Spielgel Online has an article based on leaked documents about the Joint Prioritized Effects List, a list of people to be killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Combat operations in Afghanistan may be coming to an end, but a look at secret NATO documents reveals that the US and the UK were far less scrupulous in choosing targets for killing than previously believed. Drug dealers were also on the lists.
A Dubious History of Targeted Killings in Afghanistan, Spiegel Online
The existence of the list has been known, but Spiegel has published
a copy of the list for August 8, 2010. Names and some other information have been redacted. On that date, about 525 persons were subject to kill or capture, with a few of them restricted to capture only. About 143 persons were subject only to information collection.
The list includes tribal affiliation of the persons to be killed, the military unit responsible for the killing, a code name for the operation against a person, and sometimes the price on their head. The prices range from ten thousand to one million dollars.
Spiegel says that Atta Mohammed Noor, governor of Balkh province, was on the list, but subject to information gathering only.
According to the current documents, in 2010 NATO even added Atta Mohammed Noor, a governor in northern Afghanistan, to the list. Noor, an ethnic Tajik and former warlord, had become wealthy through smuggling in the turmoil of war, and he was seen as someone who ruthlessly eliminated his enemies. He was listed as number 1,722 on the NATO list and given a priority level of three, but NATO merely collected information about Noor, rather than placing him on the kill list.
A Dubious History of Targeted Killings in Afghanistan, Spiegel Online
Noor was prominent during the presidential election dispute, for essentially blackmailing U.S. officials (and the nation of Afghanistan) with threats of civil war. He might not be especially surprising as a U.S. ally in Afghanistan, also placed on a list of U.S. enemies, and subject to U.S. military operation against him. But it would then be surprising if he is the only person with the dual status.
The publication of the governor's name, as being on the list, would certainly have political repercussions in U.S./Afghan relations.
Around the end of 2008, NATO decided that alleged narcotics traffickers could be added to the list of people to be killed. American military officials had claimed that relation of the drug traffickers to the war was not needed, for targeted killings by military forces in the war. A German general had objected that this was a violation of international law.
According to the NSA document, in October 2008 the NATO defense ministers made the momentous decision that drug networks would now be "legitimate targets" for ISAF troops. "Narcotics traffickers were added to the Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL) list for the first time," the report reads.
In the opinion of American commanders like Bantz John Craddock, there was no need to prove that drug money was being funneled to the Taliban to declare farmers, couriers and dealers as legitimate targets of NATO strikes.
Targeting the Drug Trade
In early 2009, Craddock, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander for Europe at the time, issued an order to expand the targeted killings of Taliban officials to drug producers. This led to heated discussions within NATO. German NATO General Egon Ramms declared the order "illegal" and a violation of international law. The power struggle within NATO finally led to a modification of Craddock's directive: Targets related to the drug production at least had to be investigated as individual cases.
A Dubious History of Targeted Killings in Afghanistan, Spiegel Online