Last month I had a private dinner in Kabul with Amrullah Saleh, who at that time was President Hamid Karzai's security chief. Saleh is a tough, burly and intimidating Tajik with a piercing, unblinking stare, who rose to prominence as a mujahideen protege of Ahmed Shah Massood, the legendary Lion of the Panjshir.
Under Massood, Saleh was one of the leaders of the anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan before 9/11, and he brought these credentials to his job after the US conquest, hunting down and interrogating any Taliban he could find, with little regard for notions of human rights. The Taliban and their backers in Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, regarded him as their fiercest enemy – something he was enormously proud of – and at dinner he spoke at length of his frustration with the ineffectiveness of Karzai's government in taking the fight to the Taliban, and the degree to which the ISI was still managing to aid their pocket insurgents in Waziristan and Baluchistan.
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