Afghans jubilant over death of “Father of Taliban”

KABUL: Even as Afghanistan’s government continued to remain reticent on Saturday following reports that Pakistan’s top religious figure had been assassinated, several nationals expressed happiness over his demise.
Commonly known as the “Father of Taliban”, Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, chief of his own faction of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, was killed in a knife attack at his residence in Rawalpindi, on Friday.
He ran a capacious Islamic seminary for students in northwestern Pakistan which was attended by a number of Afghan Taliban leaders in the 1980s, including the group’s founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Many Afghan officials accuse Haq of ‘nurturing terrorists’ in the seminary, with several graduates going on to participate in the country’s war for decades.
A former senator, Haq requested the Taliban’s support after the US-led troops overthrew the militant group’s government, in late 2001, in Afghanistan.
President Ashraf Ghani’s government which had recently asked Haq to facilitate peace talks with the Taliban, did not comment about his assassination. However, many ordinary and educated Afghans on social media and other platforms either expressed their happiness or showed no sympathy.
“Any one that sends a message of condolence or sympathy for the careening of this person is not an Afghan because he has shed the blood of Afghans without any justification…,” Nasrat Sultani, a government employee, said.
Tabish Forogh, an activist described Haq as the “ugly caricature of the partners of state-sponsored terrorism”.
Outgoing lawmakers and parliament nominees joined the chorus by expressing their jubilation at the reports. “Big News! The terror mastermind and hydra is gone,” Atta Nasib, a prominent parliamentarian candidate, said, with Hamid Sahil, a journalist, adding that “the hands of the assassin of Haq need to be kissed”.
“Hard to shed a tear for a man that was responsible for so much pain,” Saad Mohseni, the mogul of Afghan media, tweeted.
President Ghani’s brother, Hashmat Ghani, who is a businessman and holds no official title threw caution to the wind by questioning: “Now that father of the Taliban is dead, won’t be long before their mother (IS)?”.
While condoling Haq’s family and Pakistan, the Taliban in Afghanistan in an official statement termed Haq as a “martyr” and his death as a “major loss” for the Islamic world, particularly Pakistan.

Afghans jubilant over death of “Father of Taliban”