Word: sherzai
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...Afghanistan. These groups once opposed the Taliban, but Afghan intelligence sources confirm that the old disputes have been sidelined in the face of a common enemy: America and its Afghan allies. Astad Abdul Halim, Ittehad-i-Islami's Kandahar commander, blasts the province's U.S.-backed governor, Gul Agha Sherzai. "If Sherzai continues the bad acts he is doing now," he says, "there will be a time very soon when we will attack...
...Kandahar, for example, the U.S. chose former governor Gul Agha Sherzai as the warlord to help them unseat the Taliban. Sherzai is back in power, now, but much of the local resentment bred by the corruption and lawlessness of his first term in office persists. U.S. support for Sherzai has alienated some local commanders with no loyalty to the either the Taliban or al-Qaeda. And their resentment is being exploited by some long-standing U.S. enemies. The forces of the local Ittehad e-Islami faction, for example, appear to have made common cause with the Hizb e-Islami...
...Sherzai is also under pressure from some of his own tribal allies over the allocation of spoils, and disaffected elements are being courted by more militant opponents of the new government. A landscape teeming with posses of armed fighters of fluid loyalty may already be challenging the U.S. military's determination to avoid involvement in inter-Afghan power struggles...
Once this version leaked out, Sherzai's men insist, the supposed turncoats' cover was blown. "I think it destroyed their mission," says Engineer Pashtun, Sherzai's chief aide. "Most of the medium-level Taliban feel they were betrayed by Omar." Pashtun claims he didn't think Turabi, who is reportedly across the Pakistan border now in Quetta, was on America's wanted list. Pentagon leaders threw up their hands. "We can't verify [the surrender] ever happened," Donald Rumsfeld told reporters Friday. "It's hard to be released if you're never in custody...
Hamid Karzai's interim government, which expressed frustration over the incident, has little control over what happens outside Kabul. The U.S. will have to rely on local commanders like Sherzai, who owes his position to American cash and the squad of Green Berets that has chaperoned him around for two months. But Sherzai and the other warlords running Afghanistan need the support of the locals too. "Gul Agha will be thinking of the future," a former Talib told TIME. "When America goes, he will still be here." Sherzai was no doubt thinking of the future when he let Turabi slip...