If you don’t pay, they take you in and turn you over to the Americans as Taliban or Al-Qaeda

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http://www.peacereporter.net/dettaglio_articolo.php?idc=0&idart=11179

Afghanistan - 26.5.2008
Afghanistan’s Dirty War
Afghan Death Squads in the Service of Occupation Troops

Australian Philip Alston, United Nations special envoy for summary, arbitrary, and extrajudicial executions, has completed his investigation in Afghanistan and denounced the use of “death squads” composed of “irregular Afghan militias” by foreign occupying forces to fight a dirty war against Taliban guerrillas. “I’ve gathered numerous accounts of violent raids against alleged insurgents conducted by heavily armed Afghan militias taking orders from foreign military,” Alston said in Kabul. “These actions often end in execution of the suspects without any army or institution taking responsibility. These secret units, known as Campaign Forces, are placed under a regular chain of command, but they operate outside the law and with utter impunity. The situation is absolutely unacceptable”. The UN special envoy explained that these militias are operating in all of the country’s “hot” zones from Helmand and Kandahar province in the south to Nangarhar province in the east.

Face to face with the mercenaries. Two years ago in May 2006, PeaceReporter conducted an investigative report on the topic from Helmand province. The following are extracts from that report. Just outside of Grishk stands a US military base: a small fortress in the middle of the desert with the stars and stripes atop a wooden tower. The base is home to one of the many “unofficial” US prisons where suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda are interrogated and tortured before being sent off to Kandahar, Bagram, and eventually Guantanamo.

But the base is manned by Afghan mercenaries, not American troops. The locals call them khakhprush, “men who have been sold to the enemy.” They are kids from nearby villages. They don’t wear a uniform. When they’re not out on a mission for or with the Americans, they’re hanging out on the carpets they put down in front of the barracks surrounding the walls of the base. They spend their days drinking tea, smoking hashish and maintaining their arsenal of rifles, machine guns, and rocket launchers.