Mawlawi Afzal

Mawlawi Mohammad Afzal (born c. 1925^[1] – 2012) was a Panjpiri-educated Afghan clergyman of the Kam tribe^[1] from Barg-i-Matal, Nuristan Province. He studied in Deoband, and later at Akora, Pakistan, before teaching at a madrassa in Karachi, and then in his native village of Badmuk.^[2]

Following the Saur Revolution of 1978 in Afghanistan, Afzal established a Salafist mini-state in northern Nuristan, known as the Islamic Revolutionary State of Afghanistan, with consulates in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.^[3] Though Nuristan was generally a mujahideen area, Afzal was among those leaders who were at least temporarily co-opted by the DRA communist government.^[4] In the 1980s, Afzal was among those Nuristani leaders who, after initially supporting him, expelled the southern Nuristan military leader Sarwar Nuristani, suspecting him of supporting the Communist government.^[1] With the arrival of the Taliban in the mid-1990s, Afzal aligned himself with that movement, and received their support.^[5]

See also

• Former Salafist states in Afghanistan

References

1. Professor Barnett R. Rubin; Barnett R. Rubin (2002). The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System, Second Edition. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300095197.
2. Olivier Roy (September 1995). Afghanistan: from holy war to civil war. Darwin Press. ISBN 978-0-87850-076-5. Retrieved 29 March 2011.
3. Robert D. Crews; Amin Tarzi (15 May 2009). The Taliban and the crisis of Afghanistan. Harvard University Press. pp. 338–. ISBN 978-0-674-03224-8. Retrieved 29 March 2011.
4. Abdulkader H. Sinno (2009). Organizations at war in Afghanistan and beyond. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0801475788.
5. Christine Noelle-Karimi; Conrad Schetter; Reinhard Schlagintweit (2001). Afghanistan: A Country Without a State? (Schriftenreihe Der Mediothek Fur Afghanistan, Bd. 2). IKO. ISBN 978-3889396280.