Word: khaksars
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Mullah Abdulsamata Khaksar has been waiting months for the CIA to talk to him. The former deputy Interior Minister of the Taliban says he has a lot of information to give up, perhaps even some that will lead to Mullah Omar, the fugitive leader of Afghanistan's fallen regime and chief ally of Osama bin Laden. But, until TIME alerted U.S. military officials in Kabul in late January of his willingness to talk, no American officials had debriefed Khaksar. Two weeks after, no senior U.S. intelligence official had spoken...
...little that Khaksar has divulged - to an American general and his intelligence aide -is tantalizing. For example, after the loss of Kandahar, elements of the Taliban and al-Qaeda formed a new group based in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. Called "al Farkan," its goal was to wage jihad against the American presence in Afghanistan. Khaksar says that there are people in the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, who know about this and may be involved. He says that the ISI agents are still mixed up with the Taliban and al-Qaeda and that the ISI recently assassinated an Afghan...
...secret where the ex-Taliban lives. There are a few loyal Pashtun guards at the gate, their weapons hidden but ready. Khaksar says he heard recently that Mullah Omar and a few other Taliban ministers were trying to recruit a hit man to finish him off. "The Taliban have offered a lot of money, and if the assassin dies in completing his mission, the money will go to the assassin's family," Khaksar says. He sits at a desk with a picture of the late Northern Alliance hero, Ahmed Shah Massoud, on his desk, perhaps insurance in case the current...
...death threats made the ex-Taliban frantic want to see the Americans. Five times he sent letters to the U.S. embassy compound in Kabul, he says, offering to meet the diplomats. Khaksar said he was ready to pass on information that might lead to the capture of the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar and to some al-Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan. But he waited days, weeks, months and nobody contacted him. It's possible that his letters never got to CIA agents inside the embassy. Security at the US embassy compound is on a war alert, with snipers...
...Most probably, Khaksar's five letters are still buried in a mailroom heap, waiting for someone to translate their vital contents from Dari to English and then pass it on to someone in intelligence. Khaksar is baffled by all this. He's seen American war technology at work, rockets hitting speeding Land-Cruisers full of Taliban. So he finds it difficult to comprehend that the embassy of such a mighty nation might misplace not one but five letters. "I just don't understand it," Khaksar says. His information might be outdated or even incorrect, but as deputy interior minister...