AN AFGHAN'S PATH FROM U.S. ALLY TO DRUG SUSPECT

WASHINGTON -- In April 2005, federal law enforcement officials
summoned reporters to a Manhattan news conference to announce the
capture of an Afghan drug lord and Taliban ally. While boasting that
he was a big catch -- the Asian counterpart of the Colombian cocaine
legend Pablo Escobar -- the officials left out some puzzling details,
including why the Afghan, Haji Bashir Noorzai, had risked arrest by
coming to New York. Skip to next paragraph United States Drug
Enforcement Administration Haji Bashir Noorzai has dealt on and off
with the United States since 1990, his lawyer said. The Reach of War
Go to Complete Coverage)

Now, with Mr. Noorzai's case likely to come to trial this year, a
fuller story about the American government's dealings with him is emerging.

Soon after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Mr. Noorzai agreed to
cooperate with American officials, who hoped he could lead them to
hidden Taliban weapons and leaders, according to current and former
government officials and Mr. Noorzai's American lawyer. The
relationship soured, but American officials tried to renew it in
2004. A year later, Mr. Noorzai was secretly indicted and lured to
New York, where he was arrested after nearly two weeks of talks with
law enforcement and counterterrorism officials in a hotel.

In fighting the war on terrorism, government officials have often
accepted trade-offs in developing relationships with informants with
questionable backgrounds who might prove useful. As with Mr. Noorzai,
it is often not clear whether the benefits outweigh the costs.

The government's shifting views of Mr. Noorzai -- from sought-after
ally to notorious global criminal -- parallels its evolving
perspective on Afghanistan's heroin trade.

In the first years after the United States invasion in late 2001,
military and intelligence officials mostly chose to ignore opium
production and instead dealt freely with warlords, including drug
traffickers who promised information about members of the Taliban and
Al Qaeda or offered security in the chaotic countryside. But in more
recent years, as poppy production has soared and financed a revived
Taliban insurgency that is threatening the country's stability, the
Americans have begun to take some more aggressive steps.

"In Afghanistan, finding terrorists has always trumped chasing drug
traffickers," said Bobby Charles, the former top counternarcotics
official at the State Department.

He and other officials acknowledge that the United States initially
may have had little choice other than to turn to tribal leaders with
murky motives for help in bringing order to an essentially lawless
society. But Mr. Charles pushed for the Bush administration to
recognize suspected drug lords like Mr. Noorzai as a long-term
security issue. "If we do not now take a hard second look at
counternarcotics," he said, "we will not get a third look."

Administration officials say that they are working to develop a more
effective drug strategy in Afghanistan, which now accounts for 82
percent of the world's opium cultivation, according to a United
Nations report last September. That could include broader eradication
programs, alternative crop development and cracking down on drug
lords, but any such efforts are complicated by fears that they could
increase instability.

Federal prosecutors in New York handling Mr. Noorzai's case refused
to comment for this article, as did spokesmen for the Drug
Enforcement Administration, Central Intelligence Agency and United
States Central Command.

Mr. Noorzai, who has been held in a New York jail for nearly two
years, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he smuggled heroin into
New York and denies any involvement in drug trafficking. His New York
lawyer, Ivan Fisher, argues that the arrest hurt the government's
ability to gain information about the escalating Taliban insurgency.

"Haji Bashir has been making efforts to reach working agreements with
the Americans in Afghanistan since the 1990s," Mr. Fisher said.

Several intelligence, counterterrorism and law enforcement officials
confirm that American officials met repeatedly with Mr. Noorzai over
the years. Because they provided few details about the substance of
the talks, it is difficult to determine how useful Mr. Noorzai's
cooperation proved to be. He was not paid for his information, and
the relationship was considered more informal, the officials said.

At times, there was confusion within the government about what to do
with Mr. Noorzai. In 2002, while he was talking to the American
officials in Afghanistan, a team at C.I.A. headquarters assigned to
identify targets to capture or kill in Afghanistan wanted to put him
on its list, one former intelligence official said. Like others, he
would only speak on condition of anonymity because such discussions
were classified.

The C.I.A. team was blocked, the former official recalled. Although
he never received an explanation, the former official said that the
Defense Department officials and American military commanders viewed
counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan at the time as a form of
"mission creep" that would distract from the fight against terrorism.

Mr. Noorzai, a wealthy tribal leader in his mid-40s who lived with
three wives and 13 children in Quetta, Pakistan, and also owns homes
in Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates, is from the same region
that helped produce the Taliban. A native of Kandahar Province, he
was a mujahedeen commander fighting the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan in the 1980s. In 1990, according to his lawyer, he agreed
to help track down Stinger missiles provided to the Afghan resistance
by the C.I.A.; agency officials were worried about their possible use
by terrorists.

D.E.A. officials say that at the same time, Mr. Noorzai was a major
figure in the Afghan drug trade, controlling poppy fields that
supplied a significant share of the world's heroin. He was also an
early financial backer of the Taliban. Agency officials say he
provided demolition materials, weapons and manpower in exchange for
protection for his opium crops, heroin labs, smuggling routes and followers.

Mr. Noorzai was in Quetta when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred, and he
returned soon after to Afghanistan, according to his lawyer. In
November 2001, he met with men he described as American military
officials at Spinboldak, near the Afghan-Pakistani border, Mr. Fisher
said. Small teams of United States Special Forces and intelligence
officers were in Afghanistan at the time, seeking the support of
tribal leaders.

Mr. Noorzai was taken to Kandahar, where he was detained and
questioned for six days by the Americans about Taliban officials and
operations, his lawyer said. He agreed to work with them and was
freed, and in late January 2002 he handed over 15 truckloads of
weapons, including about 400 antiaircraft missiles, that had been
hidden by the Taliban in his tribe's territory, Mr. Fisher said.

Mr. Noorzai also offered to act as an intermediary between Taliban
leaders and the Americans, his lawyer said. Mr. Noorzai said he
helped persuade the Taliban's former foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad
Mutawakil -- the son of the mullah in Mr. Noorzai's hometown -- to
meet with the Americans. In February 2002, the Taliban official
surrendered after what press accounts described as extensive
negotiations and was sent to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He
was freed in 2005.

Mr. Noorzai also persuaded a local tribal figure, Haji Birqet, to
return to Afghanistan from Pakistan, the lawyer said. But he said the
Americans, falsely warned that Mr. Birqet and Mr. Noorzai were
plotting to attack United States forces, killed Mr. Birqet and
wounded several family members in a raid on his compound.

Saying that his credibility had been hurt by the imprisonment of Mr.
Mutawakil and that he was angered by the attack on Mr. Birqet, Mr.
Noorzai broke off contact with the Americans and fled to his home in
Pakistan, according to Mr. Fisher.

The government officials could not confirm whether Mr. Noorzai had in
fact played a role in those negotiations. There may be another
explanation for his exile, however. In May 2002, one of his tribal
commanders was killed in an American raid along a drug-smuggling
route that the Americans suspected was used to help the Taliban, and
Mr. Noorzai may have feared for his own safety.

Nearly two years later, in January 2004, Mr. Charles, the State
Department official, proposed placing him on President Bush's list of
foreign narcotics kingpins, for the most wanted drug lords around the world.

At that time, Mr. Charles recalled in an interview, no Afghan heroin
traffickers were on the list, which he thought was a glaring
omission. He suggested three names, including Mr. Noorzai's, but said
his recommendation was met with an awkward silence during an
interagency meeting. He said there was resistance to placing Afghans
on the list because countering the drug trade there was not an
administration priority. Mr. Charles persisted, and in June 2004, Mr.
Noorzai became the first Afghan on the list.

Two months later, a team of American contractors working for the
Federal Bureau of Investigation contacted Mr. Noorzai and arranged a
series of meetings with him in Pakistan and Dubai, according to
several government officials and Mr. Noorzai's lawyer. They wanted to
win his cooperation and learn about Al Qaeda's financial network and
perhaps the whereabouts of the former Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad
Omar. The Americans met with Mr. Noorzai, but the talks fizzled
because F.B.I. agents who were supposed to join them were unable to
do so, one official said.

In 2005, the contractors, by then working for the D.E.A., reconnected
with Mr. Noorzai and once again met with him in Dubai.

This time, however, the objective had changed. Mr. Noorzai had
secretly been indicted by a federal grand jury in New York on drug
smuggling charges in January 2005. Now the contractors needed to
persuade Mr. Noorzai to come to the United States.

Mr. Fisher said the Americans were particularly interested in gaining
Mr. Noorzai's help in tracking the flow of money to the Taliban and
Al Qaeda. They were seeking information about Mullah Omar and other
Taliban figures. The Americans asked Mr. Noorzai to come to the
United States to meet with their superiors, he added.

Mr. Noorzai's lawyer said his client agreed to make the trip only
after receiving assurances that he would not be arrested. Mr. Fisher
also says that he has obtained transcripts from tape recordings made
by the government at the sessions.

Mr. Noorzai flew to New York in April 2005 and was taken to an
Embassy Suites hotel, where he was questioned for 13 days before
being arrested, his lawyer said.

Mr. Noorzai has been charged with conspiring to import more than $50
million worth of heroin from Afghanistan and Pakistan into the United
States and other countries. The indictment says that he imported
heroin to New York in the late 1990s and that unnamed co-conspirators
also did so in 2001 and 2002.

With Carlotta Gall from Kabul