page_title: Ahmed Khadr
section_title: Charitable work begins
hierarchical_section_title: Ahmed Khadr / Charitable work begins
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Omar Khadr, copyright released into the public domain by the Khadr family in Toronto.
context_page_description: Ahmed Said Khadr was a Canadian citizen who began working in Afghanistan in the 1980s. There he has been described as having had ties to a number of militant and Mujahideen leaders in Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda. Khadr was accused by Canada and the United States of being a "senior associate" and financier of al-Qaeda.
  During this period, Khadr worked with a number of charitable non-governmental organizations that served Afghan refugees and set up agricultural projects. He set up two orphanages for children whose parents had been killed in the Soviet invasion of the 1980s. He funded the construction of Makkah Mukarama Hospital in Afghanistan with his own savings, as well as seven medical clinics in the refugee camps of Pakistan.
  Due to his prominent regional role, Khadr helped negotiate compromises among rival warlords, power brokers and leaders to establish peace in the region. The Canadian government had considered him to be that country's highest-ranking member of al-Qaeda. In 1999, the United Kingdom added Khadr's name to a United Nations list of al-Qaeda members.
context_section_description: During his 1984 summer in Pakistan, Khadr joined Lajnat al Dawa, a Kuwaiti-run relief organisation to help Afghan refugees living in Pakistan after the Soviet invasion. He returned to Toronto in December with his family, to explain his decision to Maha's parents. After returning briefly to Bahrain, the family stopped in Kuwait to meet the charity's organisers. By January, they had settled in a second-floor apartment above the Kuwait Red Crescent Society's offices in Peshawar, Pakistan.
  While in Pakistan, Khadr became known by the kunya Abu Abdurahman al-Kanadi (Father of Abdurahman, the Canadian), due to the community mistaking which of his sons was eldest. Refusing to abandon his western clothing, Khadr frequently took care of the children while Maha volunteered at the Red Crescent hospital. During his time in Pakistan, Khadr met with the journalist Eric Margolis several times. He later said that Khadr was a "man of respect" in the city, and seemed "entirely humanitarian and not ideological at all".
  The family returned to Canada several times a year, visiting relatives. Khadr conducted fundraising for his charitable work, giving speeches at mosques and community events. During one of the visits back to Toronto, on July 6, 1985, Maha gave birth to the couple's fourth child, Ibrahim. Diagnosed with a congenital heart defect, the boy was transferred to the city's Hospital for Sick Children for surgery.
  Three months later, the family returned to Peshawar. That year, Khadr met Abdullah Anas, an Algerian who had helped fight the Soviets in northern Afghanistan. Anas would later describe Khadr as "not a man of fighting, not a man of jihad, just a man of charity work aid". He also became acquainted with Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the founder of the Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan and a mujahideen warlord, with whom Khadr would later nurture a close relationship.
  Returning to Toronto in the summer of 1986, Ibrahim underwent more surgery. On September 19, Maha gave birth to another son, Omar. Six days later, the 39-year-old Khadr was featured in the Toronto Star, calling attention to the plight of Afghanistan. He condemned the Soviets for cluster bomblets and landmines disguised as colorful toys, attracting children who picked them up and sometimes lost limbs.
  In the autumn, the family returned to Peshawar, where Khadr met Ayman al-Zawahiri, a doctor who had been convicted in Pakistan five years earlier for arms dealing. The doctor was then working in the Red Crescent hospital treating wounded refugees. The two quickly became friends, and had many conversations about the need for Islamic government and the needs of the Afghan people. At this time, the family was living in a "tiny" apartment on an $800 monthly allowance.
  In 1987, Khadr convinced his wife to let her parents take care of their sickly son Ibrahim in Scarborough. He said she could help a hundred Afghan children in Peshawar if she sent him back for care. He often praised the bravery of the fighters in the Battle of Jaji to his children, but never suggested that he had participated.
  In January 1988, Maha returned to Toronto with her youngest, Omar, to look after Ibrahim so her parents could visit relatives in the Middle East. Ibrahim became sick during the visit, and was rushed to the hospital. He was pronounced brain dead the following morning. 
  That year, Khadr joined Human Concern International full-time; it was a Canadian-based charity operating in Peshawar with which he had been cooperating. The charity had been investigated following a statement by Osama bin Laden that "The bin Laden Establishment's aid covers 13 countries...this aid comes in particular from the Human Concern International Society" Under Khadr's leadership, HCI built Hope Village in Akora Khattak to house 400 orphans, and a number of unemployed refugees were given work repairing damage at the Khost airfield. He gained the support of the World Food Program, and a $325,000 donation from the Canadian International Development Agency.
  Around this time in 1989, Khadr solicited aid from Canadia
caption: Abdulkareem (left) and Omar (right).
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