Usama bin Ladin’s “Father Sheikh”:

Daoud Khan’s 1973 Coup and the Movement of Mujahidin Leaders to Pakistan
The consequences of Daoud’s leftist coup in 1973 have been far‐reaching, but the
immediate result was a dramatic crackdown on the Islamic resistance. Within a year
many activists had been arrested, including Professor Ghulam Niazi and Yunus
Khalis’s eldest son, Mawlawi Muhammad Nasim. 96 Muhammad Nasim had evidently
drawn attention to himself by publicly denouncing a leftist sermon delivered by the
governor of Balkh during a Friday prayer service in 1973, and within a few days Nasim
was arrested. 97 Both he and Professor Ghulam Niazi would eventually die in prison. 98
Unsurprisingly, Yunus Khalis was also being hunted by the government, and he fled to
Peshawar in 1974. 99
David Edwards reports that Yunus Khalis kept a low profile in his initial years around
Peshawar. 100 Khalis was probably careful as long as his son was alive in prison and
much of his family remained in Afghanistan, but the case for his lack of political activity
at the time can be overstated. While he did not make a play for leadership of Jami’at‐e
Islami or the Muslim Youth, Khalis was an active participant in one of the first
gatherings of the key mujahidin leadership in exile.
In 1974 Burhanuddin Rabbani invited a group of mujahidin leaders to his home in a
suburb of Peshawar for a conference. 101 The list of leaders in attendance is impressive:
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Yunus Khalis, Mawlawi Jamil al‐Rahman, 102 Qazi Amin
the KGB was involved, it seems very likely that this was a political assassination given Gahiz’s known
antileftist political publications and agitation.
96 Ahmadzai, 30–31.
97 Ahmadzai, 30–31.
98 Niazi was briefly released in 1973 after Daoud’s coup, but he was later rearrested and died in prison.
99 Ahmadzai, 32.
100 See Edwards (2002), 247–248.
101 Muhammad (2007), 33–35.
102 Jamil al‐Rahman met occasionally with Khalis, and although Din Muhammad claims that Jamil al‐
Rahman was one of the founding members of Hizb‐e Islami (Khalis), it seems likely that Jamil al‐Rahman
was more closely involved with Hekmatyar. Habib al‐Rahman, a former commander for Jamil al‐
Rahman, claims that Jamil al‐Rahman was involved with Hizb‐e Islami (Gulbuddin) until 1984 when he
cut his ties to all of the mujahidin parties and went home. Some time later (around 1988) Jamil al‐
Rahman created the party known as “Jama’at al‐Da’wa ila al‐Sunna wal‐Qur’an” (The Society of
Invitation to the Sunna and the Qur’an). It was with this Jama’at al‐Da’wa party that Jamil al‐Rahman
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