Afghan warlord pleads innocence after blast kills 26

An anti-Taliban warlord defended himself against government accusations and seething villagers today, a day after his cache of ammunition and explosives blew away a chunk of their hamlet in a remote Afghan valley.

The embattled commander insisted the explosives were for road-building and that he was co-operating with a UN disarmament drive, and shrugged wearily at an investigation for the deaths of at least 26 people – most of them his relatives.

“I have lost so many members of my family here,” Jalal Bashgah said, as a handful of men armed with shovels dug gingerly into the debris in search of three people still missing. “What else are they going to do to me?”

The blast early yesterday morning flattened half a dozen homes and damaged a mosque in the hamlet in Baghlan province, 75 miles north of Kabul, as residents were returning home from prayer.

Today, stony-faced men buried the body of a two-year-old girl called Wahida on a nearby hillside. Two small feet protruded from a shroud of raw cotton as several men lowered her into the damp earth next to 23 other fresh graves, each marked with a stone.

The girl’s father, among dozens injured in the explosion, was being treated at the province’s only hospital, where a critically injured woman died overnight.

Some in the village muttered bitterly about Bashgah, who was away at the time and arrived today to inspect the aftermath. Bashgah’s immediate family also lived elsewhere, but the families of his two brothers living in the compound were mostly killed.

“Why did he have to keep explosives and ammunition in his house, which was so close to everyone else?” said one man. “He is responsible for a very bad thing.”

Bashgah said there were 85 kilograms of explosives and three crates of gunpowder in the basement for use improving the rough road along the valley. He said there was also “some” ammunition as well – indicated by the spent shell cases littering the blast site.

Bashgah, aged about 45, said his weapons dated from the resistance against occupying Soviet troops in the 1980s, when he became a trusted lieutenant of late mujahedeen leader Ahmad Shah Massood.

He later fought the Taliban, who forced him out of Baghlan and into hiding, but returned to command a government-aligned militia brigade when the US intervention in 2001 turned the tables in the Afghan civil war.

President Hamid Karzai today ordered an investigation into the explosion, and his spokesman, Jawed Ludin, insisted Bashgah had evaded a UN disarmament programme. He wouldn’t be drawn on whether Bashgah might face prosecution.

“This kind of incident reminds us that disarmament has to be implemented as soon as possible across the country,” Ludin said.

However, UN and Afghan Defence Ministry officials confirmed Bashgah’s unit was disbanded late last year and they had already collected his light and heavy weapons, and that he was in line for a two-year payment for his willingness to comply.

Disposal activities of the UN, US and NATO, who report the discovery of weapons caches almost daily, have netted a vast arsenal, though UN officials estimate there are many thousands of tons more scattered across the country.

Accidents with old ordnance have inflicted many casualties on Afghans, including children and farmers, and foreign troops, including eight US soldiers killed in January 2004 when a cache exploded prematurely.

Bashgah, looking exhausted as a tractor joined the recovery effort today, said he already volunteered to clear out the last of his ammunition stockpiles, under a third phase of the UN programme which has yet to reach Baghlan.

“Everybody knew it was there,” he said.