The Taliban on Monday announced amnesty towards President Ashraf Ghani and Amrullah Saleh. The militant group that took over Kabul on August 15 said that it would forgive everyone, right from a general who fought against us to a common person and they can return to the country, ANI reported.
President Ashraf Ghani, who fled when the Taliban took over Kabul, is currently in UAE. And Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who said he is now the country's 'legitimate' caretaker president, is reportedly in Panjshir province. Panjshir is the only province that hasn't yet fallen to the Taliban.
Saleh, on August 17 tweeted that he is “reaching out to all leaders to secure their support & consensus,” to unify and fight the Taliban. Saleh has been Afghanistan's Vice President since February 2020.
The 48-year old politician hails from the Tajik-dominated Panjshir Valley.
Orphaned at a young age, Saleh was a part of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance during the civil war that followed the 1992 ouster of Mohammed Najibullah-- the country's USSR-backed ruler since 1987.
In 1997, Saleh was appointed to serve in the Northern Alliance's liaison office in Tajikistan. There he handled contacts with international NGOs and agencies. India refused to recognise the Taliban's regime of 1997-2001 over the evaluation that the group was supported by Pakistan's army and the ISI.
Saleh had suffered personal loss at the hands of the Taliban in 1996. His sister was tortured to death by the militants.
He has said that the incident completely changed his view about the Taliban.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told AFP on August 19, that a resistance force is being led by Vice-President Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud, the son of a slain anti-Taliban fighter.
Massoud said he was ready to follow in the footsteps of his father Ahmed Shah Massoud, the famed anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban resistance leader, who was assassinated in 2001.
The commandos and special forces soldiers, who are now being hunted by the Taliban, are reportedly headed to the Panjshir region to join the resistance group.
Saleh had indicated that he would fight the Taliban to the last bullet. Saleh, who played an important role in intelligence operations of the United Front to topple the Taliban, was a key asset to the CIA. From 2004-2010, Saleh served as the head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency. At the time, he was critical of then-President Hamid Karzai’s softened stance on the Taliban and reliance on support from Pakistan. In 2011, Saleh founded the Basej-e Milli political party aimed at opposing the Taliban.
Saleh has said that the Taliban is worse than the brutal Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia. Saleh became part of President Ashraf Ghani's cabinet in 2017 and was made Interior Minister in 2018. Saleh has faced several assassination attempts. The latest was on September 9 2020, an attack that killed 10 commoners. Before that, in June 2019, a suicide bomber entered Saleh's office and blew himself up. While Saleh survived, the incident claimed 20 lives.
Talking about the Taliban, Saleh has said, “All their politburo are based in Pakistan and are not showing their faces. They can’t face the reality of new Afghanistan which is no longer buying the notion of armed struggle to solve political issues. Without Pakistan’s support, the Taliban would fade away in six months”. Saleh has openly expressed dislike for Pakistan.
Saleh has acknowledged India standing behind Afghanistan's Northern Alliance leadership after the group had taken over the nation in 1996.
In a 2017 column written on India’s 70th Independence Day, Saleh wrote, “That slice of history, from 1996-2001, known as the era of resistance in Afghanistan, evolved around the sacrifices of the Afghan people who defended their unique identity and rejected Pakistan-backed religious dogmatism and militancy.”
Saleh called former US president Donald Trump's Afghanistan strategy “an acknowledgement of the fact that Pakistan has been playing a destructive and dubious role in Afghanistan by providing support and sanctuary to terrorists and agents of chaos.”
