Awal Gul - Relationship With The Taliban

Relationship With The Taliban

"While the U.S. claims he was a Taliban commander, Gul has long insisted that he quit the Taliban a year before the 9/11 attack because, as his lawyer put it, 'he was disgusted by the Taliban's growing penchant for corruption and abuse.'" USA Today reported that Gul "had played a key role in persuading Taliban commanders to surrender Nangarhar Province to a council of tribal leaders." His attorneys wrote in a letter after Gul's death:

The government charged that he was a prominent member of the Taliban and its military, but we proved that this is false. Indeed, we have documents from Afghanistan, even a letter from Mullah Omar himself on Taliban letterhead, discussing Mr. Gul’s efforts to resign from the Taliban a year or more before 9/11/01. . . . Mr. Gul was never an enemy of the United States in any way. . . . We now hear for the very first time in the nearly 10 years since Mr. Gul’s arrest, that (1) he operated a guesthouse for Al-Qaida members, and (2) that he admitted providing bin Laden operational support on several occasions. Over the course of almost 3 years in court, the government has never provided any evidence at all to support this slander. Neither Mr. Gul nor any credible witness has ever said such things. Indeed, this is why the government placed Mr. Gul in the group of prisoners set for “indefinite detention;” it admitted that it lacked any credible evidence to prove its suspicions in a court of law. The government never even made these claims until now, when Mr. Gul is not alive to defend himself. Beginning in the early 1980′s, Mr. Gul was a member of local forces who were allied with the United States against the Soviets. From 1989-1996, he continued to run the local weapons depot in his hometown, not unlike a police commander, which he used to keep the peace. In 1996, the Taliban swept through eastern Afghanistan and took over his city at the barrel of a gun. Mr. Gul was given two options: flee with your family to Pakistan or stay home and operate the depot at the command of the Taliban. It must be remembered that the Taliban was initially greeted warmly by many Afghans, and even the American government, as a source of hope. Mr. Gul stayed home. The Taliban soon proved themselves to be as corrupt and abusive as we can imagine. Mr. Gul discovered this change over time and resigned from the Taliban more than one year before September 11, 2001. He was arrested in December 2001 when he voluntarily traveled to meet American military officials.

Phillip Smucker, writing in The Asia Times, described being contacted by Matthew Dodge, a lawyer defending Gul before a Guantanamo military commission. According to Smucker, the prosecution's charges depended on a new alternate theory as to how Osama bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora. The new theory is that bin Laden didn't escape through collusion with corrupt Eastern Shura officials across the border to Pakistan's Tribal Areas—but rather through Awal Gul's help north to Konar province.