Word: noorzai
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...Noorzai had seen more than enough. "I thought I would be next," he says. He ceased to aid the Americans and fled to Pakistan, where he stayed for the next two years...
...month after the U.S. invasion, Noorzai sent word via one of his relatives, a man named Khalid Pashtoon, to say he wanted to meet with the U.S. military. It is a testament to either craftiness or desperation that Noorzai turned to Pashtoon, who despite the family tie was a key aide to a rival tribal chief who often clashed with Noorzai. But that enemy was one of America's chief allies in the south of the country. The seeming alliance did the trick. In November 2001, instead of being targeted, Noorzai was meeting with the Americans...
...Noorzai has a flair for the dramatic gesture. In January 2002, to convince the Americans that he wanted to work with them and demonstrate not only his worth but his influence over his tribe, he delivered 15 trucks loaded with weaponry, including about 400 antiaircraft missiles, that the Taliban had concealed in his tribal villages. The gesture apparently had the desired effect. Over the next few months, Noorzai said he met with U.S. military and intelligence officers five times. The purpose, he says: "To make the situation in Afghanistan stable and also to help the Americans negotiate with the moderate...
Toward that end, Noorzai says, he played a critical role in delivering up the Taliban Foreign Minister, who had fled, like much of the leadership, to Quetta following the invasion. In February 2002, Mullah Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil's surrender made headlines around the world. Noorzai says he had invited his childhood friend to talk to the Americans, believing him to be the sort of "moderate" that Washington was seeking to work with. Noorzai says, however, that this would lead to his first betrayal by the Americans. Instead of incorporating his friend into the Afghan government, the Americans took Muttawakil...
...second and similar incident followed a few months later. Noorzai says he had persuaded a former mujahedin fighter named Haji Birqet Khan, 75, who was close to the Taliban, to come out of hiding in Pakistan and meet with the Americans. But days after Birqet and Noorzai got together in Kandahar, U.S. attack helicopters swooped in and bombarded Birqet's home, killing him and two of his grandchildren. The U.S. claimed it had got wind of a plot by Noorzai and Birqet to attack American forces. Noorzai says that report was erroneous. "He was an innocent man, a tribal leader...