Meet the Brit in charge of the Af-Pak ‘kill list’

No one has followed the Taleban and al-Qa’eda more closely than Richard Barrett, head of the United Nations monitoring mission. He tells Christina Lamb why Obama’s reinforcements won’t scare the fundamentalists away

It’s known as the ‘kill list’. The world’s biggest directory of bad guys — the 1267, as it is officially called after the United Nations resolution which voted it into force — has long been essential kit for Special Forces scouring Afghanistan and the tribal badlands of Pakistan for al-Qa’eda and Taleban. From Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar down, finding or eliminating these baddies will be crucial to the success of President Barack Obama’s much awaited Get Out of Afghanistan strategy.

But there’s one big problem. There are no wanted posters like in cowboy movies or even a deck of cards like that used in Iraq featuring Saddam and his henchmen. Many of the people on the 1267 have no photograph, no address and often only one name. Those who do have pictures are barely distinguishable bearded men in turbans.

The man in charge of the list is former British secret agent Richard Barrett. The head of the UN Commission Monitoring the Taleban and al-Qa’eda, he sits in an office in New York with a large world map on the wall. Disappointingly, it has no big red cross marked Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar. ‘No, I don’t have it bristling with black pins for bad guys,’ he laughs. ‘I wish I knew where they are.’

He admits that after eight years of international forces fighting in Afghanistan and despite the efforts of the world’s most sophisticated satellite technology, fewer than one fifth of the men named have been found. Of the 508 names on the list, he estimates that about 30 are dead, 50 are imprisoned in Guantanamo and elsewhere and the rest are still at large.