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AFGHANISTAN-CONFLICT
Afghan mujahideen fighter turned president dies: family
KABUL, Feb 12, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – An Afghan mujahideen commander who fought
the Soviets and rose to become the country’s first president after the Red
Army retreated has died aged 93, his family said Tuesday.
Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, who commanded a mujahideen faction during the
decade-long insurgency against the Soviet occupiers, passed away late Monday
in a Kabul hospital after a long illness.
Prominent Afghans, including former president Hamid Karzai, have begun
visiting the Mojaddedi family home to pay their respects.
Afghanistan’s de facto prime minister Abdullah Abdullah extended his
condolences to the respected Mojaddedi clan.
“He has played a vital role in all national issues and his legacy will
remain part of Afghanistan’s history,” he posted on Twitter.
Presidential candidate and former national security adviser Mohammad Haneef
Atmar said Mojaddedi’s passing “leaves a huge vacuum in Afghan politics and
public life”.
Mojaddedi’s death comes three days before the 30th anniversary of the
Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Red Army crossed the Amu Darya river into Soviet Uzbekistan on February
15, 1989 having suffered 15,000 losses.
After the withdrawal, Afghanistan’s communist regime collapse in 1992 and
Mojaddedi, who led the Afghan National Liberation Front, was chosen as
interim president.
He served just two months under a power-sharing deal struck by mujahideen
leaders. These factions later turned on each other and Afghanistan plunged
into civil war.
But Mojaddedi continued to play a prominent role in Afghan politics,
particularly after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. In 2003, Mojaddedi served
as chairman of the Loya Jirga — or Grand Assembly — that approved
Afghanistan’s new constitution for a post-Taliban era.
He also chaired a four-day gathering of around 2,500 tribal elders in 2013
to endorse a security agreement under which the United States would keep
troops in Afghanistan to train Afghan forces and conduct counterterrorism
operations.
BSS/AFP/MR/ 1500 hrs