[1] By his own account, Haq was an unruly child, who after persuading his father to register him for school at the early age of five, once hit a teacher who was sleeping on the job.

Steve Coll wrote that he "grew to become Howard Hart's most important Afghan guide to the anti-Soviet war.

[12] Haq was the cabinet minister for internal security in the Islamic State of Afghanistan which had been created by the peace and power-sharing agreement known as the Peshawar Accord after the fall of the communist Najibullah regime in April 1992.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who had been offered the position of prime minister, refused to share power with other parties and started a massive bombardment campaign against the capital Kabul.

Shortly after this Haq resigned as interior minister, left Afghanistan and settled in Dubai, where it was reported he became a successful merchant.

[12] In January 1999, unknown assailants killed Haq's watchman, entered his home, and murdered his wife and son in Hayatabad in Peshawar, Pakistan.

[13] From 1999 onwards a process was set into motion by Ahmad Shah Massoud and Haq to unite the various ethnic group in Afghanistan against the Taliban regime.

They agreed to work under the banner of exiled Afghan King, Zahir Shah, who was residing in Rome, Italy.

[17][18] In September 2001 an international official who met with representatives of the alliance would remark, "It's crazy that you have this today ... Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara ...

[12] Some reports soon after his death blamed the CIA for siding too closely with Pakistan's ISI, which did not wish to see Afghans united across ethnic lines, and for failing to intervene to rescue him from his Taliban captors.

The veracity of this version of events was strengthened by reports of tension between Haq and American agents after an interview in which he stated "we cannot be [America's] puppet."