Khandan Kadir - Summary

Summary

Khandan Kadir was captured approximately a year after the Taliban were overthrown.

The allegations against him were that he was an ally of an Afghan warlord named Pacha Khan. Khan had raised local forces to rise up against the Taliban when the Americans and Northern Allicance invaded. He was rewarded with official administrative control over an area of Afghanistan. But he quarreled with other administrators, and eventually quarreled with the Americans. Open fighting eventually broke out, and he became considered a renegade. Guantanamo analysts have justified the continued detention of captives who knew him, even if their own capture predates the time when he stopped being an ally and started being an enemy.

Khandan Kadir's account was that he had worked as a pharmacist during the Taliban regime. He said he hated them and avoided them, and that anyone who lived in Khowst would testify that he took risks in letting his disdain for the Taliban show, by cutting his beard short, listening to music — a prohibited activity under the Taliban, and avoiding the mosque, when a member of the Taliban was leading the service.

According to Khandan Kadir, after the Taliban were overthrown he was appointed the local director of the anti-drug branch of the National Department of Security — a more junior position that Pacha Khan's, but one senior enough for him to form working relationship with the local American agents. He claimed he was having conflict with Pacha Khan long before his conflict with the Americans experienced enough problems to class him as a renegade.

Khandan Kadir said that his capture was due to a false denunciation from Pacha Khan, and Pacha Khan's nephew Jan Baz lead a mixed force of American forces and Pacha Khan's forces, to his home. He said the documents he was captured with fully supported his account.