UN Removes 5 Taliban from Sanctions List, 2 Already Dead, Gul File Follies

By Matthew Russell Lee
July 30, 2010
The Inner City Press
http://www.innercitypress.com/un2talama073010.html

UNITED NATIONS, July 30 -- The UN's Al Qaeda / Taliban sanctions committee is removing five names from its list today, as blocks against their removal have been lifted just before an end of July deadline. The five now delisted Taliban -- two of them dead -- are:
1) Abdul Satar Paktin (TI.P.35.01.)
2) Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad Awrang (TI.M.116.01.) (Former Ambassador to UN)
3) Abdul Salam Zaeef (TI.Z.62.01.) (Author: My life with the Taliban)
4) Abdul Samad Khaksar (TI.K.54.01.) (deceased)
5) Muhammad Islam Mohammadi (TI.M.90.01.) (deceased)
The mission to the UN of Austria, which chairs the Committee, has said that the names will be removed from the Committee's web site at noon on July 30, and that further information will be available at a press conference on August 2.
Inner City Press has asked the UN and the Austrian mission about attempts to place on the Taliban sanctions list former and perhaps current Pakistani army figure Hamid Gul, who appears in one of the WikeLeaks documents as plotting with Taliban to kidnap UN officials on the road from Kabul to Jalalabad.
UN spokesman Martin Nesirky replied that the UN Department of Safety and Security is reviewing the documents.
But UN DSS, to its highest levels, has appeared to prioritize politics and "cultural sensitivity" to following up on threats and even deadly attacks on UN system personnel, for example the murder of DSS officer Louis Maxwell by Afghan national forces, for which no one has been held accountable.
Inner City Press asked the Austrian mission about Gul and was told that an "informal" request to put him on the Taliban list was made under the prior chairmanship of Belgium, and that these documents were never transferred from the Belgians to the Austrians. Those on the sanction list have their files kept in the Mission offices of the committee chair, to some a strange practice. But those like Gul, with only informal requests, have their files kept by the UN's secretariat of the Committee. Watch this site.