CIA Missile Targets Afghan Warlord

WASHINGTON -- The CIA fired a missile this week at an Afghan warlord accused of plotting attacks on his nation’s interim government and American troops, a U.S. official said Thursday.

The strike apparently marks the first time in the Afghanistan war that the United States has set out to kill an enemy not officially part of the Al Qaeda terrorist network or the Taliban.

The missile, fired Monday from an unmanned Predator plane, missed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the head of a militant Islamic party that opposes the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan. But the strike--near Kabul, the Afghan capital--killed several of Hekmatyar’s associates, said the U.S. official, who was familiar with the attack. He requested anonymity because of the clandestine nature of the operation.

The strike seems to signal an expansion of the CIA’s mission in Afghanistan to include hunting enemies not directly linked to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

It raised eyebrows in intelligence circles in Washington. Some questioned whether its primary aim was to protect interim Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai, thereby putting the CIA in the position of eliminating enemies of an unelected foreign leader.

“If we were doing that because the guy was a threat to Karzai, we are really going down a new path, and one we absolutely should not go down,” said a former CIA official who also asked not to be identified. Such a role, he said, would be tantamount to enlisting the CIA as “the enforcing arm of this new emir.”

The CIA declined to comment on the strike. But two officials familiar with the operation stressed that it was prompted by evidence that Hekmatyar posed an ongoing threat to both Karzai and U.S. troops.

Hekmatyar “was involved in planning terrorist attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan and had also offered rewards to people who were willing to kill Americans,” said one of the officials. “He’s a nasty character who is involved in terrorism.”

Responding to questions about the strike, President Bush said, “I can assure you when we go after individuals in the theater of war, it’s because they intend to do some harm to America.”

Hekmatyar, 52, is the leader of Hezb-i-Islami, a primarily ethnic Pushtun political party. Members of the party recently were accused by the Afghan interim government of plotting to set off a bomb to kill Karzai or overthrow his regime. Scores of suspects were arrested last month in connection with the alleged scheme.

Intelligence officials said the Predator fired a Hellfire missile on a gathering near Kabul believed to include Hekmatyar and his followers. But many details surrounding the strike remain unclear, including how Hekmatyar managed to escape, apparently without serious injury.

Hekmatyar has a colorful history. He emerged in the 1980s as one of the leading players in the CIA-financed war to oust the Soviet military from Afghanistan. But even then, he was an avowed opponent of the United States. When he and six other moujahedeen leaders visited the United Nations in the mid-1980s, Hekmatyar was the only one to refuse President Reagan’s invitation to visit the White House.

After the Soviets were driven from Afghanistan in 1989, Hekmatyar served as prime minister in a contentious coalition government. He launched a bloody campaign against other moujahedeen leaders and controlled forces that destroyed much of Kabul. When the Taliban, capitalizing on the chaos caused by civil war, seized control of the country in 1996, Hekmatyar fled to Iran.

He returned to Afghanistan in February.