Civil servants paid for first time in months

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan's civil servants were paid for the first time in six months Tuesday -- an $8 million total payout that will virtually wipe out money earmarked for a U.N. start-up fund.

Pressing ahead with its anti-terror struggle, U.S military officials flew American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh out of Kandahar, escorting him home to face charges he conspired with Islamic radicals to kill fellow countrymen while in Afghanistan.

As Afghan officials turned to the work of rebuilding their country, interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai urged the quick arrival of $4.5 billion in assistance that was pledged over the next several years at a conference of nearly 60 donor nations in Tokyo.

"We are happy with the results of the conference," Karzai said. In a nod to concerns that the money would not reach Afghanistan's poor, Karzai pledged to be "a samurai against corruption."

Not all were upbeat, however. The money promised was less than half the $10 billion over five years that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had hoped for.

Abdul Qadeer Fitrat, acting governor of Afghanistan's central bank, said the pledges were "not enough to reconstruct Afghanistan."

In Kabul, for civil servants owed months of back pay, the billions pledged in Tokyo were less a cause for rejoicing than Tuesday's wage payments, which were less than $30 each.

"I am very, very happy," said Finance Ministry employee Abdel Jami, clutching a thick stack of afghanis, the Afghan currency -- his pay for the second half of December and the first half of January. The pay packet, disbursed from a start-up fund to help begin basic government operations, was 1.4 million afghanis, or $28, an average monthly government salary.

The government has no money to pay back salaries yet, officials said. Some Afghan government employees have not been paid in eight months, well before the Taliban government fell.

Put on C-17 transport

Lindh, the 20-year-old Californian who fought alongside the Taliban and met Osama bin Laden, was taken from the warship USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea, where he has spent the past two months in custody, to the U.S. military base in Kandahar and put on board a C-17 transport bound for his homeland, U.S. officials said on condition of anonymity.

Lindh faces charges in a federal court in suburban Washington that he conspired with Islamic radicals to kill fellow countrymen while in Afghan-istan. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

U.S. special forces and Afghan anti-Taliban fighters staged a fruitless hunt for the Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, in house-to-house searches during six hours through four villages in the southern province of Helmand, Afghan sources said Tuesday. U.S. officials refuse to comment on special forces operations.