Fazul’s military quest lands him in Afghanistan

While studying in Pakistan, I yearned to learn more about the Afghan issue from some Talibans who were my classmates.

I did not hide my wish to go to Afghanistan. I always asked them about the way to get there, but they did not give me a satisfactory answer. Comoran brethren who were organising a programme for Jihad in Afghanistan told me that the Taliban — Afghan university students in Pakistan — went to the country during the holidays for combat and training and then returned to resume their education.

I told an Afghan brother, Abd-al-Hafiz, that I was available and could go on the next holiday, but he told me that permission was granted by the university president.

The university administration was comprised of Hanafi followers of the Diyubandi sect, and they did not object strongly to those who wanted to join the Jihad. However, they were strongly inclined towards preaching the message of Islam. They organised students during the holidays to go to Rawalpindi, Pakistan, to attend international meetings, held annually, to spread the call.

I continued to study, but my mind was preoccupied with Afghanistan. Three months after enrolling at the university, we sat for the exams and closed for the holidays.

Every student began talking about their plans for the holidays and they kept on asking me where I was going to spend mine.

I was frank with them. I told them that I wanted to go to Afghanistan.

I always wondered how my mother would feel when she heard that I opted for the religious university when she wanted me to take modern studies. Even worse, how would she react if she heard that I was going to go to Afghanistan when I had not stayed even one year in Pakistan!

Once I heard other students say that news of my decision had reached the president, I asked them if I committed a crime by wishing to go to Afghanistan to aid Muslim brethren.

But with Allah’s grace, the president understood the issue and told me that I could go after getting my mother’s permission.

And in fact, there was no need to ask for permission because my true intention was to get military training. It is a duty for which no permission is required.

It was very cold in Karachi when we met at the bus stop to board a bus to Peshawar, a 36-hour trip. We got the final instructions from Abu-Jafar, and they were as follows:

“The Amir (leader) must be listened to and obeyed during the trip. Nobody should take a photo alone. At police checkpoints, only the Amir speaks. Everybody must take up an alias (or an ‘Abu’ name). Nobody should be called by his true name”.

At this point, I truly felt that I was in a new phase of my life because I like adventure and risk.

I remembered those movies in which one’s name is changed numerous times. The difference here is that the alias is for Allah’s cause. I was thinking about the alias to take. I wanted an alias that had significance to my life.

My colleagues picked up their aliases fast. I recalled my grandfather Fadil and decided to take up the alias Abu-al-Fadl al-Qamari. This means I took up the alias of the Prophet’s uncle and got close to the name of my grandfather Fadil Husayn.

We arrived in the Pakistani city of Peshawar in the evening. We then headed for Bayt al-Ansar, a Mujahidin general guest house, hosting Mujahidin of all nationalities while organising them according to training wishes.

Not strangers

There were numerous camps to join. What is most important is that we arrived in Bayt al-Ansar safely and found brother Abu Muthanna al Qamari (the Comoran Abu al-Muthanna) who was the Mosque preacher. He was an educated young man who studied at the Medina University Shariah College.

As such, we were not strangers in the arena because we had veteran brethren who prepared the atmosphere for us before our arrival. Everybody respected us.

Aid at the time came from Muslim governments, which supported the Mujahidin on the orders of the Americans. After defeat in Vietnam in the 1970s, the Americans found in Afghanistan an arena to take revenge on the Russians and to stop their encroachment of the oil-rich Gulf states.

Throughout the week, international flights were jammed with Mujahidin coming from the Gulf states. On the commands of their masters — the Americans — those governments facilitated everything for the Mujahidin.

Whenever a brother arrived in the hands of the Mujahidin, his connection with any government was severed. And even if he was a spy, he could not obtain much information about the Islamic groups in the Jihad arena.

In the 1990s the city of Peshawar was illuminated with the early crop of Mujahidin and the natives viewed them as heroes irrespective of whether they were foreign or Arab.

Guest houses spread throughout all parts of the city, some of them belonging to Islamic groups fighting inside Pakistan, some to Islamic humanitarian organisations and yet others to foreign students who were only content with military training.

It was easy to get into the guest houses on the mere recommendation of any Shaykh or brother known in the Jihad arena.

The security at the guest house was not properly organised. An Afghan team guarded the house while an armed gateman opened the gate for guests and searching them. The guards focused on Afghans and Pakistanis.

No ID card system existed until after the first Jihad era against the Russians. The guest houses were known even to intelligence agencies like the CIA and the KGB.

The guest houses mushroomed to a point where every nationality set up its own and got financial support from the Mujahidin and donors. Even we, the Comorans, who were considerably few, had a guest house by the name Bayt al-Arqam.

There were also guest houses for Eritreans, Algerians, Libyans and Tunisians. Even some Saudi Government loyalists set up their own.

However, the best known of these guest houses were Bayt al-Ansar and Bayt al-Salam. Al-Qaeda had influence in both houses. There were also border guest houses, set up at the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which were also under al-Qaeda control.

Because our brethren in Lahore were not ready yet, we stayed at Bayt al-Ansar for nearly three days, eating the best food and sleeping like kings. Had we known what was ahead of us, we would have eaten more and slept more.

Anyhow, we had to wait for more people to come from the Gulf and Muslim countries so that we could travel together as a convoy.

We were still in the exalted month of Sha’ban, the first month of the year 1991 when the Gulf was aflame with events. We travelled in three buses. But because we didn’t know much about Afghanistan, we thought that we were already in the country whenever we saw Pakistani tribal men carrying their weapons along the route. The driver kept on pointing out to us that we were still in Pakistan.

All Pakistani intelligence authorities knew who we were, what we wanted and where we were going. Pakistani policemen and armed pro-government Pakistani tribes greeted us like heroes and were most happy to see us. We were called the Arab Mujahidin at the time. We were not yet terrorists in the malicious US terminology — we were heroes, Mujahidin and principled people.

All of the world’s media described the Afghan Mujahidin and their Arab brethren. Lectures on Afghan Jihad were heard in mosques throughout the world, including the United States and Europe.

Have we forgotten the famous event embodied in American President Ronald Reagan’s meeting with Afghan Mujahidin and his concluding joint agreements on the Afghan issue?