How US drone strike, political betrayal drove aging Afghan militant closer to Daesh

1 / 3
Hajji Amanullah, left, with some of his men in Shaygal district, Kunar province. (Courtesy Fazelminallah Qazizai)
Updated 02 March 2018
Follow

How US drone strike, political betrayal drove aging Afghan militant closer to Daesh

KUNAR, Afghanistan: Hajji Amanullah had been walking through the night, hoping to use the cover of darkness to shake off the Americans hunting him down, when he again heard the familiar low-pitched hum of the drone that seemed to watch his every move. It was early on the morning of June 24, 2017, near the end of Ramadan, and for the past few days the unmanned aerial vehicle had been doggedly following the insurgent commander as he traversed the boulder-strewn peaks and valleys that form the district of Shaygal, in eastern Afghanistan.
Almost 180 coalition troops had been killed in the surrounding province of Kunar since the war began in 2001 and Amanullah was the architect of much of the bloodshed. As a senior figure in the Islamist group Hizb-e Islami (the Islamic Party), he had clashed with the Americans dozens of times. Only now did he realize that this was their moment of revenge.
He had been using a torch to light a path through the rugged terrain and just as he recognized his mistake and paused to switch it off, a loud tearing sound split the sky. The first missile hit the ground in front of him, throwing him to the floor. The second landed closer, sending dirt, rocks and branches into the air. Stunned, and with his left wrist and left ear bleeding, he recited his last rites, convinced another missile was on its way. But to his amazement there were no more explosions. After several minutes villagers arrived on the scene and took him to a cluster of nearby houses. There, he began to recuperate and plot his next move.
Recounting the details of the drone strike in an exclusive interview with Arab News recently, Amanullah blamed himself for being too casual with his own security and underestimating the Americans’ firepower.
“If your enemy is a fox, you should think of it as a lion,” he said, repeating an old proverb.
Amanullah’s previously untold story offers a fascinating, and sobering, glimpse into the insurgent side of the war in Afghanistan, as US policymakers continue their search for a decisive breakthrough that will turn around the conflict. It is a tale of missed opportunities and shifting alliances; the horrors of combat and the perils of making peace with an intractable enemy. Ultimately, it is also the story of the changing face of radicalism in this country — a land that nurtured Al-Qaeda and that is now becoming an increasingly important sanctuary for Daesh.
Aged 50 and sporting a long white beard, Amanullah comes from the La Hussein valley in Shaygal, a picturesque area of persimmon and walnut trees. He belongs to the Shinwari tribe, one of eastern Afghanistan’s most prominent Pashtun groups, and was born into a typically large family, with eight brothers and three sisters. He was just 12-years-old when he joined Hizb-e Islami in its guerrilla war against local Marxists in the late 1970s.
 

Hizb, as it is commonly known by Afghans, was influenced by the ideas of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and led by a charismatic and ruthless former engineering student, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who Aman revered. Together, they vowed to wage armed jihad until the country was governed by a radical interpretation of Islamic law. The party went on to become the most powerful Mujahedeen faction in the 1979-1989 war against Soviet occupation, when it received the largest share of covert US arms supplies funnelled to the resistance through Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency. At the same time, Hekmatyar mentored militants from across Asia and the Middle East, training them to launch insurrections in their home countries after the Soviet withdrawal.
But when the Russians left Afghanistan and victory seemed within reach, Hizb was outflanked by rival Mujahedeen parties and Kabul descended into a savage civil war that killed tens of thousands of people, ultimately giving rise to the Taliban. Hekmatyar, one of the conflict’s main protagonists, fled to Iran before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 to launch a jihad against the America-led occupation.
For many of Hekmatyar’s supporters this new guerrilla campaign was a step too far and, exhausted by years of conflict, they laid down their arms to join the democratic process in Kabul, forming their own factions of Hizb. Amanullah was one of the few who stood by Hekmatyar and the insurgent wing of the party, known in US-military parlance as HIG. Before he had a chance to fire a shot in anger, however, American forces arrested him in the eastern province of Nangarhar while he was trying to visit a friend in jail. The experience only hardened his resolve. Released after five months, he returned to Shaygal and resumed his insurgency.
By his own account, Amanullah first confronted US soldiers in battle in late 2002, digging up a rocket-propelled grenade launcher he had hidden in a cemetery and ambushing a military convoy. Already well known in local rebel circles, his reputation grew in the years that followed as he led dozens of raids against the Americans. He rose through Hizb’s ranks, eventually becoming head of its military committee — the section of the party tasked with organizing guerrilla operations across the country. His growing influence was most keenly felt in Kunar, where American troops stationed in remote outposts struggled to withstand frequent assaults from radical fighters largely drawn from a local population hostile to outsiders.
As the war dragged on, Hizb conducted several high-profile attacks in Kabul, including one by a female suicide bomber in September 2012 that killed at least 12 people — eight of them South African employees of a chartered aviation company. But Hekmatyar’s faction remained militarily weak compared with the Taliban and, after years of behind the scenes talks, it signed a peace agreement with the Afghan government in September 2016, less than two months before Donald Trump’s election as US president. It seemed like one of the most significant political breakthroughs Afghanistan had experienced in years.
Even then, however, there were warning signs that the deal would give rise to a new wave of radicalism. A small band of Daesh fighters had already spent several months living under Amanullah’s protection in Shaygal, impressing him with their adherence to a violent and austere way of life that they claimed mirrored the conduct of Islam’s earliest apostles. He sheltered them in accordance with Pashtun honor codes but opted to keep a prudent distance from their daily operations while he waited to see how their jihad progressed.
The more time that passed, the more troubled he became by the contrasting approaches between the extremist old guard he grew up with and the younger, stricter, fighters emerging in their wake. While Daesh seemed to resemble the earlier incarnation of Hizb that he joined in the late 1970s — executing alleged spies in the pockets of territory under its control and demanding everyone adhere to its interpretation of Islam — the men he had spent a lifetime serving alongside appeared to have given up on their goal of turning Afghanistan into a radical Islamist state that would inspire uprisings across the Muslim world.
The last straw for Amanullah came in April 2017, when Hekmatyar used his first public speeches in the country for 20 years to rebuke sections of the insurgency and call for an end to the war. As far as the commander was concerned, his leader was tacitly condoning the American occupation. To add to his consternation, Hekmatyar — a man once famous for his support for Al-Qaeda and his strident denunciations of US foreign policy — then came to Kabul and took up residency in a house owned by the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani.
“God is a witness that from the start of the peace talks until the end, the process was un-Islamic and illegal,” Amanullah told Arab News. “If you look at history Muslims never send an offer of peace to infidels and apostates; it is always the infidels who send us the offer of peace. They are the forces of Satan and they will be defeated by the forces of God — they cannot resist us.”
Disgusted, he announced that he was forming his own faction of Hizb and took hundreds of fighters with him. He insisted to us that this move was initially meant as a symbolic show of dissent, rather than an act of war against his former colleagues. He claimed he only intended to speak out against the peace deal and had no plans to reignite his insurgency until the drone strike caused him to reconsider his options and edge even closer to Daesh.
Amanullah survived the attack, which occurred in La Hussein, with relatively minor injuries, but two of his most trusted fighters were killed: Amran, a 25-year-old father of five, and Redi Gul, a 30-year-old father of seven. In the hours that followed the commander’s men began to spread the rumor that he had also died, hoping the announcement would be picked up by mainstream and social media, throwing the Americans off his scent. The deception worked.
In the ensuing days leaflets started appearing in and around Kunar, warning of more retribution to follow. “Hajji Amanullah is dead!” they proclaimed in Pashto, over a picture of him with his face crossed out. “We are coming after you. Understand this: your leaders are also not safe because the coalition forces are coming after you.”
It was a boast that may yet come back to haunt the American and Afghan governments. We first met Amanullah in June 2016, before he formed his own faction of Hizb. Back then, he was happy walking in daylight and served under Hekmatyar’s chief lieutenant, Kashmir Khan, a prominent local commander who would die of natural causes later that year. Even in those days Daesh fighters enjoyed the protection of Hizb in Shaygal but their numbers were small. By the time of our most recent meeting late last year, the situation was markedly different. Security was tighter and the tension greater.
With drones clearly audible in the sky over the district, Amanullah’s militants forbade photography and kept phone conversations to a minimum. It took us several attempts to rendezvous with him at a safe house in rugged terrain in a remote corner of the district.
He arrived for the interview just after 10:45pm, accompanied by five bodyguards. He wore a shalwar kameez, a flat Afghan pakhool hat, military belt and hiking boots, and walked with the aid of a long stick. He was polite and genial, demonstrating the hospitality Pashtuns customarily show to guests. Throughout the area in which we met there was talk of the growing strength of Daesh. In places under Amanullah’s jurisdiction the group’s fighters roamed freely alongside members of the Taliban. He claimed they had all learnt from the way he and his men governed with an iron fist.
“I tell people here that the rules and laws of Daesh were the rules of Hizb. First they were adopted by the Taliban, now they are adopted by Daesh,” he said.
As someone who prides himself on keeping his word and protecting the honor of his fighters, Amanullah’s split with Hizb’s leadership has proved more traumatic than the drone strike that nearly killed him. He still regards himself as a member of the party but feels senior figures within the movement have betrayed its core principles, leaving him with no choice other than to take matters into his own hands and establish a splinter group.
At a gathering of 3,000 mainstream Hizb members in Kabul last November, Hekmatyar attempted to address the grievances of colleagues like Amanullah who are angry with the peace agreement. He acknowledged that the government had yet to fulfil key aspects of its side of the deal, including the large-scale release of party prisoners and the provision of land for the families of thousands of Hizb members currently living as refugees in Pakistan. But he claimed that by working openly in the country Hizb now had “an effective and decisive role” in Afghan politics. Dissidents should “be patient and have hope in the future,” he said.
Privately, some senior party officials are less magnanimous toward their former brothers-in-arms who continue to advocate violent resistance. Speaking to us last autumn, one high-ranking figure in Hekmatyar’s inner-circle accused Amanullah of acting out of self-interest, claiming the rogue commander was being funded by unspecified foreign donors to cause divisions within the party’s ranks.
We found no evidence to support this claim. The living conditions of Amanullah and his men were far harsher than their contemporaries in Kabul, and they expressed no interest in compromise or political power. What mattered to them was sticking to their radical beliefs, however unpalatable those ideas may be to millions of their fellow Afghans.
In Shaygal itself, the highly conservative community views Amanullah’s strict leadership as upholding Islamic values. Smoking and music are outlawed in villages under his control and it is forbidden for men to shave. Opium cultivation is banned and residents are only allowed to fish using nets or rods, not by throwing grenades into the local river — a practice that has become all too common in war-ravaged Afghanistan.
He predicted that Hizb’s influence would wane under Hekmatyar’s continued guidance and left open the possibility that he would formally merge his break-away faction of the movement with Daesh. Even if he is killed there seems little doubt that his followers will continue the jihad he started more than 30 years ago.
“All over the country the Mujahedeen of Hizb are ready to stay with us and continue as Mujahedeen until we achieve our holy aim,” he said.
When the interview was over he gathered a handful of his men and led them in prayer. He then melted back into the night.

* For this article Chris Sands reported from Kabul and Fazelminallah Qazizai reported from Kunar.


German court to rule on claim against Berlin over US strikes in Yemen

Updated 15 July 2025
Follow

German court to rule on claim against Berlin over US strikes in Yemen

  • “The German government must put an end to the use of this base — otherwise the government is making itself complicit in the deaths of innocent civilians,” said Andreas Schueller, program director for international crimes at the NGO

BERLIN: Germany’s constitutional court will rule Tuesday in a years-long legal saga over whether Berlin can be held partly responsible for US drone attacks on Yemen due to signals sent through the Ramstein air base.
The case is being brought by two Yemeni men, Ahmed and Khalid bin Ali Jaber, who lost members of their family in a US drone strike on the village of Khashamir in 2012.
The survivors say they were there for a wedding of a male family member and eating dinner when they heard the buzz of a drone and then the boom of missile attacks that claimed multiple lives.
A ruling in favor of the plaintiffs could have groundbreaking implications regarding Germany’s responsibility toward third countries in international conflicts.
The two men, supported by the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), argue that Germany is partly responsible for the attack because the strike was aided by signals relayed from the Ramstein base in the west of the country.
“Without the data that flows through Ramstein, the US cannot fly its combat drones in Yemen,” according to the ECCHR.
“The German government must put an end to the use of this base — otherwise the government is making itself complicit in the deaths of innocent civilians,” said Andreas Schueller, program director for international crimes at the NGO.
The plaintiffs first took their case to court in 2014, arguing that Germany had a responsibility to ensure the US military was respecting international law in using the Ramstein base.

The case was initially thrown out, before the higher administrative court in Muenster ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in 2019.
However, the government appealed and a higher court overturned the decision in 2020, arguing that German diplomatic efforts were enough to ensure Washington was adhering to international law.
In a hearing scheduled for 0800 GMT, the constitutional court must now decide what conditions are necessary for those affected abroad to sue the German state for the protection of their right to life, according to the ECCHR.
This includes whether data transmission alone is enough of a connection to German territory for Germany to be held responsible.
Ahead of the latest proceedings, which opened in December 2024, the German defense ministry said Berlin was “in an ongoing and trusting dialogue” with the United States about its activities at Ramstein.
The government has repeatedly obtained assurances that drones are not launched, controlled or commanded from Germany and that US forces are acting lawfully, the ministry said.

 


Japan warns of China’s military moves as biggest strategic challenge

Updated 15 July 2025
Follow

Japan warns of China’s military moves as biggest strategic challenge

  • China’s increasing dispatch of aircraft carriers in the Pacific underscores the country’s attempt to advance its sea power in distant waters, the report said

TOKYO: Japan raised strong caution against China’s rapid acceleration of military activity in extensive areas from around its southwestern coasts to the Pacific, describing the moves as the biggest strategic challenge.
China’s growing joint operations with Russia also pose serious security concerns to Japan, along with increasing tension around Taiwan and threats coming from North Korea, the Defense Ministry said in an annual military report submitted to Cabinet on Tuesday.
“The international society is in a new crisis era as it faces the biggest challenges since the end of World War II,” the report said, citing significant changes to the global power balance while raising concern about an escalation of the China-US rivalry.
The security threats are concentrated in the Indo-Pacific, where Japan is located, and could get worse in the future, report says.
Japan has accelerated its military buildup on southwestern islands in recent years, preparing to deploy long-distance cruise missiles, as it worries about a conflict in Taiwan, which China claims as its territory to be annexed by force if necessary. Taiwan launched 10-day annual live-fire military exercises last week intended to guard against Chinese threats to invade. Japan tested a short-range, surface-to-ship missile at home earlier last month.
Chinese warships’ advance into the Pacific has steadily increased, with the frequency of their passage off southwestern Japan tripling in the past three years, including in waters between Taiwan and its neighboring Japanese island of Yonaguni, the 534-page report said.
The report comes days after Japan demanded China stop flying its fighter jets abnormally close to Japanese intelligence-gathering aircraft, which it said was happening repeatedly and could cause a collision. Beijing, in return, accused Japan of flying near Chinese airspace for spying purposes.
Two earlier close encounters in June occurred over the Pacific Ocean, where Japan spotted two Chinese aircraft carriers operating together for the first time.
China’s increasing dispatch of aircraft carriers in the Pacific underscores the country’s attempt to advance its sea power in distant waters, the report said. It said China’s frequent dispatch of bombers for long distance flights in the Pacific by more sophisticated flight routes and fleet organization is seen as Beijing’s attempt to show off its presence around Japan and to further advance its operational capability.
The Defense Ministry noted two cases last year — a Chinese warplane’s brief violation of Japanese airspace over waters off islands near Nagasaki and an aircraft carrier’s entry into a zone just outside of Japan’s territorial waters further southwest in the Nansei island chain.
With US President Donald Trump focusing on the strengthening of the US economy and security, Japan and other US allies face expectations to play a greater role for peace and stability in the region, the report said.
North Korea poses “an increasingly serious and imminent threat” for Japan’s security, the report said, noting the North’s development of missiles carrying nuclear warheads into the Japanese territory and solid-fuel ICBM that can reach the US mainland.
Russia maintains active military operations around Japan and violated the country’s airspace in September, the report added, saying its increasing strategic cooperation with China has posed “strong concern” for Japan’s security.
 

 


Japan’s ruling coalition seen losing upper house majority, Asahi reports

Updated 15 July 2025
Follow

Japan’s ruling coalition seen losing upper house majority, Asahi reports

  • Asahi said its report was based on phone and Internet surveys conducted on voters July 13-14, as well as research nationwide by the newspaper’s journalists

TOKYO: Japan’s ruling coalition will likely lose its majority in the upper house election on July 20, the Asahi newspaper said on Tuesday, heightening the risk of political instability at a time the country struggles to strike a trade deal with the US
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner Komeito will likely struggle to retain the 50 seats needed to defend its majority in the upper house of parliament, the Asahi said.
The LDP will likely win just around 35 seats, the paper said. The LDP currently hold 52 seats.
Asahi said its report was based on phone and Internet surveys conducted on voters July 13-14, as well as research nationwide by the newspaper’s journalists.
Ishiba’s administration has seen approval ratings slide as the rising cost of living, including the soaring price of Japan’s staple rice, hit households. 

 


What to know about the Grand Canyon as wildfires burn, claiming a historic lodge

Updated 15 July 2025
Follow

What to know about the Grand Canyon as wildfires burn, claiming a historic lodge

Nearly 5 million people visited the Grand Canyon last year, from day trippers and campers to people sleeping overnight in historic lodges and cabins.
This year will be different, at least for one portion of the park. A wildfire has torn through a historic lodge and ended the season for the canyon’s North Rim, a place where visitors could find less bustle in one of the country’s most iconic national parks.
As firefighters continue to fight the blaze, here’s what to know about Grand Canyon National Park.
Bigger than Rhode Island
The Colorado River cuts through Grand Canyon National Park for about 278 miles , pushing across northwestern Arizona. The eastern boundary is near the state’s northern border with Utah, while the western edge is near Nevada.
Grand Canyon National Park is about 1,900 square miles, according to the National Park Service, which makes it bigger than Rhode Island.
The park is unique because of its canyon walls, which boast horizontal layers of red, orange and purple rock. The average depth of the iconic formation is about a mile , while the average width is about 10 miles .
“Four Empire State Buildings stacked one atop the other would not reach the rim,” Lance Newman wrote in the introduction to the 2011 book, “The Grand Canyon Reader.”
The north and south rims
Within the park are the north and south rims, which are the primary travel destinations because of their accessibility.
The North Rim receives 10 percent of park visitors and is known for more quiet and solitude, according to the park service. It’s open from mid-May to mid-October because of the snow. But the wildfires have closed it for the rest of the season, destroying a historic lodge and dozens of cabins.
The South Rim is open all year. It’s more bustling and boasts a historic district, which dates to when the first steam-powered train arrived in 1901.
A car trip between the rims takes five hours, according to the park service. That’s because there’s only one way across the Colorado River by vehicle, and its 137 miles  from the South Rim Village.
Hiking between rims is a shorter distance, 21 miles , though by no means easy. It includes crossing the river on a narrow foot bridge 70 feet  above the water.
Unexplored by Europeans for 235 years
The Grand Canyon was formed with the shifting of tectonic plates, which lifted layers of rock into a high and relatively flat plateau, according to the park service. About 5 million to 6 million years ago, the Colorado River began to carve its way downward, slowly deepening and widening the gorge.
The oldest human artifacts in the area date to about 12,000 years ago, when small bands of people hunted bison, the park service said. There were gradual shifts to agriculture, the building of pueblos and the development of trade routes. Today, 11 tribes have historic connections to the canyon, including the Hopi and the Diné .
The Spanish were the first Europeans to the see the Grand Canyon in 1540, according to the park service. Francisco Vázquez de Coronado and his Spanish army were searching for fabled cities of gold.
“The Hopi were able to fool the Spaniards into thinking that the area was an impenetrable wasteland and was not navigable anyway,” the park service wrote on its website, adding that the canyon “was left unexplored by Europeans for 235 years.”
In the late 1850s, an Army lieutenant explored the Grand Canyon in search of a viable trade route, the park service said. Joseph Christmas Ives described it as “altogether valueless” and predicted it “shall be forever unvisited.”
The Grand Canyon began to draw much more interest after expeditions in 1869 and 1871 by geologist John Wesley Powell.
Powell described rock layers in the canyon’s towering walls: “creamy orange above, then bright vermilion, and below, purple and chocolate beds, with green and yellow sands.”
‘You cannot improve on it’
As the years went on, more explorers arrived by boat, on foot and on horseback, often with the help of Native American guides. Wealthy travelers came by stagecoach from Flagstaff to the South Rim in the 1880s. After the arrival of trains, the automobile became the more popular mode of travel in the 1930s.
Early entrepreneurs charged $1 to hike down the Bright Angel Trail used by the Havasupai people whose current-day reservation lies in the depths of the Grand Canyon.
President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation to create the park in 1919 but Teddy Roosevelt is credited for its early preservation as a game reserve and a national monument.
He famously said: “Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.”


Thomas Massie, GOP congressman who broke with Trump, reports strong fundraising

Updated 15 July 2025
Follow

Thomas Massie, GOP congressman who broke with Trump, reports strong fundraising

WASHINGTON: US Rep. Thomas Massie has stockpiled more than $1.7 million for his re-election bid as the Kentucky Republican gears up to face President Donald Trump’s vaunted political operation, Massie’s campaign announced Monday.
Massie was one of two House Republicans to vote against Trump’s massive tax bill and he said Trump lacked authority to bomb nuclear sites in Iran without congressional approval.
Trump aides launched a super PAC devoted to defeating Massie in his 2026 primary, the first concerted effort by the president’s team to unseat a sitting member of Congress.
Trump’s challenge to Massie sent a clear signal to other Republicans that they cross the president at their peril. But Massie’s formidable fundraising will help him fight back. His sprawling district covers three television markets, making it an expensive place to campaign.
Massie raised just over $584,000 between April and June, bringing his total fundraising since the last election above $1 million, his campaign reported. The $1.7 million in his campaign bank account includes money left over from his successful 2024 re-election campaign.
The new PAC, Kentucky MAGA, will be run by two of Trump’s top political lieutenants, his former co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita and longtime pollster Tony Fabrizio. They have not yet announced a challenger they will support but hope to unify Massie’s Republican critics behind one person to avoid splitting the anti-Massie vote.
Elon Musk, a billionaire and one-time Trump ally, suggested he’ll support Massie.