SUMMARY
Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan was a Sunni Islamist, Afghan armed group and political party. It was also known as the Afghanistan National Liberation Front, National Salvation Front and Jabha-yi Milli Beraye Najat-i-Afghanistan. As with many of the other parties created during the late 1970s, Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan was originally formed as a coalition in an attempt to unite the country’s Islamist parties. Its formation was announced on 1 June 1978 but many parties soon rejected the alliance and when Jam’iyyat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan left the coalition, Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan evolved into a new independent party. It was one of the seven main insurgency groups based in Peshawar, Pakistan during the 1980s and 1990s, commonly referred to as the Mujahideen.
Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan represented the interests of the conservative and religious constituents and sought to establish a parliamentary democracy within a traditional Islamic state. As a moderate Islamist group, regarded by radical Islamists as primarily secular, it had a wide support base. This included members from the Sufi orders in southern Afghanistan, aristocratic families from the old royalist regime as well as from various tribes. Speakers of both Dari/Farsi and Pashtu supported the group. In Afghanistan, its bases were in the east and south and its main strength was located in the provinces of Paktia and Kunar. Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan also had units operating in Zabul and Kandahar. It was estimated that Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan had between 1500 and 3000 troops with the number of supporters also able to take up arms ranging from 3500 to 10 000.
The leader of Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan was Hazrat Sibghatullah Mujaddidi. He was an ethnic Pashtun and senior member of the Naqshbandi Sufi order, which was a revered family of spiritual leaders that were rejected by Wahabists. When a mujahideen-coalition took over the Government of Afghanistan in April 1992, Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan initially joined the government and Mujaddidi served as interim president. However, when fighting amongst the mujahideen groups broke out, Mujaddidi relinquished his position after two months. Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan left the government and allied with Hizb-I Islami-yi Afghanistan](/#actor/299) to then fight against the Government of Afghanistan until the Taleban overthrew the Mujahideen government regime in September 1996.
During the eighties and nineties, the mujahideen groups made several attempts to unite in an alliance, both in order to increase their combat strength but also because external donors, primarily the Government of United States of America, preferred to support one cohesive organization rather than numerous dispersed groups. This included an attempted but unsuccessful alliance between three moderate and three fundamentalist groups, which included the Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan, in 1980 under the title “Islamic Alliance for the Liberation of Afghanistan”. Simultaneously, Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan was part of the “Peshawar Seven”; an informal alliance between the seven main Islamist groups based in Peshawar. The other Peshawar Seven members were: Hizb-i Islami-yi Afghanistan, Mahaz-i Milli-yi Islami-yi Afghanistan, Hizb-i Islami-yi Afghanistan - Khalis faction, Harakat-i Inqilab-i Islami-yi Afghanistan, Jam’iyyat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan and Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi-yi Afghanistan. This informal coalition became formalized under the name “Islamic Unity of the Afghan Mujahideen” in 1985 (although it was still commonly referred to as the Peshawar Seven). It was active until 1992, when the mujahideen groups took over as Government of Afghanistan. External funding, despite tension between the individual group leaders, led to the coalition retaining a loose but longer-lasting alliance. Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan was reported to be the weakest of the Peshawar Seven groups and had a limited military presence in Afghanistan, compared to the other.
The Sunni mujahideen, including Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan Afghanistan, received substantial amounts of support in the form of arms, training, advisors, logistics and financial assistance from several governments. These included the governments of the United States of America, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China and Egypt (click Read More to see more information on secondary support).
However, Jabha-yi Nijat-i Milli-yi Afghanistan received less support than other alliance members; for example, it received 3-5% of the resources distributed to the Sunni mujahideen from Pakistan.
