A Defector's Story: Cash Opened Way for bin Laden
KABUL
Saturday, December 1...
Within the secretive Taliban hierarchy that ran Afghanistan for five years, it was not hard to figure out how Osama bin Laden derived much of his influence. When the Saudi-born heir to a construction fortune called on officials of the Taliban, according to a former minister, he often brought wads of cash and distributed it freely - sometimes taking out $50,000, even $100,000, at a time.
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"He had money in his pocket," recalled Mohammed Khaksar, the Taliban's deputy interior minister who now has defected to the Northern Alliance. "Any time he wanted, he would just pull it out and give it to them." What Mr. bin Laden got for all this largesse was equally clear: complete freedom to operate his Qaida terrorist network in Afghanistan. "There wasn't anybody who had power over Osama," Mr. Khaksar said. "He did whatever he wanted."
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For the first time, a former senior Taliban official has emerged publicly to provide a glimpse inside the militia that created perhaps the world's most repressive Islamic state and a haven for international terrorists blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington.
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Once a close friend of the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, Mr. Khaksar broke with his associates when they fled Kabul in mid-November.
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Last week he declared his support for the Northern Alliance, which is now in charge in the capital, becoming the highest-ranking defector from the Taliban's inner circle.
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In an interview at the comfortable Kabul compound where he lives with his wife and tends his garden, Mr. Khaksar portrayed a regime bought and paid for by Mr. bin Laden's millions. The alleged terrorist lavished gifts on Taliban leaders, including cash, cars and other valuables.
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If the Taliban was planning an attack in their long war with the Northern Alliance, he said, Mr. bin Laden would have 50 trucks delivered to ferry fighters to the front. "Al Qaida was very important for the Taliban because they had so much money," Mr. Khaksar said, without offering precise figures. "They gave a lot of money. And the Taliban trusted them."
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The relationship between Mr. bin Laden and the Taliban leadership clearly also had ideological roots: their common belief in radical Islam and their anti-Western views.
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While his account of his own actions is impossible to confirm and may be colored by his desire to distance himself from the Taliban, reports by U.S. intelligence agencies have described in detail how Mr. bin Laden bankrolled the Taliban, providing an estimated $100 million in cash and military aid since 1996. Mr. Khaksar, 41, played an important role in the Taliban from the beginning. An ethnic Pashtun like most Taliban members, he was one of the early key figures in the movement, which emerged in 1994 and swept to power in Kabul in 1996.
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He served first as intelligence chief and later as deputy interior minister, supervising security in the capital, where brutal tactics were used to enforce restrictions on many aspects of modern life.
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While Mullah Omar remained in his home base in Kandahar, much of the rest of the government operated out of Kabul, and Mr. Khaksar was party to many of the most controversial decisions.
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Over the years, however, he became disenchanted, particularly by the arrival of Mr. bin Laden and his foreign fighters. He complained off the record to reporters as early as 1999 and kept up a regular, secret dialogue with the Northern Alliance's top commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated on Sept. 9, allegedly by Qaida operatives.
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He said that, while he was with the Taliban, he also served as a clandestine contact for U.S. intelligence services. Agents disguised as journalists visited him to get information, he said. "They came two or three times," he said, "and they knew about my policy and about my opinion."
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In Washington, a CIA spokesman, Tom Crispell, said that the agency did not comment on such matters but added that CIA policy was to not use U.S. news organizations as cover. Mr. Khaksar has provided enough intelligence to the Northern Alliance to win his continued freedom. Other senior leaders may be imprisoned or executed but Mr. Khaksar remains in his own home, able to travel at will, guarded by some of the soldiers who protected him as a Taliban official.
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He said he had met Mr. bin Laden once, in 1996. The two did not hit it off. "I told him: 'Now there's no jihad in Afghanistan. Afghanistan can solve our own problems. We don't need you,'" he recalled. "He got very upset, and I never saw him again."
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