Mahfouz Ould al-Walid (Arabic: محفوظ ولد الوالد), kunya Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, is a Mauritanian Islamic scholar and poet previously associated with al-Qaeda. A veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan,[2] he ran a religious school called the Institute of Islamic Studies in Kandahar, Afghanistan, from the late 1990s until the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.[3] Al-Walid was on the shura council of al-Qaeda and was the head of the sharia committee.[3]