Afghan military and U.S. forces detained 30 Afghan police officers in Helmand province, on suspicions of working with the Taliban.
Against the complexities of Helmand politics, most all details of who had been detained, of what political alignments exist, are very vague.
[Helmand police chief Abdul Rahman] Sarjang would not elaborate on the reason for the operation, but a senior Afghan army official in Helmand told Reuters that the army and U.S. advisers suspected the police of providing weapons and ammunition to the Taliban and that they had planned an eventual surrender to the insurgents.
"During our investigation we found some evidence they were helping the Taliban and we were afraid they may submit the district to the Taliban," said the Afghan army officer, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss the operation. "We launched a joint operation with Americans and detained all of them."
The full extent of American involvement was not clear and a spokesman for the U.S. military in Kabul declined to confirm any details.
Afghan police suspected of aiding Taliban killed, detained by army, Mohammad Stanekzai, Reuters
Hikmat Shadman was 15 or 16 when he started working for American Special Forces in Kandahar. The United States of America has sued seventy-one million of his dollars, for Shadman having bribed contractors and soldiers, when the United States of America helped Shadman accumulate that sort of money in its large scale system of bribery in Afghanistan.
Matt Aikens tells the story in the New Yorker.
Camp Gecko in Kandahar was Mullah Omar’s old house, turned into a base for the CIA, U.S. Special Forces, and warlord-affiliated Afghan militias. It frequently turns up in accounts of human rights abuse in Afghanistan.
Hikmatullah Shadman had started working for U.S. Special Forces there. He knew, about Camp Gecko, what went on. This is an account from sergeant first class Bryan Myers.
“Hik, your English is pretty good. You know what we do here right?”
“Of course, you are the bearded ones, everybody knows what you do. That is why I want to work with you.”
Laughing, I just put my hand on his shoulder and respond “Welcome aboard.”
Shadman later moved on to contracting businesses at the Kandahar airbase. This put him in competition with Governor Gul Agha Sherzai and General Abdul Raziq Sherzai.
Hikmat’s entry into the trucking business brought him into competition with some of Kandahar’s most powerful men. Gul Agha Sherzai, the warlord who had retaken the province with the help of the C.I.A. and Special Forces, had been the governor; his brother Abdul Raziq was a general in the Afghan Army, in charge of the airport. The Sherzais also controlled lucrative contracts to supply gravel to the American base, and Raziq’s company, Sherzai Construction and Supply, provided trucks to the Americans.
Aikens describes a regular rotation between Special Forces groups at the airbase. Repeatedly, Shadman’s earnings would shoot up or down, as different groups rotated in and out.
Against this factionalism in the American military, there was the factionalism of Afghanistan. Against the corruption of Afghanistan, there was the corruption of the American military.
“Employ money as a weapons system,” Petraeus wrote in 2008. “Money can be ‘ammunition.’ ”
In 2012, American auditors were poking around. Shadman was hauled off to Bagram.
Hikmat’s first thought, when armed men kicked in his bedroom door, was that the Taliban had come for him. The men cursed him in Pashto, but when they dragged him outside he saw, to his relief, that there were American soldiers with them. He was blindfolded, shackled, and flown across the country to the main U.S. detention facility in Afghanistan, at Bagram Airfield. “The way they treated me and the place they put me in the jail,” Hikmat told me, his voice trailing off. “It was a toilet.”
In intake, he was subjected to the same fate as those he had once hunted alongside the Special Forces. His head was shaved, and he was forced to strip and wash under the guards’ supervision, an ordeal that Hikmat, having grown up in conservative Kandahar, found particularly humiliating. “This is why President Karzai says that this is the factory of the Taliban,” he said. “How they treat people!”
How we treat the people we bribe, if they should bribe us back.
The American-created system of justice in Afghanistan provides no justice. At a hearing for Shadman, no documents were presented. Gul Agha Sherzai showing up, though, can count for a lot. Shadman was released.
On December 9, 2012, the day of the hearing, Sherzai arrived at Bagram, along with a group of tribal elders from Kandahar. He, too, was unimpressed by the evidence presented by the military investigators. “They had no documents,” Sherzai told me. Even so, he found it plausible that both Mohmand and Hikmat were paying off the Taliban, since it was a widespread practice in the trucking business. “They weren’t powerful enough to face the Taliban,” he said. “Why would it be that easy for them to pass with their convoys?”
The American-created system of justice in American provides no justice, either, in a case of national security and military secrets. Classified evidence that embarrasses the United States is likely to be suppressed.
In court hearings, Hikmat’s lead counsel, Bryant Banes, has said that Hikmat was paid out of logistics funds for intelligence work for the Special Forces, and that classified evidence will exonerate him.
A congressional report, Warlord Inc., was shocked, simply shocked, to find corruption, extortion, and payments to the Taliban going on in Afghan trucking and security for the United States military.
When Hikmat Shadman arrived at Camp Gecko, at the age of 15 or 16, he knew what went on there.
“Of course, you are the bearded ones, everybody knows what you do. That is why I want to work with you.”
Gul Agha Sherzai knows how it works.
“The American money was benefitting everybody—the government and the Taliban,” Gul Agha Sherzai told me.
Hikmat Shadman was hauled off to Bagham, and had his $75 million seized. People like Gul Agha Sherzai and Abdul Raziq Sherzai were not.
In Kandahar, I was told by many Afghans that the small thieves are caught so that the big thieves may go free. They believed that Hikmat had been singled out by the Americans because he lacked the political connections of rivals like the Sherzais.
Eight American soldiers have plead guilty in cases related to this story. No powerful Americans have been charged in the scheme.
“Employ money as a weapons system,” Petraeus wrote in 2008. “Money can be ‘ammunition.’ ”