Down a rutted street in a quiet suburb of south Kabul lives a man the CIA once locked in a cage for months as an enemy combatant. Seven years later, Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakkil, 38, who served as foreign minister when the Taliban ran Afghanistan, may prove to be President Barack Obama's best chance of ending the gruelling war in Afghanistan - by enabling negotiations with America's enemies.
Such a prospect would have seemed far-fetched only a year ago; but now, as Mr Obama grapples with difficult Afghanistan decisions, faced with a faltering Kabul government and a spreading insurgency, all options are on the table.
Some of them may seem distinctly unsavoury for a president elected as a liberal idealist - in particular the notion of doing deals with Taliban commanders, and empowering former warlords and tribal leaders who have blood on their hands and in many cases hatred in their hearts.
But America's desperation to regain the initiative in an increasingly unpopular war has already produced some remarkable changes, and uncomfortable moral compromises are now on the agenda.
Among them, the Obama administration has indicated that it intends to make a fresh attempt to engage more moderate Taliban groups in talks with the Afghan government - in a determined effort to woo at least some of them away from the fighting that is claiming increasing numbers of American and other Nato forces' lives.
Mullah Mutawakkil, once a confidant of the one-eyed Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, was held at a US base in Kandahar in 2002 after he gave himself up to American troops.
Now he is being politely wooed by a stream of senior US officials who make discreet visits to his villa, which is guarded by armed police, to hear his thoughts on what the Taliban mood is like and whether any of its leaders are ready for talks.
A soft-spoken and intelligent man who was one of the Taliban regime's youngest ministers, Mullah Mutawakkil is cautious about what can be achieved, but even so his thinking is music to tired Western ears.
He believes that the Taliban would split from what he called their al-Qaeda "war allies" if a deal was within reach. Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph in the guest room of his Kabul home, he insisted that a settlement to end the war was possible -- and that it would be the West's best chance of stopping terrorists from turning Afghanistan back into their base again.
"If the Taliban fight on and finally became Afghanistan's government with the help of al-Qaeda, it would then be very difficult to separate them," he warned.
But there is, he says, another option. Taliban leaders are looking for guarantees of their personal safety from the US, and a removal of the "bounties" placed on the head of their top commanders. They also want a programme for the release of prisoners held at the notorious Bagram US air base in Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo Bay.
In return, he says, the Taliban would promise not to allow Afghanistan to be used to plan attacks on America -- the original reason for American invervention, and the overriding aim of US policy in the region.
"The United States has a right to be confident that every government, whether Taliban or any other kind of government, would guarantee not to threaten America," he said.
The former foreign minister believes the Taliban understands that Afghanistan has changed since they were driven from power. They want a nation governed by strict Islamic laws but realise they cannot turn the clock back, he said.
He cautioned that negotiations would not be easy. "I am not an optimist. But talking would be better than war," he said.
| Give us the jizya and we'll talk, little kaffir. |