Kabul

Kabul is a turning point in Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s account of the Afghan conflict and a recurring place in later testimony about routes, training, and captivity. Its fall followed his return to Afghanistan in 1992; in Slahi’s telling, the conflict’s changed character brought his participation to an end. Later references connect the city to a detainee’s escape and to allegations about Slahi’s advice to men he hosted in Germany.

The 1992 turning point

Slahi had first gone to Afghanistan for training in 1991, then returned to his electrical-engineering studies in Germany. In early 1992, as the communist government was close to collapse, he went back to Afghanistan and joined a unit commanded by Jalaluddin Haqqani. The unit was laying siege to a city that fell with little resistance three weeks after Slahi arrived. Kabul fell soon afterward.

Slahi described the period after the government’s collapse as a reversal of the purpose that had drawn him into the conflict: mujahideen factions began fighting one another over who would rule. He said he left because he did not want to fight other Muslims or take part in a contest over political office. In his account, his objective had been to oppose the communists, whom he said prevented Muslims from practicing their religion.

The claimed end of his commitment

Slahi consistently presented this turn in the conflict as the end of his commitment to al-Qaeda. The distinction in his account is between joining a fight against the communist government and continuing to participate once the factions that had opposed it began fighting among themselves. Kabul’s fall thus sits within a larger political reversal: victory over the government did not bring the unity or purpose he had expected, but a struggle for power that he said he chose to leave.

Later accounts of routes and captivity

Kabul reappears in testimony about Slahi’s connections to men he had hosted in Duisburg. Ramzi bin al-Shibh and two companions had met Slahi after discussing jihad and travel to Chechnya. Slahi reportedly said that travel through Georgia had become difficult because people were being detained there, and recommended going through Afghanistan, where they could train before continuing toward Chechnya. The account did not say that Slahi directed them to Afghanistan to join a plot against the United States; the government later characterized his advice as recruitment, while the habeas record was described as showing lodging for one night and a discussion of jihad and Afghanistan.

In a separate account from life in detention, Slahi recalled a Palestinian neighbor who had escaped captivity in Kabul. The man made his way to Jalalabad, where he was captured and sold to American forces. Kabul therefore enters the narrative not only as the site of a political turning point in Slahi’s own history, but also as a place in another detainee’s passage from captivity to renewed capture.