Story of a hippie who died for Afghans.

Between 1950s & 1970s, many westerners would travel overland along the Hippie trail (Eur-Turkey-Iran-Afg-Pak-India-Nepal etc.) to experience the orient – its culture, spirituality, the vast natural beauty, the people & to smoke hashish. https://twitter.com/NafeesRehmanDr/status/1287068379258523649

Among those curious adventurers was one young man Raffaele Favero from Italy, who was once a drummer in the band "The Prophet" but converted to Islam in NWFP in late 60s and learnt Pashto as well. He had adopted the name Rafiullah Khan after embracing Islam.

Islam had impressed him so much that he had taken it upon himself to carry forward its message. In 1968, he wrote to his family in Italy to explain to them that why he could not manage to join them for Christmas and this also explains his spiritual connection with Islam.

Rafiullah Khan would do a variety of jobs to survive and make a living – acting, photography, journalism, construction etc., but he settled in the NWFP his spiritual leader Syedmir Sainbaba lived in Karak.

Around almost the same time, a young Australian woman Jill Favero undertook the same journey to the east and arrived in the world capital of Hippies i.e., Kabul in 1972 where met Rafiullah Khan in a hotel.

https://twitter.com/JillFavero/status/631773830814392320?s=20

Rafiullah Khan and Jill Favero can be seen in the photos when they participated in the tent pegging at Kohat in a festival.

Skipping many details here. Both of them shared the same passion, fell in love with each other and got married the in 1974 Milan.

In a letter that Rafiullah Khan wrote to his parents, he mentioned that he was in Waziristan, he had bought a piece of land (prob. in Karak), a tractor and wanted to do some construction work there.

He speaks of Sufism, Sewan Sharif in Sind, documenting the tribal life etc.

He also told his parents about marrying a "beautiful, wild, gypsy-looking brunette with a heart of a princess".

He informs his parent about the local culture that how flirting or even talking about it could risk a bullet.

But after the marriage, they moved to Australia where they had three children.

However, it was the Russian invasion of Afghanistan that brought Rafiullah Khan back to the NWFP as he wanted to document the war for the Australian and Italian press & TV. From there, he would travel into Waziristan and into Afghanistan to cover the war.

His first such travel is documented to be in 1981, he had accompanied the Mujahideen and witnessed the siege & taking over of Soviet base at Zurmat. He had taken thousands of photographs and video tapes hours of war footage during his journalism work which he did as a Jihad.

On October 10 1983, when Jill Favero was on a holiday with her three children in Bali Indonesia, she was given a tragic news that her husband had died 10 days ago in a bombing attack by Soviet aircraft in Afghanistan.

The tragedy was too big to cope with, the man impassioned with the Afghan cause of freedom that she loved had died far away. The grief was made worse by the conflicting reports that came in the weeks after about how Rafiullah Khan had died.

Jill decided to fly to Peshawar Pakistan & talk to the Mujahideen herself to determine the cause of the death so she could give a good answer to her children.

In December 1983, she flew out of Melbourne to Peshawar where she is received by the Mujahideen and their families. She mentioned in her interview that the Mujahideen received them with great respect and wept from grief in memory of Rafiullah Khan – who was a brother to them.

Here, the eldest of Favero's kids is seen sitting with friends of her father, the Mujahideen. She mentioned that her kids would play with the Mujahideen, pull of their turbans, snatch and play with the beads but they were remained very kind to them enjoyed playing themselves.

Jill and her children put on the Afghan dresses in order to sneak the border into Afghanistan without being caught by the Pakistan border forces. With the help of the Mujahideen, they managed to cross the border & from there traveled in jeeps to a remote part into Afghanistan.

Mujahideen confirmed to her the actual cause of Rafiullah Khan death – which was actually the result of an accident. He was filming a captured Soviet tank and in the process got stuck there and the tank crushed him – he died of the wounds soon afterwards.

This photo be Sean Jones shows Rafiullah Khan for the last time filming the same tank moments ago that rolled over him.

The funeral prayers of Rafiullah Khan was led by Molvi Jalaludin Haqqani himself and he was buried there.

While Jill was there in Afghanistan with her children, she was told that a large Soviet attack had begun coming their way. She got into the jeep and made it safely to Peshawar within hours and from there flew back to Australia with her children.

Rafiullah Khan died a martyr. For him Afghan cause and freedom was so important that he took all the risks to document the Soviet invasion to show it to the world.

Forgot to mention that in this photo, an interpreter is translating the condolence messages to Jill. Jill went to the Nasir Bagh camp where a section was reserved for only widows and found many women mourning their loved one there. https://twitter.com/NafeesRehmanDr/status/1287068379258523649?s=20