Mohammad Ismail Khan (1946-) was an Afghan Tajik warlord who served as a Mujahideen leader during the Soviet-Afghan War, as Governor of Herat Province from 1992 to 1997 and from 2001 to 2004, and Energy Minister of Afghanistan from 2004 to 2013.
Biography[]
Mohammad Ismail Khan born in Shindand, Herat Province, Afghanistan in 1946, and he served in the Afghan National Army until 1979, when he joined other soldiers in mutinying against the communist government. He became a leader of Burhanuddin Rabbani's Jamiat-e Islami Mujahideen group during the Soviet-Afghan War, and he became Governor of Herat Province on its fall to the jihadists in 1992. In 1995, he and Ahmad Shah Massoud defended Herat from the Taliban, but Khan failed to capture Kandahar. Later that year, Abdul Rashid Dostum betrayed Khan and drove him out of Herat and to Iran with 8,000 of his followers, and, in 1997, he was captured by the Taliban in Faryab Province and imprisoned in Kandahar until his escape in March 1999. He later joined the Northern Alliance in resisting the Taliban, and he resumed ruling over Herat from 2001 to 2004, when the ISAF mediated his resignation to prevent the Herati military class from overthrowing him. He went on to serve as President Hamid Karzai's Minister of Energy from 2004 to 2013, and he survived a suicide bombing in 2009. While Khan was accused of attacks on journalists and of human rights abuses, he continued to be a popular politician, and, on 10 July 2021, he raised the "People's Resistance Movement of Western Afghanistan" to fight back against a major Taliban offensive. However, Khan was captured when the Taliban conquered Herat on 12 August 2021. The next afternoon, however, the Taliban released Khan and several other captured officials after they agreed to work with the Taliban, with some news outlets speculating that the Taliban had done so in order to win the support of the Tajik people.