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Afghanistan Claims Zakaria Kandahari Arrested Six Weeks Ago

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The continuing saga of Zakaria Kandahari, who has been at the heart of the torture and murder cases that prompted Hamid Karzai to ban US Special Forces troops from the Nerkh District of Maidan Wardak Province took another huge twist Sunday, as Afghanistan confirmed that they have Kandahari in custody. An important point to keep in mind while reading the accounts of Kandahari and the US personnel he worked with is that a strong case can be made that Kandahari most likely was affiliated with the CIA, either directly as an agent or as a contractor. US denials of Kandahari working for Special Forces then become a ruse, since even if Special Forces were present with him, they likely would have been tasked to CIA for those particular missions, providing deniability for the entire group with respect to the missions being carried out by US Special Forces, ISAF or NATO.

From the New York Times story on Kandahari’s arrest:

Afghan officials confirmed Sunday that they had arrested and were questioning Zakaria Kandahari, whom they have described as an Afghan-American interpreter responsible for torturing and killing civilians while working for an American Special Forces unit.

The arrest of Mr. Kandahari, who had been sought on charges of murder, torture and abuse of prisoners, was confirmed by Maj. Gen. Manan Farahi, the head of intelligence for the Afghan Defense Ministry. He said Mr. Kandahari, who escaped from an American base in January after President Hamid Karzai demanded his arrest, had been captured in Kandahar by the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence service. There had been speculation for the last three weeks that Mr. Kandahari was in custody.

The Times leaves out a few important details when they mention Karzai’s demand last January that Kandahari be arrested. Back in mid-May, they claimed it was the head of Afghanistan’s military who demanded the arrest and provided details on John Allen making false promises that he would be turned over:

Afghan officials investigated the events in the Nerkh district, and when they concluded that the accusations of misconduct by the team were true, the head of the Afghan military, Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi, personally asked the American commander at the time, Gen. John R. Allen, to hand Mr. Kandahari over to the Afghan authorities.

According to a senior Afghan official, General Allen personally promised General Karimi that the American military would do so within 24 hours, but the promise was not kept, nor was a second promise a day later to hand him over the following morning. “The next morning they said he had escaped from them and they did not know where he was,” the official said.

Note that the Times said that there had been “speculation for the last three weeks” of Kandahari’s arrest. The article on the arrest in the Washington Post states that he was arrested about six weeks ago: Read more →

Afghanistan Arrests Colonel For Turning Over Prisoners to Zakaria Kandahari

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Please tell me which country follows the rule of law and which one is in the process of rebuilding its political and legal systems after war has left its government lawless and dominated by corruption.

I just can’t stay away from the continually unfolding story of the death squad in the Nerkh District of Maidan Wardak Province in Afghanistan. Recall that in this post, I came to the conclusion that the death squad seems virtually certain to have been run by the CIA or CIA contractors, making denials of involvement coming from the military meaningless. The role of the shady character known as Zakaria Kandahari, and especially his sudden and complete disappearance once the situation spiraled out of control, seems especially to fit that of someone under the control of a covert CIA paramilitary group that recruits and runs militia groups.

Today, Reuters is out with a report that gives this story yet another huge development. It appears that in the course of its investigations into the disappearance, torture and murders relating to a group of 18 missing men (with the New York Times telling us Saturday that up to 14 of those bodies have now been recovered), Afghanistan has now arrested a colonel in the Afghan army for turning prisoners over to the “rogue” militia:

An Afghan army colonel has been arrested by the government for illegally handing over prisoners to a man working with a U.S. special forces team that was accused of torture and killings, three sources have told Reuters.

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A senior Afghan government official in Kabul and two officials with international organizations said the colonel, who was based in Wardak, had admitted to handing over several prisoners to a man known as Zakeria Kandahari, a shadowy figure who has spent years working with U.S. forces.

Note that Reuters says that Kandahari has worked “with US forces” for years and then consider the military’s response to this development:

A senior U.S. military official and the senior Afghan official based in Kabul said Kandahari was working with or for the Americans at the time the prisoners were handed over to him. The senior U.S. official told Reuters Kandahari had no official status with U.S. forces in Wardak.

Hmmm. So Kandahari had worked with US forces for years, but when pushed, the military says he “had no official status with US forces in Wardak”. But someone who is being run by the CIA’s paramilitary arm wouldn’t have official status with US forces, would they?

The article then goes on to quote an Afghan official as saying that poor judgment on the part of the colonel for turning the prisoners over to Kandahari  for quesitoning (presumably, when the colonel knew the prisoners would be tortured) when Kandahari had no official status was why he was arrested.

Despite pervasive and convincing evidence that the US has repeatedly committed this same crime of turning prisoners over to foreign groups who then torture them, not a single US person has been arrested for the crime Afghanistan now seems prepared to punish. As I noted previously in the dust-up over indefinite detention without charges at Afghan prisons, there are times when Afghanistan seems more committed to the rule of law than the US.

Update: AP is now reporting that hundreds of people have blocked a highway outside Kabul displaying more bodies they claim were freshly dug up near the Nerkh base:

Hundreds of Afghans blocked a major highway south of Kabul on Tuesday, carrying freshly dug-up bodies they claimed were victims of torture by U.S. special forces and demanding the Americans be arrested, officials said.

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The three bodies were dug up earlier on Tuesday morning near a former U.S. special forces base in Nirkh district, according to Attaullah Khogyanai, the provincial governor’s spokesman. Six other bodies were unearthed there in the past few weeks.

As would be expected, the story quotes a US military official denying that US special force were involved. When will the Afghans start insisting on investigating the role of the CIA?

 

Body of Zakaria Kandahari’s Videotaped Torture Victim Surfaces, 200 Yards from US Nerkh Base

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When last we left the saga of the US role relating to the “rogue” Afghan death squad in the Nerkh District of Maidan Wardak province of Afghanistan, the New York Times was studiously transcribing denials from various US government officials of any US involvement  in the torture, disappearances and murders that are both the touchstone of US-trained death squad operations dating back at least to Central America in the 1980’s (if not all the way back to Vietnam) and the atrocities that prompted Hamid Karzai to announce that he was expelling US Special Forces from the province. Although Karzai eventually relented somewhat and agreed to only expel US Special Forces from the Nerkh District instead of the entire province, as I pointed out in my post on the Times’ transcription of US denials, evidence continues to accumulate that CIA paramilitary operations personnel almost certainly seem to have been involved in the training and deployment of the “rogue” Afghan Local Police unit based in Nerkh. With today’s new development, it seems very likely that these CIA paramilitary personnel (and their Afghan trainees) are still operating, with impunity, at the Nerkh base.

What we learn today is stunning and looks like a calculated move intended to strike fear into the local population around the Nerkh base (which is, of course, the aim of US-trained death squads organized under the COIN rubric). From the New York Times:

Family members on Tuesday found the body of a man missing since last November near the American Special Forces base to which he was last seen being taken, according to Afghan officials and victims’ representatives.

Afghan investigators said that after his disappearance, the man, Sayid Mohammad, was seen in a video undergoing torture at the hands of an Afghan-American named Zakaria Kandahari, who was the chief translator for an American Army Special Forces A Team stationed at the base in the Nerkh district of Wardak Province.

Mr. Mohammad’s body was found about 200 yards outside the perimeter of the Nerkh base, which is now occupied by Afghan special forces after the American unit was removed following protests by Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai.

Relatives of Mr. Mohammad said his body was largely intact but both of his feet had been cut off. They took his remains to the Nerkh district government center in protest. The partial remains of another missing person were also found near the base, family members and Afghan officials have said.

The article is silent on the question of how long the victim appeared to have been dead. Note that the Times reminds us that the Nerkh base no longer has US Special Operations Forces. I find it very hard to believe that a group of Afghan Local Police and Afghan Special Forces, after having drawn so much local anger and international attention to themselves through prompting Karzai’s outburst and expulsion of US Special Forces, would carry out such a brazen and brutal move on their own. However, if CIA paramilitary operatives are still present at the base and still directing (and protecting) the Afghan team, the move seems less surprising.

We also learn in today’s article that at least 17 people are now known to have been disappeared by this death squad. Nine of those victims have been found dead and eight are still missing. Afghan investigators are considerably less credulous of US denials of involvement than the Times is:

“There is no question that Zakaria directly tortured and murdered,” the investigator said. “But who is Zakaria? Who recruited him, gave him his salary, his weapons? Who kept him under their protection? He worked for Special Forces. That a member of their team was committing such crimes and they didn’t know it is just not credible.”

The description of the videotape of the torture session conducted by Kandahari (which still has not been released) has changed in one respect. Today’s article informs us that the Afghan investigator who was interviewed now says there were no voices with American accents on the tape.

Not that it really needs pointing out, but involvement of CIA paramilitary personnel at the Nerkh base would by definition be a covert mission covered by false, but official US government denials.

Oh, and there’s one last question I would have added to the Afghan investigator’s list above: Who helped Zakaria Kandahari to escape without a trace?

The answers to those questions would go a long way toward confirming or denying my speculation on CIA paramilitary personnel (including contractors) being central to these awful events.

DoD’s Bungled Answers to Questions on Re-Vetting ANSF and Cultural Awareness

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On Saturday, I noted that the move by US Special Operations forces to halt training of Afghan Local Police and Afghan special forces while those entire forces were re-screened for security threats meant that there would need to be an equivalent action taken on the larger effort to train the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police while they are re-screened:

So, while only Special Operations forces have suspended training for now, it is hard to see how this will not extend to all training of Afghan security forces soon, because the lapses in screening of recruits applies equally to the much larger ANA and ANP forces (approximately 350,000 for those two forces combined, compared to various estimates in the 20,000 range for the ALP and Afghan special forces when combined).

Even though it was a holiday weekend, it is remarkable that Pentagon Spokesman George Little was taken so off-guard in this line of questioning that Marcy pointed me to in Tuesday’s transcript:

 Barbara, do you have a question?

Q:  Thanks, two questions.  On green-on-blue or insider attacks, what I didn’t hear you mention was that — what ISAF tells us is essentially all 350,000 Afghan security forces either have gone or are going through the process of being re-screened.  And that comes from ISAF.  So what would you — what does — what do you say to the families who have lost loved ones or their colleagues in the military after so many incidents this year alone?  Who’s accountable for it taking so long for the U.S. military, for the coalition to realize they had to re-screen?  Because for months, we were told isolated incidents, and apparently not.

MR. LITTLE:  Well, let me put this in some perspective here, Barbara.  It’s not that we have come only recently to this issue.  We’ve taken it seriously for some time.  In March of this year, six months ago, the — ISAF issued a tactical directive — and let me just list all that that tactical directive contained.  It made it the adoption of specific and tailored force protection measures.  Personnel and increased risks from insider attack were required to undertake specific close quarter combat and active shooter training.  All commands are required to conduct refresher training, particularly for mentors and others who routinely work side-by-side with Afghans.

The directive required additional in-theater cultural awareness training.  The directive also asked that coalition force units create safe zones inside ANSF compounds where they can defend themselves if necessary.  And more recently, there’s been a great deal of focus by General Allen and his team on the importance of Guardian Angels, small unit leadership, and counterintelligence matters that will help identify potential attackers early on.

Q:  But why did it take — and I have a follow-up to this, please — why did it take so long for the military in the department to come to the conclusion that 350,000 troops had to be re-screened?  Why did (off mic)

MR. LITTLE:  Three hundred and fifty thousand troops?  Read more →