Warlord or Druglord?

This powerful Afghan tribal leader offered to help the U.S., but is in a New York jail awaiting trial on drug charges. How the war on terror is at war with the war on drugs

AP

Bashir Noorzai, an Afghan who is on the United States' list of most wanted drug kingpins.

For a week and a half in AprilĀ 2005, one of the favorite warlords of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was sitting in a room at the Embassy Suites Hotel in lower Manhattan, not far from where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood. But Haji Bashar Noorzai, the burly, bearded leader of one of Afghanistan's largest and most troublesome tribes, was not on a mission to case New York City for a terrorist attack. On the contrary, Noorzai, a confidant of the fugitive Taliban overlord, who is a well-known ally of Osama bin Laden's, says he had...

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