The Case Of The Disappearing Prisoners

There are good reasons Nooruddin Turabi is on the U.S.'s list of most wanted Taliban. The one-eyed Justice Minister wrote the regime's oppressive religious edicts and led the destruction of the two giant Buddhas in Bamiyan. He was intimately familiar with al-Qaeda's leadership. So when word got out that this prize fugitive and six other top Taliban officials surrendered to Kandahar's governor last Monday and were promptly released, the Pentagon was angry and confused. But the tale proved to be as hard to nail down as those Taliban leaders on the run.

Advisers to Gul Agha Sherzai, the warlord who has retaken control of Kandahar, told reporters Wednesday that seven Taliban leaders had surrendered their weapons and vehicles to Sherzai and sworn loyalty to him. The governor then sent them home to their villages. The next day, Sherzai's men claimed Turabi was the only Talib to surrender. A day later, no one had surrendered--but six (Turabi and five low-level officials) were said to have approached Sherzai and asked for amnesty, which he refused. But he promised not to pursue them as long as they left a forwarding address. They agreed and, it was said, even offered to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden.

Once this version leaked out, Sherzai's men insist, the supposed turncoats' cover was blown. "I think it destroyed their mission," says Engineer Pashtun, Sherzai's chief aide. "Most of the medium-level Taliban feel they were betrayed by Omar." Pashtun claims he didn't think Turabi, who is reportedly across the Pakistan border now in Quetta, was on America's wanted list. Pentagon leaders threw up their hands. "We can't verify [the surrender] ever happened," Donald Rumsfeld told reporters Friday. "It's hard to be released if you're never in custody."

Hamid Karzai's interim government, which expressed frustration over the incident, has little control over what happens outside Kabul. The U.S. will have to rely on local commanders like Sherzai, who owes his position to American cash and the squad of Green Berets that has chaperoned him around for two months. But Sherzai and the other warlords running Afghanistan need the support of the locals too. "Gul Agha will be thinking of the future," a former Talib told TIME. "When America goes, he will still be here." Sherzai was no doubt thinking of the future when he let Turabi slip over the border.

--By Mitch Frank. Reported by Michael Ware/Kandahar