Used by Taliban and Bombed by U.S., a Village Aches

In this tiny Afghan hamlet that fewer than 100 people call home, the Muslim holy days of Eid al-Adha, usually the most joyous of family celebrations, have been filled with grief.

The families of Sarajiddin and of Haji Ajab Gul are mourning the loss of 12 civilian relatives in an American bombing raid last fall and the detention by coalition forces of four family members at the end of January.

No reason has been given for the detentions, nor do the families know where their relatives are being held.

“Look at these children. It is Eid and they have no father,” said Sadem, a cousin who lived in one of the compounds that was bombed and whose brother was arrested.

He pointed to the crowd of children gathered around him.

“Tell the Americans to release their father. His daughters, his sons, they are so sad. He has done no sin. We have no idea why they took him,” Sadem said.

The story of Zani Khel mirrors those of other villages across Afghanistan’s southern tier, where bombing was heavy and detentions frequent as coalition forces, led by Americans, prosecuted their war against the Al Qaeda terrorist network. In such places, civilians have been especially vulnerable because supporters of the deposed Taliban regime and Al Qaeda are often mixed with the local population.

The families in Zani Khel live about half an hour’s drive from the city of Khowst. Until Sept. 11, the area was home to a number of Arabs believed to be members of Al Qaeda; many then fled to Pakistan. It is a region where most people were pro-Taliban until the Islamic government fell, largely because they found it easier to work with the Taliban than against it.

The families of Zani Khel apparently agreed to shelter fleeing Taliban members, making the village a target for American bombers. The subsequent arrest of four people is harder to understand, because the commandos who came to these poor homes offered no information, and questions put by the family to Americans at a nearby air base have gone unanswered.

“My father is an uneducated man, he cannot read or write, he didn’t have any job with the Taliban, he was not a mullah, we don’t belong to Al Qaeda. Please tell the Americans to let him come home,” said Taj Maluk, 30, the eldest son of Sarajiddin, one of the people arrested.

U.S. military officials will not comment on whether they have detained specific individuals, and there is not even a way for family members to find out where their relatives are being held or to check on their conditions, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s Central Command said.

“I’m not familiar with any avenue for that sort of contact,” said Navy Cmdr. Dan Keesee.

Some details about the families could raise questions in the minds of U.S. investigators, and the Americans may have intelligence about individuals’ activities that was unknown to family members.

Asked if he was upset with the Americans for the detention of his father, Sakhi Gul, another of Sarajiddin’s sons, told a reporter, “I want the Americans to stay in Afghanistan to bring peace.”

But others in the family compound shouted at him: “How can you say that? They killed your family. They killed your mother. They arrested your father. You should speak the truth.”

Sur Gul, a local commander in Khowst who oversees the security of the city and works closely with U.S. soldiers in the area, was circumspect about the recent arrests.

“If the people belonged to the Taliban, the Americans didn’t make a mistake to arrest them,” he said. “But I don’t have any information that the Americans had intelligence about them.”

The village’s problems started Nov. 16, the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a period of intense prayer and fasting. That evening, the Taliban leader for the southern provinces, Jalaluddin Haqqani, who local villagers say was heavily supportive of Al Qaeda, arrived at the home of Sarajiddin.

Haqqani remains a near legendary figure in this area, known for having successfully led moujahedeen forces against the Soviets and eventually driving them out of Khowst.

The 55-year-old Sarajiddin ran a small guest house next to his home, and Haqqani asked if he could stay there four or five hours. Kabul, the capital, had fallen to Northern Alliance troops, and the Taliban leadership and Al Qaeda members were on the run, rarely staying anywhere for long.

“My father said, ‘No, please don’t stay here,’ ” said Maluk. But the ethnic Pushtun tradition of hospitality is strong, and Haqqani had arrived with soldiers, so in the end Sarajiddin did not refuse him. Just as Haqqani was about to leave, the bombs hit. Four explosions rocked Sarajiddin’s home, the guest house and an adjacent house where relatives lived.

In an instant, blankets went up in flames, carpets caught fire, children screamed.

“I couldn’t see anything. It was chaos. All I could hear were the voices of women and children crying. Then the roof collapsed,” said Sakhi Gul, Sarajiddin’s 17-year-old son.

When it was over, Sarajiddin’s wife, Fatima, was dead, along with one of his sisters-in-law, a daughter-in-law and six girls and three boys--all under age 12.

Also killed were eight or 10 of Haqqani’s bodyguards, but the leader, though injured, escaped with his remaining guards, according to Sarajiddin’s relatives. The family buried their dead in a small graveyard just beyond their house and pleaded with the family of Bacha Khan, which controls the immediate area, to help them rebuild their home.

Bacha Khan, who at the time called himself governor of the province as well as of two adjacent provinces, brought Sarajiddin about $500 to help with the reconstruction and said the Americans understood they had made a terrible mistake.

Just as the family members were putting their lives back together, tragedy struck again.

At 3 a.m. on Jan. 20, they woke to the sound of helicopters landing in the desert scrub surrounding their house. Heavily armed commandos stormed through the mud-walled compound’s steel gates, bursting the locks with explosives. They rushed into the family’s rooms. They grabbed the men, restraining young and old with plastic cuffs. It is unclear whether the commandos were Americans or British. Villagers described them only as English-speaking.

The raid lasted two hours. Then Sarajiddin, his brother, one of his sons and the brother of Sadem, were pushed into the waiting helicopters, Maluk said.

Two of those arrested, Sarajiddin’s son and Sadem’s brother, had both just returned from Saudi Arabia for Ramadan. Saudi Arabia is one of the places that have fed activists into Al Qaeda; however, it is also a place, like Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where southern Afghans routinely go to work so they can send money home. Indeed, it is rare to find a family in this region that does not have a relative in Saudi Arabia or Dubai.

As the days passed with no word of the detainees’ welfare, their relatives pleaded with Bacha Khan to make inquiries to the Americans. They went several times to an American air base near Khowst and begged just to talk to the Americans.

“They would not even let us inside,” Maluk said bitterly.

“Now, we cannot trust the Americans,” he said.

--- UNPUBLISHED NOTE ---

Beginning in stories published in 2006, the Afghan warlord Bacha Khan is identified as Pacha Khan Zadran. (Second reference is “Pacha Khan.”)

--- END NOTE ---