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Regular visitors to skyreporter.com have grown familiar with the name Abdul Jabar Sabet. He’s the Karzai government’s top lawman, who’s a really tough customer – though not against the Taliban or heroin traffickers. It’s journalists Sabet prefers to go after.
(Any of you surfing by for the first time might enjoy a look at Sabet’s exploits in our AFGHAN HEROIN series of film reports, especially THE AMERICAN CONNECTION.)
There are many, many Afghans this reporter would rather be covering. But Sabet has accomplished so much for his boss (at least the boss he serves publicly, President Hamid Karzai) that both man and method deserve further attention.
For instance, it’s been more than five years, since the Taliban held Kabul in their cruel and medieval grasp, that reporters have been plucked off the street and whisked away to some official’s hideout. Where policemen hold them by both arms while their chief punches them in the face, and knees them in the groin. And for good measure, dispenses a little censorship-by-rifle-butt to two or three other colleagues.
Yes, you can criticize President Karzai and his team all you like – for failing to provide electricity or leaving the roads in a mess or for mishandling foreign aid money. But there’s no taking away from the President’s Attorney General in the assault and battery department. And inciting mobs against the media? There, too, Sabet has set himself apart. His work must play well in London and Washington and Ottawa: Blair, Bush and Harper have uttered not a word about restraining him.
Seriously, though, how does a man turn into the spectre Afghans are now confonted with? Skyreporter has related Sabet's long-standing links to fugitive warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of Afghanistan's and the West's most wanted terrorists. Sabet's ties with Hekmatyar led State Department officials to block his attempted re-entry to the U.S., where Sabet had previously been employed by the Voice of America.
When the Taliban came to power, Sabet turned to Canada. Strangely, given his past with extremist groups - and particularly the prior denial of residency in the U.S. - Sabet's application to enter Canada was approved in 1999. He became a familiar face in Montreal's Afghan community, and was a regular at the Masjit as-Salam on Ontario Street.
Sabet was not employed, collecting welfare instead. Members of Montreal’s Afghan community say he was a bully, an unpleasant man who found himself estranged from his family when he brought girlfriend Fakhria Siddiqi to town. Sabet, they say, believed in ethnic supremacy – that only his community had the right to rule Afghanistan.
A former minister in Hamid Karzai’s cabinet uses one word to sum up Sabet. Unstable.
In 2003, Sabet returned to Kabul - with not much money - and secured a lawyer's position at the Interior Ministry. Last year, as a quid pro quo for declaring the Pentagon's detention camp at Guantanamo Bay "humane," the U.S. embassy in Kabul - together with representatives of Her Majesty's United Kingdom government - lobbied for his promotion.
In August, Karzai nominated Sabet as Attorney General. Confirmation was secured with the support of former warlord and accused human rights abuser Abdul Sayaaf, leader of Afghanistan’s parliamentary minority.
But it is another alliance – or sideline - that causes additional concern. Because Abdul Jabar Sabet, as well as being a man of many prosecutorial tendencies, is also a man of divided loyalties (or at least an ability to work more than one side of the street at a time).
Remember that earlier career stunt: a staffer for Voice of America, yet at the same time a spokesman for an avowed anti-American zealot, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar? Next time on skyreporter.com, another of Sabet's alleged current paymasters.
President Karzai, do you know what your Attorney General is up to in his spare time?
14 Comments
hello, can we post comments in dari or share documents in dari
Ali, so more of us can appreciate your comments, perhaps you could make them in Dari first, then English.
Is the treatment of journalists by Stephan Harper and Canada's new government a model to mold budding democracys on ? Could you compare / contrast your experience of Karzi vs Harper on access / openness to the media ?
Keith, I can only relay what I've been told not only by fellow journalists, but also by senior Canadian civil service officials, diplomats, soldiers - and more than a few elected MPs. Stephen Harper's team practices information control on nothing less than an Orwellian scale. No one in government or the public service speaks to the news media unless Big Brother in the PMO gives the go ahead. And much of the time, that approval is just not forthcoming. The corrosive impact this has on Canada's political culture is immense.
I don't think that the Leaders in the west are unaware of what is the reality of the guys in Karzai's cabinet.Those like Sabet are thier best choices to obey thier orders with no why and what. It's for you guys in the west to not let your politations kill your sons and daughters for nothing in Afghanistan. I am sure they are not here to help a government which is doing things like what Sabet did with the free media(Tolo) so far.At least thier lives worth more than what Karzi and his guys are doing here in Afghanistan.
SO, Mr. Kent, you think you know the Afghans and their society by living in Mustafa Hotel and roming around the streets? Nop. You should not campare the freedom of press in Afghanistan with your FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE society. Freedom can be a dangerous thing in certain times and certain conditions. Majority of Afghans don't want their values be traded with western freedoms. You should know that after decades of war, one can not proceed in normal ways. You have to know the people before judge the system. They are still dealing with bombs and killings daily. Unfortunately, my people have become very hostile and self serving. Maybe it is the war or maybe they have been used to be like this. Anyway, if I were in power there, I would be more determined to enforce laws even harsh ones at times. Carrots don't work always. Sometimes, you have to use the stick too to protect others. A handful of returnees can change the country overnight wtih their alien ideas. You have to be an Afghan to know Afghanistan.
"Majority of Afghans don't want their values be traded with western freedoms. You should know that after decades of war, one can not proceed in normal ways."
I don't know at all if Afghans agree with you about the need of the stick but I don't know for sure.
Mr. Kaykai, I don't think the stick is the answer to the problem of corruption and failure of the state, because then new people will rise up under that stick, and revolt again. Interaction with the West is not an "all or nothing" kind of thing, leaving aside Bush and his wrong preemptive wars. America is a very young nation, and others will be able to help Afghanistan to recover in time, whether it's Asia or Russia or Iran or Europe.
Mr. Paykai. Thanks so much for your comment. I don't stay at the Mustapha, but I highly recommend it. Friendly people, confident of their freedoms. As are most of the Afghan people I've met and travelled with over the past 28 years. On the street, in the mountains and deserts - I've visited 14 or 15 provinces in your beautiful country.
And I've come to understand that if the people's sincere wishes for peace and reconstruction were truly being respected, rather than betrayed, we wouldn't have to read such harsh words.
I am so outraged that this person, Sabet, has a residence in Montreal and that our 'new' government doesn't seem to care that this most undesirable type of human has parked his family here......so I wrote yet another email, but this time to the Prime Minister. Of course, I do realize that this residency was granted in 1999, during the Chretian era, however that was then and this is now. One corrects a past mistake regardless of who made it, or one tacitly agrees with it by doing nothing. It seems as though this 'new' government of ours has chosen the latter inaction.
Needless to say, I expect no response from our 'new' Prime Minister, and doubtful I will even get an acknowledgement that the PMO received my email. 'Tis a very sad state of affairs in Canada at the moment.
I sincerely hope that the Afghan people, all of them, somehow understand that we support their quest for a more stable and kinder society than they've known for the past 3 or more brutal decades. We respect their lengthy history and their freedom to enjoy their own traditions. I'm sure the last thing they want is our pushing our alien culture onto them. I just ask that they judge us not by our politicians, just as we do not judge their citizenry by their politicians.
Thank you, Arthur, for giving the people of Canada, Afghanistan, etc the chance to speak to one another without having to go through the mouths of our agenda-driven politicos.
Patrick, you're most welcome - and you make an important point. People who offer their thoughts and suggestions here at skyreporter are doing so directly, and I think very sincerely. And we all applaud your decision to take direct action by addressing your comments in writing to the Prime Minister. If only Steve and his staff would realize that there are real benefits to be found in listening to the people of Canada and Afghanistan.
I am deeply shocked and bitterly disappointed that Afghanistan's leaders and many of its people seem to support the brutal and illegal methods of Sabet and his goon squad. There are thousands of outside advisors, NGO's, and other internationals, as well as many clear-thinking Afghans, working in this country to establish a stable, prosperous, forward-looking and law-abiding Afghanistan, whose efforts are seriously undermined by Sabet. The impact of this man is pervasive, frightening hard working and underpaid government workers into fearful, resentful silence. Reform is a dirty word because of his impact. Yes, this country must stop corruption in all its forms, but larger corruption cannot cure this evil.
I am clearly reminded of the early days of so many brutal regimes of the past that started with abuse of the media and other reform-minded people.
Harper, Bush, Blair and all interested parties must cry out to Karzai and his government - stop Sabet now! He and his supporters will pull this country back into chaos unless they are stopped immediately!
My thoughts and prayers are with those many innocent Afghans who are every day being illegally persecuted by the nation's so called top law-man!