Mawlawi Mohammad Afzal (born c. 1925[1] – 2012) was a Panjpiri-educated Afghan clergyman of the Kam tribe[1] from Barg-i-Matal, Nuristan Province.
He studied in Deoband, and later at Akora, Pakistan, before teaching at a madrassa in Karachi, and then in his native village of Badmuk.
[3] Though Nuristan was generally a mujahideen area, Afzal was among those leaders who were at least temporarily co-opted by the DRA communist government.
[4] In the 1980s, Afzal was among those Nuristani leaders who, after initially supporting him, expelled the southern Nuristan military leader Sarwar Nuristani, suspecting him of supporting the Communist government.
[1] With the arrival of the Taliban in the mid-1990s, Afzal aligned himself with that movement, and received their support.