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Taliban Execute Opposition Leader
KABUL,
Oct 26 (News Agencies) - The U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan suffered its biggest setback yet on Friday when the Taliban executed an Afghan leader sent into the country to try to encourage a split in the ruling militia.
Abdul Haq, a hero of Afghanistan's U.S.-backed resistance to the 1979-89 Soviet occupation and a leader of the country's dominant Pashtun tribe, was captured by Taliban forces south of Kabul. He was then taken to the capital and shot as an American spy, according to Abdul Hanan Hemat, the head of the Taliban's information agency.
Haq was executed near Kabul on Friday hours after his capture, the Taliban spokesman told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"He was shot with a Kalashnikov automatic rifle around 1:00 pm," Hemat said.
Two other people detained with Abdul Haq were also shot for "trying to encourage people to rebel," he said.
The executions were ordered on the basis of a fatwa, or religious edict, issued by Islamic clerics last month calling for the death penalty for anyone spying for the United States.
The Taliban official said Abdul Haq had been detained despite the U.S. sending two helicopters and a fighter jet to try to help him escape.
"The helicopters tried to land and rescue them but they failed," Hemat said.
The Taliban's version of events could not be independently confirmed and there has been no comment from U.S. officials.
Hemat said Haq had been carrying several satellite phones, a large amount of U.S. dollars and documents carrying the names of people involved in the alleged plot to encourage tribal elders and elements of the Taliban to turn against the regime's leadership.
A foreign intelligence source had described reports of Haq's capture as a "huge setback" for attempts to split the Taliban.
Mir Wais Zahir, youngest son of Afghanistan's former monarch Mohammed Zahir Shah - who is at the center of efforts to form a post-Taliban government, said in Rome that Abdul Haq had been "in the process of organizing something."
Haq's execution came after a night of heavy bombing of Kabul, which killed two young girls, casting a further shadow over a campaign already beset by mounting concern over civilian casualties and the use of cluster bombs.
Abdul Haq was a legendary figure in the fight against the 1979-89 occupation by the Soviet Union.
He is not a member of the main opposition force, the Northern Alliance, which is dominated by Afghanistan's Uzbek and Tajik minorities.
But Haq is a hero to Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, which supplies the bulk of Taliban forces. A foreign intelligence official told AFP Haq had returned to Logar province to set up a tribal revolt against Taliban rule.
"If he has been captured, it is a huge setback to this idea of dividing the Taliban," the source said, "It also boosts the position of the Northern Alliance, who have said all along that there are no moderate Taliban."
The Northern Alliance's envoy to Moscow, Abdul Assefi, reiterated Friday that the Taliban must be excluded from any future regime, but said that Pashtuns would be included in a broad-based coalition.
"The Taliban is not an ideology, it is a military school," he said, "They have nothing in common with any specific ethnic group."
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