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He Was a Senior Afghan Government Official. Except He Wasn’t.
By MUJIB MASHAL and FAHIM ABEDDEC. 2, 2016
An undated photo of Sardar Zmarai in Afghan garb in Panjshir Province.
“He is being investigated at a detention center of the National Directorate of Security,” the statement said.
Mr. Zmarai, whose latest false identity was as a descendant of an Afghan prince who had served as the country’s first president before he and his family were wiped out in a Communist attack in the 1970s, may be one of the more cunning impostors here. But he is not the first to have benefited from the chaos of the Afghan war.
Many have posed as Taliban peace emissaries, sometimes turning out to be suicide bombers on assassination missions. One shopkeeper made it as far as the presidential palace posing as the Taliban’s deputy leader and was rewarded with cash for a willingness to talk peace.
Photo
Mohammad Daoud Khan, the first president of Afghanistan. Sardar Zmarai claimed to be his descendant, the authorities said. CreditUllstein Bild, via Getty Images
Others have made fortunes forging the signatures of senior officials, including that of the country’s vice president to give away prime plots of real estate just hundreds of yards from the presidential palace.
On Thursday, some of Mr. Zmarai’s victims laughed at how badly they had been duped.
Gen. Noor Habib Gulbahari, the police chief of Baghlan Province and one of the recipients of the certificates, said Mr. Zmarai had introduced himself as a prince and governmental envoy in charge of security matters in the northeast of the country.
“He gave certificates of appreciation to some high-ranking officials — including the army corps commander, myself and some other officials,” General Gulbahari, in a kind of humorous amazement, said in a phone interview. “He came to Baghlan from Balkh with a bunch of army commandos, then he called the army corps commander in Balkh to inform him that he had arrived safely to Baghlan. I also talked with the corps commander in Balkh through his phone, and he told me to take care of him.”
During his stay in Baghlan, Mr. Zmarai was put up in a government guesthouse. When he moved on to assess the security situation in neighboring Kunduz Province, General Gulbahari asked his deputy to accompany Mr. Zmarai in a convoy and provide security for the journey.
“We did not ask him for any document or ID as he came in an army chopper and with army commandos,” General Gulbahari said. “He did not ask us for money or anything.”
A picture of Mr. Zmarai’s broad exploits over the past decade and a half was quick to emerge.
Mr. Zmarai, believed to be in his late 20s, hails from Khanabad District in Kunduz Province, according to government officials and relatives who were reached by phone. His father sells wheat in the local market, and his brothers work as tailors and mechanics.
Relatives, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they did not want to anger the family, said Mr. Zmarai had made his foray into con work about 14 years ago. He would pose as a government inspector on local projects in Khanabad, luring officials and contractors to give him a cut. But early on, he was arrested twice by the authorities.
He tried posing as a senator, going around with a traditional Afghan cape draped over his shoulders. When people would ask where he got the votes, Mr. Zmarai’s family would say that some senators were appointed by the government and did not need votes.
Later, he took his craft to the city of Kunduz, the provincial capital. Just doors down from the province’s intelligence directorate, he established an office and marketed himself as a middleman to the NATO military base, where lucrative contracts were up for grabs, his relatives said.
Journalism that matters.
More essential than ever.
One day, he drove a senior military official from the province up and down a stretch of highway he said he had obtained the contract for paving and was hoping the official would become his partner in starting the project, according to Ahmad Fahim Qarluq, a civil society activist in Kunduz. He persuaded the official to pay him $700 and disappeared.
He also said he could contract vehicles to nongovernmental organizations and businesses across the country: $600 a month for a Toyota Corolla, and $1,200 for a four-wheel-drive vehicle.
“There would be so many cars in front of his office that people wouldn’t get a turn to talk to him,” said Salahudin, who gave one of his cars to Mr. Zmarai for rent. “After three months, he left with people’s cars.”
Mr. Salahudin said Mr. Zmarai did not take his car because it was parked for maintenance, but owed him money nevertheless. When he finally tracked Mr. Zmarai down in Badakhshan Province three months later, the con man duped the owner of a gas station there into paying what he owed Mr. Salahudin.
In more recent times, Mr. Zmarai was largely based in Mazar-i-Sharif, but his ambitions were national. On one visit to the central jail in northern Panjshir Province, he posed as a presidential adviser.
But he preferred the identity of a prince.
When he arrived in Helmand Province a couple of years ago, he was greeted with garlands of flowers and boarded in a V.I.P. government guesthouse. He even sold the land of his supposed ancestor, Prince Daoud, in Nangarhar Province.
“He sold a plot of land to me in Nangarhar which belonged to Daoud,” said Gen. Abdul Wahid Taqat, a military commander under the Communist government who is now retired. “He took $10,000 from me, and when I followed the issue, the land did not belong to him.”
General Taqat said Mr. Zmarai had also persuaded one of his friends to sell his apartment in Kabul and bring him $110,000 he made from it to buy him a larger plot of land. The con man ran away with the money.
For a man with such a colorful life, the final moments before his arrest had to be dramatic, and were — though the accounts, fittingly, differ.
The office of the Balkh Province’s governor said Mr. Zmarai, running from the police, had jumped from the third floor of the airport. A second official said Mr. Zmarai was arrested as soon as the government helicopter he used during his northern tour landed in Mazar-i-Sharif. Fearing his arrest when he saw security guards on the grounds, Mr. Zmarai had jumped from the helicopter and hurt his leg, that official said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/world/asia/afghanistan-government-impostor.html?_r=0
By MUJIB MASHAL and FAHIM ABEDDEC. 2, 2016
An undated photo of Sardar Zmarai in Afghan garb in Panjshir Province.
- Afghanistan bearing certificates of appreciation from the presidential palace in Kabul — a favored token of Afghan officials, second only to government medals.
The dignitary, a burly young man with a massive watch, was provided security by Afghan commandos and ushered around in one of the government’s precious helicopters. District governors in Baghlan Province posed with him for photographs; generals clicked their heels together in respect and then gladly extended their hands to receive their certificates.
The only problem? The man, who had introduced himself as Sardar Zmarai, a prince and a senior representative from President Ashraf Ghani’s Office of the National Security Council, was actually a serial impostor — a daring con.
And after more than a decade of tricking officials and business executives across the country, and growing rich from it, Mr. Zmarai, the son of a wheat seller, had pushed his luck a little too far.
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“He is being investigated at a detention center of the National Directorate of Security,” the statement said.
Mr. Zmarai, whose latest false identity was as a descendant of an Afghan prince who had served as the country’s first president before he and his family were wiped out in a Communist attack in the 1970s, may be one of the more cunning impostors here. But he is not the first to have benefited from the chaos of the Afghan war.
Many have posed as Taliban peace emissaries, sometimes turning out to be suicide bombers on assassination missions. One shopkeeper made it as far as the presidential palace posing as the Taliban’s deputy leader and was rewarded with cash for a willingness to talk peace.
Photo
Mohammad Daoud Khan, the first president of Afghanistan. Sardar Zmarai claimed to be his descendant, the authorities said. CreditUllstein Bild, via Getty Images
Others have made fortunes forging the signatures of senior officials, including that of the country’s vice president to give away prime plots of real estate just hundreds of yards from the presidential palace.
On Thursday, some of Mr. Zmarai’s victims laughed at how badly they had been duped.
Gen. Noor Habib Gulbahari, the police chief of Baghlan Province and one of the recipients of the certificates, said Mr. Zmarai had introduced himself as a prince and governmental envoy in charge of security matters in the northeast of the country.
“He gave certificates of appreciation to some high-ranking officials — including the army corps commander, myself and some other officials,” General Gulbahari, in a kind of humorous amazement, said in a phone interview. “He came to Baghlan from Balkh with a bunch of army commandos, then he called the army corps commander in Balkh to inform him that he had arrived safely to Baghlan. I also talked with the corps commander in Balkh through his phone, and he told me to take care of him.”
During his stay in Baghlan, Mr. Zmarai was put up in a government guesthouse. When he moved on to assess the security situation in neighboring Kunduz Province, General Gulbahari asked his deputy to accompany Mr. Zmarai in a convoy and provide security for the journey.
“We did not ask him for any document or ID as he came in an army chopper and with army commandos,” General Gulbahari said. “He did not ask us for money or anything.”
A picture of Mr. Zmarai’s broad exploits over the past decade and a half was quick to emerge.
Mr. Zmarai, believed to be in his late 20s, hails from Khanabad District in Kunduz Province, according to government officials and relatives who were reached by phone. His father sells wheat in the local market, and his brothers work as tailors and mechanics.
Relatives, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they did not want to anger the family, said Mr. Zmarai had made his foray into con work about 14 years ago. He would pose as a government inspector on local projects in Khanabad, luring officials and contractors to give him a cut. But early on, he was arrested twice by the authorities.
He tried posing as a senator, going around with a traditional Afghan cape draped over his shoulders. When people would ask where he got the votes, Mr. Zmarai’s family would say that some senators were appointed by the government and did not need votes.
Later, he took his craft to the city of Kunduz, the provincial capital. Just doors down from the province’s intelligence directorate, he established an office and marketed himself as a middleman to the NATO military base, where lucrative contracts were up for grabs, his relatives said.
Journalism that matters.
More essential than ever.
One day, he drove a senior military official from the province up and down a stretch of highway he said he had obtained the contract for paving and was hoping the official would become his partner in starting the project, according to Ahmad Fahim Qarluq, a civil society activist in Kunduz. He persuaded the official to pay him $700 and disappeared.
He also said he could contract vehicles to nongovernmental organizations and businesses across the country: $600 a month for a Toyota Corolla, and $1,200 for a four-wheel-drive vehicle.
“There would be so many cars in front of his office that people wouldn’t get a turn to talk to him,” said Salahudin, who gave one of his cars to Mr. Zmarai for rent. “After three months, he left with people’s cars.”
Mr. Salahudin said Mr. Zmarai did not take his car because it was parked for maintenance, but owed him money nevertheless. When he finally tracked Mr. Zmarai down in Badakhshan Province three months later, the con man duped the owner of a gas station there into paying what he owed Mr. Salahudin.
In more recent times, Mr. Zmarai was largely based in Mazar-i-Sharif, but his ambitions were national. On one visit to the central jail in northern Panjshir Province, he posed as a presidential adviser.
But he preferred the identity of a prince.
When he arrived in Helmand Province a couple of years ago, he was greeted with garlands of flowers and boarded in a V.I.P. government guesthouse. He even sold the land of his supposed ancestor, Prince Daoud, in Nangarhar Province.
“He sold a plot of land to me in Nangarhar which belonged to Daoud,” said Gen. Abdul Wahid Taqat, a military commander under the Communist government who is now retired. “He took $10,000 from me, and when I followed the issue, the land did not belong to him.”
General Taqat said Mr. Zmarai had also persuaded one of his friends to sell his apartment in Kabul and bring him $110,000 he made from it to buy him a larger plot of land. The con man ran away with the money.
For a man with such a colorful life, the final moments before his arrest had to be dramatic, and were — though the accounts, fittingly, differ.
The office of the Balkh Province’s governor said Mr. Zmarai, running from the police, had jumped from the third floor of the airport. A second official said Mr. Zmarai was arrested as soon as the government helicopter he used during his northern tour landed in Mazar-i-Sharif. Fearing his arrest when he saw security guards on the grounds, Mr. Zmarai had jumped from the helicopter and hurt his leg, that official said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/world/asia/afghanistan-government-impostor.html?_r=0
