The Associates of Pacha Khan

by Katherine

(11th in a series. Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.)

During at least six different CSRT hearings at Guantanamo, the prisoner is accused of associating with a man named Pacha Khan. The allegations describe Khan as “a renegade Pashtun Commander,” who “has been conducting military operations against the Afghan Transitional Administration (ATA) and coalition forces.”

Four of the prisoners were captured together on January 21, 2002: Mohammad Gul, Abib Sarajuddin, Gul Zaman, and Khan Zaman. They all say that Khan was fighting on the Americans' side, against the Taliban.  In the words of Mohammad Gul, who is accused of being the son of a recruiter for Pacha Khan:

My father did not work for Pacha Khan directly…Pacha Khan came to the village elder, Nazim, to gather and rise up against the Taliban. The village elder told my father to go and tell the other villages close to our village to get together and that we needed to united against the Taliban. Whatever he did, it might have been indirectly for Pacha Khan but Pacha Khan was working with the Americans and he was in the government at that time.

***

As far as I can tell this is true. As of December 2001, Pacha Khan Zadran could pick up is cell phone and call in a U.S. airstrike.  He is accused of calling in two strikes that killed approximately 150 civilians during that month.

One airstrike allegedly hit  a convoy of tribal elders traveling to celebrate Hamid Karzai’s installation:

Hajji Saifullah, the leader of the Gardez ruling council, said the Americans had relied on faulty intelligence provided by a local warlord, Padsha Khan Zadran….On Dec. 20, according to rival Afghan commanders in Gardez, Mr. Zadran ordered fighters at a checkpoint south of the city to halt a convoy of tribal elders from Khost who were heading to Kabul for the inauguration of the new interim government. They demanded that the elders pressure Mr. Karzai to appoint Mr. Zadran the governor of Paktia, Paktika and Khost Provinces. The elders, Afghans in Gardez say, refused.

A few hours later, the convoy of elders was hit by a succession of American attacks, which killed most of the occupants. The survivors scrambled up a hill, toward the villages of Asmani and Pokharai, and the American planes, circling back, struck both villages, destroying about 20 homes.

Rival warlords in Gardez say Mr. Zadran used his satellite phone to tell the Americans that the convoy was filled with Qaeda fighters. The Afghans insist, however, that the elders in the convoy supported Mr. Karzai's government.

A few weeks after the strike, two men from a nearby village who were found sifting through the rubble of Asmani for their relatives' belongings said they had buried 42 villagers after the strike. The men were adamant that there had never been any Qaeda or Taliban fugitives there.

"I swear it, I collected all the bodies, and every one was a villager, somebody I knew," said Hajji Khial Khan, one of the men.

(At the time, the U.S. denied these reports, and said the convoy had actually fired missiles at American forces.)

The second hit a wedding party in the village of Qila-Niazi.

It was a wedding party on a late December night. But from the air, it looked to the pilots like what their intelligence source had claimed: a gathering of al-Qaeda terrorists. Dozens of cars had converged on Qila-Niazi, a hamlet of 12 mud-walled homes in the shadow of a snowy ridge 80 miles southeast of Kabul. The women were gossiping and painting their hands red with henna. The men were in another room playing cards and dancing. Music drowned out the sounds of the U.S. warplanes overhead.

At 10:30 p.m., the first bombs struck the party; the assault lasted six hours. The next day, a team of special forces arrived in Qila-Niazi to inspect what was thought to have been a triumphant blow against Osama bin Laden’s network. Instead it found the remains of the party. Out of 112 people, two women had survived. “When the U.S. soldiers saw the destruction, they were very sad,” says Assaullah Falah, a tribal elder, as he leads a reporter through the wreckage. . . .

Both the Kabul-bound convoy and the Qila-Niazi wedding party, for example, were targeted by Pacha Khan, a former provincial governor, derided by one official as a “Pentagon-created warlord,” who was using American munitions to take care of his own business, according to Afghan government sources and tribal elders in Gardez. Says tribal chieftain Saifullah Khan: “Pacha Khan would phone up the Americans, point out a village and say they are all al-Qaeda.” Pacha Khan denies the charges.

I did not find any reports of air strikes at Khan’s initiative in January 2002, but I can’t find any indications of his falling out with the U.S. either. That came later.

***

The other two prisoners accused of associating with Khan were captured some time later. They both claim that their only link to Khan is that his forces arrested them. 

Padsha Wazir (pdf; CSRT starts on page 28) states:

If I worked for Padsha Khan like they said he would not have turned me over to the Americans if I were his soldier. . . .In the beginning when the Americans first came to the area Padsha Khan was the one who was helping the Americans and working for the Americans. They were providing him food and money and weapons and he was recruiting people for the Americans. He was a good man at the time working for the Americans. Now if he is a bad man I did not have anything to do with him.

Khan was not personally involved in the arrest; Wazir was simply stopped at a checkpoint by Khan’s forces.  He had a weapon in his car (many, many Afghans seem to own guns) and when they tried to confiscate it he argued that he worked with the Afghan government and the Americans and had a permit from the government to carry it. He offered to show them the permit, but instead the commander “went and talked to the American. No one ever asked who I am, what did I do, or where did I live. They just handcuff me.” The CSRT does not specify the date this occurred.  Based on the prisoner’s ISN of 631, I would guess the spring of 2002.

The final prisoner, Kadir Khandan (PDF; CSRT begins on to page 9), was arrested on September 19, 2002. He is not actually accused of working directly for Pacha Khan; the allegation is that “The detainee was captured in the company of Jan Baz, the nephew of Pacha Khan.”

Khandan says that Jan Baz Khan was present at his arrest, but not in the way that the allegations imply. Khan was there with the soldiers who arrested him:

When my brother went outside, he came back and said they are not the people that work for you, they are Americans and they have Jan Baz and Pacha Khan soldiers or followers with them. Two Afghani soldiers that were fighting together with the American soldiers, Jan Baz was acting as the leader of those soldiers that was combined with the American forces. . . .

Pacha Khan had already captured, when I was working for the government, two of my drivers and had already started with me. All the people that are here and know me they also know that Pacha Khan had captured me six months ago as well. And they know that he still has my cars and he had imprisoned me two times prior to that. And as soon as I saw Jan Baz, I knew that there goes another attack of Pacha Khan on me. . . .

See what lies do, a set of a few lies, it ended me up over here. If you have my evidence, if you have my papers, then you have to compare these accusations with that and see if I belong here. Jan Baz is my enemy and here he is presented like we were caught together like a friend.

Unfortunately, there is very strong corroboration for Khandan’s claims. It may be technically true that Khandan was arrested “in the company of Jan Baz Khan,” but to phrase it that way is so misleading that I have to wonder whether the allegation is made in good faith.

***

By the time of Khandan's arrest in September of 2002, Pacha Khan Zadran had fallen out with U.S. forces—and “with just about everyone” else, in the words of one freelance journalist.  An August 26, 2002 Time article (don’t miss the picture) called him “arguably Afghanistan’s most erratic warlord.”

Khan Zadran had started launching rockets at Gardez in April, killing 36 civilians and getting U.S. special forces stuck in the middle of a clan war. In August, Hamid Karzai

said he wanted Zadran arrested for murder, but the warlord is unfazed. "Karzai wants to arrest me? He has mental problems," he says, holding court before nephews, cousins and Kalashnikov-wielding guards. . . .

Without a strong army, Karzai has little chance of taming warlords like Zadran. And the U.S. still needs him to hunt for al-Qaeda (although officially a top American diplomat in Kabul says the U.S. military is no longer cooperating with Zadran).”

But if the military had stopped cooperating with Pacha Khan Zadran by the time Kadir Khandan was arrested in September 2002, they were still working with his nephew, Jan Baz.  As late as December of 2002, Jan Baz Khan’s forces were still making arrests for the United States.

I know this because on December 1, Jan Baz Khan's forces arrested a 22-year-old taxi driver, a prisoner whom the New York Times has described as “a frail man, standing only 5 feet 9 inches and weighing 122 pounds.”

On the day he disappeared, Mr. Dilawar's mother had asked him to gather his three sisters from their nearby villages and bring them home for the holiday. But he needed gas money and decided instead to drive to the provincial capital, Khost, about 45 minutes away, to look for fares.

At a taxi stand there, he found three men headed back toward Yakubi. On the way, they passed a base used by American troops, Camp Salerno, which had been the target of a rocket attack that morning.

Militiamen loyal to the guerrilla commander guarding the base, Jan Baz Khan, stopped the Toyota at a checkpoint. . . .The four men were detained and turned over to American soldiers at the base as suspects in the attack. Mr. Dilawar and his passengers spent their first night there handcuffed to a fence, so they would be unable to sleep.

You may have recognized the prisoner’s name; if so you know how this story ends. Dilawar was taken to Bagram Airbase on December 5, 2003. He was chained to the ceiling and beaten for days. He died of his injuries on December 10. According to the same N.Y. Times article, 

The findings of Mr. Dilawar's autopsy were succinct. He had had some coronary artery disease, the medical examiner reported, but what caused his heart to fail was "blunt force injuries to the lower extremities." . . . .

One of the coroners later translated the assessment at a pre-trial hearing for Specialist Brand, saying the tissue in the young man's legs "had basically been pulpified."

"I've seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus," added Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, the coroner, and a major at that time.

Jan Baz Khan was arrested in January of 2003.  According to the New York Times, U.S. military officials disclosed in February that Khan “was suspected of attacking Camp Salerno himself and then turning over innocent "suspects" to the Americans in a ploy to win their trust.” 
Khandan told his CSRT that four months after his own arrest, he saw Jan Baz Khan in prison in Bagram. 

On September 17, 2004, the New York Times reported* that Khan had been taken to a CIA prison in a hotel called the Ariana in Kabul. I could not confirm either of those reports, and I cannot find any other information about Jan Baz Khan’s current whereabouts.

A number of U.S. soldiers have been tried in connection with Dilawar’s death. Most were not convicted. Of the ones that were, the maximum sentence was under six months in prison.

Pacha Khan was apparently arrested in December 2003, but according to Agence France Presse, in February of 2004, Karzai officially “forgave” him and handed him over to his tribal elders. He was elected to Parliament in September of 2005.

Kadir Khandan was much luckier than Dilawar, but much less lucky than Pacha Khan Zadran.  He tells his CSRT panel he was tortured in Afghanistan, in a prison in Khowst, but that conditions improved in Kandahar airport and that “here in Cuba I have been treated nice.” The abuse allegations are on pages 24-35 of this PDF. I obviously do not know if they are true. Khandan doesn’t repeat them at the ARB, but that may simply be because he isn’t asked.

Based on court documents in his habeas case, Khandan is still at Guantanamo. So is Abib Sarajuddin. I cannot find habeas cases (open or closed) for the other four prisoners named in this post. That could mean that they were released from Guantanamo before filing a habeas petition. More likely it means that they are still in prison but do not have a habeas case, or that I am not spelling their name the same way that it’s spelled in the court documents (I tried variations, but there is almost no limit on the number of ways you can transliterate from Arabic or Pashto into English). 

***

Maybe some of this shouldn't be surprising. Maybe it’s inevitable that when we go to war we get bad intelligence; that we make alliances with sketchy warlords who lie to us; that some of our bombs fall on civilians; that we imprison innocent taxi drivers and farmers; that the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer.  But God, I wish we could at least stop pretending otherwise.  And it’s certainly not inevitable that we keep innocent people locked up for four years or more without a hearing, let alone beat them to death. 

*obviously that is not an official link; I actually got the article from Lexis-Nexis.

Comments

[cleek]

ick. horrible stuff.

fine job reporting it, however.

[Andrew]

This is an excellent illustration of the risks we've faced by trying to fight this war on via proxy rather than directly. We have a very unfortunate tendency to forget that the people who are allying themselves with us are only doing so because they think it can bring them certain advantages. So we don't worry about what agenda they may bring to the fight, and we end up with situations where we're 'capturing' people who are not our enemies, but the enemies of some of the people we've chosen to ally ourselves with.

It only gets worse when combined with the policies of this administration, of course. Every time I read about a detainee being mistreated I have a difficult time maintaining my bearing, and it seems as if there is no end of such stories. I appreciate your hard work putting all this together.

[hilzoy]

Thanks, Katherine.

[Jake - but not the one]

Katherine, I can't say I've been enjoying your posts, but I have read them and appreciate the time and effort put into them.

There is simply nothing I can say that in any way adds to what you have already said.

Thanks for the posts. Keep writing.

Jake

[JakeB]

My thanks to Katherine for putting this together, although I wish it wasn't necessary.

A few times, here, for example, Josh Marshall has suggested that we will need something like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings here in the US to figure out just how badly the country has been screwed up, and in what ways, so that we can fix it.

This recounting of injustice that Katherine has posted in her series makes me think we'll need something like this to save the soul of this country.

[will]

I wanted to add my thanks as well. Excellent posts by Katherine.

[dutchmarbel]

Just to let you know that I read it and appreciate your post!

I still don't know how to discuss the content rationally though

[ScottM]

"Just to let you know that I read it and appreciate your post! I still don't know how to discuss the content rationally though."

Exactly, I'm in the same boat. Thanks.

[abb1]

Same here.

[Debbie(aussie)]

Ditto, for me too.

[Katherine]

Thanks, everyone.

My general approach is to pile up so many facts that people have a hard time arguing against it; I shouldn't really complain when that works. The trouble is, the people who still disagree do not read this site.

There will be no Truth and Reconciliation Commission or anything comparable, there's no constituency for it. Those happen in countries where the government commits human rights abuses against their own citizens, not a bunch of foreigners.

I sometimes think that there won't be an investigation at all if the Democrats don't take a house of Congress this year. I mean, say we lose the midterms and McCain is elected in 2008--there's a real chance McCain could end these policies but little chance that he'd want to air the previous Republican administration's dirty laundry. Even a Democratic Congress &/or administration after 2008 may conclude that it's over, and to start the investigations now reopens old wounds and looks vindictive.

And in a way--yes, the focus should be on forward looking legislation. But that will only pass, and only be effective, if there's a real consensus that we made a horrible mistake.

So there may never be even real Congressional hearings. It is possible that it will be up to human rights organizations & the press to establish what happened. That's part of why I'm fairly obsessive about cataloging this stuff.

[dutchmarbel]

I am really gratefull and I think you're doing a great job!

[abb1]

Wow, you're an optimist. Why do you think McCain would end these policies? He's an insane militarist. It's one thing to grandstand on the Senate floor, but quite a different story when you're the top manger of the capitalism-democracy-freedom jihad.

[peter ramus]

Katherine, thank you for your tenacity in sticking with this. Reading the harrowing stories in this series is enormously dispiriting; I can't help but admire the moral courage in your continuing witness, particularly in the context of the systemic ADD of blogging, where the temptation is to chase immediately after the next new enormity, and such substantive, focused, and thoroughgoing work as yours is rarely accomplished. Let me add my gratitude and appreciation for your efforts to the voices of the other commenters here.