Asia Times Writer Syed Saleem Shahzad Embeds With The Taliban in Kunar Province - Part II
On May 31st I posted Part I. Here is part II.
From Asia Times On Line
AT WAR WITH THE TALIBAN, Part 2
A fighter and a financier
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KUNAR VALLEY, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's troubled recent history, which spans the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, the vicious post-Soviet civil war and then Taliban rule, has thrown up a number of men who have obtained "legendary" status - whether through their tribal followings or from connections with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) .
These mujahideen resistance figures include Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Ismail Khan and the late Ahmad Shah Massoud.
The new leaders of the anti-American resistance in Afghanistan, however, are cut from a different cloth. They are despised and victimized by the ISI and often condemned by tribal elders. They are the sons of a global ideology which is orphan all over the world except in the merciless border terrain of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Take Qari Ziaur Rahman, commander of the Taliban in Nooristan and Kunar provinces, which border Pakistan. He is not the son of a legendary mujahideen commander, but of a cleric named Maulana Dilbar. His ties do not lie with the ISI, but with Osama bin Laden, having instructed bin Laden in the lessons of the Prophet Mohammad's life.
Ziaur, in his early thirties, was raised in the camps of Arab militants, who instilled in him the passion to fight against the Americans - not only in Afghanistan, but across the globe. Ziaur did not get his command as any hereditary right. First he had to prove himself on the battlefield, which he did by taking on US troops in Kunar and Nooristan. He was the first to mount operations against the US in the Karghal district of Kunar and he engineered the second-biggest encounter ever in Nooristan.
His exploits drew the attention of the coalition forces, which placed him on a wanted list and distributed flyers from the air offering a reward of US$350,000 for his arrest or killing.
With the heat on, Ziaur tried to take refuge in Pakistan, but in a coordinated move by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the ISI, he was arrested. Fortune smiled on him though and under a scheme brokered by Pakistani tribal warlord Baitullah Mehsud he was released in a prisoner exchange for Pakistani military officials. Otherwise, he would certainly have ended up at the US's Bagram air base near Kabul, or even at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba. After his release, Ziaur was elevated from a military operations commander to the overall in-charge of the Taliban's affairs in Kunar and Nooristan. His duties include devising regional battle policies and arranging budgets. He also represents Kunar and Nooristan in Taliban leader Mullah Omar's shura (council).
Ziaur is widely tipped to become one of the most important Taliban commanders in the whole region. Asia Times Online spoke to him, and somewhat unusually - even brazenly - he allowed his picture to be taken.
You can read the rest of the story here.
Don't know about the rest of you but it REEEEEEEEALLY ticks me off to read this terrorist was captured and let go.
