Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible

by Douglas Farah

  12 Ibid.

  13 “Victor Bout in South Africa,”

  14 Andre Verloy notes; “The Secret Empire,” Seattle Times, February 28, 2002.

  15 “Intelligence Brief: Victor But Transnational Criminal Activities,” U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, Intelligence Division, December 2000.

  16 “Final Report of the Monitoring Mechanism on Angola,” para. 134.

  17 Ibid., paras. 129-135.

  18 “Profile of Victor Butt.”

  Chapter 6: The Chase Begins

  1 “Report of the Panel of Experts in Relation to Sierra Leone,” United Nations, December 2000, para. 254.

  2 Authors’ interview with CIA official, December 2000.

  3 John L. Hirsch, “War in Sierra Leone,” Survival (Autumn 2001): 153.

  4 Los Angeles Times interview with U.S. official, April 2002.

  5 Authors’ interview with former U.S. official, June 2006.

  6 Los Angeles Times interview with U.S. official, March 2002; authors’ interview with British intelligence analyst, June 2006.

  7 E-mail communication with the authors, September 26, 2006.

  8 Los Angeles Times interview with Alex Vines, April 2002.

  9 Los Angeles Times interviews with Devos Bart and Ronny Lauwereins, March 2002.

  10 Los Angeles Times interview with Johan Peleman, March 2002; also Moscow Times interview with Peleman, October 8, 2002.

  11 Frontline interview with Peleman, May 2002.

  12 This account is based on interviews with Austin, Peleman, Winer, and U.S. officials.

  13 Text of President Clinton’s inaugural speech, January 20, 1993.

  14 Authors’ interviews with former Clinton administration officials; 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 100-101; Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin, 2004), pp. 386-391.

  15 Winer interview; Mark Bowden, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001), p. 219. According to former U.S. officials quoted in Bowden’s book, Clarke intervened with senior DoD officials in 1993 to allow Delta Force soldiers to secretly accompany Colombian troops on drug raids.

  16 Text of President Clinton’s speech to the UN General Assembly, October 22, 1995.

  17 Text of Arms Export Control Act of 1968, amended to outlaw unlicensed brokering, 22 USC 2778.

  18 Los Angeles Times interview with U.S. official, March 21, 2002.

  19 Los Angeles Times interview with Alex Vines, April 2002.

  20 Los Angeles Times interview with U.S. official, March 21, 2002.

  21 Winer interview; authors’ interviews with U.S. official, May 2006.

  22 Authors’ interview with former U.S. official, June 2006.

  23 Text of National Security Act of 1947 amended in 1966, 50 USC (402)I; also, Richard A. Best Jr., “Intelligence and Law Enforcement: Countering Transnational Threats to the U.S.,” Congressional Research Service report, December 3, 2001, p. 23.

  24 White House press secretary’s announcement of National Security Council staff realignment, July 30, 1998.

  25 Los Angeles Times interview with Peleman, March 2002, and with former U.S. State Department official, April 2002.

  26 Los Angeles Times interview with Peleman; De Standaard interview with Peleman, January 5, 2002.

  27 Authors’ interview with Graham Allison, July 31, 2006.

  28 New York Times, November 10, 2003; BBC News profile, June 16, 2004. In October 2003, Khodorkovsky was charged by Russian prosecutors with tax evasion. He was sentenced in 2005 to a nine-year jail term and sent to a prison in Krasnokamensk.

  29 Lee Wolosky, “Putin’s Plutocrat Problem,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2000.

  30 Authors’ interviews with former Clinton administration officials; Strobe Talbott letter to Anne Applebaum, Slate, June 10, 2002.

  Chapter 7: The Taliban Connection

  1 John Daniszewski, Stephen Braun, Judy Pasternak, Maura Reynolds, and Sergei L. Loiko, “On the Trail of a Man behind Taliban’s Air Fleet,” Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2002; also Robin Bhatty and David Hoffman, “Afghanistan: Crisis of Impunity,” Human Rights Watch, July 2001.

  2 Daniszewski et al., “On the Trail”; also, Los Angeles Times interviews with Russian and UAE airport executives and workers, March and April 2002.

  3 Los Angeles Times interview with Sherin, April 2002.

  4 Bhatty and Hoffman, “Afghanistan;” Afghan and U.S. officials and the Human Rights Watch report all described bin Laden as a key “source of funds for the Taliban,” paying for a four-hundred-man unit of non-Afghan fighters—the 055 brigade—at the Rishikor base south of Kabul.

  5 Bhatty and Hoffman, “Afghanistan;” Bhatty and Hoffman described “buying teams in Hong Kong and Dubai” that worked for Pakistani-based firms to supply the Taliban. The firms reportedly moved military supplies by truck and by sea.

  6 Los Angeles Times interview with U.S. officials, April and May 2002.

  7 Los Angeles Times interview with senior Afghan official, March 2002.

  8 Los Angeles Times interview with Samir Zeidan, December 19, 2001.

  9 Los Angeles Times interview with Richard Chichakli, January 2002. Asked if Farid had attempted to move arms shipments from Sharjah, Chichakli did not rule it out: “Is it possible? Maybe. I’m not aware of something sticking to him, though.” Chichakli insisted that “officially, Ariana never operated in Sharjah,” and added that “most of the flights that went into Afghanistan were chartered on other companies.” He did not name them.

  10 Los Angeles Times interviews with former Ariana executive, January, March, and April 2002. Iran’s official IRNA News Agency reported that Mansour was killed in southeastern Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, during air strikes by U.S. and British jets. Taliban spokesmen denied the account, and Mansour’s name remains on official U.S. lists of wanted Taliban officials.

  11 Stephen Braun and Judy Pasternak, “Long before Sept. 11, Bin Laden’s Aircraft Flew under the Radar,” Los Angeles Times, November 18, 2001. UAE and other gulf state sheikhs frequently flew in the late 1990s to a landing strip south of Kandahar that had been refurbished by the Taliban at bin Laden’s expense. Afghan air controllers reported that both the late Sheikh al Nahyan and Sheikh Maktoum visited several times during the late 1990s. The presence of a hunting party of UAE sheikhs in winter or spring 1998 dashed U.S. hopes of a commando raid to capture bin Laden, who also reportedly attended. That tale and an account of the UAE royalty’s enthusiasm for bustard-hunting with the Taliban are detailed in Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin, 2004), pp. 445-450.

  12 Los Angeles Times interviews with former Ariana executive, January and April 2002. Mansour told the executive that the UAE had waived landing fees for all Afghan flights at Sheikh Maktoum’s request. The move saved the Taliban more than $1,000 a week. The elder Sheikh al Nahyan died in November 2004, replaced by his older son, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayid al Nahyan. In January 2006 Sheikh Maktoum was elevated to the position of UAE vice president and prime minister.

  13 Ibid.; Los Angeles Times interviews with UAE officials, April and May 2002. Ghanem al-Hajiri, director-general of the Sharjah Airport Authority, insisted in an April 2002 interview that no weapons had moved illegally from Sharjah to Afghanistan, only “general cargo.” There were no international sanctions against the flights at the time because a UN arms embargo against the Taliban was not imposed until December 2000. Other UAE officials conceded that weapons shipments from Sharjah during that period were a known problem. A senior official of the UAE’s federal government said “we did manage to stop all the flights from the UAE to Afghanistan” after the UN flight embargo was imposed in 2000. But “prior to that,” the official acknowledged, “they were able to smuggle anything.”

  14 Los Angel
es Times interviews with Russian and UAE executives and workers, March and April 2002; also, Los Angeles Times interview with former Ariana flight engineer Abdul Shakur Arefee, January 2002.

  15 Los Angeles Times interview with Inchuk, April 2002.

  16 Daniszewski et al., “On the Trail.”

  17 Judy Pasternak and Stephen Braun, “Emirates Looked the Other Way while al Qaeda Funds Flowed,” Los Angeles Times, January 20, 2002. Ahmed told the Ariana official that the arms originated in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and other East European sites.

  18 Translated transcript of Viktor Bout interview with Radio Echo Moskvy, February 28, 2002. Bout statement provided to the Center for Public Integrity, 2002.

  19 U.S. State Department fact sheet, “African Arms Transfers, Trafficking,” July 9, 2001.

  20 Text of European Union Council of Ministers’ embargo on the Taliban, December 1996

  21 Ibid.; Los Angeles Times interview with Vladimir I. Sharpatov, April 2002.

  22 State Department cable, U.S. embassy, Islamabad, September 29, 1996. Obtained by National Security Archive, George Washington University. The cable relayed worried Russian reaction to the Taliban victory and recounted remarks from Taliban Mullah Abdul Jallil that relations with Russia were “tense.”

  23 State Department cable, April 17, 1995, assessing the arming of the Taliban, Rabbani government, and other Afghan factions. Obtained by National Security Archive, George Washington University. Also, interview with consultant who studied aid to various Afghan groups in the late 1990s.

  24 Bout interview with Radio Echo Moskvy, February 28, 2002.

  25 James Risen, “Russians Are Back in Afghanistan,” New York Times, July 27, 1998.

  26 Ibid.

  27 Authors’ interview with Bout associate, March 6, 2006.

  28 Daniszewski et al., “On the Trail.” Los Angeles Times correspondent John Daniszewski noted the contents of Taliban files with permission of Afghan officials in late March 2002.

  29 UN panel reports on Sierra Leone and Angola; also, Los Angeles Times interview with former UN investigator Johan Peleman.

  30 Los Angeles Times interviews with Sheikh Adbdullah bin Zayed al Saqr al Nahyan, January and April 2002.

  31 Los Angeles Times interviews with Lakhiyalov and with Afghan government officials and review of Taliban documents, late March 2002; also interview with an official of KAS of Kyrgyzstan, April 3, 2002. According to Afghan aviation registries made available to the Times, the Taliban air force registered seven planes from Bout-orbit firms: on January 23, 1998, two Antonov An-12 planes bought from Flying Dolphin and Santa Cruz Imperial; on June 2, 1998, two An-32s bought from Vial; on September 18, 1998, an An-12 bought from Flying Dolphin; and on January 5, 1999, two An-12s bought from Air Cess. All of the military planes were given false registries as civilian Ariana aircraft by Taliban officials. Ariana also registered five planes purchased from suspected Bout-orbit firms: in November 1998, an An-24 bought from Flying Dolphin; on January 16, 1999, an An-24 bought from Air Cess; on March 25, 1999, an An-24 bought from Santa Cuz Imperial; on July 20, 1999, the An-24 bought from Aerovista ; and on April 1, 2001, an An-24 that was bought from an unknown source but later suspected by Afghan officials as also originating with the Bout network.

  32 Bout associate; authors’ interview with Dirk Draulans, May 1, 2006.

  33 Los Angeles Times interview with senior Afghan officials, March 2002.

  34 Los Angeles Times, April 26, 2005. In late 2001, soon after the September 11 attacks, an intelligence document surfaced with a brief but tantalizing entry linking Bout to Taliban arms sales. One translation reported that “Victor previously made in the region of $50 million in Afghanistan, selling heavy ordnance of former Soviet stock to the Taliban.” A January 2002 account for the Center for Public Integrity by Phillip van Niekerk and Andre Verloy dated the document to a period prior to the attacks and added that “Bout ran guns for the Taliban ‘on behalf of the Pakistan government.’” Dubious about Bout’s relationship with the Talibs, Johan Peleman questioned the reliability of the report, which he said came from South African sources but likely originated with Belgian intelligence. Despite his skepticism, Treasury officials publicly cited the report as the agency’s Office of Foreign Assets Control ordered sanctions against “Viktor Bout’s International Arms Trafficking Network.” A Treasury official later reconfirmed the estimate and said it had been authenticated by American analysis, adding that the $50 million figure included both weaponry and other cargoes delivered to the Taliban.

  35 Daniszewski et al., “On the Trail.”

  36 Los Angeles Times interviews with Russian aviation executives, Sharjah, April 2002.

  37 Daniszewski et al., “On the Trail.”

  38 Los Angeles Times interview with U.S. diplomat, April 2002; translated copy of Sharjah Municipality trade license between Victor Butt and Sultan Hamad Said Nassir al Suwaidi, registered with UAE Ministry of Justice on March 3, 1993, and renewed on July 11, 1998.

  39 Los Angeles Times interview with U.S. diplomat, April 2002; authors’ interview with U.S. diplomat.

  40 Los Angeles Times interviews with Valery Spurnov and other Russian air cargo executives, April 2002; “Afghanistan: Crisis of Impunity,” Human Rights Watch, July 2001.

  41 Los Angeles Times interview with Russian air executive, April 2002.

  42 Los Angeles Times, Ariana records, and interview with Valery Spurnov, April 2002; A cache of Ariana waybills, flight records, and financial documents that surfaced in early 2003 provided a glimpse of the airline’s activity between 1998 and 2000. The material—which was authenticated by a former Ariana official—includes Farid Ahmed’s ANZ Sharjah bank records and utility bills, Ariana flight schedules, manifests, and crew lists, and more than thirty pages of waybills for flights to Kabul and Kandahar.

  43 Los Angeles Times interview with Igor Abdayev, April 2002. Jet Line was later linked to Bout’s orbit by CIA officials.

  44 Los Angeles Times interviews with Spurnov and other Russian air executives, April 2002.

  45 Daniszewski et al., “On the Trail.”

  46 Los Angeles Times interview with Richard Chichakli, January 2002; Los Angeles Times interview with U.S. official, April 2002.

  47 Daniszewski et al., “On the Trail.”

  48 Los Angeles Times interview with Mankhayev, April 2002.

  49 Los Angeles Times interview with former Ariana executive, April 2002.

  50 Daniszewski et al., “On the Trail.”

  Chapter 8: Black Charters

  1 Los Angeles Times interview with Jakkie Potgeiter, April 2002.

  2 John Daniszewski, Stephen Braun, Judy Pasternak, Maura Reynolds, and Sergei L. Loiko, “On the Trail of a Man behind Taliban’s Air Fleet,” Los Angeles Times, May 19, 2002.

  3 Afghan Ariana Airways flight and financial documents obtained by the authors; Los Angeles Times interview with Arefee, March 2002. Wardak was one of four Taliban air force pilots whose false Ariana identities were found in Taliban aviation files.

  4 “Testimony of Detainees before the Combatant Status Review Tribunal,” released March 3, 2006, by the Department of Defense, Set 29, 2001-2047.

  5 Los Angeles Times interviews with former Ariana pilot and former Ariana executive, April 2002.

  6 “Bin Laden Bodyguard Details al-Qaeda’s Time in Sudan, Move to Afghanistan,” al-Quds al-Arabi, March 21, 2005; also related by former FBI counterterror agent Jack Cloonan in Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), p. 223.

  7 Los Angeles Times interview with former U.S. official, April 2002.

  8 UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention report, 1998; U.S. State Department 2000 Narcotics Control report. Total Afghan opium production jumped from twenty-five hundred tons in 1998 to forty-six hundred tons in 1999.

  9 Los Angeles Times interviews with Dr. Ravan Farhadi, December 2001, and with U.S. officials, April 2002.

  10 Stephen B
raun and Judy Pasternak, “Long before Sept. 11, Bin Laden’s Aircraft Flew under the Radar,” Los Angeles Times, November 18, 2001.

  11 Los Angeles Times interview with Julie Sirrs, November 2001.

  12 9/11 Commission report, p. 124.

  13 Reuters, August 23, 1999.

  14 Published minutes of meeting of UN Security Council, October 22, 1999.

  15 “Consolidated List of Taliban Aircraft Issued by the Secuity Council Committee Established by Resolution 1267” (1999). The aircraft, banned from all international flights, included an Ariana Antonov An-24 previously owned by Flying Dolphin and a second Ariana An-24 of unknown origin, but suspected by Afghan officials as a Bout-network plane. A third An-24, previously owned by Aerovista and KAS, also was on the list.