Amrullah Saleh
Amrullah Saleh امرالله صالح | |
|---|---|
| File:Amrullah Saleh.png Amrullah Saleh in an interview | |
| Director of National Directorate of Security | |
| In office February 2004 – June 2010 | |
| Preceded by | Muhammad Arif Sarwari |
| Succeeded by | Ibrahim Spinzada (temporarily) followed by Rahmatullah Nabil |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 280px 1972 Panjshir, Afghanistan |
| Died | 280px |
| Resting place | 280px |
| Parent |
|
| Awards | Cleary University (honorary Doctorate Degree in Political Science) |
Amrullah Saleh (Persian: امرالله صالح; born 1972) is an Afghan politician who last served as head of the Afghan National Directorate of Security. In 1997, at the age of 24, he was appointed by anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud to lead the United Front's (Northern Alliance) liaison office inside the Afghan Embassy in Dushanbe handling contacts to international non-governmental (humanitarian) organizations and intelligence agencies. After the fall of the Taliban regime, Saleh was appointed by President Hamid Karzai in early 2004 to lead the National Directorate of Security. Due to political differences with Karzai, Saleh resigned his position in 2010. He is currently leading one of the strongest Afghan pro-democracy and anti-Taliban movements, the Basej-i Milli (National Movement) or Afghanistan Green Trend, with about 10,000 of his supporters rallying against the Taliban in Kabul in 2011.
Biography
Amrullah Saleh was born in the Panjshir Province of Afghanistan in 1972.
In the late 1990s, in his early 20s, Saleh worked for the anti-Taliban resistance, the United Islamic Front (Northern Alliance), under Ahmad Shah Massoud.[1][2] In 1997, Saleh was appointed to lead Massoud's international liaison office in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, where he served as a coordinator for non-governmental (humanitarian) organizations and as a liaision partner for foreign intelligence agencies.[1]
After the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States, Amrullah Saleh helped lead United Front intelligence on the ground in Afghanistan during the War in Afghanistan (2001–present) toppling the Taliban regime.[3]
After the creation of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Saleh was appointed to head Department One of Afghanistan's main intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS). The duties of Department One included liaison with foreign military, diplomatic, and intelligence organizations. In 2004, Amrullah Saleh was appointed as the head of the NDS by President Hamid Karzai.[2] In June 2010 Saleh resigned from his position. He subsequently founded the Basej-i Milli (National Movement) or Afghanistan Green Trend as a pro-democracy and anti-Taliban grassroots movement.
National Directorate of Security
Saleh initiated structural reforms and helped rebuild the Afghan intelligence service.[4] Saleh and former interior minister Hanif Atmar were viewed by the international community as two of the most competent cabinet members in the Afghan government.[4]
In 2005, Amrullah Saleh engaged several NDS agents infiltrating the Pakistani tribal areas to search for Bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. Several Al-Qaeda members could be identified, but it was determined that Bin Laden was not in the area. In 2006, Amrullah Saleh was presented with evidence that Bin Laden was living in a major settled area of Pakistan just 20 miles from the town of Abbottabad, Pakistan. He shared the intelligence with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf who angrily brushed off the claim taking no action.[5] (see Bin Laden–Musharraf controversy)
After the Afghan presidential election, 2009, Afghan President Karzai's views about the security issues confronting Afghanistan and how best to deal with them reportedly changed. This impacted the working relationship between the President of Afghanistan and some of his cabinet ministers including his intelligence chief.[6] Saleh says, "He [Karzai] thought democracy had hurt him as a person. His family had been attacked by the media unfairly, and the West was criticizing him unfairly. So after a presidential election, he was a changed man, and we could not have the same relationship as before the presidential election."[6] Renowned political analyst Ahmed Rashid in 2010 observed the same, "Karzai’s new outlook is the most dramatic political shift he has undergone in the twenty-six years that I have known him."[7] Both Amrullah Saleh and interior minister Hanif Atmar subsequently had strong disagreement with Hamid Karzai on how to proceed against the Taliban, who Karzai was now referring to as "brothers". At that point Saleh and Atmar got increasingly isolated in the Karzai administration.[6]
In early 2010, an Afghan man approached the NDS claiming to represent senior Taliban commander Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour. Offering a letter allegedly written by Mansour, he said Mansour was interested to open a channel for negotiations.[6] Saleh's people started testing the credentials of the supposed messenger, and judged them to be false closing the case.[6] The man then approached other Afghan government institutions. Saleh recounts, "When I learned ... that he was going through a different avenue, I warned the government that if it is this Aminullah, if he claims this, and if it is this guy, trust me, he is not representing anybody; it's a scam. ... Be careful. This is not Mansour. But there was a perception that Amrullah is against talks, so let's sideline him."[6] The Afghan man, who lived in Pakistan where the Taliban's leadership council is based, subsequently held three meetings with NATO and Afghan officials.[8] Having been flown from Pakistan to Kabul on a NATO airplane, the supposed Mansour met with President Hamid Karzai in the presidential palace.[8] In late 2010, it turned out, that the supposed Mansour was an impostor as Amrullah Saleh had previously warned. The New York Times writes: "In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor."[8]
On June 6, 2010, Amrullah Saleh resigned from the NDS while Hanif Atmar resigned from his position as interior minister after a militant attack against the national peace jirga, although nobody had been killed or wounded and the attackers had been arrested.[4] A few days after the jirga, Karzai had summoned Hanif Atmar and Amrullah Saleh to discuss the attack against the jirga. After the meeting both men officially resigned because of the failure to stop the attack on the jirga.[4][9] CNSNews writes: "Saleh told reporters he had submitted his resignation as general director of National Security because he had lost Karzai’s trust as a result of the attack. He said he and Atmar had briefed the president on the security preparations for the jirga, and the subsequent "success in ... capturing the facilitators," but Karzai had not been satisfied. He had therefore felt unable to continue in his post. He also said there were “tens” of reasons for leaving his position, but would not elaborate on others."[10]
The two men's resignation led to widespread concerns among Afghanistan experts.[4] Concerns were voiced over the direction the country was moving in.[10] President Karzai’s national security adviser, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, was quoted as saying:
"With Amrullah Saleh, the Afghan people have lost a huge treasure of commitment, awareness and experience in this struggle against terrorism, Al Qaeda and the ISI. I can’t think of anyone who will be able to even slightly fill the vacuum that he leaves behind. Besides being a highly efficient chief at the N.D.S., he is a man of knowledge and research with an incredible memory and intellect. When he analyzed issues at international meetings, he exhibited tremendous ability at logical reasoning. He was head and shoulder above others. ... I had many differences in arguments with him, but I always saw his presence at the N.D.S. as a huge advantage to this country and this government. Despite my high respects for the president’s decisions, I am extremely mournful about Saleh’s departure. Extremely mournful."[11]
— Rangin Dadfar Spanta, June 2010
The Afghan media also extensively covered the resignations with the daily newspaper Hasht-e Subh headlining an article: "Resignation of Atmar and Saleh: Accountability to the People or Tribute to Pakistan?"[11]
The resignation of Saleh and Atmar came amidst heavy disagreement between Hamid Karzai and Amrullah Saleh on how to proceed against the Taliban.[12] Daoud Sultanzoi, a member of the Afghan parliament, said, he had observed that disagreement between Karzai on the one side and cabinet members such as Saleh and Atmar on the other side had been going on for a while.[13] Saleh publicly blamed Pakistan for its support to the Taliban and other extremist groups and said talks with the Taliban should take place but not at the cost of democratic structures.[13] Meanwhile Karzai had increasingly been placing his hopes on his attempts to reach a secret deal with the Taliban and Pakistan. Pakistan had repeatedly urged Karzai to oust Saleh from his position.[13]
Amrullah Saleh said he considered Hamid Karzai a patriot, but that the president was making a mistake if he planned to rely on Pakistani support as Pakistan was trying to reimpose the Taliban.[13]
"They are weakening him under the disguise of respecting him. They will embrace a weak Afghan leader, but they will never respect him."[14]
— Amrullah Saleh, June 2010
Saleh on the BBC's Hard Talk explained and reiterated that Karzai in hoping to reach a deal with the Taliban and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence through appeasement policy had alienated his internal allies as well as Afghanistan's external allies and had undermined the morale of Afghan security forces.
Bin Laden–Musharraf controversy
Amrullah Saleh has repeatedly stated that Afghan intelligence believed and had shared information about Osama Bin Laden hiding in an area close to Abbottabad, Pakistan, four years before he (Bin Laden) was killed there. Saleh had shared the information with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf who had angrily brushed off the claim taking no action.[5]
As early as 2004, agents working for Afghan intelligence determined that Bin Laden was living in a major settled area in Pakistan proper, rather than the semi-autonomous tribal areas on the Afghan-Pakistan border, Amrullah Saleh told The Guardian. Leading Saleh and Afghan intelligence to that conclusion were "thousands of interrogation reports" and the assumption that Bin Laden "a millionaire with multiple wives and no background of toughness would not be living in a tent".[5] "I was pretty sure he was in the settled areas of Pakistan because in 2005 it was still very easy to infiltrate the tribal areas, and we had massive numbers of informants there. They could find any Arab but not Bin Laden."[5]
In 2007, the Afghans specifically identified two Al-Qaeda safe houses in Manshera, a town just miles from Abbottabad, leading them to believe that Bin Laden was possibly hiding there. But Amrullah Saleh says that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf angrily smashed his fist on a table when Saleh presented the information to him during a meeting in which Afghan President Hamid Karzai also took part.[5] According to Saleh, "He said, 'Am I the president of the Republic of Banana?' Then he turned to President Karzai and said, 'Why have you brought this Panjshiri guy to teach me intelligence?'"[5]
A BBC journalist confronting Musharraf with Saleh's allegations writes: "The former leader of Pakistan plays the dispassionate broker very well. ... [But] this is when Mr Musharraf's camouflage starts to slip. The substance of the claim he handles like a politician (it was actually a case of mistaken identity involving the CIA, he says). But he bristles with anger at the mention of Amrullah Saleh's name."[15] Accusing Saleh of "impertinence" and being "lowly", Musharraf stated: "Amrullah Saleh I have never liked and therefore he has no right to present anything to me."[15]
A December 2011 analysis report by the Jamestown Foundation, however, came to the conclusion that "in spite of denials by the Pakistani military, evidence is emerging that elements within the Pakistani military harbored Osama bin Laden with the knowledge of former army chief General Pervez Musharraf and possibly current Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani. Former Pakistani Army Chief General Ziauddin Butt (a.k.a. General Ziauddin Khawaja) revealed at a conference on Pakistani–U.S. relations in October 2011 that according to his knowledge the then former Director-General of Intelligence Bureau of Pakistan (2004–2008), Brigadier Ijaz Shah (retd.), had kept Osama bin Laden in an Intelligence Bureau safe house in Abbottabad."[16] Pakistani General Ziauddin Butt said Bin Laden had been hidden in Abbottabad "with the full knowledge" of Pervez Musharraf.[16]
Recent activity
In 2010 Saleh launched a peaceful campaign to warn that Hamid Karzai had lost conviction in the fight against the Taliban and was pursuing a compromise that could come at the cost of democracy, stability and human rights, especially women's rights. He criticized Karzai's policy, which he called a "fatal mistake and a recipe for civil war".[17]
"My view is there must not be a deal with the Taliban. Ever. There must be a process. And according to that process, based on that process, the Taliban should become part of the society and play according to the script of democracy. They should be demobilized, disarmed, reintegrated the way the Northern Alliance was. ... And also they should denounce violence. And that process will bring a lasting stability. Minus that, if there is a deal, deals never bring stability. They create fragile peace. ... if there is a deal, we will resist against the deal, "we" meaning all the forces who fought the Taliban."[2]
— Amrullah Saleh, November 2010
"[T]he Taliban have no message, no vision except intimidation, spreading fear, bringing exclusion in the Afghan society, stopping development and destroying pluralism. ... We all want to make peace, but we do not want to Talibanize Afghanistan."[2]
— Amrullah Saleh, November 2010
Amrullah Saleh founded the Basej-e Milli (National Movement), also known as Afghanistan Green Trend, which has successfully established itself in Afghanistan. In May 2011, more than 10,000 of his followers took part in an anti-Taliban demonstration in the capital Kabul.[18][19][20]
In December 2011, Saleh also criticized the corruption of the Karzai government. He warned that if the Afghan government did not commit itself to necessary reforms and to battling corruption, the year 2014 - when international troops plan on having finalized their exit strategy - would be "a year of challenges rather than opportunities".[21] Saleh especially emphasized the need for fundamental reforms in Afghanistan's Independent Electoral Commission.
"2014 is a year of opportunities, some coalitions will form and whoever wins transparently or in an almost transparent situation, the Afghan people will support the new order ... If there are no reforms, I can foresee a popular uprising, a just uprising different from the Taliban's.[21]
— Amrullah Saleh, December 2011
Speaking during the inauguration of an Islamic foundation in Kabul, Saleh said the Karzai government and the United States of America cannot represent the anti-Taliban Afghan civilians and initiate peace talks while simultaneously excluding them. The former Afghan Intelligence Chief insisted on considering the views of the Afghan people during the peace talks process, as a majority of Afghans both in the northern and southern regions, he said, have negative views of the Taliban.[22] He also questioned the honesty of the Taliban's involvement in peace talks.[23] The recent objections by nearly all major opposition parties come amid growing efforts by the US and Hamid Karzai to make headway in secret talks with the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i Islami.[23] In these talks representatives from the anti-Taliban United Front, which fought the Taliban from 1994 until 2001 and unites leaders representing roughly 60% of Afghanistan's population, are being excluded. Critizising the secretive nature of US talks with the Taliban, which they suspect might end in a return of the Taliban to power, opposition leaders have asked for a transparent UN-led peace process.[24]
External links
Official
- Amrullah Saleh on Facebook
2011
- BBC's "Secret Pakistan": Amrullah Saleh about Bin Laden and Abbottabad
- BBC Hardtalk: Amrullah Saleh: Moderate Taliban is 'an invention'
- Interview with CNN
- 'Afghanistan's Top Spy' with Amrullah Saleh by CBS
- 'Uniting a polarized Afghanistan' about Amrullah Saleh by Al Jazeera
- Anti-Taliban rally May 2011 (BBC Persian)
- Anti-Taliban rally May 2011 (Tolonews)
- Amrullah Saleh appeared on the 3rd of 3 segments featured in the Tuesday, Jan. 18th, 2011 episode of PBS's Frontline, called The Spy Who Quit.
2004-2010
- Amrullah Saleh speech at the Jamestown Foundation's Conference on Terrorism (Dec. 2010)
- Amrullah Saleh Interview with PBS's Frontline in 2006
- Amrullah Saleh Interview (Part 1 & Part 2) with Al Jazeera in 2008
- Amrullah Saleh Interview with ToloTV Part 1
- Amrullah Saleh addressing the Afghan parliament see video
- ToloTV report "Afghan Intelligence Chief Resignation Details"
References
- ^ a b "Amrullah Saleh Interview". BBC. 2008.
- ^ a b c d "The Spy Who Quit". PBS. January 2011.
- ^ "Shadow Warrior". 60 Minutes. 2009.
- ^ a b c d e Rodriguez, Alex; Cloud, David S. (2010-06-07). "Afghan interior minister, top security official resign". Los Angeles Times.
- ^ a b c d e f "Osama Bin Laden death: Afghanistan 'had Abbottabad lead four years ago'". The Guardian. 2011-05-05.
- ^ a b c d e f "The Spy Who Quit". PBS. 2011.
- ^ "NATO's Dangerous Wager with Karzai". The New York Review of Books. 2010.
- ^ a b c "Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor". New York Times. 2010.
- ^ "Afghan interior, intel chiefs replaced over attack"
- ^ a b "Removal of Two Key Afghan Officials Seen As A Blow to the West". CNSNews. 2010.
- ^ a b Mashal, Mujib (2010-06-14). "Afghan Media Criticize Security Officials' Resignations". New York Times.
- ^ ""Former Afghanistan Intelligence Chief Says He Quit Because of President Karzai's 'Soft' Policy on Taliban, Says: 'This Soft Behavior Makes the Enemy's Intention Even Stronger and Makes the Confidence of Friends Shaky'"". MEMRI. 2010-15-06.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ a b c d Rubin, Alissa J. (2010-06-06). "Afghan Leader Forces Out Top 2 Security Officials". New York Times. Cite error: The named reference "New York Times" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ Karzai Is Said to Doubt West Can Defeat Taliban
- ^ a b "Can Pervez Musharraf help soothe US-Pakistan relations?". BBC. 2011-28-10.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ a b "Former Pakistan Army Chief Reveals Intelligence Bureau Harbored Bin Laden in Abbottabad". Jamestown Foundation. 2011-22-12.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Minority leaders leaving Karzai's side over leader's overtures to insurgents". Washington Post. 2011-23-06.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Thousands of Afghans Rally in Kabul". New York Times. 2011-05-05.
- ^ "Anti-Taliban rally". BBC Persian. 2011-05-05.
- ^ "Govt Opposition Warn of Taking to Streets". Tolo TV. 2011-05-05.
- ^ a b "Karzai does not trust security forces former spy chief says". Tolo TV. 2011-26-12.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Ex-Afghan intelligence chief critizes government initiative". Khaama Press. 2011-26-12.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ a b "Karzai 'accepts' Taliban office in Qatar". Al Jazeera. 2011-27-12.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Need for UN-led Peace Process with the Taliban". Outlook Afghanistan. 2011-22-11.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help)
- Gall, Carlotta (2004-02-05). "Afghan Leader Removes Chief Of Intelligence". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-01-29.
{{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=(help) - Schroen, Gary C. (2005). "Afterward". First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan. Random House, Inc. ISBN 0891418725.