Meet Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the top Taliban leader who was once at Indian Military Academy

One of the Taliban's seven most powerful figures, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai was a cadet at the prestigious Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Uttarakhand's Dehradun. 

Stanikzai, who was a deputy foreign minister in the last Taliban regime, is in contrast to his peers, considered to be highly educated. According to a Times of India report, Stanikzai was known as 'Sheru' among the 1982 batchmates of the IMA. 

He was 20 years old when he was one of 45 cadets at the IMA from the Bhagat Battalion's Keren Company. He was trained at the officers` academy in the 1970s, under the Indo-Afghan defence cooperation programme. 

Born in 1963 in the Baraki Barak district of Logar province of Afghanistan, Stanikzai is ethnically a Pashtun.

Major General DA Chaturvedi (retired), his batchmate and a recipient of the Param Vishisht Seva Medal, Ati Vishisht Seva Medal and Sena Medal, described Stanikzai as a "likeable guy".  "He was an average Afghan cadet who seemed to be enjoying his time here,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. 

In the 1980s, he left the Afghan Army, which he had joined as a lieutenant, and joined "Jihad" against the Soviet army, fighting with Nabi Mohammadi`s Harakat-e Inqilab-e Islami and Abd ul Rasul Sayaf`s Ittehad-e-Islami, as commander of its south-western front. Harakat is the mujahidin faction considered closest to the Taliban both in terms of worldview and personnel and included Mullah Omar in its ranks. When the Taliban came to power in 1996, Stanakzai served as deputy minister of foreign affairs and later deputy minister of Public Health of the insurgent regime.

According to analyst Kate Clark, the English speaking "soldier" was the face of the Taliban for the west. But he was never trusted by his boss, the then foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil Abdul Ghaffar who later defected from the Taliban when the US started attacks on Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama Bin Laden.

(With IANS inputs)