By Olusegun Olanrewaju
Taliban may now get its nemesis in former vice president, Amrullah Saleh.
The cosmopolitan-looking Afghan politician with strong ties to the United States has proclaimed himself a ‘caretaker president’ of the war-scarred country on August 17, and may sure get the backing of the western front, and ,indeed, many nations of the world, sans China.
On Thursday, Saleh retreated to his native mountain range base in the country’s last remaining holdout in Panjshir Valley, northeast of Kabul, vowing never to surrender to the extremist Islamist movement’s seizure of power.
The defiant Afghani former vice president, by self-declaration, has tried to make one thing clear: that, as the Taliban seized control of the capital on August 15 following the collapse of his government, he would not surrender.
Unlike other leaders in the ousted regime, he has not fled the country, even boasting that ‘’Pakistan is too big’’ for the Taliban to swallow or govern, in darted reference to Pakistan, which has been branded as the ‘Israeli tail wagging the American dog’.
“Nations must respect the rule of law, not violence. Afghanistan is too big for Pakistan to swallow and too big for Talibs to govern.
“Don’t let your histories have a chapter on humiliation and bowing to terror groups,” Saleh said in a tweet.
Saleh’s comments were in response to the tweet of Michael Johns, a former White House official, which stated: “Afghanistan’s constitution, adopted in 2004, addresses the nation’s governance under circumstances such as those that have just unfolded. In such a case, first vice president @AmrullahSaleh2 assumes the role of the presidency.
‘’Nations must respect the rule of law, not violence.”
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To this Saleh wrote: “Don’t let your histories have a chapter on humiliation and bowing to terror groups,”
Two days after Taliban’s occupation of Kabul, precisely on August 17, Saleh declared himself as the “legitimate caretaker President” after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country when Taliban took over the presidential palace in Kabul.
Saleh is a native of Panjshir Valley. He was a member of the Northern Alliance, which was formed when the Taliban came to power in 1996.
Recently, he vowed to “never, ever and under no circumstances’’ to bow down to the Taliban.
“I will never, ever and under no circumstances bow to the Talib terrorists. I will never betray d soul and legacy of my hero, Ahmad Shah Masoud, the commander, the legend and the guide.
‘’I won’t disappoint millions who listened to me. I will never be under one ceiling with the Taliban. NEVER,” tweeted Saleh.
This has indeed, become a source of worry to the Taliban that is still mired in a crisis of leadership in governance, despite a notable support from one of the biggest five in international relations, China.
The man, Amrullah Saleh
Cast in the mould of steel, he declares: “I will never, ever, and under no circumstances bow to the Talib terrorists (sic),”
“As per d constitution of Afg, in absence, escape, resignation or death of the President the FVP becomes the caretaker President.
“I am currently inside my country & am the legitimate care taker President. Am reaching out to all leaders to secure their support & consensus (sic),” he announced on Twitter.
Who is Amrullah Saleh, the self-proclaimed caretaker president resisting the Taliban takeover?
Orphaned at an early age, he has, for decades, fought aggressively against the Taliban, having originally done so as a guerilla fighter amongst the ranks of Ahmad Shah Massoud’s Northern Alliance.
Saleh, who has vowed “never be under one ceiling with Taliban,” was born in 1972 and hails from the Tajik ethnic group.
In 1997, Ahmad Shah Massoud appointed Saleh as head of the United Front’s international liaison office at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Dushanbe, Tajikistan
In 2004, Saleh was appointed the chief of Afghanistan’s newly formed intelligence agency, the National Security Directorate (NDS)
With the Taliban overrunning the presidential palace earlier this week and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fleeing the country, Vice-president Amrullah Saleh, on August 17, took to Twitter to declare himself caretaker President citing the Afghan Constitution which, it is worth noting, the Taliban do not recognise.
“I am currently inside my country & am the legitimate caretaker President. Am reaching out to all leaders to secure their support and consensus,” he tweeted.
According to agency reports, Saleh’s exact whereabouts are unknown, but he is believed to be in the Panjshir Valley – the only region that has yet to be captured by the Taliban – reportedly cobbling together the ‘Second Resistance’ of the ‘National Resistance Front of Afghanistan’ – a front made up of former Northern Alliance members and anti-Taliban leaders acting under the leadership of Ahmad Massoud, the son of fallen leader Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Saleh is reported to be ‘violently opposing the Taliban’, but keen watchers are bidding for time to understand the whole scenario better.
The new resistance leader was orphaned at an early age. And he has, for decades, fought aggressively against the Taliban, mainly as a guerrilla in the ranks of Ahmad Shah Massoud’s Northern Alliance.
That was the front that formed firmly opposed Taliban rule.
According to reports, Saleh’s angst against the Taliban, which went personal in 1996, reportedly stemmed from the torture and murder of his sister by Taliban fighters.
“My view of the Taliban changed forever because of what happened in 1996,” he wrote in an op-ed in the influential American Time magazine in 2020.
In 1997, Saleh was appointed as the head of the United Front’s international liaison office at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
There he worked in collaboration with non-governmental (humanitarian) outfits and foreign intelligence agencies.
Following the September 9/11 attacks on the US by the monster terrorist Osama bin Laden and his foot-soldiers, Saleh became a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent.
He was said to be leading the United Front’s intelligence operations to overthrow the Taliban regime.
‘Afghanistan too big for Pakistan to swallow, for Taliban to govern’
He had been the subject of various assassination attempts in the ousted Ghani regime, but survived mysteriously.
‘War is not over’: Amrullah Saleh declared, after declaring himself as the caretaker president of Afghanistan
He has accused ‘Pakistan of providing “close air support to Taliban in certain areas”. Afghanistan Vice-President Amrullah Saleh
As the chief of Afghanistan’s newly formed intelligence agency, the National Security Directorate (NDS) in 2004, Saleh was credited with developing an effective intelligence-gathering network, which enabled him to uncover a great deal about how the hard line Taliban functioned, as well as the sources of its funding and other logistics.
He has since been a vocal critic of the Pakistan government, alleging on several occasions that the country had been providing financial and military assistance to the Taliban and other terror groups in Afghanistan.
In 2010, amid rumours that he had grown disillusioned with the Karzai-led Afghan government that was approaching the Taliban more sympathetically, Saleh resigned as intelligence chief, following an attack at a Kabul peace conference.
He launched a peaceful campaign against then Afghan President Karzai in 2011 and later founded the Basej-e-Milli (National Movement), marking his first foray into the political arena.
Following the appointment of Ashraf Ghani as president of Afghanistan in 2014, Saleh took on the role of Interior Minister in the Ghani-cabinet. He resigned from the post in January 2019 to run for the September elections. When Ghani was re-elected to the top post, Saleh was made Afghanistan’s first vice president.
Last line
As it is, it is clear that peace Taliban may have its hand full of opposition to effect any meaningful rule.
What with strident opposition from powerful nations of the world, including the west such as the Us and India, and indeed other nations opposed the Taliban-style terrorism.
In short, the road to peace in Afghanistan is still far off.
