| Publicity | "You can't look for lilywhite purity in Afghanistan; it doesn't exist by our standards" Thomas Schweich, US Ambassador for Counternarcotics 2007-08. |
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| It's one of the world's most dangerous places where friendships can be fickle and America's strategy of playing favourites means either a palace or a prison cell. Getting things done means getting cosy with some pretty unsavoury types, where a future US President seeks the counsel of an alleged drug runner and killer. |
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| In early 2002, Foreign Correspondent's Mark Corcoran was in the southern Province of Kandahar, where he encountered two warlords who had become the key players in Washington's strategy to eliminate the Taliban. |
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| Now Corcoran has returned to the war zone to discover they've both taken very different paths - one to high influence and prestige, the other to an American prison for life. Their divergent destinies are an apt metaphor for the treachery and failed strategies of a war now dragging into its 8th year. |
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| It's a white knuckle journey through Afghanistan's dark underbelly featuring a re-union - of sorts - with the man who's become known as The Bulldozer. |
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| He is the gregarious Gul Agha Sherzai. Now hailed as America's favourite warlord, Sherzai was the go-to man when then Senator Barack Obama visited Afghanistan last year. Despite his dark past Sherzai is now a key political powerbroker instrumental in keeping President Hamid Karzai in office. |
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| "To be a leader, an effective leader, in Afghanistan at some point in your life you had to have been involved in the commission of atrocities, the accumulation of enormous wealth." Ivan Fisher American lawyer |
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| Human rights investigators say Sherzai should be investigated for human rights abuses- and accusations of his involvement in the narcotics trade have been ignored. For the Americans, he's a warlord they can do business with. |
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| The Governor flexes his authority with a hair-raising car-trip through Taliban infested mountain passes and open roads. Corcoran's along for the ride and declares on arrival at Sherzai's residence: 'Governor if the purpose of that exercise was to terrify me you've succeeded.' |
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| However it is a very different lifestyle of the other warlord. |
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| Haji Bashir Noorzai, a former ally of the Pentagon and CIA, was a key Taliban powerbroker who when he was lured to New York ostensibly to broker a peace deal was arrested for drug trafficking and sentenced to prison for life. |
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| Montage. Skyline to Kabul | Call to prayer/Music | 00:00 |
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| CORCORAN: Welcome to the new Afghanistan, where America’s war on terror collides head on with the war on drugs. | 00:09 |
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| THOMAS SCHWEICH (US Ambassador Counternarcotics, Afghanistan 2007-’08): ‘You can’t look for lilywhite purity in Afghanistan. | 00:25 |
| Schweich | It doesn’t exist by our standards.’ | 00:27 |
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| Music | 00:29 |
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| IVAN FISHER: ‘To be a leader, an effective leader in Afghanistan, at some point in your life you had to have been in involved in the commission of atrocities, the accumulation of enormous wealth.’ | 00:31 |
| Fisher | CORCORAN: ‘And that wealth comes from?’ IVAN FISHER: ‘In Afghanistan? Either monopoly sets…. or opium.’ | 00:48 |
| Montage | Music | 00:56 |
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| CORCORAN: This is the story of two warlords I first met in 2002. The two were key American allies whose drug trafficking and human rights abuses were conveniently ignored. Their fate now serves as an apt metaphor for the erratic conduct of Washington’s secret war in Afghanistan. | 00:58 |
| Freeze-frames of warlords | Warlord #1 now faces life in an American prison, while his former partner, Warlord #2, has become Washington’s favourite….. feted by none other | 01:20 |
| Sherzai with Obama | than Barack Obama. THOMAS SCHWEICH: ‘I was surprised because he does have a questionable past, | 01:32 |
| Schweich | but I can’t imagine that the President wasn’t briefed on who he was meeting with.’ | 01:40 |
| Map Afghanistan/Sat photos |
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| CORCORAN: Today in the shadow world of narco-politics, all roads lead to Kabul. | 1:55 |
| Kabul/Women/Police on streets | Music | 02:02 |
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| CORCORAN: Asking questions about drug trafficking in a war zone it’s easy to make enemies and not just with the Taliban. Trust is in short supply. Suicide attackers often dress as police. | 02:09 |
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| Of course all this only protects the rich and the powerful. Afghans are bitterly disillusioned with President Hamid Karzai. The billions in foreign aid have delivered neither security nor prosperity, just the bog of corruption and narcotics. Many, including the President’s own brother, have been implicated but few are arrested. | 02:30 |
| Silhouette police on skyline | Now producing 90% of the world’s heroin and opium, Afghanistan is a virtual narco state. Drugs fuel half the economy. America’s top counter-narcotics official here admits he has a problem. | 02:57 |
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| ‘To what degree does this narco economy permeate the political leadership?’ | 03:14 |
| Schofer. Super: | ANDREW SCHOFER: ‘It is pervasive. It is throughout the leadership, throughout the economy, throughout the political class. I don’t think anybody disputes that.’ | 03:18 |
| ‘Poppy Palaces’ | CORCORAN: New mansions dubbed ‘poppy palaces’ have been built upon the opium profits and we’re on our way to one such pile to meet an old acquaintance from 2002. | 03:33 |
| Gul Agha Sherzai | He’s since moved on to become America’s favourite warlord. His name is Gul Agha Sherzai. Sherzai translates as ‘son of a lion’. But these days he’s better known as ‘the Bulldozer’ – the ruthlessly efficient former warlord who gets things done. | 03:47 |
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| GUL AGHA SHERZAI: ‘And President Karzai is calling me his Bulldozer.‘ | 04:05 |
| Sherzai and advisers consult with Kandahar chieftains | CORCORAN: For five years now he’s been Governor of troubled Nangarhar Province. Bordering Pakistan, it was a Taliban and opium growing stronghold, but the Bulldozer has wiped out poppy cultivation and taken on the insurgents – becoming a national hero in the process. | 04:15 |
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| GUL AGHA SHERZAI: ‘I was made Person of the Year and the President gave me the medal of Wazier Aakbarkahan.’ | 04:41 |
| Lunch with Pashtun leaders | CORCORAN: Today he hosts lunch for his tribal brethren, ethnic Pashtun leaders from the Kandahar region, the heart of the Taliban insurgency. Sherzai was going to challenge Hamid Karzai for the Presidency in elections this August, but he withdrew after striking a deal that almost guarantees Karzai’s re-election and repositions Sherzai as the top powerbroker. He says the key to his success is to hunt down the foreigners of Al Qaeda, while offering an amnesty for tribal Taliban fighters. | 04:50 |
| Sherzai | GUL AGHA SHERZAI: ‘With the religious scholars and mullahs – there are almost 12 thousand Taliban in Nangarhar province - with the help of those leaders I convinced the Taliban to join the peace process.’ | 05:27 |
| Night time Kabul –Sherzai convoy |
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| CORCORAN: That night he puts his peace process to the test. Sherzai’s suddenly decided to return to his provincial capital of Jalalabad. It’s a 140 km dash, at night, along a route routinely attacked by the Taliban, but there’s political point scoring behind this apparent recklessness. | 05:49 |
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| Music | 06:11 |
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| CORCORAN: While President Karzai remains hunkered down in his palace, the Bulldozer is seen to be out and about, daring his enemies to take a shot at him, which they often do. | 06:16 |
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| This display of bravado is carefully calculated. The journey, decided with just an hour’s notice, runs at breakneck speed under the cover of darkness. In Afghanistan, an uneventful trip is a good trip and there’s a huge sense of relief as we swing into the grounds of the Bulldozer’s palace. | 06:39 |
| Sons greet Sherzai | Greeted by his youngest sons, Sherzai segues from Warrior to Family man with 17 children from three wives. It’s all part of the Bulldozer road show. GUL AGHA SHERZAI: ‘When the Bulldozer’s here, no problem. The Taliban is no danger. I have defeated them.’ | 07:03 |
| Soldiers outside palace/ Sherzai into palace | CORCORAN: It’s been a long political journey here for the Bulldozer. He first made his name as a mujahedeen commander in the war against the Soviets. In the early 1990s after the Russians went home, he was appointed Governor of the southern region of Kandahar. His was a brutal reign of violence that has now been conveniently forgotten. | 07:26 |
| Corcoran | ‘So are you still very much a fighter? A mujahedeen?’ | 07:49 |
| Sherzai | GUL AGHA SHERZAI: ‘My heart is still the same old heart.’ | 07:51 |
| Setting sun/People on street | CORCORAN: A leading human rights investigator claims the Bulldozer’s brutality was a major factor in the rise of the Taliban who won widespread support by vowing to end the chaos. His demand for Sherzai to be investigated has been ignored. NADER NADERI: ‘We do know that while he was a governor in Kandahar, | 07:54 |
| Naderi. Super: | he was not able to control individual commanders who were committing serious atrocities and that was raping girls, raping boys, kids, everyday mass killings.’ | 08:18 |
| Satellite map | Music | 08:36 |
| Excerpt 2002 story | CORCORAN: We first met Sherzai back in early 2002. Backed by US Special Forces, he’d just returned to Kandahar, ousted the Taliban and installed himself as governor for a second time. As we revealed, the Bulldozer was part of a controversial deal involving the other warlord in our story, | 08:48 |
| Photos. Haji Bashir Noorzai | Haji Bashir Noorzai. Noorzai was Afghanistan’s most powerful drug lord and leader of a one million strong tribe allied to the Taliban. | 09:08 |
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| Music | 09:23 |
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| Noorzai cut a deal with the Americans, agreeing to help track down fugitive Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders. In return, the US turned a blind eye to his narcotics operation. For the US, the priority was catching terrorists. Drugs came a very poor second. | 09:25 |
| Excerpt 2002 story, Sherzai walks out of Governors compound with entourage | The two warlords were happy to help. GUL AGHA SHERZAI MINDER: [Answers phone whilst walking] ‘Haji Bashir (Noorzai). Hello Haji. GUL AGHA SHERZAI: ‘Don’t hang up! Don’t hang up! [minder passes him phone] Hello… greetings!’ CORCORAN: Chatting on their US supplied satellite phones it was all pleasantries, never business because the business that glued the pair together was an enormous narcotics enterprise. Governor Sherzai, ‘the Bulldozer’ was allegedly taking his cut of Noorzai’s drug operation. | 09:49 |
| Landscape. Travelling to Sangin | Music | 10:19 |
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| CORCORAN: The heart of that business lay three hours away in the town of Sangin. | 10:22 |
| Excerpt 2002 story. Corcoran with Taliban. Super: | Armed with a hidden camera, we entered this former Taliban stronghold. The traffickers assumed we were American Special Forces. Had we declared our real identity, it was unlikely that we would have walked out again. | 10:30 |
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| ‘And is it good quality product at the moment? Good quality opium?’ TRANSLATOR: ‘Bad quality, good quality. Most special quality.’ CORCORAN: ‘Yeah if I want to buy some, how much for a kilo in US dollars?’ | 10:47 |
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| TRANSLATOR: ‘Around eight hundred dollars.’ CORCORAN: ‘Can we see some product? Show us some good quality stuff.’ TALIBAN: ‘Stay here, yeah?’ | 11:03 |
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| CORCORAN: It’s no coincidence that since we filmed here, the struggle to control this town in the heart of Taliban opium country has led to some of the heaviest fighting of the war. The United Nations estimates that five hundred million US dollars a year in drug profits flow to the insurgents. | 11:15 |
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| TRANSLATOR: ‘Shall he open?’ CORCORAN: ‘Yeah, why not?’ TALIBAN: ‘Do you want to taste it?’ CORCORAN: ‘Not for me.’ | 11:34 |
| Driving | CORCORAN: Sherzai was later sacked as Governor amid tribal rivalries. Western and Afghan intelligence officials accused him of amassing a $300 million dollar fortune from the drug trade, but President Karzai refused to investigate. | 11:42 |
| Sherzai palace | The Bulldozer was parachuted in here to run Nangarhar. | 12:07 |
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| ‘The main allegation is that you got wealthy during your time as Governor of Kandahar, taking a percentage of the opium profits from the area. How do you respond to that allegation?’ | 12:13 |
| Sherzai | GUL AGHA SHERZAI: I’m very vulnerable… why do they talk behind my back? If someone has proof, it’s okay – but if they don’t, no-one will get it off those gossips. Everyone will stone a tree full of fruit but no one will touch a fruitless tree. Praise to God no-one can prove it against me.’ | 12:23 |
| Satellite map New York | CORCORAN: But there was no soft landing for his old associate. | 12:43 |
| Aerials. New York buildings | Haji Bashir Noorzai took arguably the biggest risk of his life - he flew straight into the lair of the infidel. New York City. | 12:53 |
| New York streets | Music | 13:01 |
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| CORCORAN: He was one of the world’s most wanted narcotics traffickers but somehow he’d swallowed assurances that he wouldn’t be touched, for the right information. Still it must have been a stomach-churning ride to a meeting with intelligence officers at this Manhattan hotel. IVAN FISHER: ‘He has for at least, for the last twenty years, | 13:07 |
| Photo. Noorzai | been dedicated in varying degrees to working for and with the United States in Afghanistan, | 13:32 |
| Fisher. Super: | Working, as he understood it, with CIA funds and sometimes with CIA individuals.’ | 13:38 |
| View of Ground Zero from hotel room/ Hotel room interior | CORCORAN: In a room with a view of Ground Zero, where the Twin Towers once stood, Noorzai coughed up what he thought his hosts wanted – intelligence for their war on terror, but he’d been duped by an elaborate sting. | 13:51 |
| Photos. Noorzai and DEA contractors | His hosts, pictured with him here, were not the agents he thought they were but contractors working for America’s counter-narcotics agency – the Drug Enforcement Administration or DEA. Noorzai was no longer an asset but a target. He was charged with conspiracy to import fifty million dollars worth of heroin. | 14:05 |
| Archival. Date Super: | GILBRIDE: ‘Today’s arrest of heroin warlord, Bashir Noorzai, is a huge victory for Afghanistan and the United States in the fight against international narcotics trafficking.’ | 14:33 |
| Photos. Noorzai and DEA contractors | CORCORAN: This veteran of Washington’s covert wars had just been king hit by America’s wildly spinning moral compass. Noorzai’s high profile attorney claims it was a controversial takedown. | 14:44 |
| Rosetta company signage/Photo. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz | He says Noorzai was lured to New York by a mysterious private company called Rosetta. While it was a DEA run sting, he claims Rosetta’s real masters were then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his Deputy Paul Wolfowitz. | 15:01 |
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| ‘So Rosetta was a kind of private enterprise CIA working to the Defence Secretary?’ IVAN FISHER: ‘Hopefully a | 15:19 |
| Fisher | competent CIA as opposed to the one according to Wolfowitz that it had offices a few miles away, so yes that was the idea. | 15:27 |
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| This was going to do things that couldn’t be done through regular channels, bribing public officials in order to establish introductions to people who ultimately introduce you to one of these high value target people.’ | 15:40 |
| Photo. Noorzai | CORCORAN: Noorzai’s New York arrest offered a brief glimpse into the strange interdependent world of drug trafficking and intelligence. | 16:01 |
| New York Office foyer. Schweich looks out of window | In 2007, with the insurgency and drug production spinning out of control, Thomas Schweich was appointed the Bush Administration’s Special Ambassador for Counter-Narcotics. His brief? To sort out the mess in Afghanistan. | 16:12 |
| Stylised. Taliban/Statue of Liberty | THOMAS SCHWEICH: ‘It is shocking. It’s shocking when you first get there to realise that everybody you’re dealing with has been part of a gruesome thirty years of war, a civil war, fighting tribal rivalries, rivalries with neighbours. | 16:28 |
| Schweich. Super: | It’s just not a world that most of us in the West have ever encountered before. So you have to do the best you can.’ | 16:44 |
| Photo. Sherzai/Noorzai | CORCORAN: In targeting one warlord, it appears the Americans were prepared to ignore the crimes of another. | 16:53 |
| On screen document montage | We’ve obtained hundreds of pages of documents from the Rosetta operation to snare Noorzai. This secret 2004 Pentagon report, accused Noorzai of directly bribing Gul Agha Serzai and of handling 500 million dollars of Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s money. | 17:04 |
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| In another document, Noorzai himself made detailed allegations of drug trafficking and collaboration with the Taliban against many in the Afghan leadership – including Washington’s favourite warlord, Gul Agha Sherzai. All this material was ruled off limits during Noorzai’s New York trial. | 17:27 |
| Photo. Sherzai | IVAN FISHER: ‘Sherzai was involved in the obtaining and keeping of power.’ | 17:50 |
| Fisher | CORCORAN: ‘In Afghanistan, what does that mean?’ | 17:56 |
| Super: | IVAN FISHER: ‘In Afghanistan that means that you are probably quite ruthless and capable of enormous violence and very, very ugly forms of it. One way or another you’re involved with opium.’ | 17:59 |
| Sherzai | GUL AGHA SHERZAI: ‘I didn’t work with Haji Bashir (Noorzai). He surrendered to me… handed over his weapons and surrendered. He was working with the Taliban… he wasn’t working with me.’ | 18:19 |
| Satellite map. Afghanistan |
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| Sherzai’s Jalalabad palace | CORCORAN: Sherzai’s splendid Jalalabad palace is a heavily guarded island of tranquillity. The Bulldozer claims Nangarhar Province is now poppy free and safe, but in Afghanistan security is a relative concept. | 18:41 |
| Apache helicopter | CORCORAN: Out here, the Americans take no chances. | 19:00 |
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| LT COL STEVE CABOSKY: ‘Generally the Province is pretty safe but we did have an attack last month that | 19:06 |
| Cabosky | killed four…. four of my guys.’ | 19:11 |
| Sherzai at irrigation system opening | CORCORAN: The Bulldozer is officially reopening an irrigation system rebuilt with American money. Washington believes he’s delivered that most previous commodity – security. In return, the US has invested $140 million in 100 projects across his province. CABOSKY: ‘Well he’s a strong leader. He’s done a lot of good work for Nangarhar. | 19:16 |
| Cabosky. Super: | A lot of talk about whether he may want to move on to bigger and better things, so we’ll how it goes.’ | 19:40 |
| Sherzai at irrigation system opening | CORCORAN: The Governor is quite literally a river to his people. This system will provide water to 60 thousand villagers. The Bulldozer’s men forced them to abandon poppies for wheat and other crops requiring much more water. Now he’s delivered. | 19:48 |
| Sherzai departs | ‘A man you can do business with?’ LT COL STEVE CABOSKY: ‘Yeah he sure is. He’s a friend of the Coalition, he’s worked very closely with us. We have established a great working relationship throughout the years and expect will continue to do so.’ | 20:09 |
| Shofer over map | CORCORAN: Back in Kabul, US Counter narcotics officials plot the Bulldozer’s achievements with amazement. | 20:26 |
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| SCHOFER: ‘Well if you look at the numbers, it’s hard to argue that he’s been anything but a success. Going from 18,000 hectares to effectively zero in one year is pretty remarkable.’ | 20:33 |
| Shofer. | CORCORAN: ‘Why has he been able to make it work in Nangarhar and you don’t have that degree of success anywhere else in the country? What’s the critical factor there?’ | 20:43 |
| Super: | SCHOFER: ‘I wish we knew. I wish we could see the same results in other provinces around the country.’ | 20:53 |
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| CORCORAN: ‘Gul Agha Sherzai previously was governor of Kandahar during a period when the opium production down there basically spun out of control. I mean he wasn’t just running Kandahar, he was running four provinces.’ | 20:58 |
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| ANDREW SCHOFER: ‘I prefer to look at the results for this year and what happens next year. There are plenty of fingers to be pointed at what was done in the past. I don’t want to get into that.’ | 21:12 |
| Schweich | CORCORAN: ‘Gul Agha Sherzai, what kind of man is he?’ | 21:24 |
| Super: | TOM SCHWEICH: ‘Well we hear a lot of things. I mean he obviously, like many Afghan warlords, has a background that’s kind of shaky. | 21:27 |
| Sherzai | He’s a man who craves attention, who wants to be perceived as a hero in Afghanistan. He’s very politically ambitious, but he’s also pretty brave. He’s willing to make tough decisions and crack down on people who are powerful in order to get that recognition. | 21:34 |
| Schweich | I think there’s a perception among the West that he’s somebody who can be rehabilitated though, who can be brought around.’ | 21:50 |
| Obama visits Sherzai. | Music | 21:57 |
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| CORCORAN: Sherzai’s rehabilitation received its biggest boost last August, when then Senator Barack Obama visited Afghanistan. Obama initially bypassed President Karzai, heading first for a briefing from the Bulldozer. GUL AGHA SHERZAI: ‘I prayed for him and said, May God make you President. | 21:59 |
| Sherzai | And he said to me, If God wills it!’ | 22:25 |
| Photos. Obama visits Sherzai | TOM SCHWEICH: ‘This is exactly what they craved too, Mark, they want recognition. | 22:29 |
| Schweich | The more recognition you give these warlords as having improved their country, the more they will do things that we like.’ | 22:32 |
| US Troops in Afghanistan | CORCORAN: President Obama is now sending an extra 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, part of his new strategy for victory that also targets traffickers. | 22:39 |
| Poppy fields | The tragedy is that it’s taken nearly eight years for America’s generals to acknowledge what was obvious from the first day their troops marched through the opium poppy fields - that drugs, the Taliban and the corrupt Afghan leadership are all linked. | 22:50 |
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| ‘Was it perhaps one of the biggest errors made strategically in dealing with Afghanistan?’ TOM SCHWEICH: ‘I think so, absolutely because the people | 23:12 |
| Schweich | who are fighting get significant resources from the drug trade and we should have known that because the Taliban in the 1990s took money from the drug trade.’ | 23:17 |
| Sherzai and entourage | CORCORAN: But this new get tough strategy has its limits. The party won’t be ending any time soon for Gul Agha Sherzai. The new Afghanistan needs strong leaders. IVAN FISHER: ‘Is the national interest best served by fighting the drug people or working with them? And | 23:26 |
| Fisher | now we see in Sherzai’s example the pendulum is going back to the practical approach.’ | 23:49 |
| Security cameras/Jail | CORCORAN: The swing of the pendulum has knocked out Haji Bashir Noorzai. Held in this Manhattan jail for four years, he was recently sentenced to life behind bars. | 24:00 |
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| TOM SCHWEICH: ‘We do have to make judgements there and I think that if you look at the totality of the evidence, | 24:21 |
| Schweich | there was a much stronger case against Noorzai as somebody we really shouldn’t be dealing with who does need to serve some time in prison, versus Sherzai.’ | 24:27 |
| Military funeral service | CORCORAN: The Coalition soldiers have been farewelling the fallen since 2001. Nearly 1,200 have now died in Afghanistan. Haji Bashir Noorzai’s imprisonment did nothing to diminish the opium trade, nor the insurgency. His lawyer ponders on what might have been. | 24:42 |
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| IVAN FISHER: ‘Whenever on television there is a story about our guys being killed, I ask myself | 25:05 |
| Fisher | would their lives have been saved had Haji Bashir been free to pursue the joint effort he came here to establish?’ CORCORAN: We’ll probably never know. | 25:13 |
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| Music | 25:35 |
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| Further Information A drive with The Bulldozer Profile of an Afghan warlord http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2009/s2600063.htm |
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| Credits: | Reporter : Mark Corcoran Camera : Michael Cox Geoffrey Lye Research : Mavourneen Dineen Janet Silver Editor : Simon Brynjolffssen Producer : Mark Corcoran |
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