Northern Alliance leader spent youth in Pennsylvania

From South Mountain Middle School in Allentown to the Hindu Kush Mountains in Afghanistan, from taking orders at a local McDonald’s to giving orders as commander of a 3,000-strong army -- what a long, strange journey it’s been for Jeff Naderi, now known as Sayed Jaffar Naderi.

How does a 1978 graduate of Hiram W. Dodd Elementary School on the city’s south side end up on the other side of the world in Afghanistan fighting with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban?

It helps to be the son, grandson and nephew of politically active leaders of the Ismailis, a Shi’ia Muslim sect in Afghanistan.

The former Allentown native will be featured at 8 tonight in a National Geographic Explorer special report, “Afghanistan’s Warriors” on MSNBC.

Independent filmmaker Jeff B. Harmon and cameraman Alexander Lindsay spent four weeks in 1988 with Naderi and his troops in Kayan in the Baghlan province in northeastern Afghanistan at the tail end of the Soviet-Afghan war. The documentary portrays life in Kayan and profiles Naderi, whom Harmon dubbed the “Warlord of Kayan” and described as “a colorful character” and a John Belushi lookalike.

Although it aired in 1989 on British television, “Afghanistan’s Warriors” has been updated in light of recent events and will be seen for the first time in the United States, said Eileen Campion, a spokeswoman for National Geographic.

Harmon said he last spoke to Naderi a few weeks ago before the U.S. military strikes. “He was in Tajikistan and getting ready to go into Afghanistan. He’s commander of the Ismail Defense Force and is now in charge of 3,000 troops.”

He said Naderi was not specific about his plans and was leery of being monitored during his phone conversation with Harmon.

“Things are very, very chaotic. You can imagine the situation there. This was before the American military strike so everyone was waiting for the strike and wondering how it was going to change the situation on the ground,” Harmon said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles.

When Naderi was 10, his father, Sayed Mansoor, became a political prisoner in Afghanistan, and Naderi was sent to live with relatives in Birmingham, England, and then to live with relatives in Allentown in 1979 when he was 13.

Viewers tonight will hear Naderi speak kindly of his Allentown years and see the warlord as a sixth-grader in his 1978-79 Hiram W. Dodd yearbook photograph with his teacher, Patricia Young, Harmon said.

“He was very friendly, outgoing, got along well with the other students. And he liked to joke around a lot, too,” Young said about Naderi in a 1989 Morning Call article.

They’ll also hear Naderi talk about his “wild and crazy” teenage years where he says he was kicked out of South Mountain Middle School numerous times. He told Harmon he joined a motorcycle gang and worked at a McDonald’s.

“He said he still makes the best french fries in Kayan,” Harmon said.

Naderi might have embellished his life a bit in Allentown, according to relatives in Allentown. After the same stories, plus one about a girlfriend who made him get a cross tattooed on his bicep, appeared in Life magazine in 1989, his uncle Said Homayun Naderi of Allentown told the Morning Call at the time, “I’m surprised that he said ‘gang’ because my family never join a gang. I don’t know where he would find a motorcycle.”

And viewers will see the former Allentown resident listening to heavy metal music while riding in a jeep. “He loved AC/DC. ‘Highway to Hell’ was his favorite song,” Harmon said.

Even the circumstances of his departure from Allentown seem a bit vague. Naderi spent about three years in Allentown before he was called back to Afghanistan by his father, Harmon said. But his uncle told the Morning Call in 1989 they sent Naderi back when he was 15 because an older woman was romantically interested in the teen.

When Harmon filmed Naderi, he was 24 and had just been appointed governor of Baghlan province and commander of 12,000 troops who were part of the opposition fighting the Taliban, he said. Sporting a turban and baggy Afghan pants and robe one day, and donning a leather jacket another, Naderi always commanded respect, Harmon said. Villagers would give him a warlord’s welcome, fire machine guns in his honor and kill a goat to honor him.

Naderi and his father were key powerbrokers who dealt with all sides in the war, Harmon said. “They dealt with the mujahadeen [holy warriors] and they also dealt with the Soviet occupation force and the Afghan government, which at times was a puppet government of the Soviets. They dealt with everybody,” Harmon said.

“Afghanistan is not two men playing chess, it is war,” Naderi said in the documentary, according to a 1989 London Times story. “Afghanistan is like a salad, all mixed up, the Ismailis don’t want to kill anybody, but if anybody wants to ride us like a mule then we have to kill them,” the article said.

Naderi told Harmon the Taliban forced him and his troops out of Kayan in 1998. “He walked four nights and five days without food through the Hindu Kush mountains,” he said.

“He’s a very buoyant character and has this tremendous amount of energy. He’s a real operator and powerbroker. Things are difficult. He’s got to run back and forth between Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan,” Harmon said. “He has a tremendous amount of responsibility on his shoulders, from a military standpoint and taking care of his people. He is responsible for the refugees under his tutelage.

“I respect him very much, and I wish him well in this very difficult time. He’s a very shrewd commander. I think he looks at things realistically. I think he’s someone who’s actually very, very pragmatic and realistic. He would take a realistic view of the situation on the ground.”