At home with the warlord who is now a Taleban target

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 traditional Afghan dress and with several rings on his fingers, he is something of a publicity merchant, and delighted to be in the company of western women. He says he is happy to see women educated, including his own daughters – a turnaround for a former Taleban commander.

"Women must be educated," he insists. "It is allowed in Islam that a girl can learn anything. They should go by the rule of Islam and cover their face and go and do education." He leans back in his chair and covers his beard with his hand, and I wonder just how much he means it.

As for the Taleban, he says they are no longer primarily Afghan. "Afghanistan is like a tourist place," he says. "They come from Pakistan, they come from Iran." They are, he says, planting the crude, homemade bombs, the improvised explosive devices, of which there are an estimated 500 in the Musa Qala district alone, according to intelligence sources.

"It is like a sickness that everybody is doing suicide bombs. There is nothing like suicide bombs in our religion. It is nothing to do with our religion."

As the representative of Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai in the town, and with close relationships with British troops, does he feel Musa Qala is ready for democracy?

"It is," he says. "But we consider democracy a little different from foreign democracy. We have Islamic law and our Islamic society. We can do democracy between the rules and regulations of Islamic law."

After our interview, he surprises everyone by inviting me and another female journalist into his home to meet his family. This is unheard of. We are the first western journalists he has allowed behind the closed door of his personal compound.

We step through a small metal door, push back the curtain and step down into a courtyard and into a room where his five wives – three pregnant – and at least 15 of his 27 children rush to say hello. They are fascinated by us. We are probably the first western women they have seen and the only man the women will ever see is Mullah Salaam.

Despite what he says about progression, this is clearly still a very traditional society.

As I leave the house, the women wave as the door to the outside world shuts again. I can't help but feel that Mullah Salaam has a long road ahead of him.