Afghan Biographies

Qari Hekmat killed


Name Qari Hekmat killed
Ethnic backgr. Uzbek
Date of birth
Function/Grade Taliban/ISIS commander Jowzjan
History and Biodata

3. Biodata:
Qari Hekmat Qari Hikmatullah is the son of Tohir Yoʻldosh, founder of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. He had long been a Taliban commander in Jowzjan Province and was their shadow governor for Darzab District. In Nov 2015, he allegedly accused a woman of adultery and intended to stone her to death, but was prevented. This incident led to him being expelled by the Taliban for "cruel activities". In October 2016 he joined the Islamic State/Daesh. He commands at least 200 armed men. He soon moved into Qush Tepa District, defeating local Taliban. 2017 the governor of Sar-e-Pul province said Hekmat was increasing recruitment there.

During the second half of October 2017, the Taleban deployed hundreds of fighters in Jawzjan province to retake areas under the control of Qari Hekmat, who is a disgruntled Taleban commander. In 2015 as a result of intra-Taleban conflicts about territorial control and taxation Hekmat – the Taleban’s former shadow district governor in his home district Darzab – declared himself and his fighters part of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), the Afghan-Pakistani division of the so-called Islamic State (called Daesh by Afghans) centred in Iraq and Syria. Since then, Hekmat has had almost full control over his home district of Darzab in the remote south of Jawzjan, near the border with Faryab and Sar-e Pul. There is no Taleban presence in this district anymore, and Afghan government forces are limited to the district government office as well as to a few bases nearby.

In early October 2017, Hekmat’s fighters went on the offensive and overran most Taleban positions in neighbouring Qush Tepa district. This included the Taleban’s district headquarters located there; this district and Darzab are also under one local Taleban military committee.

According to a Taleban field commander, fighters loyal to Hekmat besieged the Taleban in the villages of Beg Sar, Khanaqa, Gardan and Shir Beg in Qush Tepa at the beginning of October. The local Taleban, he said, retreated to the Astana area of neighbouring Dawlatabad district in Faryab. On 21 October 2017, the Taleban conducted an unsuccessful counteroffensive against Hekmat’s network that continued for five consecutive days. According to locals, while the Taleban were able to re-take a number of villages for a short while, Hekmat’s fighters returned during some of the more recent clashes. Eventually, the Taleban once again retreated to Dawlatabad.

Qari Hekmat has been killed in an airstrike in Darzab district, Jawzjan province. Other reports say Hekmat was killed in Qorogh village of Belcheragh district in neighbouring Faryab province.
The attack that killed him along with one of his bodyguards was carried out as they attempted to return to his base in Sar Dara village in the district of Darzab. The second bodyguard was wounded. The terror group has appointed Mawlavi Habibur Rehman Mawlawi Habib-ur-Rehman as the new leader of the group to replace Qari Hekmat. Mawlavi Rahman is originally a resident of the Sholgar district, Balkh province. Unlike Hekmat, 31 year-old Mawlawi Habib Rahman is a relative newcomer to the Jawzjan insurgency and not a local. The Uzbek from Sholgara district in Balkh province joined Hekmat’s forces in 2016. Habib Rahman is also the brother in-law of a former Taleban shadow district governor in Qush Tepa, Mufti Nemat, who surrendered to General Abdulrashid Dostum in 2015. He later switched sides again to join the late Hekmat. Mufti Nemat continues to operate in Darzab and might also have supported the appointment of Habib Rahman to lead the group.(20180407)

More Background:
It has emerged from reports, that Qari Hekmat immediately after he switched to Daesh, and as early as 2015, had reached out to local commanders and had attracted others from elsewhere. He now hosts limited numbers of outside fighters from Ghor, Kunduz, Sar-e Pul and Balkh provinces. According to local sources, they constituted “not more than a few dozen.”

His first step was to selectively target local commanders who led small groups of fighters. Previously, most of them had either dealt with the Taleban or the local government. Some served as local Taleban commanders and others operated under pro-government militia forces with shaky loyalty. Qari Hekmat managed to convince at least 20 of them operating in Darzab and Qush Tepa to put themselves under his command.

The most prominent was Haji Zainuddin, a local Uzbek and former Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) commander. He had some hundred fighters located in an area at the border between Darzab and Qush Tepa. There, his fighters mainly operated as a community protection forces dealing with local issues independently. He had struck a deal with the Taleban in 2009 that formally put him under their control, but left a degree of autonomy. The deal was mainly based on two conditions: that his villagers in his area would not join the government forces – in return the Taleban would give him full authority to control the area, including taxation – and the Taleban would not deploy his fighters to other parts of the district. In 2016, when Hekmat became stronger, he switched side to Hekmat.

Another example is Mufti Nemat, an Uzbek commander hosting around 80 fighters. Nemat had surrendered to General Abdulrashid Dostum in February 2015. He stayed almost two years in Sheberghan, but later left and joined Qari Hekmat. Now he serves as a Daesh-affiliated commander in the Sar Dara area of Darzab, which served as Hekmat’s fall-back position during the latest Taleban offensive. Commander Qudrat Gul, with 40 to 50 fighters, and Commander Hamza, with around 30 followers, also started to operate under the Daesh flag in mid-2016.

Around the same time, with Omar Muhajer, who led fighters from Ghor province, some commanders from outside southern Jawzjan started to join Hekmat. Mujaher is a Tajik from either Ghor or Farah and is said to be very young. His previous affiliation, if any, is unknown to AAN’s local sources.

The second outsider group is said to be from as far away as Dasht-e Archi district in Kunduz. It also is a small group of some 10 to 15 fighters, who are most probably from Jundullah (the Army of God). They joined Hekmat in late 2016. Jundullah is a splinter group of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They are mostly active in Afghanistan’s northeast, but consist only of Afghans. In 2015, some Jundullah fighters had expressed interest in the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) by translating ISIL leader Abu Baker al-Baghdadi’s statements into the local language and dubbing and circulating ISIL video clips from Syria in social media. The Taleban then disarmed and detained a number of Jundullah fighters in Kunduz and Takhar provinces, making some of them to flee. 



A third group, led by Mawlawi Habib Rahman from Balkh, joined Hekmat in 2016 with around ten fighters. He served as the head of the shadow judiciary under Hekmat for some months, but then was replaced for an unknown reason. 

Mawlawi Habib Rahman now serves as a Daesh-affiliated commander in the Sar Dara area of Darzab.

Over the border from Jawzjan, in Sayad district of Sar-e Pul province, another small group of fighters stretched out their hands to Qari Hekmat and visited his base in Darzab. Mullah Ghazanfar, an infamous Taleban commander, leads it. When he met Hekmat at the beginning of 2017, he sought assurance that he would be provided with shelter in Sayad, in case the Taleban pushed him out from Darzab. However, this friendship did not last for longer than a few months. In August 2017, Ghazanfar, along with Mullah Nader, the shadow Taleban district governor for Sayad, carried out a widely-reported assault against Afghan Local Police and public uprising forces in Mirza Olang village. This resulted in a number of civilians killed.

Qari Hekmat has already set up a shadow structure in the area under his control to deal with people’s daily affairs. There were units for the judicial, military, police, finance and ‘virtue’ affairs, i.e. a religious ‘police’. He uses Arabic terms for them in a clear distinction from the Taleban’s shadow structure, for example, shortah (Arabic for police), al-maliyah (for finance unit), qazi’iyya (for judicial unit), and askariyah (for military unit).

According to sources close to him, the group has established a decision-making council of 14 members led by Hekmat to deal with different issues. “All members of the council are prominent commanders and heads of the units are also included. They discuss finance, military, public outreach and security issues every month.” Hekmat has distributed administrative positions among the commanders who joined him. Mufti Nemat serves as head of the military court, and Omar Muhajer as the head of the ‘virtues’ unit. Mullah Sohbatullah, another Uzbek from Darzab, heads the finance unit, while Mullah Qudratullah, a Tajik from either Herat or Badghis, operates the intelligence unit.

Hekmat also appointed two deputies: Mullah Zabihullah, for military affairs, and Haji, for civilian affairs. Local sources were unable to provide more detail; both deputies seem to come from outside the area.

Hekmat has proved that fighters loyal to him are able, not only to eliminate the Taleban from his area, but also practice Daesh-style brutalities. As AAN has already reported, his fighters publicly beheaded a local resident accusing him of distributing amulets in January 2016. In the same year Daesh-affiliated fighters set on fire two shrines in Bibi Maryan and Sufi Dost Muhammad villages in Darzab district. The shrines were popular locally, but Daesh suppresses all forms of religious activity that do not conform with its own interpretations. These activities also aimed to attract public attention and give further credibility tothe claim that the group is Daesh’s representative in the north. Qari Hekmat uses the Daesh logo in the statements and messages he delivers. In February 2018, for instance, the group distributed leaflets in Darzab and Qush Tepa with the Daesh logo calling on locals to obey the Daesh instructions.

In June 2017, Mawlawi Zikrullah, Hekmat’s fellow Darzabi commander, reportedly led a delegation with ten other fighters in Hekmat’s name to Nangarhar province to visit the ISKP leadership that is the recognised branch of IS in Afghanistan. According to sources close to Hekmat, Zikrullah stayed in Nangarhar for a couple of weeks. However, the nature of Hekmat’s connection with ISKP base in eastern Afghanistan still remains unclear. It seems it is more on the communication level, rather than operational or involving financial support being exchanged between Hekmat and ISKP.

Both the ALP commander for Darzab district, Sher Muhammad, and locals from the district, mention that foreign fighters had joined Hekmat. Baz Muhammad Dawar, Darzab’s district governor, told media outlets in December 2017, that Uzbeks, Chechen and even French and Algerian nationals had been seen in Darzab district. The spokesman of the Afghan Ministry of Defence (MoD), Dawlat Waziri, in December 2017, also picked up on the alleged presence of French and Algerians.

The French news agency AFP even quoted “European and Afghan security sources in Kabul “ confirming this, without giving more detail, though.
The sources denied the presence of any French fighters. According to Alhaj Muhammad Akram, “There is no evidence to claim the presence of French fighters”.

The Taleban have failed one more time to retake control of Darzab and Qush Tepa; mainly as a result of their own disunity. This has boosted the non-Taleban militant group’s morale and consolidated their power in the two isolated districts. However, if the Taleban were to become more serious in a future attack, the outcome would be unclear. The government, for the moment, does not seem to be in a position – or willing – to tackle this problem in this remote region. There are even indications that it might be happy that the Taleban – its much stronger enemy countrywide – has come under pressure there.

The Taleban’s unsuccessful counter-offensives indicate that the movement suffers from fragmentation and lacks a strong leadership at the provincial level in Jawzjan. This has yielded negative results affecting their local fighters’ ability to take on Hekmat. The Taleban also seem to face the same problem government troops face after so-called cleaning operations – the enemy withdraws, and returns when the troops retreat again.

Hekmat has taken advantage of this situation and dramatically expanded his territory in both districts. Some government forces hold out in the district centres, but the Taleban were wiped from parts of Darzab and Qush Tepa; territory they still held in October 2017.Public services and schools remain shut and locals face serious challenges in their efforts to continue their day-to-day lives.

Qari Hekmat’s group has emerged as the strongest single group in this part of Jawzjan. It might have come as a surprise, even to himself, that his capability to survive militarily (so far) has enabled him to set up his own shadow administrative structures in these two isolated districts. This facilitates disgruntled Taleban commanders and more radical groups to join him as an alternative to the Taleban. It has also turned the area into a refuge for such groups from elsewhere. But so far he has proven too weak to defeat the remaining pro-government forces holed up in the centre of his home district.

It is unclear to date whether he has any intention to expand his grip beyond Darzab and Qush Tepa. The appearance of the Central Asian fighters in Jawzjan and of Daesh style atrocities might be an indication that he intends to build relations with foreign fighters.

The size of the outside groups remains limited to a dozen fighters. This indicates that southern Jawzjan is still far from being a northern Afghan ‘Nangrahar’. Also, the danger emanating from this region is minimal in respect of the overall strategic balance in Afghanistan, as it is neighbouring countries where there is a fear of a spread of Daesh.(20180305)

Last Modified 2018-05-16
Established 2017-11-12