CIA: Clueless In Afghanistan?

This article is to be read in continuation of my earlier articles of April 29, 2002, titled "OPEnduring Uncertainty" and of April 2, 2002, titled "PunishmentTerrorism"

When the CIA started its covert actions in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, in tandem with the overtmilitary operations of the Armed Forces of the international coalition led by the USA, it had chosen the lateAbdul Haq, one of the two brothers of Haji Abdul Qadeer, Hamid Karzai and Haji Abdul Qadeer himself as itssurrogates to win over the Pashtuns and incite a revolt by the Pashtuns against the Taliban and bin Laden's AlQaeda in the Pashtun belt in Eastern and Southern Afghanistan.

All the three of them had a long history of active covert collaboration with the CIA -- Abdul Haq fromDubai where he had his business, Hamid Karzai from Pakistan and the USA, where his family ran a chain ofretail stores, and Abdul Qadeer from Pakistan and Germany, where he had gone from Pakistan after he was drivenout of Nangarhar by the Taliban in September,1996.

The CIA's first choice as the new ruler of post-Taliban Afghanistan was Abdul Haq, who was captured andexecuted by the Taliban immediately after he was infiltrated into the Nangarhar area in October, 2001. Hamid Karzai, who was infiltrated after the execution of Abdul Haq, almost met with a similar fate, but wasrescued and airlifted to Pakistan by US helicopters.  He was subsequently taken to Kabul after itsliberation and installed there as the head of the new administration.

For two reasons, Haji Abdul Qadeer was the CIA's choice as the Governor of the Nangarhar province in whichJalalabad is located. Firstly, as the Governor of Nangarhar under the Rabbani Government in 1996, he wasentrusted with the  responsibility of looking after Osama bin Laden and his entourage when they shiftedfrom Khartoum in the Sudan to Jalalabad in 1996 and hence was expected to be familiar with the varioushide-outs of bin Laden in Eastern Afghanistan before bin Laden shifted to Kandahar after the capture ofJalalabad and Kabul by the Taliban in September,1996.

Secondly, during the first Afghan war against the Soviet troops in the 1980s, he played an active roleunder the control of the CIA and the Directorate-General For External Security (DGES), the French externalintelligence agency, in organising the heroin trail to the Soviet troops from the heroin refineries ofPakistan owned by Haji Ayub Afridi, the Pakistani narcotics baron, who was a prized operative of the CIA inthe 1980s.  Abdul Qadeer and Afridi became very close associates in running this drug trade with theblessings of the CIA. Amongst others who were associated with this trade were  Haji Mohammed Zaman andHazrat Ali.  He was familiar with the topography of Eastern Afghanistan and had built up over the years awide network of contacts in the world of the heroin barons of Afghanistan.  The CIA apparently felt thathe would thus be in a position to mobilise the services of the heroin world to assist the US in its efforts tohave bin Laden and the other leaders of the Al Qaeda smoked out.

Abdul Qadeer was reputed to be the richest bye-product of the Afghan war of the 1980s and after thecollapse of the Najibullah Government in April,1992, he became the Governor of Nangarhar from 1992 to 1996and, simultaneously, he and his family set up and ran for some years a private  airline company to runfreight and passenger services between Jalalabad and Dubai. bin Laden and his entourage were shiftedfrom Khartoum to Jalalabad via Peshawar in one of his planes.  Much of his money was allegedly earnedfrom heroin smuggling and from the smuggling of electronic and other goods from Dubai and Pakistan.  Hiswealth gave him considerable influence over the Pashtuns of Eastern Afghanistan.

After 1992, the narcotics mafia group spawned by the CIA and the DGES during the 1980s started smugglingnarcotics to the Western countries on a large-scale, allegedly  using either the aircraft of AbdulQadeer's family company or the ships of the LTTE.  The US Government, concerned over the flow of heroininto the streets of US towns, exercised pressure on Islamabad to have Afridi arrested and deported to the USAfor prosecution and trial on a charge of drug smuggling.  However, no action was taken against AbdulQadeer.

With an Afghan passport, Afridi, a Pakistani national belonging to the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas(FATA), voluntarily traveled to Dubai , where he allegedly negotiated with American authorities the terms ofhis voluntary surrender and from there he boarded a cargo flight to the US in December 1995 to hand himselfover to the US drug control authorities.  He was sentenced to three and a half year's imprisonment. 

After serving his sentence, he returned to Pakistan in August,1999.  He was arrested by the Pakistanidrug control authorities and prosecuted in a drug smuggling case pending against him.  The courtsentenced him to seven years imprisonment in the middle of 2001.  Hardly had he started his sentence in aKarachi jail, when he was got released by the ISI, reportedly at the request of the CIA, after the war againstthe Taliban and the Al Qaeda had started on October 7, 2001, and allowed to proceed to his home in the KhyberAgency.

According to Pakistani sources, he was infiltrated by the CIA into Eastern Afghanistan to assist HamidKarzai and Abdul Qadeer in organising a local uprising against the Taliban.  Pakistani journalistsreported  that "Afridi's constituencies in eastern and southern Afghan provinces have been revivedfollowing the withdrawal of the Taliban", and with them (according to the Frontier Post ofPeshawar) the heroin labs along the frontier.  The Pakistani press quoted the Jane's IntelligenceWeekly as writing  on October 22, 2001, that in the non-Taliban areas of north-eastern Afghanistan"heroin refineries - generally run by chemists from the Mashriqi region of southeastern Nangahar province- operate under the protection of local commanders."  The Mashriqi region was identified by thePakistani press as that of Haji Abdul Qadeer, Haji Mohammed Zaman and Hazrat Ali.

At the Bonn conference held in December last year, Qadeer's expectation of being appointed as the head ofthe interim administration in Kabul was belied.  Instead, under US pressure, Hamid Karzai was appointedas the head.  Qadeer was persuaded to work as the Minister for Urban Development under Karzai.  Atthe loye jirga in Kabul in June, 2002, he played an active role in persuading ex-King Zahir Shah to come outin support of Karzai continuing as the President and Qadeer himself was rewarded by the US and Karzai by beingappointed as one of the three Vice-Presidents and the Minister for Public Works.

Qadeer's gravitating to Kabul caused a power vacuum in Nangarhar, with Hazrat Ali, former area commanderHaji Zaman and several others contending for the post of Governor.  Heckmatyar's followers took advantageof the resulting instability to infiltrate into the area and set up clandestine bases for operations againstthe allied forces and the Karzai Government.

Was the assassination of Qadeer personally motivated due to jealousies and rivalries in the narcotics worldor was it yet another shot by the dregs of the Taliban and the Al Qaeda, acting either independently or intandem with Heckmatyar's men, to demonstrate to the world that they are alive and kicking and that the USA andits surrogates in Afghanistan will continue to be hit whenever and wherever possible?  The answerpossibly lies in a mix of both the reasons.

With Abdul Qadeer gone, those behind the assassination would be turning their attention to the next intheir hit list, possibly including Hamid Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah, the Foreign Minister, Muhammed Fahim, theDefence Minister, and Taj Mohammad Wardak, a Pashtun and the new Interior Minister.  The ease with whichQadeer was killed with the security guards of his Ministry not even trying to save him is a disturbingindicator of the apathy, if not the hostility, of the new wielders of arms in Afghanistan towards thoseconsidered as US surrogates.

The entry of Heckmatyar's well-trained (by the ISI in the past) and well-motivated Pashtun forces intoAfghanistan, which would not have been possible without the complicity, if not the active assistance, of theISI, has added a new dimension to the uncertain situation in Afghanistan.

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently,Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai)