts in the early years of the war. Steve Coll wrote that he "grew to become Howard Hart's most important Afghan guide to the anti-Soviet war." Later in the 1980s he became a critic of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and (after his relationship with them ended) the CIA. The CIA labelled him "Hollywood Haq"—the Hollywood Commander. Haq was injured several times, including the loss of part of his right heel. Because of