New York Times Blasted by Its Own Reporter After Publishing Op-Ed by a Terrorist Leader

The piece by Siraj Haqqani in @nytopinion – which's independent of our news operations & judgment – omits the most fundamental fact: that Siraj is no Taliban peace-maker as he paints himself, that he's behind some of most ruthless attacks of this war with many civilian lives lost

— Mujib Mashal (@MujMash) February 20, 2020

“The piece by Siraj Haqqani in @nytopinion — which’s independent of our news operations & judgment – omits the most fundamental fact: that Siraj is no Taliban peace-maker as he paints himself,” Mashal wrote Thursday. “He’s behind some of most ruthless attacks of this war with many civilian lives lost.”

Mashal followed up less than 20 minutes later, linking to three articles direct from The Times’ archives detailing Haqqani’s involvement in numerous devastating, high-profile bombings in the Afghan capital of Kabul, several of which have come in the last five years.

And to know what our @nytimes news reporting has on Siraj Haqqqani, and what the Haqqani Network is accused of over the years, just read our years and years of reporting. Some samples:https://t.co/CW0k9I7Il1https://t.co/DcTDVtro8zhttps://t.co/p1MURtNXNF https://t.co/jktbWgmHCG

— Mujib Mashal (@MujMash) February 20, 2020

And despite writing that “the killing and the maiming must stop,” Haqqani was outed in 2017 by Afghan and U.S. intelligence as the key planner and organizer behind a suicide attack that year with one of the highest death tolls the war has yet seen.

According to a May report in The Times, the attack, a truck bombing, took place in the heart of the city during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, killing more than 80 people upon ignition.

By June, CNN and other outlets were reporting a death toll of approximately 150 and the Trump administration, seeking to fulfill a campaign promise and pursue military withdrawal from the region, was forced to deploy 3,000 more U.S. forces.

The son of the late Jalaluddin Haqqani, a U.S.-backed Mujahideen rebel leader during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Haqqani has deep ties to the rise of radical fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East, The Times reported.

Haqqani’s father is the founder of a deadly terror cell known as the “Haqqani network,” which operates in eastern Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, and pledged fealty to the Taliban in 1995, closely intermingling with local al-Qaida cells as well.

The Taliban deputy took over as chief of the Haqqani network in the years prior to his father’s widely publicized 2018 death due to an unspecified illness.