Hamid GulThe nutty former head of Pakistain's ISI, now Godfather to Mullah Omar's Talibs and good buddy and consultant to al-Qaeda's high command...
says the Islamist group's long-time foe Abdullah Abdullah
... the former foreign minister of the Northern Alliance government, advisor to Masood, and candidate for president against Karzai. Dr. Abdullah was born in Kabul and is half Tadjik and half Pashtun...
has the best chance of securing peace.
Widely viewed as a "Godfather" figure for Pakistain's strategy of using jihadist proxies to exert influence in neighbouring countries, the 77-year-old retired general is still seen by some observers as offering a window into the mindset of the country's powerful military establishment.
As Afghanistan prepares for a run-off poll on Saturday between Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, Pakistain has maintained a neutral stance. But Gul, who headed Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency between 1987 and 1989 during the late stages of the Soviet occupation, said it would take a fighter, not an academic to secure peace for Afghanistan -- as long as he refused to sign a bilateral security agreement with the US.
Gul said Abdullah's past as a resistance fighter together with his shrewd choices of running mates made him uniquely placed to negotiate with those he called the "Afghan opposition" -- the Taliban.
Abdullah draws his main support from ethnic Tajiks in the north, while Ghani is a Pashtun like the majority of the country and the Taliban. But, said Gul: "Abdullah has a distinct advantage for future peace in Afghanistan -- if that is the objective and it should be -- that he is a jihadi.
"And the other people with him are also jihadis," he continued, referring to running mates Mohammad Khan, an ally of powerful
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar... who used to be known in intelligence circles as
The Most Evil Man in the Worldbut who now seems merely run-of-the-mill evil...
who has traditional ties to Pakistain, and Mohammad Mohaqeq -- a Hazara seen as closer to Iran.
"Ashraf Ghani is not a jihadi," he said about the ex-World Bank economist who spent the 1980s living in the US. "And for a jihadi to open a dialogue with a non-jihadi would be very difficult."
Following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the country slid into anarchy, and Taliban fighters trained in Pakistain gradually prised control from the Northern Alliance of commander Ahmad Shah Massoud -- a revered national hero who was also Abdullah's mentor.
During this period, Gul maintained contacts with both sides in an unofficial role as a mediator. "At that time I used to live in Ahmad Shah Massoud's guesthouse and Abdullah was deputed to look after me so I met him almost every day" during trips from 1992-1995, prior to the Taliban's ascent to power.
He added his last trip to Afghanistan came in 2001. "And that was to attend the last parade of Taliban government on 19th of August 2001, just three weeks before 9/11. I was a chief guest there."
He warned that war would continue if the next Afghan president signs a security pact allowing some 10,000 US troops to remain in the country until 2016.
Some observers have accused Gul of aggrandising his role in regional affairs post-retirement, but security analyst Ayesha Siddiqa said he remained "strongly connected" with the prevalent line of thinking in the military's high command.