Mullah Mohammad Omar Mujahid was an Afghan Islamist militant and cleric. He founded the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) in 1994 and served as its first leader until his death in April 2013, including as the head of its government from 1996 to 2001. His death, however, remained concealed until July 2015, during which time the Taliban continued to issue statements in his name. Known for his reclusivity, he was a mythical and revered figure within the Taliban.
Hezb-e Islami Khalis is an Afghan political ex-Mujahidin movement under Maulawi Khalis, who separated from Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami and formed his own resistance group in 1979. The two parties were distinguished as Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin and Hezb-e Islami Khalis, after the names of their respective leaders.
Jamayat-E-Islami, sometimes shortened to Jamiat, is a predominantly Tajik political party in Afghanistan. It was originally formed as a student political society at Kabul University. It has a communitarian ideology based on Islamic law. During the Soviet–Afghan War and the following Afghan Civil War against the communist government, Jamiat-e Islami was one of the most powerful of the Afghan mujahideen groups. Burhanuddin Rabbani led the party from 1968 to 2011, and served as President of the Islamic State of Afghanistan from 1992 to 2001, on exile from 1996.
Mawlawi Mohammad Yunus Khalis was a mujahideen commander in Afghanistan during the Soviet–Afghan War. His party was called Hezb-i-Islami, the same as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's party. The two are commonly differentiated as Hezb-e Islami Khalis and Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin.
Tehreek-e-Jafaria was a Shia militant group in Pakistan, which was founded in 1979 by Arif Hussain Hussaini. Its creation coincided with the enforcement of controversial Islamic laws by then President of Pakistan, General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq. At the same time, 1979 Iranian Revolution in Shi'a Iran added extra confidence and comfort in the movement.
Haji Abdul Qadeer was a prominent Northern Alliance leader in Afghanistan and opposed the Taliban. Originally a commander of the Hezb-i Islami Khalis faction during the Soviet–Afghan War, he then served as governor of Nangarhar Province, the head of the Eastern Afghanistan Shura, and later Vice President of Afghanistan and Minister of Public Works in the administration of Hamid Karzai from 19 June 2002 until his assassination on 6 July 2002. He was the older brother of fellow anti-Soviet and Northern Alliance commander Abdul Haq, who was executed in late 2001 by the Taliban. Abdul Qadeer is notable for welcoming Osama bin Laden to Jalalabad in 1996.
Abdul Haq 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.
Sabar Lal Melma was a citizen of Afghanistan who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. Sabar Lal Melma's Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 801. American intelligence analysts estimate that Sabar Lal Melma was born in 1962, Darya-e-Pech, Afghanistan.
Hajji Ali is a politician in Afghanistan. He previously served as a military commander for the Northern Alliance in eastern Afghanistan.
The Afghan mujahideen were various armed Islamist rebel groups that fought against the government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War and the subsequent First Afghan Civil War. The term mujahideen is used in a religious context by Muslims to refer to those engaged in a struggle of any nature for the sake of Islam, commonly referred to as jihad (جهاد). The Afghan mujahideen consisted of numerous groups that differed from each other across ethnic and/or ideological lines, but were united by their anti-communist and pro-Islamic goals. The union was also widely referred to by their Western backers as the Afghan resistance, while Western press often referred to them as Muslim rebels, guerrillas, or "Mountain Men". They were popularly referred to by Soviet troops as dukhi as derivation from Dari word دشمان dushman, which turned into short dukh and also was suitable due to their guerrilla tactics; Afghan civilians often referred to them as the tanzim, while the Afghan government called them dushman, a term also employed by the Soviets.
Regional and tribal Afghan leaders rose up and formed an alliance known as the Eastern Shura to oust the Taliban in Khowst Province and Nangarhar Province, during the War in Afghanistan. Mary Anne Weaver, writing in The New York Times on the fourth anniversary of al Qaeda's attacks on September 11, 2001, described the formation of the Eastern Shura as the result of surrender negotiations on November 13, 2001, between Mohammad Yunus Khalis and Osama bin Laden.
Abdul Haq al-Turkistani is an Uyghur Islamic militant who leads the Turkistan Islamic Party. The United States Treasury reported he took over leadership of the organization in 2003, following the death of its previous leader, and took a seat on al-Qaeda's shura in 2005.
Anwar Dangar was a commander from Shakar-Darrah, which is located approximately 25 kilometres north of Kabul, and was an ally of Burhanuddin Rabbani's Jamiat-e-Islami. He was reported involved in the planning of the Afshar Operation which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians and furthermore he is said to have directly lead troops into the battle.
Darul Uloom Haqqania or Jamia Dar al-Ulum Haqqania is an Islamic Seminary in the town of Akora Khattak, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, northwestern Pakistan. The seminary propagates the Hanafi Deobandi school of Sunni Islam. It was founded by Maulana Abdul Haq along the lines of the Darul Uloom Deoband seminary in India, where he had taught. It has been dubbed the University of Jihad due to its methods and content of instruction, along with the future occupations of its alumni. A number of leading members of the Taliban, including past chief Akhtar Mansour, studied here.
The Tora Bora Military Front is an insurgent group in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. It is led by Anwarul Haq Mujahid. The faction broke away from Hezb-e Islami Khalis (HiK) following the death of HiK's leader Mohammad Yunus Khalis and an ensuing power struggle between Mujahid and Haji Din Mohammad.
Fazal ur Rehman Khalil is a founder of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) and current leader of Ansar-ul-Umma, which is accused of being a front organization of the banned HuM.
Doctor Amin al-Haq is an Afghan national and a trained doctor. He is reported to have been a former Osama bin Laden bodyguard and a security coordinator. Al-Haq was reported to have been captured in Lahore, Pakistan, in early January 2008. He was released from Pakistani custody in September 2011 citing a lack of evidence. Pakistani officials stated that al-Haq's connections to al Qaeda "could not be proved," and he is also "not in good health." CBS News and NPR cited al-Haq's release was a trigger for challenges of Pakistan's commitment to fight terrorism. However, British daily The Telegraph cites a senior Pakistani security official, who told the paper al-Haq was "arrested mistakenly, therefore, the police failed to prove any charge of his association with Osama bin Laden and the court set him free." Analyst Rahimullah Yusufzai speculated, "They could only have released him with the say so of America or if maybe there really was no evidence or he was not that important."
Sana-ul-Haq, better known as Asim Umar, was an Indian militant and the leader of al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent. al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri announced the creation of AQIS and introduced Asim Umar as its leader in a video posted online in September 2014.
Mujahid is a person engaged in jihad.
Mawlawi Matiul Haq Khalis is the Afghan Taliban leader and current President of the Afghan Red Crescent Society he also served as a member of the negotiation team in Qatar office.
Hezb-e Islami Khalis (until 2006)