Usama bin Ladin’s “Father Sheikh”:

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converted to a guesthouse when Bin Ladin moved to Kandahar. 268 But even if the al‐ Qaìda leader created a permanent presence at Najm al‐Jihad that included several buildings, 269 the vast majority of the thousands of residents of the community had little or nothing to do with Bin <strong>Ladin’s</strong> organization. This distinction between part (al‐Qaìda compound) and whole (Khalis’s residential community) appears to be lost in some accounts; Guantánamo documents released by the U.S. government indicate that at least part of the U.S. intelligence community believes that “Nejim al Jihad [sic] was an al Qaida housing compound owned by <strong>Usama</strong> Bin Ladin that is occupied by al Qaida members and their families.” 270 It is possible that analysts made this assessment based on information that is unavailable to scholars, but on the surface it seems as though the larger history of Najm al‐Jihad is simply not well‐ known in the intelligence community. In the event that the equation of al‐Qaìda’s compound at Najm al‐Jihad with the entire community is accidental, then it is easy to imagine how any one of thousands of residents of the neighborhood could be construed as an al‐Qaìda operative or facilitator on the basis of this mistaken analytical synecdoche. The trouble is that although Khalis’s neighborhood is no longer commonly referred to as Najm al‐Jihad, it is not clear when the Jalalabad community ceased to use that name. If the locals stopped calling the housing development by its original name soon after ground was broken in construction, then perhaps the only part of the area known as Najm al‐Jihad in 1996 was the al‐Qaìda compound. Unlikely as this may be, only further investigation can uncover the way that this name was actually used in reference to Khalis’s town and the al‐Qaìda compound that apparently existed within its boundaries. No matter what people may call the neighborhood, it would be naive to ignore the political dimensions to the creation of Khalis’s new community. However, his housing 268 Abu Jandal (2005). 269 In his own notes Peter Bergen describes a large al‐Qaìda compound near Hadda outside Jalalabad. By definition, this must be at or near Najm al‐Jihad. See Bergen, 172. There is one outlier who describes an al‐ Qaìda compound north of Jalalabad, but this does not necessarily mean anything. The writer, ‘Abdurrahman Khadr, may be mistaken that the compound was north of Jalalabad or this could simply represent a second al‐Qaìda presence near the city. See Bergen, 173. 270 U.S. Department of Defense, 6. 58
development had relatively little in common with the more explicitly radicalized refugee camps in Pakistan that he and other mujahidin leaders had created during the Soviet‐Afghan War. 271 Unlike those wastelands of human suffering and political radicalization, Najm al‐Jihad and other postwar urban housing developments were intended to be permanent settlements. Khalis, Sayyaf and other Afghan leaders made various attempts to develop periurban property with mixed results. 272 There is no suggestion in any available source that Najm al‐Jihad was linked to Afghan mujahidin training camps before the arrival of al‐Qaìda in 1996. In fact, indirect evidence suggests that by 1996 Khalis was no longer the direct commander of a military force. 273 If this is the case, he had less clear need to continue indoctrinating and recruiting new jihadi fighters than other leaders who were still contesting control of large portions of the countryside, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud. Bin Ladin did stay in Yunus Khalis’s community at some point in 1996, 274 and he also left a guesthouse there after he moved to Kandahar. However, the al‐Qaìda leader himself did not remain very long at Najm al‐Jihad in the summer of 1996 before he travelled southwest to the mountains of Tora Bora. 271 One of the most famous of these is the Shamshatoo Camp of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Camps like Shamshatoo were much more than refugee camps. They acted as locations for the indoctrination/education, recruitment and training of fighters for the mujahidin parties. Shamshatoo may still act in this capacity as a site for recruiting young fighters for Hizb‐e Islami (Gulbuddin), and has come under scrutiny in both the popular media and the think tank community. See Ron Moreau. “The Jihadi High School.” (The Daily Beast: Newsweek. 2011 24‐April). http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/04/24/the‐jihadi‐high‐school.html; and Omid Marzban. “Shamshatoo Refugee Camp: A Base of Support for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.” (The Jamestown Foundation. 2007 24‐May). http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=4189. 272 Sayyaf’s housing development was built near Paghman. Some of this activity by Afghan elites was doubtless purely speculative and intended to generate revenue as the NATO presence and various NGOs arrived in the Taliban’s wake. It is not known to what extent this was also true in the case of Khalis, since the only current evidence is from the biographies and may be biased in his favor. In any event, these materials all cite the building of Najm al‐Jihad as a project with specific humanitarian goals. 273 Admittedly this evidence is mostly indirect. When actual military forces are mentioned in the biographies during this period, they are inevitably commanded by leaders like Engineer Mahmud or Hazrat ‘Ali and not by Khalis. For example, see Muhammad (2007), 97. By the end of 1997, Khalis’s health would have probably prevented him from participating in any kind of real battle as he had in the 1980s. He was suffering from a variety of illnesses by then, and around 1997 in an accident near his home he injured himself badly enough that he had to be evacuated for treatment to Saudi Arabia. See Muhammad (2007), 111–113. 274 Linschoten and Kuehn seem to cite al‐Masri when they claim that “the Arabs were initially placed in a guesthouse associated with Sayyaf,” but it is not clear what this means to us. See Linschoten and Kuehn, 136. Regardless of whether or not his entire group stayed with Sayyaf at some point, Bin Ladin appears to have been “hosted” by Khalis for part of the time they were in Nangarhar. 59
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Usama bin Ladin’s “Father Sheik
Page 3 and 4:
Author’s Acknowledgments This rep
Page 5 and 6:
Executive Summary The purpose of th
Page 7 and 8:
Three important Nangarhar‐based c
Page 9 and 10:
Map of Nangarhar Province and the S
Page 11 and 12:
Introduction The year 1996 was a wa
Page 13 and 14:
only known primary sources relate t
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Qaìda, which are less likely to ha
Page 17 and 18: violent jihadist organizations such
Page 19 and 20: Unfortunately, this is not quite hi
Page 21 and 22: Khalis’s involvement in print jou
Page 23 and 24: ideological interference, and he qu
Page 25 and 26: thus mirror larger divisions within
Page 27 and 28: founding member of the Hizb al‐Ta
Page 29 and 30: Daoud Khan’s 1973 Coup and the Mo
Page 31 and 32: There are good reasons to be doubtf
Page 33 and 34: Events would unfold dramatically ov
Page 35 and 36: distracted the mujahidin from direc
Page 37 and 38: Khalis’s Attempts to Cultivate Ji
Page 39 and 40: was shared between three men.” 14
Page 41 and 42: Evaluating Yunus Khalis’s Persona
Page 43 and 44: Taliban. In the absence of more inf
Page 45 and 46: direct contact with Yunus Khalis du
Page 47 and 48: facilitators were killed in late 19
Page 49 and 50: I heard something incredible from Y
Page 51 and 52: Many Western works on al‐Qaìda e
Page 53 and 54: Khalis’s most important commander
Page 55 and 56: new position. 202 They found an ide
Page 57 and 58: satisfied with the experience than
Page 59 and 60: Khalis and the Afghan Civil War For
Page 61 and 62: Given Din Muhammad’s obvious pro
Page 63 and 64: celebration of Sudanese independenc
Page 65 and 66: initiated project, 254 and there is
Page 67: It is impossible to discern Khalis
Page 71 and 72: the content, if not the tone and ex
Page 73 and 74: Mahmud to avoid acting until “the
Page 75 and 76: commanders like Haji Saz Nur, Jalal
Page 77 and 78: Conclusion As the United States and
Page 79 and 80: other leaders were motivated to end
Page 81 and 82: materials discussed so far are any
Page 83 and 84: wrote a biography of Yunus Khalis t
Page 85 and 86: Afghan Civil War. Hekmatyar is a pr
Page 87: since the death of Usama bin Ladin
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Usama bin Ladin’s “Father Sheikh”:

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