Abu Walid al-Masri

Mustafa Hamid (; March 1945 – December 2025), also known as Abu Walid al-Masri and Hashim al-Makki , was an Egyptian journalist who in the 1980s fought as an Islamic jihad volunteer during the Soviet–Afghan War. He became a journalist. While living in Kabul, Afghanistan, Mustafa Hamid married Rabiah Hutchinson, an Australian convert. In Kabul, Hutchinson was regarded for her medical knowledge. His daughter Asma is married to Al-Qaeda's suspected leader Saif al-Adel, with whom she has five children.

On 29 December 2025, it was announced that Hamid had died at the age of 80.

Activities After the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, at the age of nearly 40, he went there to fight as an Islamic jihad volunteer, along with many other men from the Mideast, who became known as the "Afghan Arabs". During the 1980s, the United States provided some support to the mujahideen resistance to the Soviet Union, primarily through the CIA. Hamid became known by his kunya as Abu Walid al-Masri.

At the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War, he met Jalaluddin Haqqani in 1979 and later worked with him from 1980 until 1992. In 1986 he met Ayman al-Zawahiri in Peshawar. In 1988 he met Osama bin Laden and remained friends with him until his 2011 death. In 1993, he went to Khost where he lived and training mujahideen fighters.

During the Soviet–Afghan War, al Masri also worked as a journalist for the Arabic-language Al Ettihad news. He reportedly taught as a senior advisor at the Al Farouq training camp for a time in the mid 1990s. This was during the period when ethnic groups and warlords competed for power in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union. By 1996, the Taliban emerged in control of much of the country. Al-Masri has been described as a leader or advisor to al-Qaeda, based in Afghanistan by then and associated with the Farouq camp, although he has disclaimed this. An additional five letters, allegedly from Saif al-Adel, were posted on 23 March 2011, covering the Arab Spring uprisings.

In 2011, Hamid was released by Iran. He returned to Egypt after the 2011 Egyptian revolution. There he was interviewed by Leah Farrall, an Australian counterterrorism scholar, who published an article about him in Atlantic in 2011, which also described his view of Iran's politics in Afghanistan.

In 2015 Hamid and Farrall published The Arabs at War in Afghanistan.