Commander Basir Andarabi was one of the brightest representatives of that generation of Afghan patriots who fell victim to American interests...
Author: Farid Ahmad, editor of "Sangar"
In a clash that took place on April 10 in South Salang between the Taliban and fighters of the Azadi Front, Abdulbasir Andarabi, known as Basir Andarabi, one of the key commanders of this front, was martyred along with five of his associates.
When I was collecting materials for this article, I realized one very bitter truth that the Afghan society is tired, even of its heroes. Almost half a century of war has given rise to so many heroes on this land that no one has counted their number, and even journalists do not have time to write their biographies.
Apparently, the country of heroes should not have such a fate as Afghanistan. Another bitter reality is that Afghan heroes always fight for their homeland but become victims of the interests of foreign powers. The foreign presence takes them on and off the stage.
But the stories of these heroes must be written down, and that is the only thing that can be done to perpetuate their names and ideals. It is enough that a sinister fate has taken their young lives, but history is not such a cruel judge.
Below is the story of Basir Andarabi, one of the hundreds of heroes who were martyred for Afghanistan...
"Thief"
Commander Abdulbasir Andarabi, the son of Abdusamadkhan, was born on February 10, 1988, in the village of Rashidi, Qasan Valley, Deh Salah District, Baghlan Province. Upon reaching the age of seven, he entered the first grade of the school in his hometown and studied there until the fifth grade.
Siddiq Andarabi, one of his classmates and childhood friends, now one of the commanders of the Afghan National Resistance Front, says that he has very good memories of him, especially from his school years, when the First Resistance to the Taliban and international terrorism continued and the social situation of the people was very heavy.
“Basir and I went to neighbors' gardens and stole unripe apricots. When the owner of the garden found out about this and came to Basir, he said: “This is the work of Siddiq,” and if he came to me, I said that this was the work of Basir,” he recalls.
Siddiq Andarabi says that without exaggeration, Abdulbasir was one of the smart, worthy, and most talented students in the school, and after graduating from high school, he was included in the Qasan Lyceum and graduated in 2009.
“We broke up in the sixth grade. Basirkhan, who had a good marital status, went to the Qasan Lyceum and studied until the 12th grade. And I was engaged in auxiliary and peasant labor. But whenever he came home from school, we met, talked, and drowned in the world of children's dreams, we wanted to become a person useful to society,” says Siddiq.
Basir, who had great enthusiasm and interest in military service, was included in the selective school for young officers of the Ministry of Defense of Afghanistan. During his student years, he was a very disciplined cadet.
Basir completed military training courses with honors. At the same time, he was included in the professional course of the commando corps - Special Forces Corps, where he studied seriously and with enthusiasm. Then he went to the hot battlefields of Afghanistan and was in military service until the fall of the republic.
"THE LION OF THE COMMANDO"
His first assignment was with the 215th "Maiwand" Army Corps in Helmand. This was the beginning of a long journey (2013-2016), passed in the most unstable and talibani province, which was considered the center of drug production in the world. In these difficult conditions, he fought against the Taliban - "enemies of the peace in Afghanistan." In Helmand, he was first appointed commander of a block (more than 30 people) and eventually became commander of a tulay (more than 100 people).
General Jalaluddin Yaftali, known as Jalal Yaftali, former commander of the 203rd Tundar (Thunder) Army Corps, who knew Basir Andarabi from the very beginning of his career in the national army, says that his reputation in Helmand at that time was at its best, and the enemy was even afraid of his name.
“Fighting comrades who came from Kabul to Helmand for joint operations told interesting stories from the words of captured Taliban. As soon as the Taliban heard the name of Basirkhan, everyone got scared, and when they found out that Basirkhan and his people were on the opposite side, they immediately ran away,” he says.
He fought fierce battles in the city of Lashkargah, the center of the province and its districts - Nahre Seraj, Nadali, and Sangin. One of the bright pages of those days in his life was the liberation of Nadali and part of the city of Lashkargah, which were under the control of the Taliban for several days.
He was called Abdulbasir Mujahid. At the time, he earned himself the nickname "The Lion of the Commando". In August 2016, he was seriously wounded in one of the battles with the Taliban and transferred to the Sardar Davudkhan Hospital in Kabul. A month later, he returned to the battlefield again.
On September 4, 2016, he wrote on his Facebook page: “I thank the Almighty God that I again found myself among my friends and comrades. I feel very happy. We made a promise that we would courageously defend this land for the rest of our lives.”
"BOTH IN THE NORTH OR IN THE SOUTH..."
The fame of the exploits and military merits of Commander Basir Andarabi reached the Ministry of Defense. For this reason, on June 16, 2017, he was appointed chief of staff of the 5th battalion of Special Operations "Zulfiqar" of the army corps 209 "Shaheen" with a center in Mazar-i-Sharif. This army corps was responsible for commando operations of the Ministry of Defense in the northern provinces of Faryab, Juzjan, Saripul, Samangan, Balkh, Kunduz, Takhar, and Badakhshan.
This was the brightest period in the life and achievements of Commander Basir.
More than a month after his appointment, he was ordered to free the village of Lulash, the center of the Kuhistan district of Faryab province, which was occupied by the Taliban and foreign terrorists.
One of his soldiers, who fought in that war and now lives in Mazar-i-Sharif, and we will not name him for security reasons, says, we accepted the order on the same day that the center of the region fell.
“About 60 people from the police and army forces were surrounded by the Taliban, the number of Taliban and foreign terrorists was estimated at 200 people. They were joined with their weapons by 130 people from the militia units, and their commander named Nasir fled to the province of Ghor. About 200 commando fighters under the command of Basirkhan entered the combat zone and liberated the center of the district in three days," he said.
Apparently, no one expected that Kuhistan would be freed so soon. In those years, another district of Faryab - Gurmach passed from hand to hand between the Taliban and the government. In August of the same year, the Taliban recaptured the area. A joint operation of the security forces to release him was developed in the Shaheen Corps, and this task was entrusted to Commander Basir Andarabi. On September 29, 2017, the area was liberated with heavy Taliban losses.
At the time, the media called Basir the “The Eagle of the Commando,” and someone wrote on Facebook: “A lion remains a lion, whether in the north or in the south.”
GHANI-TALIBAN CONSPIRACY
The province of Faryab at that time (and still is) has become one of the centers of the gathering of the Taliban and foreign terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. It was later revealed that the deployment of foreign fighters in the area was a plan by the government of Hamid Karzai and the United States and that the destabilization of the area was their joint plan to ensure the safe presence and combat training of terrorists for future wars.
Intelligence Report: Where is the Al-Qaeda state?
Apparently, Basir Andarabi, who thwarted this plan, became not only a thorn in the side of the terrorists but also their supporters in the Afghan government and the United States. In March 2018, during one of the operations in the nearby village of Yakkatut in the Sari Havz region of the Pashtun Kot district of the Faryab province, Basir and about 40 of his fighters were ambushed.
His comrade-in-arms says that the enemy surrounded them from four sides for more than 20 days, and with them was a man named Rahmani, the commander of local popular uprisings with his detachment.
“When the enemy occupied the village of Yakkatut, we took up positions in two high hills. The attackers also spoke foreign languages, apparently Russian and Arabic. These ISI children were dressed in uniform military uniforms and equipped with night-vision binoculars. We asked for help from the command center, but no one heard us. Now I think it was a conspiracy between Ghani and the Taliban and its goal was to destroy Basir Khan," he said.
In those days, Dawlat Vaziri, a defense ministry spokesman, told the media at the time that government forces were fighting in the region. In fact, no one in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif thought about the commandos, it seemed that everyone was waiting for them to be killed.
In the province of Baghlan, the hometown of Basir Andarabi, they learned about this and through the media called on people to gather so that the government would take measures to free Basir and his comrades.
But the government took no action, and the people of Baghlan, led by lawmaker Mohammad Zarif Zarif, blocked a highway in the Shamrokh district of Puli Khumri, the provincial capital, for several hours. This situation forced the government of Kabul to send a plane to withdraw the commando forces.
But Basir Khan did not forgive himself for this defeat and asked the commander of the Shahin Corps to send him back to Sari Khavz. On 30 April he returned and commando forces liberated Yakkatut. In the fighting, 11 terrorists were killed and another 17 wounded, and the local Taliban commander Mullah Pirmuhammad and the leader of his group, Mullah Walimuhammad, were also killed.
This was not the last operation of Basir Andarabi in Faryab. In August of that year, Shaheen Corps intelligence reported that the Taliban and foreign terrorists were planning a major offensive to capture the city of Sarchakon, the center of the Gurzivon district. This attack took place on the night of August 8 and was carried out by commando forces led by Basir Andarabi and with air support from the international force "Resolute Support Mission", killing 12 and wounding 11 terrorists, and a large number of weapons and ammunition fell into the hands of special forces.
"SAVIOR ANGEL"
In May 2019, according to Siddiq Andarabi, Commander Basir was on vacation in his home village of Rashidi in Andrab when heavy fighting broke out in the town of Puli Khumri, the center of Baghlan province. On May 4, the Taliban attacked the Baghlan Police Command Building with great force and occupied it.
“Commander Basir, without informing the state authorities, went into battle with his soldiers. On May 5, the command was released and the Taliban were driven out of the city. At the same time, he became known as "Basir Commandos," says Siddiq Andarabi.
Someone in the media also called him a "Savior angel". It really was the truth, expressed in a nutshell.
General Jalal Yaftali says that when he was a brigade commander in Mazar-i-Sharif, they conducted seven special operations with commandos led by Basir Andarabi.
“We launched these operations mainly at night. At that time, the military situation changed. We fought not only with the Taliban but also with the terrorists of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and other foreigners about whom no one knew who they were and from which country. But these operations were very difficult. The enemy was not the same enemy. Laser groups trained in Pakistan and the Taliban's Red Detachment entered the battlefield, they had thermal imagers. Their attacks intensified day by day. Basir Khan was a diligent and cool-headed young man and played a key role in the operations," General Yaftali said.
According to Seddiq Andarabi, the incident with the Baghlan command was the reason for the new appointment of Major Basir. On May 14, 2019, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the 3rd Brigade of the 207th Zafar Army Corps in Badghis.
There is little information about the activities of Basir Andarabi in Badghis. What is known is that he participated in the wars of Bala Margab, another area that was the scene of fierce fighting between government forces with the Taliban, and foreign terrorists. He expressed his impressions of these battles on his Facebook page very effectively but with one sentence: “Bala Margab turned us into an old man!”
Less than a year later, on April 5, 2020, at a solemn meeting, he was officially introduced as Chief of Staff of the 2nd Brigade of the 207th Zafar Army Corps in the western province of Farah. This was his third appointment as chief of staff in the Afghan Ministry of Defense army, and he was now also called "Rais Basir" or "Chief Basir".
The news of the press service of the army corps "Zafar" published news and photos of this period of its activity. According to them, Major Abdulbasir Andarabi, with the forces under his command, in particular, carried out heavy operations in the Bala Bluk and Pushtrud regions of Farah province, and in early January 2021, he liberated the Anardara region, which had been under the control of the Taliban for several months.
BISMILLAKHAN AND "THE TALIBAN HUNTERS"
Today, the Afghan military has a different interpretation of Basir Andarabi's latest appointment. The government of Ghani and the United States, which had the plan to talibize the north - the borders of Central Asia, transferred such elite commanders who "knew how to kill the Taliban" from the north to the provinces of the south and west. With the exception of Basir Andarabi, Jalal Yaftali was transferred to the command of the Tundar Army Corps, Hamid Saifi was transferred to Maidan Wardak, and several others were transferred to the southern and western provinces, which, although populated by Pashtuns and prone to the Taliban, but did not pose a problem for plans in the north.
Apparently, this was not the last such decision on these "Taliban hunters". In May 2021, President Ghani appointed Bismillah Muhammadi, a well-known anti-Taliban figure, as Minister of Defense. Apparently, in those days that were the beginning of the advances and conquests of the Taliban, this decision and appointment carried a good message, but Bismillakhan not only did nothing against the Taliban but, according to some, became the main factor in their coming to power.
In a series of dozens of generals and commanders, he fired eight well-known and successful military and anti-Taliban “Taliban hunters”, such as Basir Andarabi, Hamid Saifi, Munib Amiri (brother of Khaled Amiri), Ehsan Faiz, Hamidullah Tofan and others. Interestingly, instead of them, he appointed completely incompetent and irresponsible people, even pensioners.
Hamid Saifi, who was commander of the 5th Brigade of the 203rd Tundar Army Corps in Maidan Wardak province, told the author of these lines that Bismillakhan dismissed him from his service without good reason in the first week of his appointment.
“Instead of me, he appointed a brigade commander who retired two years ago due to the end of his service life and old age and has never commanded a single company or brigade throughout his entire service,” Hamid Saifi said.
Basir Andarabi was fired along with Hamidullah Tufan, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 207th Zafar Army Corps, on the same day, July 5, 2021. On his Facebook page, he reacted as follows: “Change and dismissal is a principle in the system, but, unfortunately, in our case, it is done unfairly. In any case, we respected the decision of the respected leadership of the Ministry of National Defense and are doing everything for the benefit of our comrades and compatriots. I will remain an honest soldier of the people of Afghanistan. I will continue my fight against the enemies of the Afghan people with a high national spirit. At the moment, Commander Tufan and I are fired for no good reason!”
But what was Bismillakhan's reason for such a decision? Now quite a few people cite him, along with Ghani, as the main reason Afghanistan fell into the hands of the Taliban and terrorist organizations. Several commanders also admitted to me that they left their barricades and bases to the Taliban without a fight on the orders of Bismillakhan.
The attempts of the author of these lines to find the answer to this question from Bismillakhan himself were unsuccessful. But I heard from people close to him that he said in his circle: “If I hadn’t fired them, they would all have been killed!”
"GUJUR WILL BE YOUR MASTER"
From Basir Andarabi's warnings and forecasts on his Facebook page:
On June 10, 2021, he wrote to the warlords who sold Afghanistan to the Taliban and did not deal with the problem of the army: “The conditions and situation cannot be worse than this. In calm times, everyone beat in their chests with a stone of patriotism and courage. Where are these brave patriots today? No other day will be worse than this day. Command and control via walkie-talkies, WhatsApp, and phones are no longer effective for a soldier. Come to the scene of action and battle. Give your soldiers the spirit and motivation to fight. Support the soldiers, and make them understand the truth and lies! In this case, the enemy will never win, and the enemy is nothing now if there is a will! About your betrayals and thefts another time.”
On June 14, 2021, he wrote against the propaganda of some politicians and the media who worked for the money of the West and propagandized in favor of the Taliban: “Please! If you cannot support us, do not propagandize for the benefit of the enemy. Solve your problem with Arg (President's Palace). Do not become an enemy of your enforcers. They are the guardians of your honor."
On June 21, 2021, as the army units fled, he wrote: “How far are you running? If you do not fight in your base and armor, the Pakistanis will destroy you with great dishonor in front of your wife and child! Your weapon has a full-fledged bullet, not water.”
On June 24, 2021, after the fall of the Burka region and the escalation of wars in Baghlan, he wrote: “Dear patriots of Andrab, if you do not mobilize, do not protect Andrab and Khinjan, then Gujur - your shepherd of today will become your master and ruler of tomorrow.”
EXPLANATION: The Gujurs are a tribe from Pakistan who were resettled in Baghlan by the Pashtun rulers of Afghanistan over the past 100 years. Now they really are the Taliban strike force in this province and play a major role in suppressing the anti-Taliban forces.
June 25, 2021, after the fall of dozens of districts in Afghanistan: “Demoralization on the war front has very bad consequences. They shake the feet of the most steadfast.”
LEAVING THE HOMELAND
In the photo: Basir Andarabi with the late Imam Nurzad at the Battle of Kotale Murgh. On the same day, Commander Basir lost his left eye.
After his dismissal, Basir Andarabi returned to his native Andarab and stayed at home. But it was a time when districts fell one after another to the Taliban, and the wars in Baghlan also intensified, several districts fell.
Siddiq Andarabi says that when the Taliban attacked Kotale Murgh, the area between Andarab and Nahrin, all Andarab commanders gathered.
“Basir Khan told me that if we do not prove ourselves once again in history, we should not consider ourselves men. He took some young people, driven by patriotism, and went to Kotale Murgh. We also joined them with our people," he said.
But in the battles of Kotale Murgh Basir Andarabi was deprived of his left eye by fragments of a mortar shell. According to Siddiq, his detractors tried to kill Basir in Andarab. He was first transferred to Chaharsadbistar Hospital in Kabul. Since treatment there became impossible and Kabul was likely to fall soon, Yassin Zia, the former Chief of the General Staff of the Ministry of Defense of Afghanistan, sent Commander Basir to India for medical treatment at his own expense.
“When Basir Andarabi was in India, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. At that time, we liberated Andarab from the Taliban. He called me and said that you are fighting, and I am in the ranks of the fugitives. I told him no, it's not. Apparently, our war is still ahead. Get ready,” says Siddiq Andarabi.
Basir Andarabi left for Iran after treatment and lived in this country until the winter of this year.
In early March, he returned to Afghanistan, along with the famous commander Akmal Amir and some associates, and was martyred in an unequal battle with the forces of the Taliban Badri and Omari. This is a separate story, and our research shows that Andarabi, Amir, and their comrades were killed according to a pre-planned plan (you will read this story and its details in Sangar soon).
LAST FLIGHT
Commander Basir lived in the Karaj district of the Alburz district of Tehran, Iran. Abdukhamid Hamidi, his brother, tells the story that he would go away for hours in thought, and no one could understand what he was thinking, but he was very sad, at the same time full of energy.
What was the commander thinking?
Siddique Andarabi says Basir called him one day and said, “Commander, what do you think why we were betrayed? What wrong have we done to America? What have we been fighting for all these years? Why was I wounded five times, but my sacrifices were in vain? Why did my comrades die? What do you think, I used to call the Taliban “Iranian mercenaries”, why am I in Iran now?”
These questions are asked by every patriot who participated in the US and NATO "anti-terrorist operations". They consider themselves extremely humiliated. They came to understand that for 20 years they fought not for Afghanistan, but for the United States, sacrificed thousands of their comrades in arms for the sake of America's plans, and in the end achieved nothing, but became refugees, having lost their homes and the Homeland. Even worse, thousands of their comrades in arms were beheaded and shot all over Afghanistan in the most mocking manner. They realized that they were nothing more than fuel for America's boiler, they were puppets of American spectacle, who were used and discarded.
But the only thing they could do was keep the fire of love for the freedom and independence of Afghanistan alive. Although America took advantage of their feelings, the anti-occupation idea survived at the cost of the sacrifices and blood of thousands of Afghan war martyrs...
Isn't it true? If, instead of the name of Basir Andarabi, we place in this story the names of dozens of patriotic soldiers of Afghanistan and replace geographical names with other geographical names, will not the stories of the fate of all be the same?
Another evolution that took place in the life and struggle of Basir Andarabi and other anti-Taliban soldiers, who always and everywhere hung portraits of Ahmad Shah Massoud in their offices, was the realization of another truth: they learned their values. Commander Basir wrote in the motto of his Facebook page: “My language is Persian, I am a Bakhtar Tajik, and my country is Khorasan!”
Maybe that's why when Basir Andarabi left Iran for Afghanistan, he asked his family to burn all his documents. He opened a new page in his life and struggle against the ignorance of the Taliban and the new occupation of Afghanistan. Although he was martyred early, the last time the Eagle of the Commando flew through the Hindu Kush space, ignited the flame of hope in the hearts, and became immortal. He paved the way for the struggle of the new generation. It was the last thing he could do...
