Top Afghan leader: ‘Without Pakistan support, Taliban would fade away in six months…’

Amrullah Saleh, a former chief of the Afghan intelligence service National Directorate of Security, tells The Indian Express "the key is for the Taliban to realise they can't subdue a nation by guns and bombs provided by the Pakistani ISI and the army".

Top Afghan leader: 'Without Pakistan support, Taliban would fade away in 6 months...' — Amrullah Saleh is former chief of the Afghan intelligence service National Directorate of Security (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Hours before the deal reached between the United States and the Taliban for withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan collapsed, Amrullah Saleh, vice-presidential candidate and running mate of President Ashraf Ghani in the uncertain September 28 presidential election, had told Nirupama Subramanian that the (then imminent) deal was “not a deal for or of the Afghans”.