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Report: US Paid Afghan Warlords for Help
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Afghani warlords accused of receiving money in return for U.S. assisstance |
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The United States gave dozens of Afghan warlords payments of $200,000 and satellite telephones for their help in the war in Afghanistan, The Washington Times reported Thursday.
Citing bankers, money changers and others close to the transactions, the newspaper said more than 35 local commanders made banking transactions involving identical $200,000 sums late last year, in at least some cases after meeting with U.S. officials. The report said the transactions totaled more than $7 million.
The paper said the gifts of satellite telephones to the tribal commanders, whose efforts proved crucial to driving Taliban forces from southern and eastern Afghanistan, have been well-publicized in the region, but the cash payments have not.
Asked about the payments, a senior Western diplomat based in Pakistan said, "It sounds like someone in the State Department finally learned how Afghanistan works. The commanders have become fairly adept at selling themselves, and they always need money for guns." U.S. recognition of this fact is evident from the decision to offer a reward of $25 million for information leading to the arrest of Osama bin Laden.
However, a State Department official in Washington denied knowledge of such a program, calling it "bizarre" and "not something the State Department would normally do." A CIA spokesman declined to comment.
The newspaper said that among those receiving the payments was Mirza Mohammed Nassery, who defected from the Taliban and served as a commander of a group in the city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. The paper quoted Nassery's driver as saying that last fall the commander visited the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, and emerged with large black briefcase.
According to the report, Nassery then drove to Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan and immediately went to see his banker. The banker, who spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity, said Nassery opened his briefcase and placed $200,000 and a large satellite telephone on the table.
According to the newspaper, the tribal commander told the banker that American officials had given him the cash in exchange for his cooperation in the drive to topple Afghanistan's former Taliban leadership and destroy Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
Interviews by the Washington Times with dozens of moneychangers in Chowk Yadgar, the largest market for currency transfers into Afghanistan, showed that no fewer than 35 tribal commanders, most of them Taliban defectors either deposited or arranged the transfer of $200,000 sums.
A highly placed source in the Interior Ministry of Hamid Karzai's interim administration in Kabul also confirmed that many such payments took place in the weeks after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
A middle ranking U.S. Army officer involved in the siege of Tora Bora who declined to be named said, "While we never talked about it directly, everyone knew that the cooperation of the commanders, most of them former Taliban, had been bought."
According to military analysts, cash payments are attractive because they allow a warlord to avoid defeat from an obviously more powerful force and at the same time build up reserves of weapons.
"If we had only given them satellite phones and no money they would have had no reason to speak with us and probably would have sold the sat-phones," the U.S. Army officer said.
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