Mohammad Yunus Khalis

Who was Mohammad Yunus Khalis?

Mawlawi Mohammad Yunus Khalis was a mujahideen commander in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. His party was called Hezb-i-Islami, the same as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's party. The two are commonly differentiated as Hezb-e Islami Khalis and Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin.

He was a staunch conservative fundamentalist, though not--unlike Gulbadin Hekmatyar, his original commander with whom he severed his ties for being too extreme--a hardliner, and wrote the 1991 treatise "An Appeal to Support the Holy War in the Sudan". After the fall of the communist government in 1992, his forces controlled Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan.

Maulvi Mohammad Yunus Khalis was born in 1919 in Khogyani District, Nangarhar Province in Afghanistan and became a powerful figure in his country’s turbulent modern history. Educated in Islamic law and theology, Khalis exercised influence through his conservative vision of Islamic society. Sometimes referred to as the don of Nangarhar, he was also a shrewd politician who wielded considerable power behind the scenes during one of the most turbulent and violent periods in his country’s history.