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Sadat, 39, is a polarizing figure. In his memoir \u201cThe Last Commander,\u201d published in August by Bombardier books, he admits his blunt and combative manner garnered powerful enemies \u2014 including Ashraf Ghani, the last president of Afghanistan \u2014 and sometimes put him at odds with the U.S. generals ostensibly there to support Afghan military efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In one of the book\u2019s scenes, he describes telling off a U.S. Army one-star who demanded he and other Afghan soldiers be searched and turn over their weapons before entering their own headquarters for a mission briefing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ultimately, Sadat said he threatened to shut the general out of the meeting entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI walked in with all my combat gear on, carrying my M-4 rifle,\u201d Sadat writes. \u201cI hated myself for being so rude, but we needed to make a point. This was our war. America was a supporting partner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Sadat\u2019s account, the months prior to the 2020 Doha Agreement, a peace deal with the Taliban that set the stage for U.S. withdrawal, had yielded significant victories by the Afghan military in holding and retaking key territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sadat felt the deal hamstrung Afghan forces, limiting their ability to engage with and pursue the Taliban just as their military efforts were gaining momentum. It was a feeling of betrayal, Sadat says in his book, that would only be compounded the following year as American forces began to withdraw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In May 2021, all the contractors responsible for the Afghans\u2019 fleet of Black Hawk helicopters left at the same time, without the handoff process needed to keep the aircraft maintained and flying, according to his memoir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sadat describes the pain of listening to U.S. troops blow up their remaining caches of ammunition, leaving none behind for Afghan allies. It makes his frustration and helplessness visceral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs a time when we were rationing every round, the sight of mortar shells being fired uselessly into the desert, one after another, was demoralizing,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Afghanistan United Front, or AUF, is itself something of an act of defiance. It shares many common aims with the National Resistance Front (NRF) of Afghanistan, led by former Afghan politician Ahmad Massoud and headquartered in Tajikistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sadat said he reached out to Massoud soon after the fall of Afghanistan with interest in joining his movement, but the NRF had adopted an approach \u2014 and older Afghan flag \u2014 associated with mujahideen factions of the 1990s. Sadat insisted on standing behind Afghanistan\u2019s last constitution, and its final flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NRF leaders perceived a power struggle, and Sadat ended up on his own. He now says he\u2019s open to changes to the Afghan government once the people are back in control, but believes the guiding documents and symbols of the country must remain constant until then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe need something for now to bind our legal claim, and that is the constitution and a constitutional order,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The extent of Sadat\u2019s network of allies is hard to ascertain. His book features advance praise from H.R. McMaster, a former U.S. national security advisor and retired Army lieutenant general who calls it \u201can invaluable perspective on the American self-defeat in Afghanistan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sadat has also toured with Australian counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen and Thomas Kasza, a U.S. Army veteran who founded an organization to support Afghans who assisted special operations troops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2022, Sadat met with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and became a contributor to the Republican-led committee report on Afghanistan\u2019s fall released in September. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sadat said he aligns with the report\u2019s perspective on President Joe Biden, whose \u201cabandonment\u201d of Afghanistan speaks, he believes, to Biden\u2019s longstanding contempt for the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And while he remains in friendly communication with other U.S. military leaders he once worked with in Afghanistan, those individuals have made clear they are unable to get involved in his cause, he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Where he has the most support, meanwhile, is at the ground level of his home country, among the scattered Afghan military forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe could mobilize tens of thousands of soldiers in a matter of months,\u201d he said, adding that the Taliban\u2019s suffocating rule in Afghanistan was also stirring up the fight in young men who\u2019d never previously served. \u201cWe believe that thousands and thousands of fresh recruits will also rush to the call.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before that comes to fruition, lessons must be gleaned from failures of the past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sadat said he believes the HFAC Republicans\u2019 report provided \u201ca sense of accountability\u201d for the U.S. government\u2019s mistakes and failures in Afghanistan leading up to the country\u2019s collapse. But he wishes the report probed deeper into the risk the Taliban pose today, not only to the Afghan people, but also to the Western world as the extremist movement gains strength and lends support to other radical Islamist groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnother 9\/11 attack and major global attacks is not a matter of if; it\u2019s a matter of when, because they\u2019re preparing,\u201d Sadat said. \u201cSo, there are two ways the Americans can do this. One way is to support us, so we can go and \u2026 destroy them inside Afghanistan. The other way is, the Americans wait and fight them in Europe and the Middle East and inside America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It remains unclear when the time will be right for AUF to launch its planned political and military offensive against the Taliban. Sadat said he can\u2019t discuss the timeline, but made clear the group can\u2019t afford to wait forever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n An upcoming book tour that will usher him to locations across the United States \u2014 including stops in Texas, Arizona and New York \u2014 will, he hopes, raise more resources and awareness for the AUF to continue its work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs soon as we have enough resources, we\u2019re going to go and start our campaign,\u201d Sadat said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd in this, we\u2019re not asking anyone\u2019s permission.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWe could mobilize tens of thousands of soldiers in a matter of months. We believe … thousands of fresh recruits will also rush to the call.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":108762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-post-featured-layout","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":47,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2594],"class_list":["post-47823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mideast-africa"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"FLOGN6DXTVCHRDX5FAKB52X3UY","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-military\/2024\/09\/25\/meet-the-afghan-general-who-wants-to-take-on-the-taliban\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"featured-layout","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_9161.jpg.jpg\")
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