Amrullah Saleh

Who is Amrullah Saleh?

Amrullah Saleh is an Afghan politician who last served as head of the Afghan intelligence service National Directorate of Security. In 1997, in his mid-20s, he was appointed by anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud to lead the United Front's liaison office inside the Afghan Embassy in Dushanbe handling contacts to international non-governmental organizations and intelligence agencies. After the fall of the Taliban regime, Saleh was appointed by President Hamid Karzai in early 2004 to lead the National Directorate of Security. Due to political differences with Karzai, Saleh resigned his position in 2010. In late 2010, Saleh created one of the strongest Afghan pro-democracy and anti-Taliban movements, the Basej-e Milli or Afghanistan Green Trend, with about 20,000 of his supporters rallying against the Taliban in Kabul in 2011.