Gen. Amerkhel: busted smugglers, but now pursued by gangs and Attorney General

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai travels to the United Nations in New York this week, leaving behind, amid the corruption-ridden ministries of his government, one particular story of betrayal of trust that should, by now, have led to a complete overhaul of the Western-sponsored Kabul regime.

Instead, nearly a year after his removal on unspecified charges as police chief of Kabul Airport, Gen. Aminullah Amerkhel is still on the run from the Afghan capital’s largest heroin trafficking gang - and its stooges working within the Karzai regime’s disgraced law enforcement apparatus.

All of this is going on with the full knowledge of the West’s biggest embassies in Kabul, particularly American, British and Canadian officials, all of whom share connections to the shadowy figure at the centre of the story, Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabet.

As detailed in our film report from May 8th, featured here again today, Gen. Amerkhel was forced from his airport post last October by Sabet, despite - or, it is alleged, because - of the police chief's achievements in detecting and arresting heroin smugglers. Trafficking has reportedly surged in Amerkhel's absence. Police sources tell skyreporter that heroin is now moving "easily" through the airport.

Fearing arrest by Sabet’s henchmen, Amerkhel fled to Britain, where he had previously consulted with officials of Tony Blair’s Labour government on how best to combat the trade in illicit drugs.

By spring, however, demands for Amerkhel’s reinstatement from Afghanistan’s Senate Speaker Sibgatullah Mojadidi convinced the general to return home to clear his name. For a time, Sabet was slated for firing, not least because of his censure by the Senate and other leading Afghan legislators, and after accusations, during public protests, that he was secretly acting on behalf of the drug gangs.

However, influential strongmen including Abdul Sayyaf, who commands one of the country's largest private militias and leads the parliamentary minority, have pressed President Karzai to keep Sabet in office. Sayyaf backed Sabet’s nomination to the AG’s post in August, 2006, and since then has positioned his own underlings in top anti-narcotics positions in both the Ministry of Interior and the Attorney General’s office.

Consequently, a resolution of Amerkhel’s case has been delayed. Sabet has still not produced specific charges against the general. But he and his staff have continued to harass Amerkhel, his wife and six children. Sabet insists the general submit to further investigation. Threats of arrest have been sent by post, repeated phone calls and by police squads who have several times raided the Amerkhels’ apartment, only to find the general away from home.

Amerkhel has spent the last four months in hiding, frequently moving between his home province and the residences of friends and family in Kabul. According to several of Amerkhel’s former colleagues, Sabet’s continuing vendetta has coincided with threats by one of Kabul’s leading heroin traffickers to kill Amerkhel.

All of which begs an explanation from President Karzai and his sponsors in Washington, London and Ottawa.

The United Nations provides an ideal forum to do just that – explain why no one is coming to the aid of an honest cop and his family, while record quantities of heroin flood the trafficking lanes on the way to market.