Abdul Rasul Sayyaf

Ustad Abdul Rabi Rasul Sayyaf
Born 1946 (age 62–63)
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf (left) during anti-Soviet struggle in Jaji, Paktia Province, Afghanistan in August 1984
Nickname	Abdul Rasul Sayyaf[1] Abd-i-Rab Rasoul Sayaf Abdul Rabb Rasoul Sayyaf Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf
Place of birth	Afghanistan
Rank	Commander
Other work	Sayyaf is as of 2007 an influential lawmaker and has called for an amnesty of former mujahideen.[2]

Ustad Abdul Rabi Rasul Sayyaf^[3] (Arabic: عبد رب الرسول سیاف‎, b. 1946, Paghman Valley, Afghanistan) is an Afghan Islamist politician. He took part in the war against the PDPA government in the 1980s, leading the Mujahedin faction Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan.

During the war, he received patronage from Arab sources and mobilized Arab volunteers for the Mujahedin forces. Sayyaf is said to have been the one who first invited Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan, after bin Laden's 1996 expulsion from Sudan by the otherwise sympathetic Sudanese régime under Saudi, Egyptian, and American pressure.^[4]

In 2005, Sayyaf's Ittehad-al-Islami (or Islamic Union) was converted into the political party, the Islamic Dawah Organisation of Afghanistan. He has been considered a member of the Northern Alliance,^[5] despite his close relationship with militant groups that opposed it. He has also been accused of betraying the Northern Alliance's leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, by having knowingly assisted two assassins in killing him.^[1]

Biography

Sayyaf is fluent in Arabic and holds a degree in religion from Kabul University and a masters from the illustrious Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. He has been described as "a big, beefy man with fair skin and a thick gray beard." Sayyaf is reported to be approximately six feet three in height and weigh 250 pounds. "He usually wears a white skullcap or a large turban, and a traditional Afghan shalwar kameez, a tunic with loose pants."^[1]

Sayyaf was a member of the Afghan-based Ikhwan al-Muslimin, founded in 1969 by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Dr. Burhanuddin Rabbani and having strong links to the original and much larger Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Ustad (Professor) Abdul was a professor at a small Islamic university called The Shariat in Kabul until 1973, when he plotted with Burhanuddin Rabbani, Ahmed Shah Massoud, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to overthrow President Daoud Khan from the Panjshir Valley. The coup failed and he was forced to flee to Pakistan^[3] but was arrested when he returned.^{[citation needed]}

Being imprisoned by the Communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) in April, 1978, he was freed in controversial circumstances by the second PDPA leader Hafizullah Amin, who, coincidentally, happened to be Sayyaf's distant relative.^{[citation needed]} Although, by virtue of him being incarcerated, and, consequently not arriving in Peshawar until 1980, until after the actual Soviet intervention, he was recognized by the Pakistanis as the leader of the Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan (Ittihad-i-Islami Baraye Azadi Afghanistan), a coalition of several parties fighting the Soviet and Afghan government forces. The Islamic Union soon imploded, and Sayyaf retained the name as the title of his own organization.

Sayyaf fought against Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s, and was generously financed and apparently favoured by Saudi Arabia, seemingly due to his close religious affinities with the Wahhabist Saudi Royal and religious establishment and abovementioned excellent command of the Arabic language. During jihad against Soviets he formed a close relationship with Osama bin Laden.^[6] Together in the Jalalabad area they established a training camp network, later used by Al-Qaeda personnel, with bunkers and emplacements.^{[citation needed]} In 1981, Sayyaf formed and headed the Ittihad-i-Islami Baraye Azadi Afghanistan , or Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan. In 1985, he founded a university in an Afghan refugee camp near Peshawar called Dawa'a al-Jihad, (Convert and Struggle), which has been described the "preeminent school for terrorism." Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who masterminded the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, attended it.

Despite his growing wealth, he continued to live a spartan life, avoiding modern conveniences like mattresses and air conditioning; although he enjoyed a nightly game of tennis.^[7]

During the post-war period, Sayyaf retained his training camps, using them for militarily training and indoctrinating new recruits to fight in Islamic-backed conflicts such as Chechnya, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in the Southern Philippines, where his name inspired the Abu Sayyaf group. Also, in these camps, Sayyaf trained and mentored the soon-to-be-infamous, Kuwaiti-born, future Al-Qaeda operative and senior commander, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, after being introduced by the latter's brother, Zahid, during the Afghan Jihad in 1987.

Afghan Civil war

After the forced withdrawal of the demoralised Soviet forces in 1989, and the overthrow of the Mohammad Najibullah regime in 1992, Sayyaf's organization's human rights record became noticeably worse, underlined by their involvement in the infamous massacres and rampages in the Hazara Kabul neighbourhood of Afshar.^[8] Sayyaf is known to be a vituperative opponent of the like-minded Taliban movement, which is the reason he joined the Northern Alliance, despite his aforementioned religious and ideological affinities with them.

In 1993, during the Afghan civil war, Sayyaf's faction was responsible for, "repeated human butchery", when his faction of Mujahideen turned on the Shi'ite Muslim minority groups.^[1] Amnesty International reported that Sayyaf's forces rampaged through Afshar, .^[9]

Constitutional Loya Jirga

In 2003 Sayyaf was elected one of 502 representatives at the Constitutional Loya Jirga in Kabul, chairing one of the working groups. Originally wanted Loya Jirga intended to divide the 502 delegates randomly among 10 working groups, but Sayyaf objected, suggesting delegates be divided among the groups to ensure equal distribution of professional expertise, provincial origin, gender and other criteria. "Those who know the constitution, the ulema [Islamic scholars], and the lawyers should be split into different groups so that the results of the discussion and debate will be positive, and closer to each other," said Sayyaf.

Abdul Sayyaf's influence in the convention was felt further when his ally Fazal Hadi Shinwari was appointed by Hamid Karzai as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, in violation of the constitution, as Fazal was over the age limit and trained only in religious, not secular, law. Shinwari packed the Supreme Court with sympathetic mullahs, called for Taliban-style punishments and renewed Taliban's dreaded Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, renamed the Ministry of Haj and Religious Affairs. It deployed squads to prevent public displays of "un-Islamic" behavior among Afghan women.^{[citation needed]}

9/11 Commission Report

The 9/11 Commission Report mentions that Sayyaf was a mentor to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, chief manager of the "planes operation" which culminated in the quadruple hijackings of September 11, 2001.^[10] Somewhat ironically, the report also mentions on page 149 that "Sayyaf was close to Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance. Therefore working with him might [have been] a problem for KSM because bin Laden was building ties to the rival Taliban." Sayyaf allegedly arranged the interview in which Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated raising suspicion he was involved in killing Ahmad Shah Massoud.^[1]

Abu Sayyaf group

In Kathy Gannon's "I is for Infidel, From Holy War to Holy Terror: 18 Years in Afghanistan," Gannon mentions the Abu Sayyaf group, a Philippine terrorist organization, "was named for him by its founder Abdurajak Janjalani. Janjalani was a student and a disciple of his who received military training from him." Jon Lee Anderson of The New Yorker^[1] also mentions that "when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 and many of the foreign jihadis moved on, a group of Ittihad members—some of them native Filipinos and some of them Arabs—formed the Abu Sayyaf terrorist organization in the Philippines".

Presently

As of 2007, Sayyaf is an influential lawmaker and has called for an amnesty for former mujahideen,^[2] as well as pushing for a bill that would prevent from Mujaheddin from being charged with war crimes, upsetting groups that hold him responsible for thousands of civilian deaths himself.^[7]

References