Abdul Ali Mazari

Abdul Ali Mazari(Dari: عبدالعلی مزاری; 5 June 1946 – 13 March 1995) was an ethnic Hazara politician and leader of Hezb-e Wahdat during and following the Soviet–Afghan War, who advocated for a federal system of governance in Afghanistan.[1][2][3] He was allegedly captured and killed by the Taliban during negotiations in 1995, and posthumously given the title "Martyr for National Unity of Afghanistan" in 2016 by the Afghan government.[4][5]

Ustad
Abdul Ali Mazari
استاد عبدالعلی مزاری
Leader of Hezbe Wahdat
In office
1989 – 13 March 1995
Personal details
Born5 June 1946
Charkent, Balkh province, Afghanistan
Died13 March 1995(1995-03-13) (aged 48)
Ghazni, Afghanistan
Political partyHezbe Wahdat
OccupationPolitical leader
AwardsMim Hea Mim peace award
NicknameBaba Mazari (بابه مزاری)

Early life

Abdul Ali Mazari was born in 1946 in the Charkent district of Balkh province, south of the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. He began his primary schooling in theology at the local school in his hometown, then went to Mazar-e-Sharif and later to Qom, Iran and Najaf, Iraq.

Mujahideen commander and politician

During the Soviet–Afghan War, Mazari returned to Afghanistan and gained a prominent place in the mujahideen resistance movement. During the first years of the resistance, he lost his young brother, Muhammed Sultan, during a battle against the Soviet-backed forces. He soon lost his sister and other members of his family in the resistance. His uncle, Muhammad Jafar, and his son, Muhammad Afzal, were imprisoned and killed by the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. His father, Haji Khudadad, and his brother, Haji Muhammad Nabi, were killed as well in the war.

Abdul Ali Mazari was one of the founding members and the first leader of the Hezb-e Wahdat. In the first party congress in Bamiyan, he was elected leader of the Central Committee and in the second congress, he was elected Secretary General. Mazari's initiative led to the creation of the Jonbesh-e Shomal or (Northern Movement), in which the country's most significant military forces joined ranks with the rebels, leading to a coup d'état and the eventual downfall of the Communist regime in Kabul.

After the 1992 fall of Kabul, the Afghan political parties agreed on a peace and power-sharing agreement, the Peshawar Accords, which created the Islamic State of Afghanistan and appointed an interim government for a transitional period to be followed by general elections. According to Human Rights Watch:[6]

The sovereignty of Afghanistan was vested formally in the Islamic State of Afghanistan, an entity created in April 1992, after the fall of the Soviet-backed Najibullah government. ... With the exception of Pashtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami, all of the parties... were ostensibly unified under this government in April 1992. ... Hekmatyar's Hezbe Islami, for its part, refused to recognize the government for most of the period discussed in this report and launched attacks against government forces but the shells and rockets fell everywhere in Kabul resulting in many civilian casualties.

Although Hezb-e Wahdat initially participated in the Islamic State and held some posts in the government, conflict soon broke out between the Hazara Hezb-e Wahdat of Mazari and the Pashtun Ittihad-i Islami of Abdur-Rasul Sayyaf.[6][7] The Islamic State's defense minister Ahmad Shah Massoud tried to mediate between the factions with some success, but the cease-fire remained only temporary. In June 1992, the Hezb-e Wahdat and the Ittihad-i Islami engaged in violent street battles against each other. With the support of Saudi Arabia,[8] Sayyaf's forces repeatedly attacked the western suburbs of Kabul resulting in heavy civilian casualties. Likewise, Iran supported Mazari's forces that were also accused of attacking civilian targets in the west. Mazari acknowledged taking Pashtun civilians as prisoners, but defended the action by saying that Sayyaf's forces took Hazaras first, adding that the prisoners taken by his forces were housed, fed, given water, and not tortured. Mazari's group later began cooperating with Hekmatyar's group from January 1993.[6]

In September 1994, following accusations against Abdul Ali Mazari of committing a coup within the party's leadership, senior Hezb-e Wahdat member Muhammad Akbari separated from Mazari to form the National Islamic Unity Party of Afghanistan, which aligned itself with the Taliban and gained the support of the majority of party members in the Hazara hinterland and some surrounding regions, particularly in Panjab district, Waras district, Uruzgan province, Helmand province, and Sar-e pol province. Although Mazari's influence was heavily reduced by the split, he was able to retain the allegiance of the majority of Hezb-e Wahdat members in western Kabul, Yakawlang district, Wardak province, and Mazar-i-Sharif city.[9][10]

Death
Shrine of Abdul Ali Mazari in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan
Statue of Mazari in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Built during the presidency of Hamid Karzai, it was destroyed by the Taliban in August 2021, and later replaced by a replica of the Quran[5][4]

According to Hazara Press, on 11 March 1995, the Taliban requested a meeting with Mazari and a delegation from Hezb-e Wahdat containing Abuzar, Ekhlaasi, Eid Mohammad Ibrahimi Behsudi, Ghassemi, Jan Mohammad, Sayed Ali Alavi, Bahodari, and Jan Ali in Pul-e Ghul Bagh, near Kabul. Upon their arrival, the group was abducted and transferred to Chahar Asiab, after which they were killed.[11]

According to the Taliban's Al Somood magazine, claims of him being killed deliberately are false, and he died in an accident involving a helicopter crash near Ghazni.[12] Taliban-affiliated researcher Mustafa Hamid described the Taliban's version of events surrounding the death of Abdul Ali Mazari in detail, stating that it began with Mazari and a group accompanying him being detained by the Taliban during a routine inspection of taxis passing through a village on the outskirts of Kabul. At the request of Taliban officials, he was thereafter placed on a helicopter leaving Kabul. Having become suspicious of the Taliban's intentions, Mazari and his partners snatched the weapon of one of the Taliban guards whilst mid-flight, killing another one of the guards and injuring the pilot. This caused the Helicopter to violently crash over the province of Ghazni, killing everyone on board. The crash of the aircraft attracted the attention of a nearby Taliban patrol, who found Mazari's deceased body onboard.[13]

Mazari's body, after being handed over by the Taliban, was carried by his followers on foot from Ghazni across Hazarajat to Mazar-i-Sharif (at the time under the control of his ally Abdur-Rashid Dustom) in heavy snow over forty days.[1] Hundreds of thousands attended his funeral in Mazar-i Sharif. Mazari was officially named "Martyr for National Unity of Afghanistan" by President Ashraf Ghani in 2016.[5][4]

See also

References
  1. Qazi, Abdullah (1997). "Biography of Abdul Ali Mazari". Afghanistan Online. Retrieved 28 February 2011.
  2. Bhadrakumar, M K. "Afghanistan rocked by northern bombing". Asia Times. Archived from the original on 22 May 2008. Retrieved 28 May 2008.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  3. Mazari, Abdul Ali (1995 (1374 AH)) Iḥyā-yi huvyyat: majmū‘ah-’i sukhanrānīha-yi shahīd-i mazlūm ... Ustād ‘Abd ‘Ali Mazāri (rah) (Resurrecting Identity: The collected speeches of Abdul Ali Mazari) Cultural Centre of Writers of Afghanistan, Sirāj, Qum, Iran, OCLC 37243327
  4. Steinbuch, Yaron (18 August 2021). "Taliban destroy statue of foe, stoking fears after moderation claims". New York Post. United States. Retrieved 9 December 2022.
  5. "Taliban replace statue of Hazara leader in Bamiyan with Koran". Kabul: France 24. 11 November 2021. Retrieved 9 December 2022.
  6. "Blood-Stained Hands, Past Atrocities in Kabul and Afghanistan's Legacy of Impunity". Human Rights Watch. 6 July 2005.
  7. Gutman, Roy (2008): How We Missed the Story: Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and the Hijacking of Afghanistan, Endowment of the United States Institute of Peace, 1st ed., Washington DC.
  8. Amin Saikal (2006). Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival (1st ed.). London New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. p. 352. ISBN 1-85043-437-9.
  9. Christia, Fotini (12 November 2012). Alliance Formation in Civil Wars. Cambridge University Press. pp. 90–93. ISBN 978-1-107-02302-4.
  10. Ruttig, Thomas (1 January 2006). "Islamists, Leftists – and a Void in the Center. Afghanistan's Political Parties and where they come from (1902-2006)". Afghanistan Analysts Network. p. 25. Retrieved 18 November 2022. The largest of the Shia parties, Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami, had already split into two during the Taleban era, when Ustad Muhammad Akbari struck an agreement with them and maintained control – under some Kandahari supervision - over parts of the Hazarajat, while Khalili's wing remained with the NA.
  11. "Father of Hazara Nation - Abdul Ali Mazari". Hazara.net. 2012. Retrieved 11 June 2019. According to Hazara Press, the Leader of the Hizb-e-Wahdat Party, Ustad Mazari and a group of Islamic Wahdat Party Central Committee members (Abuzar, Ekhlaasi, Ebrahim Behsudi, Ghassemi, Jan Mohammad, Sayed Ali Alavi, Bahodari, and Jan Ali), were on their way (in two cars) to meet Mullah Burjan, the Taliban commander, who requested a personal meeting with Ustad Mazari. On their arrival, the leaders were taken by surprise when they were forcefully abducted by Mullah Burjan and other Talibans in the vicinity of Pule Ghul Bagh. They were killed in Ghazni on March 11, 1995.
  12. Hamid, Mustafa (December 2022). "حقاني.. العالم الفقيه والمجاهد المجدد (الحلقة 50)" [Haqqani.. the Scholar, the Jurist, and the Mujaddid Mujahid (Part 50)] (PDF). Al Somood (in Arabic). 17 (203): 24–30. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 December 2022. حكام كابل ورجالها الأقوياء تمكنوا من خداع حركة طالبان عندما لمسوا فيهم المثالية المفرطة لطاب المدارس صغار وحزب وحدت، وتسببت بشكل غير مباشر في مقتل الزعيم الشيعي عبد العلي مزاري في حادث تحطم طائرة هليكوبتر بالقرب من مدينة غزني غربي كابل.
  13. Hamid, Mustafa (3 June 2010). "إجابات مصطفى حامد عن ثلاث أسئلة من شيعة أفغانستان" [Mustafa Hamid's answers to three questions from the Shiites of Afghanistan]. Māfā as-Sīyāsī (in Arabic). Archived from the original on 28 January 2023. وعلى الجانب الآخر هناك قصة مقتل القائد الشيعى الكبير عبد العلى مزارى، الذى قتل فى حادث دل على سؤ الفهم والشك المتبادل ولم يكن بالقطع لا إنتقاميا ولا طائفيا ... من أكبر الأحداث المؤسفة التى أعقبت مجزرة "كارت سيه" كانت إلقاء طالبان القبض على الزعيم الشيعى عبد العلى مزارى ومجموعة كانت معه أثناء عملية تفتيش روتينية على سيارات الأجرة فى أطراف كابل ... فتم ترحيله على طائرة مروحية إلى كابل بناء على طلب الإمارة هناك. الرجل هو ومجموعته توجسوا شرا فحاولوا السيطرة على الطائرة وهى فى الجو فوق ولاية غزنى وتمكنوا من إنتزاع سلاح أحد الحراس وقتل أخر وإصابة الطيار. فهبطت الطائرة هبوطا عنيفا على الأرض جذب أنظار داورية من طالبان كانت فى المنطقة فتوجهوا صوب الطائرة لإستطلاع الأمر، فبادرتهم المجموعة بإطلاق النار ودارت معركة نتج عنها مقتل القائد مزارى، ولتبدأ بعد ذلك مرحلة شكوك وكراهية لا نهاية لها بين الشيعة وحركة طالبان. ثم خرجت الكثير من القصص الكاذبة حول كيفية مقتل الزعيم الشيعى البارز، وكان هدفها تأجيج الفتنة وإيغار الصدور والدفع نحو المزيد من سفك الدماء تسهيلا لمهمة قوى خارجية تريد السيطرة على أفغانستان ونزح ثرواتها.
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