A former leader of the Islamic State’s Khorasan branch the ISKP surrendered to the Taliban in Nangarhar past week, where he was welcomed by Taliban officials.
Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, who was the first known face in Afghanistan to announce support for the Islamic State and its then caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi n 2014, has an interesting history. He was born on January 1, 1960, in Jalalabad, Afghanistan but he spent a significant part of his life in Pakistan.
At one point he was a journalist and at another point, he was dealing in jewellery. In 1979, Dost was among the followers of Juhayman al-Otaybi and was involved in the Grand Mosque seizure in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. He was arrested after the Saudi government stormed the Mosque, but was somehow freed later after which he fled to Peshawar, Pakistan.
He and his brother, Badr ul Zaman Badr, were arrested at their home on Nov. 17, 2001, by Pakistani intelligence agents, who later handed him over to the U.S. and were eventually taken to the U.S. military facility at Bagram, north of the Afghan capital, Kabul. After about 11 weeks there, he was flown to Guantanamo. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 561.
Dost’s brother, Badr ul Zaman Badr, later suggested that the pair had been arrested on the basis of satire, telling American radio producers in 2007 that he and Dost had written a joke about a public official, who then told authorities the brothers were linked to al-Qaeda.
Dost said before his arrest he had worked for three Afghan magazines “Ahsan” (Justice), “Zeray” (Good News) and “Dawat” (Invitation) which were all sympathetic to the Taliban. He said he had once been a member of Afghan rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e Islami party but had severed ties to the group.
“I committed no crime against the Americans or anyone else,” Dost said.
Dost’s brother, Badrul Zaman Badr, was freed from Guantanamo in December 2004.
Dost said on the day he arrived his American jailers forced him to take off his clothes and then photographed him. After that, he was taken to a doctor and then given an orange prison jumpsuit.
“I was never tortured,” Dost said. “But I was kept in solitary confinement and that was worse than torture.”
The allegations against Muslim Dost, in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, was that he was a member of the Jamaat al Dawa al Quran (JDQ) militant group, and served as a contact between that group and Al Qaeda. Muslim Dost acknowledged being a member of JDQ but said he joined long ago, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
During his time in prison, Dost became something of a poet and he went to great lengths to record his work. Later Dost accused the Americans of not returning his poetry work to him.
Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost was one of the 38 captives the Bush Presidency determined had not been enemy combatants after all. The U.S. Department of Defense refers to these men as No Longer Enemy Combatants.
Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost was freed on April 20, 2005, with sixteen other Afghans whose Tribunals had determined they were not enemy combatants.
According to Fox News, the US considered Muslim Dost “too old and sick to get back in the fight” and his intelligence value had been “maxed out”.
Following his release from Guantanamo, in 2006 Dost published “The Broken Chains,” an account of his experience in detention. In 2007, Dost’s poems were included in a volume of poems written by Guantanamo detainees called Poems from Guantánamo: the Detainees Speak, a collection that was edited by Marc Falcoff and published by the University of Iowa Press in 2007.
On September 30, 2006, the media reported that Muslim Dost had been arrested by Pakistani officials. Muslim Dost’s brother linked the arrest to criticisms of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate‘s role in the capture of Guantanamo detainees. Muslim Dost’s brother said he was arrested while leaving a mosque. Local Peshawar Police Superintendent Iftikhar Khan denied any knowledge of Muslim Dost’s arrest but acknowledged Inter-Services Intelligence officials may have executed a covert arrest. In 2008, Muslim Dost was released from detention as part of a prisoner swap between the then Pakistani government and the Pakistani Taliban, who had been holding Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan and others hostage.
In July 2014, Muslim Dost swore allegiance to the leader of IS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and began recruiting fighters and distributing propaganda for its Khorasan branch in the Nuristan and Kunar provinces of Afghanistan as well as in some Afghan refugee camps in Peshawar. In a video released in 2014, Dost claimed to have had a vision about the reestablishment of the Caliphate.
But in late 2015, Dost publicly disassociated himself from IS and its Khorasan branch, while condemning the group’s leadership and its killings in Afghanistan.
Fast Forward to 2022
In the first week of March, a ceremony was held in Jalalabad, Nangarhar, which is also the place of birth of Muslim Dost. The chief guest of the ceremony was the Taliban’s intelligence chief for Nangarhar Dr Bashir. During the ceremony, Muslim Dost officially surrendered himself to the Taliban and shook hands with Taliban officials. Later he also addressed the ceremony where he made a small speech alongside Dr Bashir.
Following is a transcript of the video (credit to @UmaidMusafir for translation):
Muslim Dost: The first dispute was that the neighbouring military officers (Generals, Colonels, Majors and Brigadiers) and the head of Kashmir jihadists had secret meetings with Hafiz Sahib Khan and when our guys informed us we asked them why they met them, and they said that they give us money, I said that don’t go to Afghanistan and stay in Pakistan and Pakistan has right on us and we should fight for the sake of Shariah and stay there. If you go there, there will be a fight between Muslims, but they did not agree with me and asked me to give us money for going for jihad, I said that this is not jihad because you are doing this for the sake of money.
Dr. Bashir: So all of you understand that these people are not among us not in our religion nor in our culture so get out of their ranks by whatever name they are and join Islamic Emirate and become Muslim.
Dost: Whoever joined oppressive groups and followed them and knew that they are oppressive, they are excommunicated from Islam’s borders, so I would either stay with Daesh and get out of Islamic boundaries or I would have to stay in Islam and get out of Daesh, so for sure I would prefer Islam.
Dr. Bashir: So whoever stood against Islamic Emirate they would be given the listen as the others were given in the past.
It is worth noting here that Dr Bashir, the intelligence chief of Taliban in Nangarhar province, is the same individual who was seen in a recent video making threats against Pakistan.
Many experts have noted that following the August 2021 takeover of Afghanistan, quite a few Taliban officials and members have expressed disdain for Pakistan and some have even engaged in hateful rhetoric against ethnic Punjabis. ‘Punjabi’ is also often used as a slur for Pakistanis and its security forces by members or supporters of a variety of militant groups fighting against the Pakistani state.