Who is Afghanistan's 'caretaker-President' Amrullah Saleh?

Saleh has a long history of struggle against the Taliban as a one-time insurgent-turned-spy chief and later vice premier

As the Taliban wrest power in Afghanistan, only one voice of resistance amid its former leadership has so far stood out.

"I will never, ever, and under no circumstances bow to the Talib terrorists (sic)," Afghanistan's First Vice-President (FVP) Amrullah Saleh said on August 15.

After incumbent President Ashraf Ghani's exit in the face of Taliban's sweep into Kabul, the toppled government's vice president claimed that he was the country's “legitimate” caretaker president.

Amrullah Saleh made the comment on Twitter on Tuesday. He cited the Afghan constitution was empowering him to declare this.

He wrote that he was “reaching out to all leaders to secure their support & consensus.” However, it was not clear who he was looking to for support or how he would garner it.

As of now, Afghan leaders, including former President Hamid Karzai and peace council chief Abdullah Abdullah, have been negotiating with the Taliban since the fall of Kabul.

A former spy, a strong voice against Taliban

Saleh, born in 1972 in Panjshir, said he would take up the fight in his northern province.

Famed for its natural defences, the Panjshir valley never fell to the Taliban during the civil war of the 1990s, nor was it ever conquered by the Soviets a decade earlier.

Saleh said that unlike the United States and NATO "we haven't lost spirit & see enormous opportunities ahead. Useless caveats are finished JOIN THE RESISTANCE."

Saleh, whose whereabouts were unknown, said that he would never "under no circumstances bow" to "the Talib terrorists." He said he would "never betray" Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance who was assassinated by two al Qaeda operatives just before the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Saleh and Massoud's son, who commands a militia force, appear to be putting together the first pieces of a guerilla movement to take on the victorious Taliban, as fighters regroup in Panjshir.

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Such a battle would be the latest in Saleh's long struggle against the Taliban as a onetime insurgent turned spy chief and later vice premier.

Orphaned at a young age, Saleh first fought alongside guerilla commander Massoud in the 1990s.

He went on to serve in his government before being chased out of Kabul when the Taliban captured it in 1996.

The hardliners then tortured his sister in their bid to hunt him down, Saleh has said.

"My view of the Taliban changed forever because of what happened in 1996," Saleh wrote in a Time magazine editorial last year.

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After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Saleh — then a part of the anti-Taliban resistance — became a key asset for the CIA.

The relationship paved the way for him to lead the newly formed Afghanistan intelligence agency, the National Security Directorate (NDS), in 2004.

As NDS chief, Saleh is believed to have amassed a vast network of informants and spies inside the insurgency and across the border in Pakistan, where Pashto-speaking agents kept track on Taliban leaders.

The intelligence Saleh gathered provided what he alleged was proof the Pakistani military continued to back the Taliban.

Saleh's rise however has not been without its share of dramatic stumbles.

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In 2010, he was sacked as Afghanistan's spy chief following a humiliating attack on a Kabul peace conference.

Exiled into the political wilderness, Saleh maintained his fight against the Taliban and Islamabad on Twitter, where he fired off daily tweets taking aim at his longtime foes.

A return to favour came in 2018 when he briefly oversaw the interior ministry after sealing an alliance with President Ashraf Ghani, who has now fled to the United Arab Emirates.

Saleh went on to become the former leader's vice premier.

His most recent political revival came as the United States was preparing to exit Afghanistan and coincided with a series of assassination attempts on Saleh by the Taliban.

(Compiled using agency inputs)