KABUL/WASHINGTON, 10 February — The United States yesterday held its most senior Taleban official to date in its five-month-old war on terror, but faced growing international criticism of its widening campaign. Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel, the Taleban foreign minister, surrendered to US forces in Kandahar on Friday. Yesterday, he was branded by Afghanistan’s interim government as a war criminal who should be put on trial.
One of the closest aides to reclusive Taleban leader Mulla Muhammad Omar, he is seen as a potential source of crucial evidence on Omar and Osama Bin Laden, the chief suspect of the Sept. 11 terror attacks who has eluded a US-led manhunt so far. As Washington pondered its high-ranking catch, interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai pardoned 350 captured Taleban soldiers, saying they were “innocent” as part of a general amnesty that allowed foot-soldiers to go free.
The soldiers, all Afghans, were paraded before a ceremony outside the presidential palace in Kabul where Karzai warned them not to take up arms again and “to find jobs”. As the prisoners stood huddled in blankets against the bitterly cold night, Karzai said they were “innocent” of crimes.
As Karzai released the prisoners, there was growing international disquiet about the US treatment of its own captured Al-Qaeda and Taleban prisoners. In Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it and Washington were at odds over Washington’s decision not to recognize captured Taleban and Al-Qaeda fighters as prisoners of war.
“There are divergent views between the US and the ICRC on the procedures which apply on how to determine that the persons detained are not entitled to prisoner of war status,” the ICRC said in a statement. “The US and the ICRC will pursue their dialogue on this issue.”
Concern also continued to flow over signs that the US was expanding its war on terror to other countries. While taking care to avoid directly criticizing Bush’s recent statements describing certain countries as an “axis of evil,” UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said it was unrealistic to see the world in terms of good and evil states.
In an interview published by the Swiss daily newspaper Blick yesterday, Annan was asked about Bush’s statement describing Iran, Iraq and North Korea as part of an “axis of evil.” Annan said, without specifically mentioning the US: “You cannot divide the world between the good and the evil, because between them there are shades of gray.”
In Salt Lake City, the new Afghan flag was not flying as the Winter Olympics got under way on Friday. The interim government had demanded that it be flown at the opening ceremony, but was refused.
The voluntary surrender of Mutawakel was met with Kabul’s insistence yesterday that he be tried as a war criminal. Taleban leaders “were a part of the problem. They created misery for our people. The world has suffered because of what they did,” Interim Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said. “They cannot be a part of the solution, they were a part of the problem and they deserve justice and to be treated as war criminals because they supported terrorism.”
About 50 US soldiers searched the remote mountain district of Zhawar Kili in eastern Afghanistan yesterday after a CIA missile strike hit a group of suspected senior Al-Qaeda members, apparently including a tall man who was being treated with great deference by those around him.
A US official refused to say whether the man may have been Bin Laden. “He was clearly someone who was senior,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Ahead of the former king’s return, Karzai continues to wrestle with security problems as rival warlords try to fill power vacuums left by the fall of the Taleban. He yesterday met representatives of two warlords who clashed violently last week over who should be governor in eastern Paktia province. “This is a very serious matter and Karzai wanted himself to be involved in finding a solution,” Deputy Border Affairs Minister Mirza Ali told AFP.
Fifty people were killed in a two-day battle when Karzai’s appointed governor, Padsha Khan, sent his forces to secure the governor’s house in the provincial capital Gardez.
