Ahmed Gailani

Pir Sayyid Ahmed Gailani (Persian: پیر سید احمد گیلانی‎ 1932– 21 January 2017), was the leader (Pir) of the Qadiriyyah Sufi order in Afghanistan, and the founder of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan (Mahaz-i-Milli Islami ye Afghanistan), a party that was associated with the Mujahideen who led the war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Peer Sayed Ahmad Gilani died in the evening of January 21, 2017 at a hospital in Kabul after a short illness.

In October 2001, Pir Ahmed Gailani headed a group of Afghan leaders, the Assembly for Peace and National Unity of Afghanistan, which attempted to win over moderate elements in the Taliban.

Despite this, NIFA remained the most popular party among the Afghan refugees living in Pakistan. A poll carried out in 1987 revealed that 456 refugees out of a sample of 2,000 supported NIFA, which was the highest score of any of the mujahideen parties. By contrast, the Pakistanis, judging the group inefficient allocated NIFA only 10-11 percent of the weapons procured by the CIA, with a much larger share going to Islamist groups, in particular Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin. However, the sample of this survey has been noted as suspect, since it mostly included "educated" refugees and thereby ignored the many refugees that were illiterate or poor. The educated class was more favourable towards Zahir and thereby NIFA. (Citation, Gilles Dorronsoro, Revolution Unending, 2005).

In 1979, after the communist PDPA had come to power, Pir Gailani fled to Pakistan where he created the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, a moderate royalist faction. This party was one of the seven used by the Pakistani ISI for distributing CIA-funded weapons to the mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation. NIFA had the most liberal stance of all the Peshawar parties, and it supported the return of King Zahir Shah from exile. Representing the interests of the pre-war Pashtun establishment, it rejected both communism and Islamism, in favour of "nationalism and democracy."

Ahmed Gailani was born in the Surkh-Rōd District of eastern Nangarhar Province of Afghanistan, where he remains a significant figure. He studied at Abu Hanifa College in Kabul, before graduating at the Faculty of Theology of Kabul University in 1960. In 1952, he reinforced his family's close ties to the Afghan royal family by marrying Adela, a granddaughter of Amir Habibullah.

Sayyid Ahmed Gailani's family are descended from Abdul-Qadir Gilani, the founder of the Qadiriyyah. His father, Sayyid Hasan Gailani, was born in Baghdad before moving to Afghanistan in 1905 in order to establish the Qadiriyyah order in that country. Amir Habibullah Khan gave him land in Kabul and eastern Nangarhar Province.