KABUL: A Taliban commander and two senior Afghan officials confirmed that Italian forces paid protection money to prevent attacks on their troops.
After furious denials in Rome of a British paper report that the Italian authorities had paid the bribes, the Afghans gave further details of the practice. Mohammed Ishmayel, a Taliban commander, said that a deal was struck last year so that Italian forces in the Salobi area, east of Kabul, were not attacked by local insurgents.
The payment of protection money was revealed after the death of ten French soldiers in August 2008 at the hands of large Taliban force in Sarobi. French forces had taken over the district from Italian troops, but were unaware of secret Italian payments to local commanders to stop attacks on their forces and consequently misjudged local threat levels.
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