Charismatic, crafty leader the skyjackers want released

WHAT MADE Ismail Khan unusual as an Afghan leader was not so much his undoubted skill in military command as the unswerving loyalty he commanded.

He looked every inch the Messiah, and his followers for their part quite clearly adored him.

I last saw Khan, whom the Stansted hijackers want released as part of their demands, shortly before the Taliban overran the north-west of Afghanistan and took him prisoner. Little has been heard of him since.

At the time, he and his tiny army were planning a counterattack on the north-western city of Herat, his home town, from where they had recently been driven by the Taliban, the Muslim fundamentalist militia which now controls 90 per cent of the country. The helicopter which ferried me to his headquarters in the Morghab Valley was perilously stacked with Iranian-made landmines.

I spotted him waiting for this important consignment even before the helicopter landed: a big man in a white jalaba and a flowing white beard, standing nobly against the downbeat of the helicopter blades, in contrast to the heavily armed but crouching Mujahedin who clustered around him. His courage and wiliness in resisting the Soviet invaders are legend in Afghanistan. Meeting him in the flesh did not disappoint.

He took me to his headquarters, a ruined farmhouse surrounded by fields of tall grass and poppies, where we squatted over glasses of tea. "Three hundred of my boys have vowed to fight the Talibs with their last drop of blood," he told me, before explaining the Koranic concept of "amanat".

He said: "Those that die here will be buried where they fall, but later we will disinter them and take them to Herat."

Few other fighters can expect to receive such treatment from their commanders. When a man like Ismail Khan issues such an order, his twinkly eyes exuding calm and authority, one tends instinctively to believe him. In early 1997 Khan was a part of a disparate anti- Taliban alliance, comprising Communists, Mujahedin, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazara Shi'ites. From his talk, and his plan to launch a unilateral counterattack on Herat, it was clear that he trusted no one but the people of Herat province, whom he once governed.

"Heratis are enlightened, good people, different from the rest of the country," he said. "They will rise and support us as we advance."

Perhaps it was his faith in the Herati character that undid him. In the summer of 1997, using a tactic that served them well both before and since in their campaign to conquer Afghanistan, the Taliban used bribery to split the already shaky northern alliance. Within 48 hours they had swept eastwards across the plains to capture both Khan and the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, the headquarters of the opposition.

Khan was spirited away to a jail in Kandahar, at the other end of the country in the Taliban heartland. There has been little or no news of him since. Many had assumed him to be dead: in the past, the Talibs have not hesitated to dispatch enemies whom they know could be dangerous to them. But the hijackers seem to know otherwise.

Copyright 2000
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