Afghanistan risks fracturing along bloody ethnic lines if President Hamid Karzai continues misguided efforts to reach out to the Taleban, the country's former spymaster has warned.
In an exclusive interview with The Scotsman in his mountain bolt hole, Amrullah Saleh compared the Taleban to Cambodia's Khmer Rouge and accused the government of being "ultra soft" on the brutal, mediaeval insurgents.
"If we want to reconcile wit
h Taleban, or persuade the Taleban to reconcile with the current system, the very worst way is the one the government of Afghanistan has chosen," he said.
Mr Karzai named 68 people charged with negotiating a settlement on Tuesday, after a tearful appeal for peace in which he begged the insurgents to lay down arms.
His High Peace Council includes warlords, a former civil war president, at least two well-known opium barons and just eight women. In June, the president welled up calling for his "dear Taleb brothers" to come home.
"These soft policies have demoralised the people of Afghanistan and it portrays the Taleban as the only winning side," Mr Saleh said, as he sat on a verandah surrounded by fruit orchards, only accessible via a footbridge over the roaring Panjshir river.
The former head of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) worked with MI6 and the CIA from 2004 until last June, when he resigned after "losing the confidence" of Mr Karzai.
He then spent weeks touring northern Afghanistan, building grass roots support for a political movement before joining forces with leading opposition politician Dr Abdullah Abdullah. Both men served under Ahmad Shah Massoud, a legendary Northern Alliance commander who was killed by al-Qaeda suicide bombers two days before the 11 September 200 attacks on the US.
Dr Abdullah claimed the Taleban see Mr Karzai's tears as weakness.
Civil rights groups fear the rush to make peace will undo precious gains in areas like women's rights. Yet with America due to start withdrawing troops in July 2011, few powerbrokers see any alternatives to talks and most are manoeuvering for a post-Nato environment. When Russian troops left in 1989 more than a million people were killed in an ethnic civil war.
"Negotiations are fraught with risks but there few other options," said Harvard analyst Matt Waldman.
