Ex-Taliban spy raking in aid money

With his fondness for American rap music and Beyoncé, Fareed Hidayati, sporting cropped hair, a clean-shaven face and speaking in a thick British accent does not seem like a typical Taliban spy. He drives around Kabul in the Taliban's favourite vehicle, the Toyota Corolla - but his car is customised with 1,000-watt speakers, bright red aluminium rims and seat cushions displaying the arms of Arsenal football club.
No surprise then, that this former Taliban turned his back on his rebel brothers, and now manages contracts - some worth more than a million dollars - for US-funded developers rebuilding the war-torn nation. Born and raised in Wardak province, the Taliban's stronghold south-west of Kabul, Hidayati was always a hustler who knew how to navigate the troubled world of local Pashtun politics and government connections, his friends say.
The chameleon's success has mirrored the turbulent changes in power in Afghanistan over the past decade, from austere Taliban fundamentalism to the flow of billions of dollars through the Western-backed state. Speaking with striking urban English that would not be out of place in a Birmingham pub, he says he always stood out as different in his remote rural home - for example, he took daily showers and looked after his hair.
"They told me, you're a foreigner!" he jokes. A chorus of R&B star Beyoncé echoes from his car in Khoshal Khan, a maze of alleys situated at the foot of the mountains in the far south-west of Kabul where women are scarce and most men wear long beards.
"I also have Britney Spears, Rihanna, 50 Cent..." offers Hidayati, sitting behind the wheel in jeans and a tight t-shirt, a silver chain around his neck, bracelet on his wrist and two gold and emerald rings decorating his fingers. It has been ten years since Hidayati, now 32, worked as a spy for the Taliban regime, which ruled from 1996 until late 2001, imposing a strict form of Islamic law where long beards were compulsory and music was forbidden.
In 1997, with the Taliban in power and bored with his medical studies in Kabul, a friend suggested that Hidayati start spying on diplomats and foreign NGOs. He says he accepted for one reason: "It was the best way to protect my family." Now he is the father of 22-month-old baby boy Sahil and has cut ties with the Taliban's exiled leaders, claiming he refused an offer to rejoin them in 2007. One day in his new job, he says, Taliban bandits approached him on a building site to rob him. He says he parked his red Corolla, grabbed an assault rifle and fired into the air.