German man from Frankfurt’ arrested with Afghan Taliban

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan: A German national has been arrested with the Taliban in Afghanistan’s insurgency-racked Helmand province, Afghan officials said, one of the only Europeans found among the militants throughout the 16-year war.

The man, who calls himself Abdul Wadood and was pictured wearing a black turban with a long, reddish beard, identified himself as a German resident of Frankfurt and spoke German, provincial officials and the Afghan army have said.

He was serving as an adviser to Maulavi Nasir, the commander of the Taliban’s elite “Red Unit” in Helmand, said Abdul Qadeer Bahadurzai, a spokesman for the 215th Army Corps — a claim that was also made by a local police chief.

The Taliban’s Red Units serve as the insurgents’ special forces and have carried out many fatal attacks on the Afghan army and police. Bahadurzai told AFP Thursday the man has no identity card or passport. There was no immediate statement from German officials in Kabul. Afghan commandos aided by the air force arrested the man during a raid on a Taliban mine-making centre in Gereshk district on Monday, officials said, adding that he was taken first to Camp Bastion and then on to Kandahar.

“This is the first time a European national has been arrested in Helmand,” Omar Zwak, spokesman for the provincial governor, told AFP. It is also believed to be one of the first times any European has been detained with the Taliban in Afghanistan since the US invasion in late 2001.

International forces fighting in the country have spoken in the past of hearing European accents on intercepted Taliban radio transmissions, and in 2009 NATO forces reportedly killed an unidentified insurgent with a tattoo of English football team Aston Villa.

But — unlike with international jihadist groups such as the Islamic State group or Al-Qaeda — citizens of Western nations are almost unknown among the Taliban ranks, with most foreigners hailing from Central Asia or Arab nations.

Perhaps the most famous Western fighter was John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban”, who was captured in Afghanistan and was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2002. In the photographs shared by the Afghan military the man, who appears to be in his 40s, is flanked by two members of the Afghan special forces dressed in combat gear and with night vision goggles pulled up onto their helmets. He is dressed in a traditional Afghan long shirt and wide trousers worn under a khaki military jacket.

Bahadurzai said three suspects were detained in total during the raid. “Three Kalashnikovs, one machine gun, four walkie-talkies and dozens of landmines were confiscated from them,” he added.

The German man, he said, spent four years in the city of Quetta in neighbouring Pakistan, long believed to be a refuge for Taliban militants.The man also spent one year in Afghanistan´s Paktia province near the Pakistani border, and one year with the Red Unit in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand, Bahadurzai said. It was not clear if the information had been confirmed by Afghan officials. German newspaper Die Welt reported Thursday that the man was a convert to Islam called “Thomas K” from Rhineland-Palatinate, near Frankfurt.