Gul Haider (or Gul Haidar) is a former

mujahideen ''Mujahideen'', or ''Mujahidin'' ( ar, مُجَاهِدِين, mujāhidīn), is the plural form of ''mujahid'' ( ar, مجاهد, mujāhid, strugglers or strivers or justice, right conduct, Godly rule, etc. doers of jihād), an Arabic term th ...

commander and official in the ministry of defense of

Hamid Karzai Hamid Karzai (; Pashto/ fa, حامد کرزی, , ; born 24 December 1957) is an Afghan statesman who served as the fourth president of Afghanistan from July 2002 to September 2014, including as the first elected president of the Islamic Repub ...

's Afghan government.Detainees not given access to witnesses: But in one case, 3 quickly found
''

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'', June 18, 2006

Military career

Born in the

Panjshir Valley The Panjshir Valley (also spelled Panjsher or Darah-I-Panjshir; Pashto/Dari: – ''Dare-ye Panjšēr''; literally ''Valley of the Five Lions'') is a valley in northeastern Afghanistan, north of Kabul, near the Hindu Kush mountain range. It is di ...

of Afghanistan, Gul Haidar joined the forces of

Ahmed Shah Massoud ) , branch = Jamiat-e Islami / Shura-e Nazar Afghan Armed Forces United Islamic Front , serviceyears = 1975–2001 , rank = General , unit = , commands = Mujahideen commander during the Soviet–Afghan WarC ...

at the age of 17, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. While serving as one of Massoud's commanders, Gul Haidar lost a leg to a

mine Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to: Extraction or digging * Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging *Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine Grammar *Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun ...

, and Massoud sent him to

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

to receive an

artificial limb In medicine, a prosthesis (plural: prostheses; from grc, πρόσθεσις, prósthesis, addition, application, attachment), or a prosthetic implant, is an artificial device that replaces a missing body part, which may be lost through trau ...

, after which he returned to Afghanistan to continue the war. During the Sieges of Kabul Gul Haidar controlled Gardana Kar-e Sakhi and lead the fighting that initially took place near the custom posts on the road to

Jalalabad Jalalabad (; Dari/ ps, جلال‌آباد, ) is the fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 356,274, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part of the country, about from the capital Kabul. Jala ...

. According to one witness he controlled 40

RPG-7 The RPG-7 (russian: link=no, РПГ-7, Ручной Противотанковый Гранатомёт, Ruchnoy Protivotankoviy Granatomyot) is a portable, reusable, unguided, shoulder-launched, anti-tank, rocket-propelled grenade launcher. ...

rocket launchers, 10 82-mm

mortars Mortar may refer to: * Mortar (weapon), an indirect-fire infantry weapon * Mortar (masonry), a material used to fill the gaps between blocks and bind them together * Mortar and pestle, a tool pair used to crush or grind * Mortar, Bihar, a village i ...

, 10 82-mm artillery pieces and 40

PK machine gun The PK (russian: Пулемёт Калашникова, transliterated as ''Pulemyot Kalashnikova'', or "Kalashnikov's machine gun"), is a belt-fed general-purpose machine gun, chambered for the 7.62×54mmR rimmed cartridge. Designed in the Sov ...

s. In February–March 1993 he was known to control the Tapi-e Salaam area of Kabul as well where his forces fired mortars at the men of Ali Akbar Qasemi who was in the university area. According to one source he was manning the artillery at T.V. Mountain in three month rotations along with General Baba Jalandar. After the fall of Kabul in 1996 he remained loyal to Massoud, and was instrumental in preventing the

Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...

from taking the Panjshir valley.

Post-Taliban

General Gul Haidar commanded up to 1000 Afghan troops fighting alongside the Americans in the battles of Shah-e-Kot in Eastern Afghanistan in March 2002. He was at the time the Ministry of Defense Commander for 4 southern provinces including Paktika, Paktya and Ghazni. Since then he has largely traded in his guns for business and has become quite successful. He currently owns a mansion in Shirpur, an area where lower class housing was demolished to make room for houses of government officials.

Relation with Abdullah Mujahid

Guantanamo detainee

Abdullah Mujahid Abdullah Mujahid (born 1971) is a citizen of Afghanistan who is still held in extrajudicial detention after being transferred from United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba — to an Afghan prison. His Guantanamo Internment Ser ...

requested Haider as one of the witnesses who could refute the accusation that he was fired because he was suspected of collusion with anti-government forces.Guardian finds Afghan witnesses US couldn't
''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', June 30, 2006Found: The 'unfindable' men
, ''

Mail and Guardian The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal syst ...

'', July 1, 2006 Haider was one of the members of a commission who recommended a promotion for Mujahid.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Haidar, Gul Living people 1962 births Jamiat-e Islami politicians