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Taliban: Others will meet Haq's fate

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- Taliban officials warned Saturday that any envoy of the deposed Afghan King Zahir Shah sent to Afghanistan would face the same fate as commander Abdul Haq who was executed by the religious militia along with two companions.

"Supporters of the ex-king should learn from the fate of commander Abdul Haq and should not try to enter Afghanistan," said the Taliban chief of intelligence Qari Ahmadullah in a statement issued in the Afghan capital of Kabul.

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"We have a wide spying network. We have spies in every town and every village and we will catch anyone who enters the country without our permission," he said.

On Friday, the Taliban executed Haq after arresting him in the Logar province, 20 miles south of Kabul. He had entered Afghanistan on Sunday with two assistants, one of whom was his nephew, to encourage defections among the Taliban and to urge the country's majority ethnic Pashtuns to stop supporting the Taliban.

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Haq, his nephew Izzat Ullah and assistant Haji Dauran, were going to a base Haq still maintained at a place called Azra, near Kabul. They were ambushed and arrested by the Taliban before reaching the base, Afghan sources said.

Like most of the Taliban leaders, Haq was also a Pashtun. A hero of the Afghan war against the Soviets in the 1980s, Haq had thousands of followers in Afghanistan. He was playing a key role in U.S. plans to win over Pashtuns and oust the Taliban.

Haq's death is seen as a major setback to U.S. efforts for engineering a coup against the Taliban inside the Pashtun areas.

Once associated with Hizb-i-Islami party of a Mujahideen leader Maulavi Yunus Khalis, Haq came from a prominent Afghan family.

His elder brother, Haji Deen Mohammed, was also a prominent Mujahideen commander while another brother, Haji Abdul Qadir, was the governor of eastern Nangarhar province and was ousted by the Taliban in 1996.

Qadir is now with the opposition Northern Alliance, fighting the Taliban near Bagram air base, north of Kabul.

After his capture, Haq reportedly made two telephone calls to his friends in Pakistan, asking for help. His friends directed his request to Washington but he was killed before the aid could arrive.

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However, Taliban officials gave a different version. They say that U.S. helicopters launched several strikes on their fighters who were holding Haq but failed to rescue him.

The Taliban also claimed that an American accompanied Haq but escaped after his arrest.

Taliban intelligence officials reportedly interrogated Haq and his two companions for 20 hours before executing them. According to the Taliban they were executed after a Taliban leader and some Muslim clerics issued a summary death sentence against them for spying for the United States.

Pakistani intelligence officials say that Haq stayed in touch with Western intelligence agents after entering Afghanistan.

The 43-year old Afghan commander had been trying to topple the Taliban regime for sometime.

He recently got in touch with a former general of the Afghan army, Gen. Juma Achak, and a prominent Mujahideen commander Malik Zareen Khan, urging them to join a rebellion against the Taliban.

Although the Afghan army was disbanded after the collapse of Afghanistan's communist regime in 1992, retired generals still have considerable support in the areas where they live.

Haq also played a key role in convening a two-day conference of Afghan commanders and tribal leaders that concluded Thursday in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. The conference was called to discuss various proposals for forming an alternative government in Kabul.

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In the recent past, Haq also helped engineer an unsuccessful coup against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan with the help of another Mujahideen commander, Gen. Rahim Wardak.

Pakistani intelligence official say since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, U.S. officials had maintained constant contacts with Haq.

Last month they encouraged him to leave his refuge in Dubai, where he has been living since last year when Pakistani officials forced him to leave Peshawar after his wife and daughter were assassinated. Investigators believe that both were targeted by the Taliban and that Pakistan, which enjoyed close relations with the Taliban until the Sept. 11 attacks, had asked him to leave because it did not want to annoy its Taliban allies.

He returned to Pakistan after meeting the ex-king in Rome last week and immediately entered Afghanistan on the invitation of some Pashtun and Taliban commanders.

According to Pakistani intelligence officials, these commanders had assured him that they and others were willing to rebel against the Taliban. They asked him to arrange U.S. support and weapons for them to fight the Taliban.

Pakistani intelligence officials are now saying that apparently it was a trap laid by the Taliban who induced Haq to enter Afghanistan and then captured him.

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"He was targeted because after Ahmed Shah Masoud, who was assassinated by Taliban's Arab supporters last month, Haq was the only Afghan commander who could put together an effective alliance against the Taliban, at least in the Pashtun area," said a Western diplomat in Islamabad. "His death is a great loss for all."

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