A DEAL between the Taliban and a rogue Afghan police commander was partly to blame for the ease with which Taliban gunmen slaughtered eight foreign aid workers.
British doctor Karen Woo, six Americans, one German and two Afghans were killed in Badakhshan province as they returned from a medical mission.
The agreement struck by Commander Malik, police chief of the Karan Wa Munjan district in Badakhshan, allows the Taliban to move fighters across his territory into neighboring provinces, Afghan intelligence sources said.
“Malik has cut a deal with the Taliban to protect his interests in the mining industry up there,” said an intelligence agent who did not want his name made public. “He lets the Taliban use his land to move through as long as they don’t cause trouble on his territory.”
Malik and his militia were recently assimilated into the Afghan police force in an attempt to bring them under government control. Malik was made district police chief.
Before the massacre, Badakhshan was thought of as one of Afghanistan’s safest provinces. The remote region was billed as a future destination for adventure tourists. But in recent months Taliban fighters have begun to use southern Badakhshan as a transit route into previously secure northern provinces such as Baghlan and Kunduz.
The team from the International Assistance Mission (IAM), a Christian charity, was returning from a 190km trek on foot and horseback to treat villagers in the remote Nuristan region when their convoy was ambushed by Taliban gunmen on August 5.
Their three vehicles had stopped after fording a swollen river that had washed out part of the dirt track.
As they clambered out of their cars, 10 Taliban fighters with faces covered by scarves and bodies wrapped in traditional Afghan blankets rushed at them, shooting in the air.
“What’s going on?” shouted the trek leader, 62-year-old Tom Little. One of the gunmen knocked him to the ground with his rifle before killing him with a bullet to the stomach.
Two of Woo’s female colleagues managed to climb into a stationary vehicle in a desperate attempt to escape. But one of the attackers lobbed a hand grenade into the Toyota 4×4, killing both women.
Another gunman whipped Woo across her face with the butt of his Kalashnikov, knocking her off her feet as she struggled to regain her balance. As she fell to the ground face first, the gunman shot her twice in the back.
The team’s cook was shot dead as he hid beneath one of the 4x4s. The sole survivor, an Afghan driver called Safiullah, told police that he was spared after falling to his knees and reciting verses from the Koran.
As the attackers fled, dragging Safiullah with them, their leader, who spoke Urdu, said into his radio, “Mission complete,” suggesting the ambush had been planned in advance.
After marching for eight hours, the gunmen let Safiullah go and disappeared into the mountains.
The details of the massacre in Badakhshan are based on Safiullah’s account of his ordeal and on interviews with intelligence agents and local police officials with knowledge of the slaughter.
The charity said the dead were victims of “an opportunistic ambush by a group of non-local fighters”, after initial reports had blamed a group of bandits.
Intelligence sources privy to the account of the lone survivor, however, said it appeared that the Taliban had tracked the medical team for days. The fighters spoke to each other in Pashaye, a rare dialect used in Sunni-dominated Nuristan. Police in Badakhshan said some of the killers had been trained in Pakistan.
“It appears the doctors were followed across the mountain passes between Nuristan and Badakhshan by the Taliban. The information we have suggests that this was a targeted killing,” said an agent who works for the Afghan security service.
Other intelligence sources said the group’s Facebook page may have alerted the Taliban to the trekkers’ intentions before they had reached Nuristan.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the aid workers were murdered because they had been preaching Christianity, a charge strongly denied by the charity.
Although there was no evidence to suggest that Malik played an active role in the murder of Woo and her colleagues, intelligence sources said a deal with the Taliban meant militants could move with relative freedom into the district from neighbouring Nuristan and Pakistan
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