| More on this story from yesterday. |
[DAWN] A German national believed to be a military adviser to the Taliban...the Pashtun equivalent of men...
in Afghanistan has been incarcerated
Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try!
in the insurgency-racked province of Helmand
...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan...
, officials told AFP late Wednesday.
Ach! Mein Gott! Er ist... Helmut von Helmand!
"A man with a long beard, wearing a black turban who identified himself as a German citizen and speaks Dutch,
| ...possibly he said Deutsch, like the Pennsylvania Dutch, who also are German... |
Gereshk police chief Ismail Khplwak (Gesundheit!) said the man ─ who was detained by Afghan Special Forces during a night raid ─ was the "military adviser of Mullah Nasir", commander of the Taliban's elite "Red Unit" in Helmand.
Photographs taken by the Afghan military show a man who looks to be in his 40s with a long reddish-brown beard speckled with grey, and wearing a black turban.
He is flanked by two members of the Afghan Special Forces dressed in combat gear and with night vision goggles pulled up onto their helmets.
The man is dressed in traditional Afghan dress worn under a khaki military jacket.
Much of opium-rich Helmand in Afghanistan's south remains controlled or contested by the Taliban who are heavily reliant on the proceeds of drug trafficking to fuel their insurgency.
The Taliban's Red Units serve as the Lion of Islams' special forces and have carried out many fatal attacks on the Afghan army and police.
| An Nahar adds: |
If confirmed it would be one of the few incidents in which a European has been captured fighting among the turbans.
Foreigners do fight alongside the Taliban
...Arabic for
students...
but citizens of Western nations are rare and most hail from Pakistain, Central Asia or Arab nations.
"They were in a mine-making centre when they were detained. Weapons and ammunitions were also confiscated from them," he said, adding that several Taliban were killed in the fighting.
Late last year sources told AFP of the presence of French fighters for the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group in northern Afghanistan, as analysts suggested foreigners may be heading for the war-torn country after being driven from Syria and Iraq.