The house is at the top of a narrow, steep, dirt road in one of Kabul's dusty suburbs, a neighbourhood with few police and fewer international soldiers. It is home to Mohammed Qalamuddin, the former head of the Taliban's infamous religious police. Captured in 2003, two years after the extremists' regime collapsed, and freed in 2005, the 60-year-old cleric has since been rehabilitated. Appointed to the High Peace Council.