Published Date: 05 July 2008 TWO guards escorted us to the compound, their guns ready loaded. This may have seemed a bit excessive for a walk of just several hundred metres up a dusty hill, but this is the Helmand town of Musa Qala, and we were about to be granted an audience with its most wanted man. Mullah Salaam, the governor of Musa Qala district, is a former Taleban commander, who has switched sides. His conversion, spearheaded by British negotiators last year, was what sparked the British and Afghan invasion of Musa Qala last December, when they retook the town from Taleban control. Since then he has ruled the town like a tribal warlord, with rumours of taxes on opium and a private militia. But his life remains in danger; as one soldier tells us, if he leaves his compound, he will probably be killed. A portly man in...
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