“After a mass killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war by the forces of an American-backed warlord during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Bush administration officials repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode, according to government officials and human rights organizations. American officials had been reluctant to pursue an investigation–sought by officials from the F.B.I., the State Department, the Red Cross and human rights groups–because the warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, was on the payroll of the C.I.A. and his militia worked closely with United States Special Forces in 2001, several officials said. They said the United States also worried about undermining the American-supported government of President Hamid Karzai, in which General Dostum had served as a defense official. ‘At the White House, nobody said no to an investigation, but nobody ever said yes, either,’ said Pierre Prosper, the former American ambassador for war crimes issues. ‘The first reaction of everybody there was, *Oh, this is a sensitive issue; this is a touchy issue politically.* ‘ ”
– James Risen, “U.S. Inaction Seen After Taliban P.O.W.’s Died,” The New York Times, July 10, 2009