Abdul Satar Ahmedi was the son of a druggist in Bulola, Afghanistan. When the Soviet Union invaded in the 1980s, they seized Bulola. Satar's father gave him an old Lee-Enfield rifle that his great-grandfather had used in the war against the British, generations before. Satar soon fell in with the Mujahideen fighters under Sayid Jaglan, acting as a medic.