A country where blood is everything

Canadian diplomat Glyn Berry died in a suicide attack in Afghanistan. The main suspect walked free.

Graeme Smith, Globe & Mail, 11 Dec 06

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KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- When an explosion shook the city of Kandahar in the early afternoon of Jan. 15, Afghan police hurried to the scene to find Canadian troops pulling comrades out of ruined military vehicles. The suicide blast injured three soldiers and killed Canadian diplomat Glyn Berry, the 59-year-old political director of the local reconstruction team.

As a helicopter roared away with the injured, criminal investigators from the Afghan National Police kept their eyes on the ground, picking their way through the twisted metal and charred flesh. They wrote down identification numbers from the engine block and chassis of the bomber's minivan, a silver Toyota Town Ace. They also noted the license plate number, 312.

The last known owner of plate 312, a man named Pir Mohammed, was arrested as the main suspect in Mr. Berry's death. Police say they grew more suspicious after they raided his home, finding a cache of weapons, documents in Arabic, and a photo of a reputed Taliban leader.

But after less than two days in custody, Mr. Mohammed walked out the front door of the investigators' office and disappeared. Why?

The explanation sounds all too familiar to those versed in Afghanistan's tribal politics. Mr. Mohammed had friends in high places, powerful men who gave him freedom before police were satisfied they had properly investigated him.

The key to Mr. Mohammed's release was Mullah Naqib, an important ally of the Afghan government who has been commanding respect in Kandahar since his days fighting the Russians. In a country where blood is everything, Mr. Mohammed was lucky enough to be born a member of the old warlord's tribe.

It's a measure of Mr. Naqib's standing -- and a reminder that loyalty is a complicated thing in Afghanistan -- that just months after Mr. Berry's death, the warlord stood on the grounds of a military base in Kandahar and shook hands with another Canadian, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was making a quick visit in March.

In an interview, Mr. Naqib warmly remembered his meeting with Mr. Harper, saying the Prime Minister extended a friendly invitation to visit Canada. "He said, 'Please come to my country,' " Mr. Naqib recalled, chuckling.

The evidence against Mr. Mohammed is far from conclusive, and it's not clear whether he was involved in the bombing. But the story of how he avoided police scrutiny serves as a warning about the strong hand of warlords and tribal elders in Afghanistan's weak justice system, even in a case of the highest importance to Canada.

"It's very important to search for this perpetrator," said Captain Sher Ali Farhad, 38, the Afghan officer who led the criminal investigation. "If you find him, you will find the source of suicide bombers. . . . Also, this suspect had very strong powers behind him. The Canadians must understand this."

Mr. Farhad said he arrived at the scene about 15 minutes after the blast, and soon grasped its importance. A high-profile Canadian official had been killed just a few weeks before thousands of Canadian troops were scheduled to arrive in Kandahar and take charge of the province's security. The Taliban were announcing they were ready for war.

Working quickly, Mr. Farhad's team took the vehicle's identification numbers to the local traffic department and tracked down the registered owner. That owner showed them letters certifying that he sold the vehicle to a second man, Abdul Razaq. In turn, Mr. Razaq told investigators he sold the minivan to Mr. Mohammed. He had documentation of the sale and a witness to support his story, so investigators went looking for Mr. Mohammed.

They caught up with him the next morning, behind the wheel of another silver Town Ace, almost identical to the blunt-nosed minivan used by the suicide bomber.

Police raided Mr. Mohammed's home later the same day, seizing a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a Kalashnikov rifle, ammunition and a few other items they found suspicious.

The man's home appeared to serve as an auto-body workshop -- car parts were strewn around the courtyard, mostly bumpers, roof racks, and other details that Mr. Farhad speculated could be used for disguising cars.

Mr. Farhad transferred the suspect to the custody of the ANP's counterterrorism unit the same afternoon, and wrote up his findings.

Mr. Mohammed looks like any other resident of Kandahar in his police mug shot, perhaps 30 years old, with curly black hair, neat turban and suit vest. But Mr. Farhad's report describes him differently: "He is a terrorist and he is mastermind," the report says, although the document gives little evidence.

Two days later, on the morning of Jan. 18, Mr. Mohammed strode back through the front door of the criminal investigation office, a free man.

"He seemed very confident and happy," Mr. Farhad said. "He was not afraid. . . . I was very surprised to see him."

The former suspect declared that he was missing his cellphone, and asked whether he'd lost it somewhere in Mr. Farhad's department. When he learned the phone had been given to the counterterrorism authorities, he walked out and hasn't been seen since.

That display of confidence ended the criminal investigation into Mr. Mohammed. Police said it would have been useless to continue building a case against somebody so well connected.

It's unlikely that any Canadians knew that the bombing suspect had been arrested -- or released -- around the time of the attack, a Canadian government source said, although rumours started circulating among Kandahar's foreign community in the following months.

Mr. Mohammed was released from jail even before Canadian officials had finished returning Mr. Berry's remains to his native Britain for burial, and a board of inquiry into his death wasn't arranged until Feb. 6.

Military police also conducted a separate probe, with an RCMP officer helping them collect information from the Afghan police, but spokesmen for the Canadian military, Foreign Affairs and RCMP all declined to comment about the result of their investigations.

"The primary investigative authority for this case rests with the Afghan National Police," a spokesman said.

Police sources in Kandahar said Mr. Mohammed belongs to a family of respected Islamic teachers who are members of the Alokozai tribe, so he naturally looked for help to the tribe's most powerful leader: Mr. Naqib.

Sometimes called Naqibullah, Mr. Naqib played a pivotal role in the history of Kandahar. He rose to prominence fighting the Russians in the 1980s, but he has also served as a peacemaker in the civil wars that followed, and he has protected his home turf in the district of Arghandab against the insurgency that tore across southern Afghanistan this year.

Asked whether he intervened on Mr. Mohammed's behalf, the grey-bearded warrior said proudly that it had been his duty.

"I am helping people, only innocent people," Mr. Naqib said. "Tribal leaders, they all know who is innocent and who is guilty. . . . I've never made a mistake."

In this case, Mr. Naqib said he was approached by Mr. Mohammed's elders and asked for help. He made some enquiries, he said, and determined that Mr. Mohammed wasn't a member of the Taliban.

Mr. Mohammed's family feuded with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar years ago, he said, in a squabble over the timing of the Eid holidays, and he has lived peacefully for years as a small-time car dealer.

The evidence against Mr. Mohammed was also very flimsy, Mr. Naqib added. Vehicle papers are a formality sometimes overlooked in Afghanistan, he said, so Mr. Mohammed's claim that he sold the minivan to somebody he met at a bus station is a credible alibi.

If police discovered weapons at Mr. Mohammed's house, Mr. Naqib said, that's entirely normal for the slums around Kandahar, where self-defence can require heavy arms.

After Mr. Mohammed's arrest, Mr. Naqib said, he led a delegation of elders to see Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and chairman of the provincial council. They discussed the matter, he said, and Ahmed Wali Karzai made a recommendation to Governor Asadullah Khalid. The governor called the police chief and Mr. Mohammed was freed.

Speaking with his usual bluntness and good humour, Mr. Naqib said the police are so badly corrupted that tribal elders such as himself are forced to serve as informal watchdogs of the justice system.

"Hamid Karzai, the President, is my friend," Mr. Naqib said. "If the officials make a mistake, the ordinary people will hate this government. . . . I am trying to keep innocent people out of jail, because if they are tortured they will turn against the government."

Human-rights groups often accuse the Afghan police of torture, and in fact, Mr. Farhad suggested that Mr. Mohammed might have been. "They didn't give us a chance to investigate him properly," he said. "We would need one month to question him, torture him."

Colonel Gary Stafford, a former Toronto police officer now helping the North Atlantic Treaty Organization train a new generation of Afghan police in Kandahar, said the international community's efforts at police reform are intended not only to fix the system's internal problems, but to make it less vulnerable to outside interference.

"I've heard of that incident you're talking about, and therein lies the problem," Col. Stafford said.

The government has recently reformed its laws, he said, giving control of the police to the Interior Ministry instead of provincial governors. Pay mechanisms are also getting an overhaul so officers can collect their salaries from a bank instead of relying on local bosses. If the government would also ban governors or warlords from paying bonuses to the police, he added, the three measures would help centralize authority in Kabul, reducing the influence of regional powerbrokers.

"It's a frustrating process," Col. Stafford said.

Canadian diplomats killed in the line of duty

J. MacLeod Boyer - The assistant trade commissioner in Cairo, he was killed during anti-Western riots there on Jan. 26, 1952.

Jack H. Thurrott - The political adviser with the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Vietnam was killed when his jeep hit a mine while on a patrol on Dec. 24, 1954.

Albert Edward Lucien Cannon - Also a political adviser to the Canadian commissioner on the ICSC, he was knifed in his bed in Saigon on April 12, 1957.

John Douglas Turner - Another political adviser to the Canadian commissioner on the ICSC died on Oct. 18, 1965, when his plane went down between Vientiane and Hanoi.

by Johanna Boffa