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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: miraje who wrote (1942)	9/14/2001 11:56:03 AM
From: Tadsamillionaire	Respond to of 27666

Afghan Warlord Living in London AFP July 27, 2000 LONDON - A notorious former Afghan commander blamed for some of the worst acts of his country's civil war is living under a false name as an asylum seeker in London, the BBC reported late Thursday. Commander Zardat, a former warlord of Afghanistan's fundamentalist Hezb-i-Islami faction, has been long implicated in the systematic looting of United Nations and Red Cross aid and medical convoys, as well as incidents of murder, rape, torture and theft. The BBC's Newsnight programme said it has uncovered the ex-warlord in a house in Mitcham, south London, living under several false names and drawing British welfare benefits. From 1992 to 1996, Zardat and his band of heavily-armed fighters wrought havoc at the strategic town of Sarobi, located on a key highway linking the then besieged capital Kabul and the Pakistan border. UN, Red Cross and other aid convoys attempting to deliver aid to the Kabul were frequently looted, and Zardat's looting was blamed for keeping the city in a state of attrition for nearly five years, when at least 25,000 civilians died under a hail of rockets, or through lack of food or basic medical supplies. Hundreds of thousands more civilians were forced to flee Kabul. The warlord thrived on the looting and was often seen cruising around his base in stolen, re-painted aid agency vehicles, epitomising the anarchic "commander rule" that ravaged the country after the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet forces and the 1992 collapse of the Moscow-backed regime. His men also levied hefty "taxes" on ordinary travellers, punishing non-payers with a severe beating, torture, rape or sodomy, and even death. In his reign at Sarobi, scores of women and children were also reported to have disappeared along the road, amid widespread fear they were being kidnapped and held for sexual abuse. In the BBC Newsnight report, Zardat denied that he had killed or hurt anyone at Sarobi and said he was not even based there. "It is all propaganda by our enemies. We never harrassed anyone, and we never killed anyone," he told the BBC. "I was not the commander at Sarobi. I was a commander at Kabul. I was just an advisor at Sarobi." But the report also featured a number of eyewitness accounts, including one of a former AFP Kabul correspondent, who saw Zardat and his men murder at least 10 unarmed men who were members of a rival ethnic group. The BBC said they were tipped-off on his whereabouts by Afghanistan's hardline ruling Taliban militia, who ousted Zardat from his Sarobi base in 1996 and sent him fleeing the country. "The Taliban accused the West of hypocrisy because they were suffering demands and sanctions over extraditing (alleged Saudi terrorist Osama) bin Laden, but Zardat was living freely in Britain," a BBC reporter explained ahead of the airing of the expose. Noted for frequently switching sides in the civil war -- a common practice aimed at securing numerous pay-offs -- Zardat was forced to flee the country as he ran out of cash, men and allies. He is despised almost equally by the ruling Taliban and their northern-based opponents -- who used to control Kabul -- and if he returned to Kabul, experts believe he would almost certainly face a public execution at the hands of the Taliban. "I come here to England because we have lots of trouble because the Taliban are trying to kill me and make trouble," Zardat told the BBC. newsmax.com