Jalaluddin Haqqani (Pashto: جلال الدين حقاني, romanized: Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥaqqānī) (1939 – 3 September 2018)[4][5] was an Afghan insurgent commander who founded the Haqqani network, an insurgent group who fought in guerilla warfare against US-led NATO forces and the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan government that they supported.

He graduated in 1970 with an advanced qualification that entitled him to the status of mawlawi,[15] and added "Haqqani" to his name,[16] as some alumni of Darul Uloom Haqqania had done.

[17] After King Zahir Shah's exile and President Daoud Khan rose to power in 1973, the political situation in Afghanistan began to slowly change.

[18] After the 1978 Marxist revolution by the PDPA, Haqqani joined the Hezb-i Islami movement of Mawlawi Mohammad Yunus Khalis.

[19] 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.

[20] At that time, Haqqani helped and protected Osama bin Laden, who was building his own militia to fight Soviet-backed Afghanistan.

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".

[31] 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.

In 1996–97, he served as a Taliban military commander north of Kabul, and was accused of ethnic cleansing against local Tajik populations.

Afghan Defense Minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, explained that the operation will "help eliminate the insurgents before they struck in areas along the troubled frontier".

[43] Both he and his son, Sirajuddin appear to have been the first Taliban to adopt the Iraqi tactic of using suicide bombers, and their network is accused of engaging in kidnappings, beheadings, the killing of women, and assassinations.

[44] George Gittoes, the Australian maker of Pashto-language films at his Yellow House in Jalalabad says Haqqani, who has befriended him, would be ready to support Ashraf Ghani in future Afghan elections.