SUMMARY
Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan, also known as the Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, was a moderate Islamist, Shia armed group and political party established in 1979.
The Islamist movements in Afghanistan originated from a cell of intellectuals at Kabul University. In the 1950s, the theology faculty opened, and graduates could travel to other Muslim universities. Inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a group called the Muslim Youth was formed in the mid-1960s. As a reaction to a communist-backed coup in 1973, the resistance group Jam’iyyat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan was created by members of the Muslim Youth network. In the following years several new resistance groups were formed but after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the Islamist struggle against the communist regime became increasingly violent and Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan was formed.
Like other resistance groups seeking to preserve Islam and traditional Afghanistan from the communist government and Soviet foreign intervention, fighters from Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan became known as Mujahideen. This title indicated that their struggle against the Government of Afghanistan was perceived as a holy war or jihad against an infidel.
When the Mujahideen groups ousted the communist President Mohammad Najibullah in 1992 and took over the government, Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan allied itself with the new Government of Afghanistan under President Burhanuddin Rabbani until the Taleban took over in September 1996. Subsequently, a leadership struggle led to the military and more secular wing of Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan formally splintering to form Harakat-i Islami-i Mardon-i Afghanistan in 2003. Since then, Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan has functioned as a political party.
Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan had its headquarters originally in Qom, Iran, until disagreements with Government of Iran authorities led to it being moved to Peshwar, Pakistan. Its bases were in the Afghan provinces of Bamyan, Ghazni, Kandahar, Parwan, Samangan and Wardak; these were located mostly in the central Afghanistan area known as Hazarajat. Although Hazarajat was dominated by the Hazara ethnic Afghan-minority, which largely follows Shia Islam, Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan did not originate from the Hazara community. Consequently, support for the group was not Hazara-dominated; its members were urban, politicized and educated individuals recruited from the full range of Shia Afghans.
Militarily, Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan was respected for being very effective in the 1980s and strongest in the border areas of Hazarajat. It was notable for being the only Shia group, as opposed to Sunni, to actively fight against the Soviet troops supporting the Government of Afghanistan during its civil war (see Government of Afghanistan - Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan). In 1984, Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan had approximately 2000 full-time troops with 15 000 supporters, which was the maximum number of people estimated to be able to take up arms at the same time.
The founder of Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan was Sheikh (later Ayatollah) Mohammad Asif Mohseni Qandahari, who was a Qizilbash Shia from the Pashtun-areas of Kandahar. He led the group until 2005, when he passed on the leadership to Mohammad Ali Jawid, who had served as a minister in the Government of Afghanistan cabinet formed in 2001. Another notable figure was Sayyid Husain Anwari, who maintained the group’s connection with the Government of Afghanistan between 1992 and 1996 by serving as the Minister of Works and Social Affairs. Following the Taleban takeover of the government in 1996, Anwari initiated a leadership struggle against Mohseni. This ended with Anwari forming a splinter group, Harakat-i Islami-i Mardon-i Afghanistan, drawn from the military, and more secular component of Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan in 2003.
Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan was part of UIFSA, the coalition more commonly known as the Northern Alliance, which fought against the Taleban government in the latter part of the 1990s before they, with US support, defeated the Taleban in 2001.
While Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan initially had links to the Government of Iran, which supported many of the Shia resistance movements, it broke these links in the early 1980s. It also stood out amongst other Shia Islamist groups for not joining the Hizb-I Wahdat coalition formed in 1989. However, some ethnic Hazara members did leave Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan for Hizb-I Wahdat.
