In a country where treachery and intrigue have long been weapons of war as effective as the Kalashnikov and the Stinger missile, Jalil is a precious asset, the very type of operator whom the Western powers would kill for in their campaign to throttle Afghanistan's Taliban regime.
Jalil is a spy for the Northern Alliance opposition and has just returned safely from a perilous sortie to Kabul behind the Taliban lines on a mission to sow disaffection and mutiny within the enemy ranks.
It was his fifth clandestine outing to Kabul this year, the second since the World Trade Center was reduced to rubble. The information he brings back from the capital after posing as a refugee on his way out may be limited, but it is vital to Northern Alliance plans to storm the city and encourage an internal insurgency in Kabul to hasten the Taliban's collapse.
"There is a serious danger. I could be caught and sent to the front line," said the sad-faced 50-year-old who agreed to meet at the office of his military commander, his head shrouded in a black and white headscarf.
"Coming back I took cover as one of a group of refugees. I didn't talk to anyone. If anyone asked I said I was a trader. I had to go through the Taliban checkpoint. They took my money and my watch."
Jalil spent three days in Kabul last week on the eve of the launch of the US bombing campaign, being spirited into the city at night by hillmen who charged US$150 to smuggle him across the mountain front line on the Salang heights north of Kabul.
His mission was to contact and cultivate a Taliban commander who is a sleeping Northern Alliance agent, increasingly fearful for his life and keen to salvage whatever he can from the wreckage of a career serving the Taliban for years.
"He was one of my officers when I was in charge of a brigade in the Kabul garrison," said General Abdul Basir, an alliance brigade commander and Jalil's boss. "He continued to keep in touch with me and I helped him when he was with the Taliban. I used to pay for his information. Now I don't even need to pay him any more."
The wooing of the Kabul officer has gone on for a year, Jalil said. Jalil stayed with him for three nights in Kabul last week and is confident he will dance to the opposition's tune if and when the Northern Alliance band strikes up.
"He keeps asking me too many questions, more than before, about what we will do when the bombing starts, what we will do, what he should do," Jalil said of the Kabul officer. "His mood has changed."
The Kabul officer's brief, according to his handlers, is to take the 200 men under his command and arrest Pakistanis and Arabs, generally reckoned to be some of the Taliban's fiercest fighters, when given the signal to act. He has been promised a berth on the other side if he delivers.
Insurgency
In the broader scheme to topple the Taliban, the Kabul officer's role of betraying his masters is a small one. But cultivating defectors, promoting internal insurgency, and seeking to erode the Taliban from within are key elements in the US strategy and in the Northern Alliance's hopes to occupy a pivotal position once the dust has settled in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
The Northern Alliance says 30 Taliban officers commanding 1,000 men have defected since the bombing began on Sunday and many more are "sleepers," kept in place in the Taliban but following opposition orders and ready to turn their weapons on the Taliban when the time is right.
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