![]() |
Amir Sultan Tarar | |
---|---|
Birth name | Amir Sultan Tarar |
Nickname(s) | Colonel Imam |
Born | Chattal, Chakwal District, Punjab, Pakistan |
Died | 23 January 2011 Mir Ali, North Waziristan, FATA, Pakistan |
Allegiance | Pakistan |
Service/ | Pakistan Army |
Years of service | 1966–1994 |
Rank | Brigadier [1] [2] [3] |
Unit | 14/13 Frontier Force Regiment |
Commands held | CO Parachute Training School |
Battles/wars | |
Awards |
Brigadier Sultan Amir Tarar, best known as Colonel Imam, (died 23 January 2011) was a one-star rank army general in the Pakistan Army, and a former diplomat who served as the Consul-General of Pakistan at Herat, Afghanistan. [4] He belonged to the Tarar Gotra of Jutts. Amir Sultan Tarar was a Pakistan Army officer and special warfare operation specialist. He was a member of the SSG of the army, an intelligence officer of the ISI and served as Pakistani Consul General in Herat, Afghanistan. [4] A veteran of the Soviet–Afghan War, he is widely believed to have played a key role in the formation of the Taliban, after having helped train the Afghan Mujahidin on behalf of the United States in the 1980s. [5]
"Colonel Imam" as Tarar was also known, was a commando-guerrilla warfare specialist, and trained Mullah Omar and other Taliban factions and leaders. Colonel Imam remained active in Afghanistan's civil war until the 2001 United States led War on Terrorism, and supported the Taliban publicly through media. [5]
Tarar was kidnapped along with fellow ISI officer Khalid Khawaja and British journalist Asad Qureshi [6] and Qureshi's driver Rustam Khan on 26 March 2010. Khawaja was killed a month later. Qureshi and Khan were released in September 2010. Amir Sultan Tarar was killed in January 2011. [7] [8]
Amir Sultan Tarar was a graduate from the PMA and from Fort Bragg. After he graduated from the Pakistan Military Academy, he joined the Pakistan Army's 15th Frontier Force Regiment as 2nd Lieutenant. Amir Sultan Tarar was sent to the United States in 1974, and was trained among the United States Army Special Forces. Upon his graduation from the Special Forces School, Amir Sultan Tarar was awarded the American Green beret by his training commander. Following his return to Pakistan, Amir Sultan Tarar joined the Special Service Group (SSG). In the 1980s, he participated in the Soviet–Afghan War. Colonel Imam, as he became known, was increasingly involved in Afghanistan's politics even after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. After the Soviet–Afghan War, Colonel Imam supported and trained Taliban fighters independently. It was alleged even in the 2000s that he still independently supported the Taliban independence movement in Afghanistan. [9] He was a disciple of Ameer Muhammad Akram Awan, the current sheikh of silsila Naqshbandia Owaisia.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Amir Sultan Tarar was invited to the White House by the then President George Herbert Walker Bush, and was given a piece of the Berlin Wall with a brass plaque inscribed: "To the one who dealt the first blow." [10] In the 2000s, Western intelligence agencies believed Colonel Imam was dead among a group of renegade officers from Pakistan's ISI who continued to help the Taliban after Pakistan turned against them following the attacks of September 11, 2001. [11]
Little is known of Amir Sultan Tarar's true history or operational profile as an agent of the ISI. Most information about 'Colonel Imam' was generated by his own admission, as well as news media speculation. Pakistan's secrecy over internal and external security, plus the code of conduct of Pakistan Armed Forces personnel serving in sensitive institutions, prevents such details from being available or verifiable. In 2010, however, Amir Sultan Tarar gave interviews to foreign and domestic journalists in Rawalpindi. [5]
Tarar's initial objective, after the Mujahedin infighting after Soviet withdrawal and before his involvement with Taliban, were unclear; his objectives at that time were just to find new friends for Pakistan from where to operate later, such as Akhaundzada of Helmand who had a blood feud with Hikmatyar and was a warlord with 17000 men under command.
According to Colonel Imam's own claims, Soviets when in Afghanistan had put a 200 million Afghani bounty on him. He also claimed that, when he presented operational details to Aslam Baig after General Zia's death about anti-soviet struggle, the later was surprised as to the extent. In Cathey Schofield's book Inside Pakistan Army, Colonel Imam admitted meeting Osama Bin Laden in 1986.
In March 2010, Colonel Imam, former ISI officer Khalid Khawaja, journalist Asad Qureshi, and Qureshi's driver Rustman Khan were abducted by an unknown militant group which called itself Asian Tigers. Khawaja's body was found near a stream in Karam Kot in April 2010 with a note attached saying he was with the CIA and ISI, about seven kilometres south of North Waziristan's main town of Mirali. Qureshi and Khan were freed in September 2010. [12]
Colonel Imam was executed in captivity, as documented in a video released by Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. [13] Both the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban were purportedly against the execution. [14] Colonel Imam's captors refused to release his body to his family unless a ransom was paid.[ citation needed ]
The Inter-Services Intelligence is the largest and best-known component of the Pakistani intelligence community. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant to Pakistan's national security. The ISI reports to its director-general and is primarily focused on providing intelligence to the Pakistani government.
Squadron Leader Khalid Khawaja was an officer of the Pakistan Air Force, and the Air Force's intelligence officer of the Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency. A former member of Special Service Wing (SSW) and a veteran of Soviet–Afghan War, Khawaja described himself as a close associate of Osama bin Laden in the early days of the Afghan resistance against the Soviet Union. He was once suspected of being involved in the murder of American reporter Daniel Pearl. This was later proved to be false, but he did connect Pearl with men who would eventually kill him.
The military history of Pakistan encompasses an immense panorama of conflicts and struggles extending for more than 2,000 years across areas constituting modern Pakistan and greater South Asia. The history of the modern-day military of Pakistan began in 1947, when Pakistan achieved its independence as a modern nation.
Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan, HI(M), afwc, psc, is a former Director General of the ISPR, the PR wing of the Pakistani Armed Forces. He served from 2003 to 2007.
Jalaluddin Haqqani was an Afghan insurgent commander who founded the Haqqani network, an insurgent group fighting in guerilla warfare against US-led NATO forces and the now former government of Afghanistan they support.
The 1996–2001 Afghan Civil War took place between the Taliban's conquest of Kabul and their establishing of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996, and the US and UK invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001: a period that was part of the Afghan Civil War that had started in 1989, and also part of the war in Afghanistan that had started in 1978.
The insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, also known as the War in North-West Pakistan or Pakistan's war on terror, is an ongoing armed conflict involving Pakistan and Islamist militant groups such as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Jundallah, Lashkar-e-Islam (LeI), TNSM, al-Qaeda, and their Central Asian allies such as the ISIL–Khorasan (ISIL), Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, East Turkistan Movement, Emirate of Caucasus, and elements of organized crime. Formerly a war, it is now a low-level insurgency as of 2017.
The Pakistani Taliban, formally called the Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan, is an umbrella organization of various Islamist armed militant groups operating along the Afghan–Pakistani border. Formed in 2007 by Baitullah Mehsud, its current leader is Noor Wali Mehsud, who has publicly pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani Taliban share a common ideology with the Afghan Taliban and have assisted them in the 2001–2021 war, but the two groups have separate operation and command structures.
The Haqqani network is an Afghan Islamist group, built around the family of the same name, that has used asymmetric warfare in Afghanistan to fight against Soviet forces in the 1980s, and US-led NATO forces and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan government in the 21st century. It is recognized as a terrorist organization by the United Nations. It is considered to be a "semi-autonomous" offshoot of the Taliban. It has been most active in eastern Afghanistan and across the border in north-west Pakistan.
Maulvi Nazir was a leading militant of the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan. Nazir's operations were based in Wana.
Pakistanis in Afghanistan are mostly refugees, but also include laborers, traders, businesspersons, and small number of diplomats. Those working in white-collar professions include doctors, engineers, teachers and journalists. Because Pakistan and Afghanistan are neighbouring states with a loosely controlled border, and a distributed population of ethnic Pashtuns and Baloch people, there is constant flow of population between the two countries.
Hakimullah Mehsud, born Jamshed Mehsud and also known as Zulfiqar Mehsud, was a Pakistani militant who was the second emir of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, elected to the post on 22 August 2009. Under Mehsud's leadership the TTP attacks targeted munafaqeen in Pakistan. This meant not only religious minorities like Ahmedi and Shia Muslims, but the Sufi Barelvi sect of Sunni Islam. The TTP began "openly attacking Sufi shrines.". It was confirmed by TTP that he was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan on 1 November 2013.
The Operation Rah-e-Nijat was a strategic offensive military operation by the unified command of Pakistan Armed Forces against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and their extremist allies in the South Waziristan area of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas that began on June 19, 2009; a major ground-air offensive was subsequently launched on October 17. It became the integral part of the war in Western fronts which led to the encirclement and destruction of Taliban forces in the region, although the Taliban leadership escaped to lawless areas of neighboring Afghanistan.
Hafiz Gul Bahadur is the leader of a Pakistani Taliban faction based in North Waziristan. Upon the formation of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in December 2007, he was announced as the militant group's overall naib amir under Baitullah Mehsud, who was based in South Waziristan, but has largely distanced himself from the TTP due to rivalries with Mehsud and disagreements about the TTP's attacks against the Pakistani state.
The Pakistan Army General Headquarters attack, was a hostage-rescue mission carried by SSG Division on 10 October 2009, when 10 gunmen in military uniform opened fire on the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, Punjab, Pakistan. The attack killed nine soldiers, nine militants and two civilians and was a major escalation in Pakistan's domestic insurgency. One militant was wounded and captured by security forces. Soon after the attack, the militants infiltrated the security buildings where 22 civilian and military officials were held hostage by the militants. The Pakistan Army immediately launched a hostage rescue operation led by the SSG Division, Army Special Forces and the 13th Regular Regiment.
Asad Qureshi is a British filmmaker who was kidnapped on 26 March 2010 by a militant group called the "Asian Tigers" in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghanistan border, where he was making a film in North Waziristan and interviewing Taliban leaders. Qureshi was accompanied by his driver, Rustam Khan, and two senior members of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Khalid Khawaja and Colonel Imam during his trip. All four were abducted; Khawaja was killed and his body was found a month later in Mir Ali with an attached note accusing him of spying for the United States and being responsible for killing people during the Siege of Lal Masjid. Qureshi and his driver were released in September 2010 through family negotiations after 165 days of captivity. Colonel Imam was executed in January 2011. Qureshi's release was a rare occurrence as the Pakistani Taliban have been known to execute most of their victims.
Ehsanullah Ehsan is a former spokesman of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and later Jamaat-ul-Ahrar. As a spokesperson of the groups, Ehsan would use media campaigns, social media networks and call up local journalists to claim responsibility for terrorist attacks on behalf of the groups. He was initially a spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). In 2014, he left TTP after he had developed ideological differences with the TTP leadership following the appointment of Fazlullah as the leader of the group. He later co-founded Jamaat-ul-Ahrar and became its spokesman. In 2015, as a spokesman of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, he condemned Fazlullah-led Tehrik-e-Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar.
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) intelligence agency of Pakistan has been accused of being heavily involved in covertly running military intelligence programs in Afghanistan since before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The first ISI operation in Afghanistan took place in 1975. It was in "retaliation to Republic of Afghanistan's proxy war and support to the militants against Pakistan". Before 1975, ISI did not conduct any operation in Afghanistan and it was only after decade of Republic of Afghanistan's proxy war against Pakistan, support to militants and armed incursion in 1960 and 1961 in Bajaur that Pakistan was forced to retaliate. Later on, in the 1980s, the ISI in Operation Cyclone systematically coordinated the distribution of arms and financial means provided by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to factions of the Afghan mujahideen such as the Hezb-e Islami (HeI) of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud whose forces would later be known as the Northern Alliance. After the Soviet retreat, the different Mujahideen factions turned on each other and were unable to come to a power sharing deal which resulted in a civil war. The United States, along with the ISI and the Pakistani government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto became the primary source of support for Hekmatyar in his 1992–1994 bombardment campaign against the Islamic State of Afghanistan and the capital Kabul.
The Asian Tigers is an Afghan militant group, first publicised when they claimed credit for the kidnapping of former Pakistani intelligence officers Khalid Khawaja and Colonel Imam and British journalist Asad Qureshi and his driver - Rustam Khan - in March 2010. Khawaja was killed in April 2010. Qureshi and Khan were released in September 2010 after 165 days in captivity. Imam was killed in January 2011.
Chattal is a village located in Chak Malook union council of Chakwal District in the Punjab Province of Pakistan, it is part of Chakwal Tehsil. It is a village located approximately 9 km (5.6 mi) Chakwal, Punjab, Pakistan on the Chakwal-Jehlum road.