London - “Al-Quds Al-Arabi”: The Wall Street Journal published a report prepared by Yaroslav Trofimov and Margarita Stankati, in which they said that the recent victory of the Taliban movement and its control of Kabul in August came as a result of the work of its secret agents who took control of Kabul and other Afghan cities from the inside.
They said the movement's undercover agents, who had shaved beards and wore jeans and eyeglasses, had spent years trying to infiltrate government ministries, universities, commerce and aid organizations. Then these secret agents in Kabul and other cities emerged from the shadows after the United States was completing its withdrawal from the country, to the astonishment of their neighbors and colleagues. They pulled their guns out of their hiding places and helped the Taliban take control of Afghanistan quickly and from within.
The newspaper comments that the pivotal role played by the secret agents is clear today, three months after the withdrawal of US forces.
As Afghan cities fell one after the other, Kabul fell in hours without a single shot being fired.
"We had agents in every organization and department," the newspaper quoted Mawlawi Muhammad Salim Saad, a prominent leader in the Taliban and oversaw the suicide operations and assassinations inside Kabul before its fall. "And the units we planted in Kabul took control of the strategic sites."
Saad's men belong to the Badri Brigade of the Haqqani Network, which is part of the Taliban and has been designated a terrorist movement by the United States for its ties to al-Qaeda. Saad was speaking in an office full of surveillance cameras at Kabul airport, commenting, "We had men even in the office I'm sitting in now."
The 20-year war is often seen as a war between gangs of bearded militants fighting from hideouts in the mountains and Afghan forces backed by US forces trying to take control of urban areas. But the war ended as a result of the efforts of a secret network that lived in the cities.
On August 15, when President Ashraf Ghani fled the capital, it was these men who took control of it as Taliban conventional forces remained outside the capital. Muhammad Rahim Omari, one of the center commanders in the Badri units, was working undercover from his family's petrol station in Kabul before he was asked to move that day. He said he and 12 people were sent to the Afghan intelligence headquarters where they disarmed the officers who were on duty that day and prevented them from destroying computers and files.
Other covert units were deployed to other government and military facilities and arrived at the Kabul airport where the Americans were conducting a massive evacuation of their troops. They secured the airport perimeter until Taliban forces arrived from the countryside the next morning. Mullah Rahim was sent to the Afghan Institute of Archeology to protect him from looting and destruction.
Omari said that the Badri units distributed their cells to work on multiple tasks - to fighters, fundraisers, and others who had a role in propaganda and recruitment. “These three types of mujahideen are now united,” said Omari, who is now appointed deputy chief of District 12 in Kabul.
The success of the cells contributed to strengthening the role of the Haqqani network within the Taliban movement, and the establishment of the Badri units, Badr al-Din Haqqani, who was killed in an American raid in Pakistan in 2012. Today, it is affiliated with his brother Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is responsible for internal affairs in Afghanistan and the Minister of Interior. The name of the division came from Badr, the first battle in which the Prophet Muhammad (may God bless him and grant him peace) won in 624. It includes sub-groups, the most famous of which is the 313th Special Operations Unit, which deployed its soldiers with their helmets and protective jackets alongside the Marines at Kabul airport in the two weeks in which the Americans completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan. Kamran, who refused to reveal his full name, was assigned to take control of Kabul University, from which he graduated, and the Ministry of Higher Education.
Kamran, 31, from the town of Wardak, west of Kabul, said he became responsible for recruitment when he was preparing a master's thesis in Arabic at the university in 2017. He estimates that he was able to recruit 500 people during his work. To hide his real job, he shaved off his beard, put on sunglasses, and put on a suit and jeans. "Many of my bearded colleagues were targeted," he said, "I was far from suspicious, at a time when many ordinary members of the movement were arrested, and I was not arrested even though I was the leader."
His colleagues and professors at the university only found out that he was from the Taliban when he came to the university with his rifle on August 15. “Most of the staff and all the university staff recognized me and were amazed to see me,” Kamran said. Today, he heads the security protection units for a number of Kabul universities. Since the fall of the capital, he has returned to the movement's uniform, the black turban, the white dress and the long beard. “That was not our traditional zen and I will not go back to it.”
Similar cells have been planted in other cities of Afghanistan, such as Kandahar, the country's second largest city. University lecturer Ahmed Wali Haqmal said that after he completed his studies in Sharia at the university, he asked the movement for permission to fight against the Afghan government. And “I was ready to carry the AK47 because no Afghans would tolerate invading the country” and “But our leadership said no, don’t come here and stay where you are, because these people are our people and the media and the world are deceiving them on our behalf.”
The two students sent Haqmal to India to complete a master's degree in human rights at the University of Aligarh. When he returned to Kandahar, he focused on recruitment and propaganda for the Taliban, and after the fall of Kabul he became the spokesman for the Ministry of Finance. Frishta Abbasi, a lawyer, said she was suspicious of the man working alongside her at the fortified Barun base, near Kabul airport, which was the seat of development projects backed by the United States and Western countries, but she only learned his identity when Kabul fell, when he appeared on television with a Kalashnikov. And I discovered that he was a military commander, "I was shocked," and the man was Asad Masoud Koehistani, and he said in an interview with "CNN" that women should cover their faces.