When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan on 15 August 2021, the intelligence service then called the National Directorate of Security (NDS) was swiftly replaced by the Taliban's General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) (IO, 14/09/21) with former Guantanamo prisoner Abdul Haq Wasiq at its helm.
From the very start, the new head of Afghan intelligence has faced significant hurdles to get the fledgling bureau up and running, not least because he has had to contend with a rival network founded by