Lawfare that worked

Washington Post:

The Afghan farmer didn't even know how to work the recording device tucked in his vest pocket when he approached a member of the Taliban who was plotting to launch a rocket attack on a U.S. air base. But if he was nervous about helping the Americans, the farmer didn't show it.

"What is the target?" he asked as the two men stood in a field on the outskirts of their Afghan village, according to transcripts of the recordings. "Do they want to shoot the foreigners or the local people?"

"The Americans are infidels, and Jihad is allowed against them," replied Khan Mohammed, the Taliban associate. "If we have to fire toward the airport, we will do it, and if not the airport, wherever else they are stationed."

The farmer, who was working for U.S. federal agents stationed in Afghanistan, secretly recorded Mohammed more than 10 times using a digital audio device and a tiny video camera shielded in his traditional vest. The focus of the investigation was at first on rockets but soon changed to opium and heroin, lucrative narcotics that U.S. officials say help finance the Taliban's insurgency.

The farmer's undercover work eventually led to Mohammed's arrest in October 2006 by Afghan police working with the federal agents. With the cooperation of the Afghan government, he was brought to the United States in late 2007.

Convicted in May of drug trafficking and engaging in narco-terrorism after a five-day trial, Mohammed was sentenced to life in prison yesterday by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington. The judge said Mohammed, the first known Afghan Taliban member convicted in a U.S. courtroom, deserved a stiff sentence because he was a serious drug dealer and a terrorist bent on killing Americans in any way he could.

In recent years, authorities have brought five prosecutions in U.S. courts against Afghan drug dealers, and they say such cases are a critical component of their strategy to sever the flow of drug-tainted cash to the Taliban. As part of that effort, U.S. officials have been pushing the Afghan government to cut down poppy fields and have been trying to reform the nation's justice system, eliminate corruption and encourage the production of food crops. Bowing to U.S. pressure, NATO has also expanded its counterinsurgency mission in Afghanistan to include drug trafficking.

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It is a rare success for lawfare in the war on terror. It demonstrates that in some isolated instances the legal process can achieve satisfactory results. But it should be noted that this was a typical drug bust and the evidence used came from a wire. No intelligence data was evidently needed to detect and prosecute this guy. That will rarely be the case with a terrorist.