Colonel Sultan Amir Tarar (died January 2011), best known as Colonel Imam, was a

Pakistan Army officer and special warfare operation specialist. He was a member of the
Special Service Group (SSG) of the army, an intelligence officer of the Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) and served as Pakistani Consul General at Herat, Afghanistan.[1] A veteran
of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, he is widely believed to have played a key role in the
formation of the Taliban, after having helped train the Afghan Mujahidin on behalf of the
United States in the 1980s.[2]

Colonel Imam, who was a commando-guerrilla warfare specialist, had trained Mullah Omar
and other Taliban factions. Colonel Imam remained active in Afghanistan's civil war until the
2001 United States led War on Terrorism, and supported the Taliban publicly through media.
[2]

He was kidnapped along with fellow ISI officer Khalid Khawaja, British journalist Asad
Qureshi[3] and Qureshi's driver Rustam Khan on March 26, 2010. Khawaja was killed a
month later. Qureshi and Khan were released in September 2010. Imam was killed in January
2011.[4][5]

Contents
[hide]

 1 Education and military career

 2 Relationships with United States
 3 Authentic knowledge about Colonel Imam
 4 Kidnapping and Murder
 5 References

[edit] Education and military career

Imam was a graduate of Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) in Kakul (located near
Abbottabad in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan), and of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, United
States. After his graduation from PMA, he joined the Pakistan Army's 15th Frontier Force
Regiment as a 2nd Lieutenant. His unit was sent to the United States in 1974, and was trained
shoulder-to-shoulder among with United States Army Special Forces. Upon his graduation
from the Special Forces School, he was awarded American Green Beret by his training
commander. Following his return to Pakistan, Imam joined the Special Service Group (SSG).
In the 1980s, he participated in Soviet war in Afghanistan, notably the Battle for Hill 3234.
Colonel Imam was increasingly involved in Afghanistan's politics even after the Soviet
withdrawal from Afghanistan. After the Soviet-Afghan war, Colonel Imam supported and
trained Taliban fighters independently. It was alleged even in the 2000s that he still
independently supported the Taliban independence movement in Afghanistan.[6] He was a
disciple of Ameer Muhammad Akram Awan, the current sheikh of silsila Naqshbandia
Owaisia.

[edit] Relationships with United States

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Colonel Imam was invited to the White House by
the then President George Bush Sr, and was given a piece of the Berlin Wall with a brass
plaque inscribed: "To the one who dealt the first blow."[7] In the 2000s, Western intelligence
agencies believed Imam was dead among a group of renegade officers from Pakistan's ISI
who continued to help the Taliban after Pakistan turned against them following the attacks of
September 11, 2001.[8]

[edit] Authentic knowledge about Colonel Imam

Little is known of Amir Sultan Tarar's true history or operational profile as an agent of the
ISI. Most information about 'Colonel Imam' was generated by his own admission, as well as
news media speculation. Pakistan's secrecy over internal and external security, plus the code
of conduct of Pakistan Armed Forces personnel serving in sensitive institutions, prevents
such details from being available or verifiable. In 2010, however, he gave interviews to
foreign and domestic journalists in Rawalpindi.[2]

[edit] Kidnapping and Murder

Imam's captors refuse to release his body to his family unless a ransom is paid. Last year in
March, Colonel (R) Imam, former ISI officer Khalid Khawaja, journalist Asad Qureshi and
Qureshi's driver Rustman Khan were abducted by an unknown militant group which called
itself Asian Tigers. Khawaja's body was found near a stream in Karam Kot in April 2010
with a note attached saying he was with the CIA and ISI, about seven kilometres south of
North Waziristan’s main town of Mirali. Qureshi and Khan were freed in September 2010. [9]

He was murdered by Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Mehsud faction, as documented in a

video. The video shows the group’s chief Hakimullah Mehsud.[10] Both the Haqqani network
and the Afghan Taliban were against the execution.[11]

Colonel Imam: ‘I have the Green Beret but the Taleban beret is better’
Anthony Loyd, Rawalpindi

Perhaps no man alive knows Mullah Omar, his Taleban insurgents and the American military
quite so well as “Colonel Imam”, a battle-creased Pakistani officer who wears a faded British
paratrooper’s jacket and a turban.

As a top agent for the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, Colonel Imam recruited, trained
and armed almost every one of Afghanistan’s prominent insurgents and warlords during the
1980s. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Ahmed Shah Massoud and Jalaluddin Haqqani were all his
charges or colleagues at one time.

“I have the Green Beret,” Colonel Imam smiled, recalling the US special forces qualification
gained in Fort Bragg in 1973. “But I think this Taleban beret is better.”

He escorted Charlie Wilson, the Texan congressman who funnelled millions of dollars to the
Mujahidin, into Afghanistan three times and once took the US Defence Secretary, Robert
Gates, then the CIA’s Deputy Director, to a Mujahidin camp near the border. But his closest
relationship was with Mullah Omar, the Taleban’s fugitive leader, whom he taught to fight
and survive, and to bring down one superpower and tie down another, over 30 years of war.

Related Links

 Karzai seizes control of election watchdog

 Afghans want Nato out after civilian death toll

“He’s a very wise man,” the Colonel remarked of his former student. “The peace of his nation
is a supreme requirement but . . . it can only come with the liberation of the area. He should
stick to that. He has no means to throw the Americans out but he can tire the Americans.

“[The Taleban] will not be tired. They are used to it. They are fighting addicts who will be
happy to keep fighting. America will be tired ultimately. They are already tired. They may
get tired like the Soviet Union.”

Colonel Imam, now 65, is scathing about both the US military surge and Britain’s initiative to
buy off biddable Taleban elements. “Every senior officer knows it is a mistake to reinforce
the error, to put more fuel on the fire of failure. And the bribe strategy is a shameless job for
the British.

“Gordon Brown devised it. It’s wrong and dirty. It might have been effective in 2002, 2003,
when [the Taleban] weren’t clear as to their future and were disillusioned. Not today.”

He insisted that only direct dialogue between the Afghan authorities and Mullah Omar
himself, without the interference of the Americans, could end the conflict — along with the
withdrawal of Nato forces. “Dialogue is the deadliest weapon against them ... [The Afghans]
should compromise on their stances and the occupation forces should say goodbye. But they
should rehabilitate as they go, so that people don’t remember them as enemies.”

Key to the strategy outlined by Colonel Imam was the fate of al-Qaeda. “If he’s given a free
hand Mullah Omar will be able to harness the al-Qaeda people,” he suggested. “He wouldn’t
want to pollute the situation. He will segregate them and he’ll see what should be their
disposal. No other leader can do it.”

Colonel Imam, whose real name is Amir Sultan Tarar, was chosen for the job of running
Mujahidin training and operations by the ISI because of his skills and US military experience.
At one time he had 200 specialist staff who put as many as 95,000 Mujahidin through US-
funded camps during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

It was in one of these camps in 1985 that he met Mullah Omar. He and his comrades were
being taught the skills of insurgency and being trained in bomb-making, ambush techniques
and intelligence gathering.

Colonel Imam frequently accompanied and directed Mujahidin teams inside Afghanistan
against the Russians and it was he who later sent Mullah Omar back to Karachi for treatment
when he was wounded and lost an eye.
They saw each other again in Kandahar in 1994. The Soviets were long gone and Afghanistan
was in the grip of civil war. Mullah Omar had been appointed “Emir” of the Taleban.

Colonel Imam, still a serving officer, was by then Consul-General in Herat. Colonel Imam’s
critics allege that he was the senior Pakistani ISI officer who backed and directed the
Taleban’s subsequent ascent to power.

“That claim is exaggerated,” he responded. “I didn’t have to advise Mullah Omar. He had a
lot of experience. But I’d drop by and have a cup of tea with him. Naturally . . . then we’d
talk about the situation also.”

Some Afghan intelligence figures have suggested that Colonel Imam still maintains his
relationship with the Taleban, as a key figure among a renegade group of ISI officers.

“Why should I go to Afghanistan now?” he mused. “The whole world would know I was
there. I wouldn’t want to create a problem for them.

“Besides, the Taleban are doing a better job than me. They’re teaching the ISI and CIA a few
things too.”

Indeed, Colonel Imam insists that he has not seen the Taleban’s supreme leader since the
autumn of 2001, as American bombs dropped on Kandahar. “The bombing started and I was
recalled back [to Pakistan]. I said goodye to him and said, ‘If you want I can remain with
you’. He said, ‘No, go back and pray for us’. I’m praying for them.”

Back in Pakistan, Colonel Imam immediately got into a furious row with Pervez Musharraf,
the President at the time, over Pakistan’s sudden cessation of support for the Taleban after the
September 11, 2001, attacks.

“I told him, ‘I spent 18 years with them and they cannot be defeated’,” Colonel Imam
recalled. “He told me I didn’t know what a superpower was. But I’d just seen one crumble in
front of me across the border and cease to exist. It hadn’t been the support of the Americans
that had done that, but conviction in their cause.”

The subsequent war has served as an epitaph for the final vestiges of the Colonel’s
relationship with America.

When Charlie Wilson died this month the Pakistani officer avoided his funeral. “The man
was not a friend,” he said. “Otherwise I would have sold my jacket and at least gone over
there, seen his grave and come back. But he used us. All Americans used us. They hijacked
our problems and left us to the dogs.”