Turn and turn again

Turn and turn again

Like the "Grand Old Duke of York", Commander Suleiman has marched his men to the top of the hill and marched them down again.

The words in the famous English nursery rhyme are believed to refer to a battle in Europe's War of the Roses, but now they can equally be applied to events in the hills surrounding the city of Herat in western Afghanistan - and the war against the Taliban.

Commander Suleiman used to control a police unit patrolling the volatile border with Iran, but defected to the insurgents along with eighty of his men and all of their weapons just over a year ago.

He told Al Jazeera at the time that he'd seen the foreign troops on Afghan soil involved in prostitution and drinking alcohol. He considered it was his duty as a Muslim to wage Jihad against them.

But this week he crossed back into government lines with most of his men to lay down their weapons after lengthy negotiations with the Governor of Herat.

He agreed to an interview with me.

Suleiman said the authorities had agreed to all his demands before he decided to defect and promised him a position as a district police chief. He told me he thought at least half of the insurgents fighting in the mountains above Herat would do the same.

President Karzai issued another invitation during his inaugural speech last week for all his "disenchanted brothers" to embrace their homeland again as long as they had no links to what he called "international terrorism".

So far several hundred armed insurgents have answered that call in the Herat district over the last few weeks, but hopes of repeating this success elsewhere have been dampened by an eve of Eid message by the Taliban’s commander Mullah Omar.

In a statement issued on his website he said: "Those who have occupied our country and taken our people as hostage want to use the stratagem of negotiation…to achieve their colonialist objectives."

"The people of Afghanistan will not agree to negotiation which prolongs and legitimises the invaders military presence in our beloved country."