By Carol Grisanti, NBC News Producer, Pakistan
A prominent Taliban commander boasted to NBC News in an interview that Afghan officials are aiding his forces in fighting U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
In the interview, wanted Taliban commander Sirajuddin Haqqani said that the corrupted Afghan officials are a key to the Taliban's military success. “There are some people with government portfolios who are supporting us because they are worried about their own security,” Haqqani said. “They inform us of the movements of U.S. and NATO troops. There have even been some instances where they have assisted us in carrying out attacks,” he added.
Afghan officials characterized Haqqani's comments as baseless "propaganda."
Sirajuddin Haqqani, 28, controls the Taliban in the Afghan border areas with Pakistan, and in the area surrounding Kabul. Under tight security, he consented to an interview with NBC News’ Mushtaq Yusufzai in a safe house in Khost, the Afghan province that borders Pakistan.
An NBC producer interviews Taliban commander Sirajuddin Haqqani (whose back faces the camera). Haqqani would not reveal his face.
Haqqani is the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, one of the most feared Afghan commanders, who fought against the Soviet occupation during the 1980s. Jalaluddin, now aged and in failing health, lives in Khost and has passed the reigns of the Haqqani terror network on to his second son, Sirajuddin.
Jalaluddin Haqqani once had strong ties with the CIA, according to published acounts. But now he and his son are wanted men. The U.S. military has placed a bounty of $200,000 on Sirajuddin Haqqani’s head.
The New York Times in today’s edition reported that: “The Haqqani Network and other militants operating in the tribal areas along the Afghan border are said by American intelligence officials to be responsible for increasingly deadly and complex attacks inside Afghanistan, and have helped al-Qaeda establish safe havens in the tribal areas.”
In the interview with NBC News, his first ever, Sirajuddin Haqqani admitted that Arab and other foreign fighters had joined him in fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan.
“We are in trouble,” Haqqani said. “We are occupied by foreign forces so we asked our Muslim brothers from all over the world to come join us and help us. And they have come.”
The difference, Haqqani explained, is that the Arabs and other foreigners are under his control while Afghan President Hamid Karzai asks for help too but remains under the control of the foreigners.
Haqqani said that he was the planner behind January’s terrorist attack on Kabul’s luxury Serena Hotel, where eight people died. He also claimed responsibility for the failed assassination attempt on President Karzai at an Independence Day parade in the capital in April.
“Yes, I organized those attacks,” Haqqani said “but I had help from a serving Afghan military general.”
Haqqani also said that Pakistan was once a pro-Mujahideen state and now is under U.S. pressure to kill its own people. As a result, he said, “it has become my moral and religious responsibility to defend the Pakistani Taliban from U.S. and Pakistani army attacks.”
“Afghanistan under coalition watch has practically become a narco-state," said Owais Ahmad Ghani, the governor of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, in a recent interview about the challenges of waging the war on terror in an unruly neighborhood. Click the image above to watch the video.
NBC’s Mushtaq Yusufzai spent months arranging the interview. He contacted local Pakistani Taliban commanders in North Waziristan and asked them to try and make contact with Haqqani across the border in Afghanistan. Yusufzai was told that because Haqqani is a wanted man, he cannot move around freely and no longer crosses the border into Pakistan.
Yuzufzai waited two days in Thall, a hamlet near the Pakistani tribal agency of Kurram, bordering Khost Province in Afghanistan.
“Finally four 4X4 pick-ups came for me in the early morning,” Yusufzai said. “They told me they were taking me to see their training camps and areas under their control. I was afraid of being killed by either American forces or Pakistani troops on the border or both,” Yusufzai said. “But they told me not to worry, they knew all the safe smuggling routes into Afghanistan.”
Yusufzai described the trip. “After two hours driving, we reached Sabaro in Khost Province, a village under their control,” he said. “The Taliban were manning the check posts and there were no Afghan army soldiers anywhere around…I was taken first to one house and waited 1&1/2 hours before being taken to a second house. I still had no idea that I would finally meet Haqqani,” Yusufzai said.
“When I entered the second house, I walked into a room full of Taliban fighters. There was one man off to the side who appeared different from the others. He had no weapon. This was Sirajuddin Haqqani. No one outside of his close circles had ever met him before,” Yusufzai said.
There are no known pictures of Sirajuddin and he refused to show his face to the NBC camera during the interview.
“I asked him about the allegations that he is running training camps inside Pakistan,” Yusufzai said.
“Look, I am sitting here in Khost, why should I go to Pakistan,” Haqqani answered. “I know the Pakistanis will capture me and hand me over to the Americans. I will stay here and liberate Afghanistan from the occupation forces,” he said.
“Soon you will see good results,” Haqqani said. “The Taliban will again control this great Muslim country.”
A U.S. military spokesman said that some of Haqqani's comments smack of propaganda. Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Zamarai Basharin agreed. He called Sirajuddin Haqqani's statements "propaganda" by the enemy. He said that Afghan officials have investigated Haqqani's claims and found no evidence that any Afghan government officials were been involved in any attacks against the Afghan state, its people or U.S. and NATO forces.
Updated July 31.
