KABUL: The New York Times said on Tuesday that a man it had described as a “Taliban leader” who had taken part in “secret peace talks” with the Afghan government was in fact an impostor.
The newspaper said the man had held three meetings with NATO and Afghan officials but that US officials had confirmed on Monday “they had given up hope” he was the leader identified as Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour. “The fake Taliban leader even met with President Hamid Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace,” the newspaper said, again citing unidentified officials.
On October 20, The New York Times quoted an unidentified source as saying talks to end the war involved “extensive, face-to-face discussions with Taliban commanders”. A flurry of often unsourced, or at best guardedly sourced, newspaper reports out of the US and Europe last month sparked interest that high-level talks, sponsored by NATO, had been held between the Afghan government and Taliban leaders.
However, senior Afghan, US and NATO officials have since said the “talks” were little more than initial contacts between the two sides that have been going on for the past two years. These included Richard Holbrooke, the senior US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the senior civilian representative for NATO in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill. Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, the Afghan minister responsible for reintegrating insurgents, told Reuters last month the talks were little more than “networking” and were still far from anything like a ceasefire.
The New York Times said on Tuesday that high-level discussions conducted with the man they thought was Mansour appear to have achieved little. “It’s not him,” the newspaper quoted an unidentified Western diplomat in Kabul, who it said was intimately involved in the discussions as saying. “And we gave him a lot of money.” Talks with the Taliban are part of a wider peace plan under Karzai which includes reintegrating the Taliban fighters and offering amnesties to senior leaders.
With the war now in its 10th year and casualties on all sides at record levels, the need for a negotiated settlement to the intractable conflict is being more widely recognised, including in Washington and European NATO capitals. For their part, the Taliban consistently reject the idea of talks until all foreign troops – now numbering about 150,000 – have left Afghanistan.
Their secretive leader Mullah Mohammad Omar last week again ruled out talks, saying the subject was an attempt to “throw dust in the eyes” of Afghans.
