A co-leader of what the U.S. military called the Kabul Attack Network appeared on Afghan television and bragged about his role in killing thousands of Afghans and hundreds of U.S. and Coalition personnel in suicide bombings and assaults, IED attacks, and ambushes for nearly 15 years before the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan.
The Taliban commander, known as Taj Mir Jawad, currently serves as the deputy minister of intelligence in the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Jawad appeared on TOLONews on Jan. 28, 2023 and gleefully admitted his role in the Jan. 28, 2018 suicide attack in Kabul that killed more than 100 people, including women and children, and other heinous attacks in and around Kabul over the years. In the Jan. 28, 2018 bombing, the suicide bomber deployed an ambulance packed with explosives and targeted old ministry of interior building in Kabul.
Tajuden Soroush, a Senior International Correspondent for Iran International, posted the video on Twitter (above). The Taliban leader is “Jawad Sargar,” Soroush told FDD’s Long War Journal.
“Not only did he say he directed the Jan. 28 attack, he said he was responsible for car bomb attacks, suicide attacks and other attacks” in and around Kabul, Soroush told LWJ.
Two U.S. intelligence officials, who wish to remain anonymous, confirmed to LWJ that Jawad Sargar is indeed Taj Mir Jawad, the Haqqani Network commander and Taliban leader who co-led the Kabul Attack Network along with another jihadist know as Daud, or Dawood.
The Kabul Attack Network pooled fighters and resources from the Taliban, Al Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic Jihad Union, the Turkistan Islamic Party, and Hizb-I-Islami Gulbuddin in order to coordinate personnel and resources, and maximize the effects of attacks in and around Kabul. The network extended into Logar, Wardak, Nangarhar, Kapisa, Ghazni, and Zabul Provinces.
The Kabul Attack Network was also supported by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The IRGC provided funding for the Kabul Attack Network.
FDD’s Long War Journal first identified Jawad as the co-leader of the Kabul Attack Network in July 2010. In Aug. 2010, LWJ discovered Jawad’s name in the Wikileaks files, which confirmed he co-led the Kabul Attack Network along with another jihadists known as Dawood (or Daud). The U.S. military targeted the “Taj Mir Jawad Network” multiple times in the early 2010s.
Jawad is also a leader within the Haqqani Network, the powerful Taliban subgroup lead by Sirajuddin Haqqani, one of the Taliban’s two deputy emirs and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s Minister of the Interior. Sirajuddin and numerous Haqqani leaders have ben listed by the U.S. as Specially Designated Global Terrorists for their ties to Al Qaeda. The Haqqani Network is listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
Immediately after the fall of the Afghan government after the U.S. withdrawal in Aug. 2021, Jawad was named as the deputy intelligence chief for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Jawad reports to Abdul Haq Wasiq, an ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee, who served as the Taliban’s deputy director general of intelligence prior to 9/11. Wasiq was captured by the U.S. in 2001. In that capacity, according to the U.N., Wasiq “was in charge of handling relations with Al Qaeda-related foreign fighters and their training camps in Afghanistan.”
