Brigadier General

Brigadier General

Brigadier general is a senior rank in the armed forces. It is the lowest ranking general officer in some countries, usually sitting between the ranks of colonel and major general. When appointed to a field command, a brigadier general is typically in command of a brigade consisting of around 4,000...

 Rahmatullah Safi (born 1948) is a former Afghan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

 army officer and mujahideen

Mujahideen

Mujahideen are Muslims who struggle in the path of God. The word is from the same Arabic triliteral as jihad .Mujahideen is also transliterated from Arabic as mujahedin, mujahedeen, mudžahedin, mudžahidin, mujahidīn, mujaheddīn and more.-Origin of the concept:The beginnings of Jihad are traced...

 commander who fought suring the Soviet war in Afghanistan

Soviet war in Afghanistan

The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist-Leninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahideen and foreign "Arab–Afghan" volunteers...

. He was later claimed to have been the representative of the Taliban movement in Europe.

Formerly a colonel

Colonel

Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...

 in the Royal Afghan Army

Military of Afghanistan

The military of Afghanistan is composed of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Army Air Force . Being a landlocked country, Afghanistan has no navy, and the private security forces who are sometimes seen wearing military uniforms are not part of Afghanistan's military...

, he trained an elite commando

Commando

In English, the term commando means a specific kind of individual soldier or military unit. In contemporary usage, commando usually means elite light infantry and/or special operations forces units, specializing in amphibious landings, parachuting, rappelling and similar techniques, to conduct and...

 force of 1,600 men during the reign of king Zahir Shah. When Mohammed Daoud Khan

Mohammed Daoud Khan

Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan or Daud Khan was Prime Minister of Afghanistan from 1953 to 1963 and later becoming the President of Afghanistan...

 took power, he left Afghanistan for England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, he joined the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, a mujahideen party led by Pir

Pir (Sufism)

Pir or Peer is a title for a Sufi master equally used in the nath tradition. They are also referred to as a Hazrat or Shaikh, which is Arabic for Old Man. The title is often translated into English as "saint" and could be interpreted as "Elder". In Sufism a Pir's role is to guide and instruct his...

 Sayyed Ahmed Gailani

Ahmed Gailani

Pir Sayyid Ahmed Gailani , is the leader of the Qadiriyyah Sufi order in Afghanistan, and the founder of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan , a party that was associated with the Mujahideen who led the war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s...

.

As a mujahideen commander, Rahmatullah Safi was based in Peshawar

Peshawar

Peshawar is the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the administrative center and central economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan....

, and operated in Paktia

Paktia Province

Paktia , is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, in the east of the country. Its capital is Gardez. The population is predominantly Pashtun.- History:...

 and Kunar

Kunar Province

Kunar is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the northeastern part of the country. Its capital is Asadabad. It is one of the four "N2KL" provinces...

 provinces, taking part in the 1986 Zhawar fighting

Battles of Zhawar

The battles of Zhawar were fought during the Soviet war in Afghanistan between Soviet Army units, and their allies of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against Afghan mujahideen groups...

. He was in charge of NIFA's training facilities, where he claimed to have trained some 8,000 mujahideen, possibly with British assistance. In 1985 Safi led a delegation of mujaheddin to the United States, where the general spoke at colleges and universities in more than a dozen US cities. Safi was hospitalized in Pittsburgh 1986 for a cardiac evaluations; his medical bills were paid by donations and the Committee for a Free Afghanistan.
As of 1998, Safi was living in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England, but departed to Afghanistan along with Nabi Misdak to convince Mullah Omar

Mohammed Omar

Mullah Mohammed Omar , often simply called Mullah Omar, is the leader of the Taliban movement that operates in Afghanistan. He was Afghanistan's de facto head of state from 1996 to late 2001, under the official title "Head of the Supreme Council"...

 to hand over Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...

 to foreign authorities., and he was considered the representative of the Taliban in Europe according to a United Nations Security Council

United Nations Security Council

The United Nations Security Council is one of the principal organs of the United Nations and is charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. Its powers, outlined in the United Nations Charter, include the establishment of peacekeeping operations, the establishment of...

 press release.

As of 2004, Safi had resigned his military commission and announced his intentions to run in the 2004 Afghan presidential election