By Matthias Gebauer and Holger Stark
"We want to eliminate the infidels -- first the Afghan infidels and then the foreign infidels, until they have left our country." He says the infidels burn the Koran and trample it with their feet, and that they "humiliate Muslims, printing cartoons of Muhammad." "All methods and tricks" are allowed to be used in order to defeat the enemy, says Nissam, adding: "We don't work for money, but for God's will. We will be victorious one day, God willing."
The dollars from Germany apparently haven't hurt his cause. "We are buying more weapons," says the mullah, "and improving our technology." He says that he sent the money "to our elders, just as we have agreed among our Muslim brothers." Although he claims that he derived no personal financial gain from the deal, German investigators with the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) and the foreign intelligence agency, the BND, were listening in when Nissam, shortly after receiving the ransom money for Blechschmidt's release, counted the money with such obvious delight that the rustling of bank notes was audible on the telephone.
They assume that some of the money that middlemen drove to the mountains on Oct. 10, 2007 remained with the mullah, but that some of it also went to other Taliban commanders.
If this were true, it would be a debacle for Foreign Minister Steinmeier, as well as for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. How can they explain to the 3,400 Bundeswehr troops stationed in Afghanistan that they Taliban are attacking them with weapons bought with German money? And how can they explain to Afghan President Karzai that the BND not only has parts of the Afghan government under surveillance, but that the German government is also paying ransoms to Kabul's enemies?
According to Afghan intelligence, immediately after the suitcase containing the ransom money was delivered, Nissam traveled to the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he probably dropped off some of his booty, as a sort of revolutionary tax. The investigations have shown that at least one of Nissam's men, a man named Mohammed Bahir, still has contacts with the Taliban in Afghanistan's southern Helmand and Zabul provinces, and even with the Quetta Shura, the Taliban's council in Pakistan.
"The Spoils Are Always Divided in Afghanistan"
Bahir, known within the Taliban as Mullah Younis, was the emissary who, during the negotiations with the German Embassy in Kabul, kept driving up the price for the German hostage until it had tripled from the initial price of $200,000. "The spoils are always divided up in Afghanistan," says one investigator, "and everyone gets his slice of the pie" -- including the Taliban.
This is not the first time the German government has made a more or less direct payment to insurgents. In the summer of 2003, after Algerian Islamists had abducted 16 German tourists in the Sahara Desert, Berlin had €5 million delivered to the kidnappers. The money, the head of the group, who called himself Abderrassak al-Para, later boasted, was put to good use: to pay for his guerilla group's recruitment of new fighters, as well as for Toyota SUVs and weapons. Jürgen Chrobog, the then a deputy minister in the Foreign Ministry, personally flew the suitcase containing the ransom money to Africa.
When Para was later arrested, it was decided, during a meeting at the Chancellery, the office of the German chancellor, that Berlin would not insist on his extradition, partly because it did not wish to "burden the German constitutional state with that sort of person," as one of the participants recalls. The same policy still applies today, even for Nissam who, like Para, is responsible for the death of a German.
When asked why he had Rüdiger Diedrich killed, Nissam replies in the same laconic way that is so common in Afghanistan when the value of a human life is at issue. "He had a heart illness," he says. "If he had to walk for 10 minutes, he kept falling down. We didn't understand his situation." According to Nissam, two "inexperienced friends" of his group misunderstood Diedrich when he told them about his condition and used words that may have been misinterpreted. "Our friends thought that he was saying: 'Shoot me, shoot me.'" Blechschmidt would later recall that Diedrich, completely exhausted, had sat down on a hillside "and then one of the boys shot him" with two rounds from his assault rifle. The doctors who later performed the autopsy counted eight bullet holes.
Whenever the Taliban commits an attack on Bundeswehr soldiers, the BKA sends a team, often a dozen officers, to Kabul to investigate. Together with the Afghan intelligence service, they interrogate suspects and follow leads.
A "Highly Sensitive" Case
The situation is more complex in the Diedrich murder case and in the Blechschmidt kidnapping case. There is no mutual legal assistance, and Germany's Federal Prosecutor's Office is officially barred from sending any of its officials to Afghanistan. It receives no information through the Afghans, not to mention interrogation reports or analyses of leads. That's why there is still no warrant out for Nissam's arrest. In fact, he has not even been officially charged. Under a political agreement between the two countries, the German government must request special permission to send a team of BKA specialists to Afghanistan to investigate. This was done in connection with attacks against Bundeswehr soldiers, but not in the investigation against Diedrich's murderers. According to one investigator, the case is "highly sensitive" and "highly political," partly because of the Afghans.
The government in Kabul wants to retain its sovereignty over the investigations. It doesn't want to lose face and it wants to prevent the Germans from acting unilaterally. For weeks, General Abdul Manan, the head of the Afghan Army's counterterrorism unit, explained to officials at the German Embassy that his special forces had surrounded the camp where Blechschmidt was being held, and that a rescue effort could be launched at any time. But when the Pashtuns contacted authorities a short time later, tracking devices revealed that Nissam and his men had left the sealed-off location much earlier.
Manan, sitting in his Kabul office, the walls decorated with US Army medals, sips a glass of green tea and promises that the perpetrators will be "arrested by the end of 2008." The general points proudly to a laminated collection of newspapers, including pictures of four police officers and two marginal members of the kidnapping gang, who were arrested as accomplices shortly after the kidnapping first took place. "Nissam and his people will soon get the same treatment," says the general.
Manan's performance is meant to document activity, but German investigators doubt that there is much behind it. Nissam's grandfather and medical student Abdul Wali, both arrested by the Kabul investigators in November, have been released again. Wali had arranged a first, failed money transfer, and when he was arrested he was carrying several tens of thousands of dollars. But because the bills were not part of the ransom money, a group of marked bills, the 23-year-old was released.
Mozafaroudin Yamin, the local police chief of Wardak, is perhaps best at describing the situation. "I have exactly 11 police officers in the region where Nissam is," he says, "you can achieve absolutely nothing with that."
The Germans have the KSK for Afghanistan. The elite force could operate in the mountains in Wardak. During the hostage crisis, the crisis team, which knew more or less exactly where Nissam was located, considered using the KSK several times. But the crisis team discarded the plan in the face of objections from military officers. The mullah remained unharmed.
As the interview in the mountains comes to an end, Nissam Udin stands up, embraces his mujahedeen and hands out flowers. He sits down next to the youngest of his fighters, under a blazing sun, and shows him how to take apart and reassemble a Kalashnikov. It is a performance by a successful warlord who cares about his fighters and can say, self-confidently: "Every mountain, every town and every region is our defensive position here."
There is one more thing that the mullah has on his mind, a message he wants the reporters to deliver to Blechschmidt. Nissam is convinced that he converted the German to Islam. Blechschmidt, says Nissam, gave him his word that he now believes in Allah. The Pashtuns refer to such conversions as "Kalima," and they say that they began calling Blechschmidt "Omar" after that. Blechschmidt himself has not commented publicly on his supposed conversion. "If he has not forgotten Kalima, and he is now praying and fasting and has remained a Muslim," claims Nissam, "then we apologize to him."
The conversation ends abruptly when a fighter jet flies by in the distance. Now that the German Tornado jets are patrolling Afghanistan, the Taliban fear the Germans. They spring into action, shouting loud commands in Pashtu.
Then, suddenly, the mujahedeen vanish as quickly as they came.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.
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