KABUL – Afghanistan’s protracted move towards talks with the Taliban bordered on farce yesterday with Afghan and foreign officials trading blame after a fake Taliban “leader” left them red-faced.
Reports about talks have intensified as US president Barack Obama’s December review of his war strategy approaches and as acceptance grows for the need for a negotiated settlement to a war that is widely seen to have gone badly for the United States.
They have also come as US and Nato commanders talk up recent military successes since the last of 30,000 extra troops, ordered by Mr Obama last December, arrived over the summer and fighting intensified in the Taliban’s southern heartland.
Against that backdrop, interest in talks has grown dramatically, although there have been no high-level negotiations confirmed by US, Nato or Afghan officials.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s government insists the process must be Afghan-led and has established a peace council as part of its wider reconciliation efforts.
“The international community, including the US and UK, have been supportive of the peace efforts and have expressed their willingness to help,” a senior palace official said.
“We have always stressed any direct efforts by the international community towards reconciliation will not only fail to bring results but could be counter-productive,” he said.
On Tuesday, the New York Times said a man it had described as a “Taliban leader”, who it said had taken part in secret peace talks, was in fact an impostor. It said the man met Mr Karzai and was given “a lot of money”.
The man, identified as Taliban number two Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, was probably just a shopkeeper from Quetta, the Pakistan city where the Taliban leadership fled after it was toppled in late 2001, the Washington Post said.
The palace official, who asked not to be identified, confirmed the meeting, describing it as a “unique case”, but said it was clear he was not Mr Mansour. Afghan officials assumed he was sent by Pakistan’s powerful ISI spy agency, he said.
“The assumption that he was an ISI asset sent to Kabul to test the waters is the strongest.”
Deepening the farce, Mr Karzai’s chief of staff was quoted by the Washington Post yesterday as saying that “British authorities” were responsible for taking the Taliban impostor into Mr Karzai’s palace in “July or August”.
“This episode has embarrassed Afghan and Western officials, and it has undercut the notion circulated earlier this year by senior US officials that there was some momentum towards talks,” the paper said.
Neither British nor US officials would comment on the latest report.
The British Times newspaper reported that the man acting as Mr Mansour had been paid and promoted by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. “Far from being a former Taliban government minister, the individual concerned is now thought to have been a shopkeeper, a minor Taliban commander, or simply a well-connected chancer . . ,” it reported. – (Reuters)