Pakistan has handed over to Afghanistan a renegade warlord who was arrested more than two months ago on accusations of banditry along the roads in a sensitive border region, officials said Wednesday. Bacha Khan Zadran - whose forces have at times fought alongside U.S. troops but also battled Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government - was handed over at a border crossing on Tuesday afternoon. Haji Din Mohammed, governor of eastern Nangarhar province, said Zadran was driven to the Jalalabad airport and flown away in a helicopter sent from Kabul, the capital.
| ... to be exhibited to the public in a cage until he dies. And probably longer. |
Afghan government officials in Kabul couldn’t be reached immediately for comment.
| They were too busy toasting each other with underpriced champagne... |
Zadran was arrested about Dec. 1 in a tribal area of Pakistan near the Afghan frontier. Officials in Kabul said Zadran was arrested with their involvement, saying he had repeatedly blocked the main road between Afghanistan’s Khost and Paktia provinces. Zadran was briefly appointed governor of Paktia in December 2001, but removed from the post after local officials, backed by their own militia, refused to allow him to enter the city and take office. Since then, his forces have tried to take small patches of territory in defiance of the central government.
| He's allied himself with Hek, with Mullah Omar, and Binny, in the name of jihad... |
Authorities in Kabul say Zadran had set up numerous checkpoints in Paktia and Khost to extort money from passers-by.
| But at heart he's just a crook. A nasty crook. |
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