Afghan drug lord facing trial had dealings with US officials

RAW STORYPublished: Thursday February 1, 2007

Details are emerging about the involvement of a Taliban-aligned drug lord with the U.S. government, The New York Times will report on its Friday front page.

"In April 2005, federal law enforcement officials announced that they had arrested an Afghan drug lord and Taliban ally named Hajji Bashir Noorzai in New York and charged him with drug smuggling," writes James Risen for the Times. "Now, as Noorzai's case moves toward trial, likely later this year, a fuller story is emerging about the American government's dealings with him."

Risen reports that shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Noorzai "agreed to cooperate with American officials, who hoped he could lead them to hidden Taliban weapons and leaders," according to Noorzai's lawyer and present and former government officials. After an attempt to renew the "soured" relationship in 2004, Noorzai was a year later "secretly indicted and lured to New York, where he was arrested after nearly two weeks of talks with law enforcement and counterterrorism officials in a hotel."

The article says that in the early years after the invasion, officials "mostly chose to ignore opium production and instead dealt freely with warlords, including drug traffickers who promised information about members in the Taliban and al-Qaida or offered security in the chaotic countryside." But as poppy production has skyrocketed, helping to finance a resurgence of the Taliban that threatens Afghanistan's stability, "the Americans have begun to take some more aggressive steps."

Excerpts from the registration-restricted Times article follow...