CIA funds elite Afghan unit: officials

The CIA has trained and bankrolled elite Afghan paramilitaries for nearly eight years to hunt al Qaeda and the Taleban, say United States officials.

Modelled after US special forces, the Counterterrorist Pursuit Team was set up in the months after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2002 to penetrate territory controlled by the Taleban and al Qaeda and target militants for interrogations by the CIA.

The 3000-strong Afghan teams are used for surveillance and long-range reconnaissance missions and some have trained at CIA facilities in the United States.

The force has operated in Kabul and some of Afghanistan's most violence-wracked provinces including Kandahar, Khost, Paktia and Paktika, a security official said.

The secret Afghan force has emerged as a new component of ramped-up American counter-terror operations against the Taleban in Afghanistan and against al Qaeda and allies over the mountainous border in Pakistan.

Drone strikes run by the CIA are at their highest level yet against Afghan Taleban, Haqqani and al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, while US special operations forces have been staging combined raids with Afghan Army special forces against the midlevel leadership on the Afghan side.

The Afghan pursuit teams were described in Bob Woodward's new book, Obama's Wars, due out on Monday.

Woodward reported that the units conducted covert operations inside neighbouring Pakistan's lawless border areas as part of a campaign against al Qaeda and Taleban havens.

The use of Afghan paramilitaries to carry out spying activities will likely inflame already frayed political relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"We do not allow any foreign troops or militia to operate on our side of the border," Pakistani Army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said. "There are no reports of any such incident and, should it happen in future, they will be fired upon by our troops."

Despite operating independently, the CIA-run paramilitary units co-ordinate their operations with Nato, the security professional said.

The CIA-run unit in Kandahar was compensated on an elite pay scale, according to human rights investigators. The average paramilitary could earn US$340 ($464) a month while a regiment head could take home US$1000. In Uruzgan, the US pays members US$300 to US$320 a month.

In comparison, an Afghan soldier in troubled Helmand province earns about US$240 a month. An Afghan policeman makes an average of about US$140 a month. Even the Taleban reportedly pays its footsoldiers about US$250 to US$300 a month.

Human rights groups are concerned at the lack of accountability for these units. The Kandahar branch paramilitaries shot and killed Kandahar's police chief and nine other Afghan police officials last year over a dispute after one of its own members was arrested.

Jonathan Horowitz, a human rights expert working with the Open Society Institute, said: "These paramilitary groups operate in such a cloak of secrecy that accountability for their abuses is nearly impossible for most Afghans. These forces don't fall under an Afghan military chain of command, and if a civilian is killed or maimed, the US can say it was not the fault of the US."

- AP