Jamiat-e Islami
자미아트-이 이슬라미
An Afghan political party and former armed organisation that emerged in 1972 from the Islamist groupings at Kabul University and was led by the theology professor Burhanuddin Rabbani. Predominantly Tajik, it was one of the most powerful mujahideen groups in the Soviet–Afghan War and the civil war that followed; Ahmad Shah Massoud directed its military wing.
In depth
The party emerged in 1972 from the informal Islamist groupings that had existed since the 1960s and was inspired by Mawdudi and his Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan. When Mohammad Daoud Khan ordered Rabbani's arrest in 1973, Rabbani fled to Pakistan and rebuilt the party there, and Pakistan backed its 1975 uprising in the Panjshir Valley. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an early follower, broke away in 1976 to found Hezb-e Islami.
Jamiat advocated a gradualist strategy of infiltrating society and the state apparatus to build broad popular support; though dominated by Tajiks, it had a wider tribal and regional cross-section than other groups and was willing to seek common ground with non-Islamists. After the Soviet invasion of 1979 the force Massoud organised in Parwan Province grew to control several provinces, and the party's prominence came chiefly from his battlefield success. The mujahideen kept fighting each other after the Soviet withdrawal: in June 1990 battles with Hezb-e Islami in Logar and Parwan cost hundreds of lives on each side.
When the communist government collapsed in 1992, Jamiat's forces were among the first to enter Kabul, and under the Peshawar Accords Rabbani became interim president. Hekmatyar rejected the accords and shelled Kabul, and the civil war went on; after the Taliban took Kabul in 1996 the mujahideen factions formed the United Islamic Front, known in the West as the Northern Alliance, with Rabbani as its political leader. Massoud was assassinated by suicide bombers on 9 September 2001 and Mohammed Qasim Fahim succeeded him as head of the military wing. After Rabbani was assassinated in 2011 his son Salahuddin Rabbani led the party.