Here's a story on our hapless erstwhile ally, the late Abdul Haq:

[size=4]Haq 'sent frantic SOS message'[/size=4]
Islamabad |By Shahid Hussein | 28-10-2001

Executed anti-Taliban commander Abdul Haq agreed to return after U.S. and Pakistan approached him to undertake a mission to lure important Pashtuns to rebel against the Taliban and join the political process to form a broad-based government under former king Zahir Shah to replace the Taliban, sources said yesterday.

He embarked on the fateful mission on October 21, entering Afghanistan from the northern Pakistani town of Parachinar along with a band of helpers. Haq and his companions travelled on horses.

He soon reported back that his efforts were making good progress and he would be able to muster support from as many as hundred influential people from different Pashtun clans including his own Ahmedzai tribe.

On Thursday Haq sent a frantic message for help from Kasarik, his ancestral village in Logar province adjacent to eastern Ningarhar region, of which Jalalabad is the capital.

He informed that he feared the Taliban were after him and requested an emergency rescue attempt. A helicopter was immediately sent but before it reached the site Haq had already been ambushed and arrested by the Taliban intelligence, the sources said, adding that the attempt was abandoned and the aircraft was recalled.

A few days before leaving for Afghanistan, Haq said in an interview shown on an international network that bombings from the air would fail to change the situation in Afghanistan.

He had suggested that Zahir Shah should publicly announce he would return and then enter Afghanistan with a security force to assume control.

Soon after the news of his arrest Haq's brother and son, who live in Peshawar in northwest Pakistan, appealed to the Taliban to release the former mujahideen commander, saying he had gone unarmed into Afghanistan on a peace mission.

But the Taliban quickly tried and executed him and his eight companions, warning that any other Afghans colluding with the U.S. would be nabbed and eliminated. Analyst Riffat Hussain described Haq's killing as a "huge blow" to the efforts aimed at gaining Pashtun support against the Taliban regime.

"Haq was the point man and had been backed by Pakistan and the United States. There is no one else to fill the vacuum." Hussain said the elimination of the influential Pashtun commander showed that Taliban were still "very much in control."

"Taliban intelligence remains effective and the American bombings have not decimated their strength," he said.

The incident will "swing the balance in favour of those American strategists who will like to launch a full-scale ground offensive against the Taliban," Hussain contended.

[url]http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=30687[/url]

Eric The(It'sFromGulfNewsOnline)Hun[>]:)]

[size=4]Taliban refuse to let family take Haq's body[/size=4]

ESHAWAR: The Taliban militia refused to let the family of executed Afghan resistance commander Abdul Haq take his body back to Pakistan for burial, his associates said on Sunday.

Instead the Taliban insisted that the body stayed in Afghanistan, said Abdul Haq's personal secretary Abdul Rahim Zalmai.

The resistance commander was buried in his family's home village at Sorkh Rod near the eastern city of Jalalabad, he said.

"He was buried by our people," said Zalmai, speaking in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar where Abdul Haq had made his base.

He added that no reason was given for the decision not to let the body be taken to Peshawar in Pakistan for burial as planned by the family.

The hero of Afghanistan's resistance to the 1979-89 Soviet occupation and a leader of the dominant Pashtun tribe was captured in Afghanistan on Friday and executed by the Taliban who accused him of being a US spy.

Abdul Haq's brother, Haji Din Mohammad, told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press that he had learned that Abdul Haq and one of the two associates executed with him had been buried in the family village.

Abdul Haq's family had wanted him to be buried in Peshawar alongside his wife and son, [b]who were killed there in 1999 in what is suspected to have been a Taliban-ordered assassination[/b].

[url]http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=758140730[/url]

Eric The(KilledHisWife&Son,Eh?)Hun[>]:)]