movement of Mawlawi Mohammad Yunus Khalis. Military career Mujahideen commander In the 1980s, Jalaluddin Haqqani was cultivated as a "unilateral" asset of the CIA and received tens of millions of dollars in cash for his work in fighting the Soviet-led Afghan forces in Afghanistan, according to an account in The Bin Ladens, a 2008 book by Steve Coll. He reputedly attracted generous support from prosperous Arab countries compared to other resistance leaders. At that time, Haqqani helped and protected Osama bin Laden, who was building his own militia to fight Soviet-backed Afghanistan. The influential U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson, who helped to direct tens of millions of dollars to the Afghan Islamists, was so taken by Haqqani that he referred to him as "goodness personified". Charles Wilson also desired to fire a Stinger missile at one of the Soviet helicopters. Haqqani was happy to make Charles Wilson's wartime fantasy come true. They dragged chains and tires on road to create dust cloud which will attract the Soviet helicopters. However, none of the Soviet helicopters came and Charles Wilson was unable to fire any missile. This episode highlights the type of relationship which U.S. officials and Haqqani network used to share. He was a key US and Pakistani ally in resisting the Soviet-backed Afghanistan. Some news media outlets report that Haqqani even received an invitation to, and perhaps even visited, President Ronald Reagan's White House, although the photographs used to support the allegation of such a meeting have cast doubt that Haqqani ever visited the US. (The pictures originally purporting to show this meeting are, in fact, of Mohammad Yunus Khalis.) During the rule of Najibullah in 1991, Haqqani captured the city of Khost, which became the first communist city to fall to the jihadis. After the fall of Kabul to the Mujahideen forces in 1992, he was appointed Justice Minister of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, and refrained from taking sides in the fratricidal conflict that broke out between Afghan factions during the 1990s, a neutrality that was to earn him respect. Relations with the Taliban Haqqani was not an original member of the Taliban; in 1995, just prior to the Taliban's occupation of Kabul, he switched his allegiance to them. In 1996–97, he served as a Taliban military commander north of Kabul, and was accused of ethnic cleansing against local Tajik populations. During the Taliban government, he served as the