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Pakistani Cleric Known as 'Father' of Afghan Taliban Assassinated

by Ayaz Gul

   ISLAMABAD --

   Unknown assailants in Pakistan have assassinated the top Islamist
   leader known as the "father" of Afghanistan's Taliban movement.

   Family members confirmed that Maulana Sami-ul Haq, 81, was resting at
   his home Friday in the city of Rawalpindi near the national capital of
   Islamabad when he was killed with a knife.

   The slain leader's son, Maulana Hamid-ul Haq, said his father's
   security guard had gone to the nearby market when the attack occurred.

   "When his guard returned home from the market he found my father
   drowned in blood," he said, adding they immediately drove him to a
   nearby hospital where Haq succumbed to his injuries.
   Nobody has yet claimed responsibility.

   Prime Minister Imran Khan, who currently is in China on an official
   visit, has condemned the assassination of the renowned cleric and
   ordered authorities to swiftly investigate it.

   Sami-ul Haq was the head of the famous "Haqqania" madrasa, or religious
   seminary, in Akora Khatak near the northwestern provincial capital of
   Peshawar.

   The slain cleric was internationally known as the founder of the
   Taliban movement, which currently is fighting the U.S.-backed
   government in neighboring Afghanistan.

   Many senior leaders of the Afghan insurgency had graduated from the
   seminary before the Islamist group emerged on the Afghan scene in the
   early 1990s and later took control of most of the civil war-torn
   Afghanistan.

   Sami-ul Haq, who was also the head of his own faction of Jamiat
   Ulema-e-Islam (S) Islamic party, had promised to play his role and even
   host the Afghan peace talks.

   A former member of the Senate, upper house of Pakistan's parliament,
   Haq was a harsh critic of the U.S.-led military intervention in
   Afghanistan that ousted the Taliban from power in 2001 for harboring
   the leadership of al-Qaida terrorist network.