Comrades speak of abandonment in Afghan opposition leader's last daring mission

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER
Associated Press Writer

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Grizzled comrades-in-arms of slain Afghan guerrilla Abdul Haq gathered at his family's home on Sunday to pay their respects and weep over what they saw as their old commander's abandonment by the United States.

Haq had ventured back into Afghanistan on a maverick mission to encourage defections among the ruling Taliban. Instead, he was captured and – despite a last-minute rescue attempt by U.S. warplanes – was executed on Friday as a spy.

"We all hate America, all of us," said Dad Mohammed, a one-legged Afghan war veteran, wiping tears off his face. "They always want to use us and our people, and then they abandon us."

Haq's mission ended early Friday in an Afghan mountain canyon, where Taliban forces ambushed, surrounded and captured him. The Taliban say they executed him and two companions within hours, under a religious edict authorizing death for U.S. spies.

After initially saying they would turn over the corpse of the outgoing, heavyset 43-year-old ex-guerrilla to his family in Pakistan, the Taliban told relatives Sunday that they had buried the body in his home village of Surkhrud, in Taliban territory.

Sunday, a week to the day after Haq's mission started, relatives and other Afghan exiles across the border in Peshawar mourned his death and vowed to continue the fight.

"This does not make us afraid," Haq's older brother, Hajji din Mohammed, told Afghan opposition leaders and others who trickled into the family compound to offer prayers.

"We lost our brother, but our war will persevere," din Mohammed said. "We renew our promise to fight for Afghanistan, and the people of Afghanistan."

Despite the brave words, the death of Haq dealt a major blow to the opposition cause – cowing both the opposition in exile, and likely any Taliban thinking of switching sides.

While condemning his hanging, one of the leading political figures of the Afghan opposition made a point of describing Haq's attempt repeatedly as "a solo act.'

"I told him, 'Don't do it,"' Sayed Ahmad Gailani said, adding he believed he had talked Haq out of his mission after the ex-guerrilla leader described it to him in general terms.

"The problems of Afghanistan are bigger than the capacity of one person to be able to handle," said Gailani, the popular leader of a coalition of opposition groups, and often mentioned as a potential chief in any post-Taliban government.

"It takes concerted, orchestrated action" to avoid Haq's fate, Gailani said.

In interviews with reporters and conversations with colleagues, Haq said he believed he could get a hearing from former war comrades now in the Taliban's higher echelons.

Like many others, he thought it would take a fellow Pashtun to rally opposition among the Pashtun-majority Afghan people. Opposition in Afghanistan now is based in the north and made up mainly of Afghanistan's minority Tajiks and Uzbeks.

U.S. officials say they neither endorsed nor supported Haq's mission, simply wished him good luck. But like Haq, the United States has sorely wished for opposition to emerge to the Taliban on their own territory.

Three weeks of U.S.-led bombing, while incurring civilian casualties that have increased anger here and in Afghanistan, have failed either to break Taliban control of Afghanistan or spur top defections.

After his capture, U.S. officials lauded Haq's aims.

"Throughout his life, this gentleman has been a voice for the establishment of broad-based government for his country," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday, before word of his death was confirmed.

On Sunday, Mohammed, the veteran, recalled how he and Haq fought against Afghanistan's Soviet occupiers in the 1980s, when Mohammed was a teen-ager. Now a wrinkled, stooped and graying 36, he said Haq had recently warned him to be ready for a new call to arms.

If he could, Mohammed said, he would follow his comrade into Afghanistan and avenge his death.

"If I did not have this," he said, gesturing at his artificial leg, "I would wrap myself in bombs and go kill."

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