Abdul Rasul Sayyaf

Abdul Rasul Sayyaf (عبدالرسول سیاف; born 1946) is an exiled Afghan politician and former mujahideen commander.

Sayyaf was born in 1946 in Paghman, Kabul Province He was born to a Ghilzai Pashtun family.

Sayyaf (سياف) is an Arabic word that means "swordsman."

He is fluent in Arabic and holds a degree in religion from Kabul University and a masters from the illustrious Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt.

He has been described as "a big, Beefy man with fair skin and a thick gray beard."

Sayyaf is reported to be approximately 6 ft in height and weigh 250 lb. "He usually wears a white skullcap or a large turban, and a traditional Afghan partug kameez, a tunic with loose pants."

He was also noted for his photographic memory; Abdullah Anas, one of the leading Afghan Arabs, recalls in his memoirs that "once when the hugely influential Abu'l Hassan al-Nadawi, known as the Syed Qutb of India, was delivering a lecture at Kabul University, Sayyaf translated the whole lecture into Persian word for word without mistakes after the former had finished delivering the entire lecture."

Sayyaf was a member of the Afghan-based Ikhwan al-Muslimin, founded in 1969 by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Dr. Burhanuddin Rabbani and having strong links to the original and much larger Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Sayyaf was a professor at the Shariat (Islamic law) faculty of Kabul University until 1973, when he plotted with his group to overthrow President Mohammed Daoud Khan.

The uprising attempt in July 1975, in Panjshir Valley, failed significantly and he was forced to flee to Pakistan but was arrested when he returned.

However another account claims Sayyaf was not part of the plot but was merely arrested by the government for his ideology.

Being imprisoned by the Communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan in April 1978, he was freed in controversial circumstances by General Secretary Hafizullah Amin, who, coincidentally, was Sayyaf's distant relative.

He took part in the war against the Marxist–Leninist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government in the 1980s, leading the Afghan mujahideen faction Ittehad-al-Islami (Islamic Union).

Compared to other Afghan mujahideen leaders, Sayyaf was closely tied with international mujahideen from the Arab world.

During the Soviet-Afghan War he had close relations with Saudi Arabia and helped mobilize Arab jihadist volunteers for the mujahideen forces.

Although he did not arrive in Peshawar until 1980, after the actual Soviet intervention, due to having been incarcerated, he was recognized by the Pakistanis as the leader of the Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan (Ittihad-i-Islami Baraye Azadi Afghanistan), a coalition of several parties fighting the Soviet and Afghan government forces.

The Islamic Union soon imploded, and Sayyaf retained the name as the title of his own organization.

After presenting his organization and the jihad to Arabs in Saudi Arabia, Sayyaf is thought to have been most responsible for internationalizing the Afghan jihad against the Soviets, and thus creating a vocal point of concerns to Muslims in the Middle East.

Sayyaf further made a name change and growing his beard very long, which were symbols of his close relations with the royal Saudis and their Wahhabist tradition.

The Saudi General Intelligence Presidency tried to coerce the leaders of the other mujahideen movements to accept Sayyaf as their leader.

In 1980 Prince Turki bin Faisal invited the major mujahideen leaders to a conference in Taif and locked them in a jail until they agreed to accept Sayyaf's command, but they reneged on the agreement immediately after being freed.

Sayyaf fought against government forces and Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s, and was generously financed, and apparently favoured, by Saudi Arabia, seemingly due to his close religious affinities with the Wahhabist Saudi Royal and religious establishment and his excellent command of the Arabic language.

During the jihad against the Soviet Union and its Afghan allies, he formed a close relationship with Osama bin Laden.

Together in the Jalalabad area they established a training camp network, later used by Al-Qaeda personnel, with bunkers and emplacements.

In 1981, Sayyaf formed and headed the Ittihad-i-Islami Baraye Azadi Afghanistan, or Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan.

In 1985, he founded a university in an Afghan refugee camp near Peshawar called Dawa'a al-Jihad (Call of Jihad), which has been described the "preeminent school for terrorism."

Also, in these camps, Sayyaf trained and mentored the soon-to-be-infamous, Kuwaiti-born, future Al-Qaeda operative and senior commander, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, after being introduced by the latter's brother, Zahid, during the Afghan Jihad in 1987.

After the forced withdrawal of the demoralised Soviet forces in 1989, and the overthrow of the Mohammad Najibullah regime in 1992, Sayyaf's organization's human rights record became noticeably worse, underlined by their involvement in the infamous massacres and rampages in the Shia Hazara-majority Afshar district of Kabul in 1992-1993 during the Battle of Kabul.

Internally, Sayyaf was allied with the Rabbani government in the 1990s until the rise of the Taliban militia; this led to him joining the Northern Alliance in opposition of the Taliban, despite his close relationship with Saudi Arabia that supported the Taliban.

Sayyaf's faction was responsible for, "repeated human butchery", when his faction of Mujahideen turned on civilians and the Shia Hezb-i Wahdat group in west Kabul starting May 1992.

Amnesty International reported that Sayyaf's forces rampaged through the neighborhood, slaughtering and raping inhabitants and burning homes.

Sayyaf, who was allied with the de jure Kabul government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, did not deny the abductions of Hazara civilians, but merely accused the Hezb-i Wahdat militia of being an Iranian agent.

Sayyaf claimed and claims he is a vituperative opponent of the Taliban movement, which is the reason he officially joined the Northern Alliance, despite his religious and ideological affinities with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

Sayyaf was initially the only Pashtun leader in the Northern Alliance fighting against the Taliban.

Sayyaf is rumored to have helped Arab suicide assassins to kill the Northern Alliance leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, attended it.

Despite his growing wealth, he continued to live a spartan life, avoiding modern conveniences like mattresses and air conditioning; although he enjoyed a nightly game of tennis.

During the post-war period, Sayyaf retained his training camps, using them for militarily training and indoctrinating new recruits to fight in Islamic-backed conflicts such as Chechnya, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in the Southern Philippines, where his name inspired the Abu Sayyaf group.

In 2005 after the creation of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Sayyaf's Islamic Union was converted into a political party and he was elected as a member of the Afghan Parliament, where he maintained political influence.

Following the Taliban capture of Kabul in 2021, Sayyaf fled to exile in New Delhi, India.