The prisoners at Gitmo lie.  Whoda thunk ?  Don't tell the left....

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100304/ap_on_re_as/as_from_gitmo_to_battle

Former Gitmo detainee said running Afghan battles

By KATHY GANNON, Associated Press Writer Kathy Gannon, Associated Press Writer
Thu Mar 4, 3:08 am ET
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan  A man freed from Guantanamo more than two years ago
after he claimed he only wanted to go home and help his family is now a senior
commander running Taliban resistance to the U.S.-led offensive in southern
Afghanistan, two senior Afghan intelligence officials say.

Abdul Qayyum is also seen as a leading candidate to be the next No. 2 in the
Afghan Taliban hierarchy, said the officials, interviewed last week by The
Associated Press.

The story of Abdul Qayyum could add to the complications President Barack Obama
is facing in fulfilling his pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo by sending
some prisoners back to their home countries or to other willing nations, while
putting others on trial.

U.S. intelligence asserts that 20 percent of suspects released from the
Guantanamo Bay prison have returned to the fight and the number has been
steadily increasing.

Qayyum's key aide in plotting attacks on Afghan and international forces is
another former Guantanamo prisoner, said the Afghan intelligence officials as
well as a former Helmand governor, Sher Mohammed Akundzada. Abdul Rauf, who
told his U.S. interrogators he had only loose connections to the Taliban, spent
time in an Afghan jail before being freed last year.

He rejoined the Taliban, they said. Akundzada said he warned authorities
against releasing both him and Qayyum.

Like Qayyum, Rauf is from Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. During the
Taliban's rule, which ended in late 2001, Rauf was a corps commander in the
western province of Herat and in the Afghan capital, Kabul, said Akhundzada.

The intelligence officials were interviewed in Helmand, where the Taliban
control several districts, and spoke on condition of anonymity lest they
attract the militia's attention.

They said Qayyum was given charge of the military campaign in the south about
14 months ago, soon after his release from the Afghan jail to which he had been
transferred from Guantanamo. That includes managing the battle for the town of
Marjah, where NATO troops are flushing out remaining militants.

Qayyum, whose Taliban nom de guerre is Qayyum Zakir, is thought to be running
operations from the Pakistani border city of Quetta. A Pakistani newspaper
report that he was recently arrested was denied by Abdul Razik, a former
governor of Kajaki, Qayyum's home district, which is under extensive Taliban
control.

One of the intelligence officials also questioned the report. He said a house
Qayyum was in was raided about two weeks ago and three assistants were arrested
but he escaped. A week ago he was seen in Pishin, a Pakistani border town about
30 miles (50 kilometers) from Quetta, the official said.

"He's smart and he is brutal," said Abdul Razik. "He will
withdraw his soldiers
to fight another day," he said, referring to the Marjah campaign.

Qayyum, who is about 36 years old, is close to the Taliban's spiritual leader,
Mullah Mohammed Omar. He has been tipped as a candidate to replace the
militia's second-in-command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was among several
Taliban leaders arrested recently in Pakistan.

A Taliban commander in the 1990s who was notorious for brutality and summary
executions, Qayyum was captured in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan
and taken to Guantanamo. According to interrogation transcripts, he identified
himself to his American captors by his father's name, Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul,
and said he had been conscripted by the Taliban but left at the first
opportunity.

According to a military transcript of his subsequent hearing, he said, "I want
to go back home and join my family and work in my land and help my family." In
December 2007 he was among 13 Afghan prisoners released to the Afghan
government and held in Pul-e-Charkhi jail, on the eastern edge of the Kabul.

A year later he was set free, despite warnings he would return to the Taliban,
said Akundzada.

Afghanistan's deputy attorney general said Qayyum went before an Afghan court,
which ruled he had served his time. The U.S.-backed Afghan government generally
gets a promise from former Guantanamo prisoners that they won't join the armed
opposition. Qayyum made no such promise.

"The court decided time served was enough," said Faqir Ahmed
Faqiryar. "When
the court is involved there is no need to promise anything."

Abdul Razik, who knows the family well, said he wrote to Qayyum's father
warning him to keep his son under control. "He told me, 'I have no control over
him.' "

Through interviews from Kabul to Helmand province, the AP traced Qayyum's steps
from the Afghan prison, across the border into Pakistan, through Peshawar to
Quetta, back into Afghanistan to his village of Soply, and then to Quetta
again.

A loner who trusts few people, his only company was a driver known to the
Taliban and who has since been arrested, Razik said.

In Soply, his native village in Helmand, Qayyum stayed for two days with his
sister, according to a neighbor who saw him outside the house and was quickly
warned to "say nothing." He returned to Quetta, from where he oversees four
southern provinces: Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul, said Sharifuddin, a
former Taliban official who lives near Soply, Qayyum's village. His information
was confirmed by Razik and the intelligence officials interviewed by the AP.

"From his houses in Quetta he appoints the (Taliban) governors, the district
governors," Sharifuddin said. "Nothing happens in these provinces
without his
approval."

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