In 2001, in the weeks around the World Trade Centre attacks, a group of Afghan tribal leaders, commanders and senior Taliban regime figures met in Rome and Peshawar and agreed to work together under the banner of the ex King of Afghanistan with the objective of toppling the Taliban regime.  They would be led by the famed Resistance leader of the anti-Soviet war period, Abdul Haq. 

The plan would be financed by two American Republican brothers who had made their fortune on the Chicago options exchange. On the other side of the Atlantic, a private British contingent including a former head of the UK’s Special Boat Service, an ex marine turned tv cameraman and a British Baronet also recognized the potential of Abdul Haq’s plan and lobbied for it in Whitehall. The story of all these men, but most of all Abdul Haq, and the reasons he went into Afghanistan on a seemingly impetuous mission, only to be assassinated by the Taliban in October 2001, is told for the first time here by a British woman who experienced important events of the Afghan war first hand and who spent many months in Eastern Afghanistan in the months after the loss of bin Laden from Tora Bora.  She stayed with Haq’s remaining family, tribal leaders whom journalists had once dubbed ‘Resistance Royalty’ but who were now accused of drug dealing and who were a pariah to the international community, yet neither were they friends of Pakistan.  

This is the story of the Afghan solution to the Taliban, why the West thwarted that plan and what it means for NATO as it seeks to stabilize and exit from Afghanistan today.  

The book is now being distributed worldwide by Pluto Press (contact Marston for trade orders) and by Palgrave Macmillan in the USA. ISBN 978-0-9568449-0-3

 an insight into the Peace Plan that might have averted the conflict; something that western policy makers must be aware of as they seek to stabilise the situation and to extricate NATO forces from Afghanistan. A wonderful account … essential to understanding the history of this tragedy. 

- William Pfaff,  author of The Irony of Manifest Destiny: The Tragedy of America’s Foreign Policy and longtime columnist for the International Herald Tribune. 

The Afghan Solution is an important and revealing book. Lucy Morgan Edwards has written a rich and compelling account of how Abdul Haq might have saved Afghanistan – and what the West can still learn from his singular vision of a post-Taliban nation. 

- David Zucchino, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, The Los Angeles Times 

Lucy Morgan Edwards’ The Afghan Solution,is the finest biography of the brilliant Afghan commander, Abdul Haq, on the market today.  Her insightful, animated volume thoroughly documents the life of this renowned Afghan warrior, his person and his vision for Afghanistan—inclusive politics moored in the tribal jirga tradition of consensus coupled with uncompromising resistance to foreign dictation from any direction. She vividly describes Haq’s two decade long quest to fulfill his vision, on the battlefield and in negotiations with other Afghan leaders, including the powerful northern Afghan commander Ahmed Shah Masood. She details how the CIA and MI-6’s “naiveté (at best)” about Pakistan’s reliability as a strategic partner inAfghanistan undermined Haq’s efforts at every turn, to the benefit of anti-Western Afghan fanatics favored by Pakistan. Her book’s absorbing narrative draws on previously unpublished, uniquely qualified Afghan and foreign sources to tell the story of his tragic death, the legacy he has left behind, and its applicability to the present and to the future.

- Peter Tomsen, author of The Wars of Afghanistan and former US Ambassador to the Afghan resistance 1989-92

With US and UK military engagement in Afghanistan at a critical juncture, this book provides a timely reminder of the roads not taken and strategic options left unexplored. The cumulative effect constitutes a compelling indictment of state-building through external imposition. This book blends personal insights with a professional detachment and will appeal to the analyst, policymaker, practitioner and, not least, the decision-makers of tomorrow: the students of today. 

- Dr Graeme Herd, The Geneva Centre for Security Policy 

A deeply reported, well argued and deftly written account of the opportunities not taken since the fall of the Taliban. This important account is based on her own deep knowledge of Afghanistan; acquired as a journalist, EU diplomat and aid worker. It helps illuminate why the country is in its present mess. 

- Peter Bergen, author of The Longest War: the Enduring War between America and al Qaeda 

A fascinating insight into how political and territorial rivalry between Pakistan and Afghanistan is played out on the ground along the Durand Line; a British Colonial legacy that has plagued relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan since the latter’s creation. 

Baqer Moin, former Head of BBC’s Persian service and author of Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah 

This original and beautifully written book presents a case study in everything that western policymakers got so dreadfully wrong ahead of their Afghan adventure. It is vital reading for everyone who truly wants to understand this tragic conflict. 

- Peter Oborne, Political Editor, Daily Telegraph  and author of The Triumph of the Political Class 

By far the best account of Afghanistan during the period that I have read. It combines the pace of a page-gripping thriller with the insights of travel writing and political journalism at their best. There were times when I felt that I could smell and taste eastern Afghanistan. 

- Conor Foley, author of The Thin Blue Line:  How Humanitarianism went to War

An American businessman who has been assisting and lobbying for Haq around US Gov called this morning and believes that following an initial interest with Haq – which still exists – the hawks have won with their plan to attack and remove the Taliban with coalition forces. Though there is no other source for this alarmist scenario it could explain the latency with which Haq has been treated. 

I need hardly add that the Pashtun response will be one to unite and “all will be against the foreigner”. The Haq option will be dead in 

the water and the US could well be in for a Soviet experience. In the Islamic world it would be a disaster. 

‘Words from Washington’, sitrep, October 2001

INTRODUCTION

Tera Mangal, Afghanistan, 25 October 2001

‘Al humdullilah, we’ve caught the American and British agents!’ they heard the man say in a thick, Arabic accent, and knew the Taliban were upon them.  It was around ten pm and they were in the place named Tera Mangal, crouching on scree slopes dwarfed between slabs of vertical rock face which reached thousands of metres high.

Their Taliban captors moved out of the darkness and faced Abdul Haq.

Some minutes earlier, when the group first realised the Taliban were close, Haq had instructed his men to sit apart from one another so they would not all be seen.  They had left their weapons back in Hezarac village after lunch with the elders and now had nothing with which to defend themselves.  As early as that afternoon, when the Taliban were in each of the four narrow Passes that met high in the Hezarac valley, it had been obvious to them there was no way out of the narrow incline.

The steepness of the slope meant Haq had been forced to dismount the pony.  He leant against the animal, breathing hard.  Despite being known as the ‘Lion of Kabul’ for orchestrating tactically brilliant operations against the Soviet regime during the 1980s, tonight Abdul Haq seemed spent.  The situation was clearly hopeless.  He couldn’t move fast and decided to give himself up before they saw the others.

The Arab cocked his Kalashnikov as the three other Talibs moved forward, their dark turbans momentarily silhouetted against the moon.  They were nervous, undecided as to what they were about to do. Three had their arms held high, intending to stop the Arab firing.

‘Move, go!’ the Arab screamed as Abdul Haq stepped forward from the shadow, still holding the pony by its bridle.

‘I need the pony, I can’t walk without my prosthetic,’ Haq said and his voice, normally steady, wavered. 

When I heard this story over three years later, in January 2005, I was told that the reason Haq could not walk was because his prosthetic was actually broken.  He had lost his foot to a landmine during his quest to eject the Soviets from Afghanistan during the 1980s.    

But that night in October 2001 the Talibs weren’t listening.   The pony was called for. He was helped onto the beast and led away, along with two of his commanders.  Minutes later, thirteen shots were fired.

This was the capture of Abdul Haq as recounted to me, in Sarobi, by Aga Jan: the man who had been with him on this last mission, as well as countless others during the anti-Soviet jihad.  There were varying accounts of what happened next.  One was that Haq was tortured and shot in Rishicoor barracks in Kabul; the other, more credible, version was that a day later, the car carrying Haq from Hezarac reached Logar, on the outskirts of Kabul.  A second vehicle – this one carrying the Taliban Interior Minister, Mullah Razzaq – sped towards it, from the city centre.   And there, on a piece of tarmac in the open air, Razzaq grabbed a Kalashnikov from his bodyguard.  Seconds later, the man Afghans knew as the ‘Lion of Kabul’ was shot dead. 

***

On 5 October 2001, the London Evening Standard reported a veteran commander of the 1980s Soviet jihad calling for George Bush’s imminent bombing campaign of Afghanistan to be delayed.  The commander, whose name was Abdul Haq, needed time, he said, to implement his plan for an internal, peaceful toppling of the Taliban.

‘ Every time I meet commanders who cross the mountains in darkness to brief me,’ he said, ‘they are part of the Taliban forces, but they no longer support them.  These men will join us and there are many of them.  When the time is right they and others will rise up and this Taliban Government will be swept aside.[i]’ 

Haq went on to add:  ‘The people are starving, they are already against them.’

But his voice, so authoritative when visiting Reagan and Thatcher to call for more support to the mujahideen during the Soviet war, was barely heard in the aftermath of September 11.  The bombing started and Abdul Haq began his perilous mission.  Two weeks later, on 25 October 2001, he was dead. 

In November 2001, after his death, Abdul Haq’s obituaries were dismissive, even overtly condemning.  Not only was the manner of his death questioned but so too was his life and, implicit to that, his ‘value’.  When the New York Times described him demeaningly as ‘a middle aged man on a mule’ or a ‘privately financed freelancer trying to overthrow the Taliban’ the implication was that there should be nothing to regret about his loss.  In London, an unattributed piece in Private Eye added snidely, ‘Like so many erstwhile terrorists, Haq managed to reinvent himself as a “moderate” and a “peacemaker” – so successfully that his murderous exploits were entirely omitted from every single obituary’.   

Other pieces begged to differ and one, written by a cultural anthropologist and former US Diplomat to Afghanistan, had a different take on the story:

To hear them talk in Washington and Islamabad, you’d think there was some doubt.  In fact, you’d think his death no great loss.  Listen carefully.  It’s scared talk, the kind of stuff you hear from bureaucrats whose backsides are exposed.Abdul Haq, they rush to insist, was on a mission of his own.  Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t.  Either way, it’s shameful to demean him.

He added:

 There is some doubt about how the man died and where and when. We know he was ‘questioned’ and then executed. But was it by hanging with his body then used for swaying small-arms target practice, or was he shot in cold blood in a prison courtyard?  It was in eastern Afghanistan – but Jalalabad or Kabul?  It was two weeks ago – but late Thursday or early Friday? There’s some doubt about who sent him and who betrayed him.  There could even be confusion about his name were it not so well known: 

 'Born Hamayoun Arsala 44 years ago, he became “Abdul Haq” – Servant of Justice – in the crucible of our Cold War’s most decisive battleground.’