December 3, 2001, The Telegraph, Former bin Laden mentor warns the West, by Marcus Warren,

December 3, 2001, The Telegraph, Former bin Laden mentor warns the West, by Marcus Warren, 

Islamic scholar now with the Northern Alliance mocks calls to bring back ex-king, writes Marcus Warren in Kabul

THE Islamic scholar who was once a father figure to Osama bin Laden is a quietly spoken old gentleman with the white bushy beard of a Father Christmas.

Now a powerful figure in the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, in the 1980s Abdul Rasul Sayyaf was an ally for thousands of Arabs flocking to Afghanistan to resist the Soviet Union, among them bin Laden.

He said this weekend of his one time protege: "At that time I did not see anything particular about him. He was not outstanding in any way, just one person among many.

He added: "I found that he was a simple man. I don't know how the media have made such a thing out of him."

Their last meeting was 11 years ago, he said. By then the foreign legionaries in the struggle against Communism had been asked to go home, he added.

Originally their place was on the battlefield and they had been closely supervised, unable to "go to the left or the right".

The experiment in recruiting the Arabs en masse backfired only later, he implied, clearly trying to distance himself from any responsibility.

Mr Sayyaf, a follower of Wahhabi Islam, the creed of the Saudi establishment, had been the main conduit for aid from the Saudi kingdom to Afghanistan. His house in exile in Pakistan was an important port of call for visitors, including bin Laden.

His standing in their world was further enhanced by the training camps he ran for would-be jihad warriors, some of whom later gravitated towards the al-Qa'eda group.

Now resettled in both the capital and his home base of Paghman, formerly a fashionable resort favoured by monarchs and ministers, Mr Sayyaf was in a belligerent mood during a rare interview over the weekend.

Sitting on a sofa in a house recently reclaimed from the Taliban, he condemned what he complained was western interference in Afghanistan and heaped ridicule on its exiled king, Zahir Shah.

Mr Sayyaf, who commands a private army, expressed support for Burhanuddin Rabbani, Afghanistan's former president, in his stand-off with younger figures, such as the head of the Northern Alliance delegation in Bonn, Younis Qanooni, who is seen as adopting a more pragmatic approach to the country's future.

Mr Sayyaf said in halting English: "Pressure will not have any effect on this nation. The result will be negative."

However, he reserved his most scathing criticism for Zahir Shah, the 87-year-old deposed former king, nominated by many anti-Taliban Pathans for the role of national figurehead for the months ahead.

He said: "This is someone who when he wants to stand up from his chair needs two people to lift him up. They want to bring a dead person back and put him at the head of this destroyed, wounded nation."