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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Profile of Nek Mohammad |
| 2004-06-19 |
| Published before his death. EFL Nek was trained in the cauldron of battle. During the early 1980s, his formative years, Wana served as the staging post for mujahideen forays into a large swath of Afghan territory from Zabul to Paktia. The town swarmed with CIA and ISI agents who recruited and trained tribal youth, arranged supplies and planned attacks. The Arab mujahideen, meanwhile, had already built concrete bunkers in the Shkai and Nawe Ada areas near Wana as Middle Eastern mosque funds poured into the region by the millions to spawn a phenomenal increase in the number of religious seminaries. A new generation of ideologically indoctrinated and combat-trained militants was being readied to bring the world under the bannerflag of the so-called Darul Islam. Nek’s father Nawaz Khan was a man of few means. Joining one of the new-look seminaries for education was therefore an obvious choice for Nek, the second eldest among his siblings. "Nek never had an intellectual mind but some other traits of his personality became evident during his stay at the Darul Uloom," recalls one of his teachers, requesting anonymity. "He showed himself to be a hard-headed boy, endowed with an impenetrable soul and an obstinate determination to carry out his will no matter how mindless it might be." The episode of Nek’s expulsion from and subsequent readmission into the Darul Uloom during his early years is widely known in Wana. Incensed over something that no one seems to remember, Nek once refused to recite his lessons in class. In line with the usual practice, the teacher Maulana Deen Mohammad began hitting him across his palms with a stick. As Nek persisted in his defiance, the teacher became furious and started rapping him on the hips. This offended Nek who picked up his books and walked out of class in a manner that was construed as a threat that he might return with a lethal weapon to get even with the teacher. Though people in Wana are reluctant to get into the details of the incident, some elders had to apparently intervene in the matter and bring Nek back to the school in peace. Between school and jihad, Nek appears to have made several false starts. Some time in the early 1990s, he was involved in an abortive car-lifting attempt and was nearly caught by the police. Together with a couple of friends, he hijacked a pickup from Dera Ismail Khan and tried taking it to the Punjab but was intercepted by the police just across the bridge on the Indus River. Nek and his friends escaped from the scene, leaving the pickup behind. For his part, Nek asserts that the incident was motivated by a grudge he held against the vehicle owner rather than any criminal intentions of making a profit. Information about Nek’s early military career with the Taliban remains sketchy at best. Did he receive formal training in guerrilla warfare at one of several training camps run at the time by the al-Qaeda as well as other militant organisations in Afghanistan and Pakistan? "I don’t think so," says one Yargulkhel tribesman who has been with Nek at close quarters. "He does not have the patience [to receive training]." But he did distinguish himself as a worthy fighter in the field. Information gathered by the Herald shows that he stuck with Mohammad Gul’s group for several years and fought on many difficult fronts across southern and southwestern Afghanistan. During the late 1990s, Nek commanded the Waziristani fighters at Bagram airbase, the Panjshir front line in Bamiyan, Mazar Sharif, Takhar as well as Badghis, the venues for some of the bloodiest battles that the Taliban fought against Ahmad Shah Masoud’s Northern Alliance. Nek was first exposed to the influence of foreign fighters when he was a sub-commander at Kargha. During this period, the former Russian garrison of Rishkhor in the southern suburbs of Kabul was converted into an al-Qaeda training camp. At Kargha and Rishkhor, the likes of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawaheri were frequent visitors and men such as Jalaluddin Haqqani, Saifullah Mansoor and Riaz Basra rubbed shoulders with the chief of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan Djumma Namangani, his deputy Tahir Yuldashev and the Chinese Uighur militant Hasan Mahsun. But Nek had to wait until the spring of 2002 before he would meet the stalwarts of this elite club of Islamic fighters at close quarters. Uprooted from the Shahikot mountains in the wake of the US-led Operation Anaconda, thousands of Arab, Central Asian and Chechen fighters needed an exit route or sanctuary and Nek soon rose to become their chief contact in Wana. As jihadi venues shrank, a lot of the earmarked funds started pouring into Wana, giving the cash-starved tribal mujahideen a fleshy bone to fight over. The Taliban leadership had gone underground and their military structure was crumbling. In the resulting vacuum, a number of groups started competing for funds in Wana. Nek led his own group while brothers Mohammad Sharif and Noor Islam ganged up with Maulvi Nur Abbas under commander Mullah Nazir. Commander Javed, another Ahmadzai soldier of fortune, ran a separate group. For two years, these groups vied with each other for the hefty al-Qaeda doleouts and developed some serious differences with each other that at times threatened to spill out in public. Yet his ability to roam free in the Wana region is not due to al-Qaeda support alone. Observers are baffled over the army’s lack of intelligence concerning matters that are common knowledge in Wana. "Everyone knows that Taliban commanders Jalaluddin Haqqani and Mullah Dadullah were in Wana in April to hold a meeting with Nek and other groups," comments one observer in Wana. "It is also common knowledge that Tahir Yuldashev was asked to appoint a new commander for South Waziristan in order to forestall infighting between the mujahideen groups. But ask the authorities and they know nothing." Credible sources believe the intelligence failure that led to military casualties during the Kalosha operation was also a ruse. "Nek is a great fighter but he is not bigger than Islamabad or even the camp office in Wana. If he is standing tall against the receding shadow of the corps commander Peshawar, there has to be something more than al-Qaeda behind him." |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #6 He had a soul? |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2004-06-19 11:52:55 PM |
| #5 a hard-headed boy, endowed with an impenetrable soul clearly stolen from a Robert Johnson blues song |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-06-19 9:14:05 PM |
| #4 Guess that hard head wasn't hard enough to be missile proof. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2004-06-19 8:18:02 PM |
| #3 "He showed himself to be a hard-headed boy, endowed with an impenetrable soul A heart of DU. Sounds like a sabot penetratror. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-06-19 7:36:56 PM |
| #2 "He showed himself to be a hard-headed boy, endowed with an impenetrable soul and an obstinate determination to carry out his will no matter how mindless it might be." I do not think thta 'endowed' is the right word. Maybe the above mentioned characteristics should be placed in the "foible" column. Basically, in Fred's words, "He was not wired to Code." |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2004-06-19 6:39:28 PM |
| #1 "He showed himself to be a hard-headed boy, endowed with an impenetrable soul and an obstinate determination to carry out his will no matter how mindless it might be." I do not think thta 'endowed' is the right word. Maybe the above mentioned characteristics should be placed in the "foible" column. Basically, in Fred's words, "He was not wired to Code." |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2004-06-19 6:39:09 PM |