Shahnawaz Tanai

Tanai was born in 1950 in Dargai village, located in Khost, Afghanistan to a poor ethnic Pashtun family, belonging to the Tanai tribe. He joined the Afghan Army in 1968 and served in its commando forces unit. Tanai received his military training in the Soviet Union where he first studied infantry tactics and later excelled in military leadership. After the Saur Revolution in 1978, the coup d'état that resulted in the overthrow and assassination of President Mohammed Daoud Khan, Tanai, was appointed head of Military Intelligence. He survived through the years of bloodshed that followed during the Saur Revolution. His first appointment was as Commander of the Kabul garrison. When Mohammad Hasan Sharq was selected by President Najibullah as the new Prime Minister, the position of Minister of Defense was vacant for some time but was finally awarded to Tanai. Tanai was recognized as a hawk and a sworn enemy of the Mujahideen, and he even urged firing Scud missiles at Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, in retribution for their support for the Afghan mujahideen. He sought a military solution to the Soviet-Afghan War, as opposed to the party's policy (under Najibullah) of national reconciliation. Tanai was also a notable participant of the 1989 Battle of Jalalabad during the First Afghan Civil War. == Coup of March 1990 ==

On 6 March 1990, when the trial of army officers from the PDPA's Khalq faction was about to start, Tanai launched a coup with the help of renegade mujahideen commander, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, against the then President Mohammad Najibullah. Tanai had secret sporadic contacts with the hardline Islamist Hekmatyar. The Pakistan government's involvement in this abortive affair was transparently obvious. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's plea to the other six party leaders to aid Tanai and Hekmatyar was rebuked as a disgrace to the jihad. Most of the factions viewed Tanai as an opportunistic war criminal and hardline communist who had been responsible for the carpet-bombing of portions of the western city of Herat during the 1979 Herat uprising. Eventually, he settled there in Pakistan, where he lived in exile until August of that same year. == Post-1990 and later life ==

Later it was alleged, but never proven, that Tanai had assisted the Taliban, more specifically by providing the fundamentalist group with personnel from the disbanded Afghan Commando Forces, Afghan Army and KHAD. Instead, Pakistan's army had transferred support from Tanai to the Taliban, since Tanai was seen as carrying too much baggage from his former years and the Taliban leadership and ranks were made up largely of mujahideen fighters. Nonetheless, the Northern Alliance trumpeted the claim that Tanai had supported the Taliban, although this was quite easily disproven, and their own ranks included former communist leaders like Abdul Rashid Dostum. Tanai was latterly the leader of the Afghanistan Peace Movement (De Afghanistan De Solay Ghorzang Gond) party. In 2005, he returned to Khost province to make a political comeback. He drove from Islamabad to the border town of Torkham, where he crossed over to Afghanistan to be warmly received by his supporters. He was then escorted in a convoy of vehicles to Kabul, where he resided. He did not stand as a presidential candidate in the 2004 elections, but his movement was enrolled as the 29th political party for the 2004 elections, and it was expected that his influence would bring back Afghan communists from Pakistan and elsewhere, where they had fled, to play a political role. He also campaigned for a bigger role for Pashtuns, former jihadi leaders and religious parties, and he openly criticised United States policies that perpetuated the Northern Alliance domination in Kabul. There were allegations that Tanai had been sent by Pakistan to influence Afghanistan's politics in the post-Taliban period. He was also accused of working for Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). According to western diplomatic sources, Tanai acted as an agent for ISI by providing the Taliban a skilled cadre of military officers from the Khalq faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan to use his pilots to fly Mig-23, Sukhoi fighters of what was left of the Afghan Air Force, drive Soviet tanks and the use of Soviet artillery. However, most neutral sources doubt this claim, partly because Western sources have tended to play up the ISI's role in the Pashtun discontent, and partly because of Tanai's unpopularity with Pakistan's army and intelligence—as opposed to the Pakistan People’s Party in power when he fled to Pakistan. Tanai also was considered a Pashtun nationalist, making him a liability to Pakistan. In a 2009 interview, Tanai stated that the NATO troops are no different than Soviet troops and that they must leave Afghanistan. == References ==