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| Afghanistan |
| Afghan Talks Featured an Imposter |
| 2010-11-23 |
| President Hamid Karzai and NATO officials were apparently tricked by an imposter who claimed to be one of the highest-ranking members of the Taliban and held at least two meetings with the Afghan leader and other officials in recent months, officials said. The con man's willingness to talk and relatively mild demands -- for example, he did not insist on the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan before opening peace talks – had raised hopes that the peace process here was finally making progress after two years of often fitful and futile attempts at negotiating with the Taliban. Instead, Afghan and U.S. officials are now trying to clean up what one Western diplomat called the "most bizarre mess" of the nearly decade-long war. They are also faced with an embarrassing reversal: only last month, U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of American and allied forces in Afghanistan, was telling reporters that the coalition had provided safe passage for senior Taliban leaders to travel to Kabul and talk with the Karzai administration. A senior Afghan official said that at least one of the people given safe passage was a man who purported to be Mullah Akthar Muhammad Mansour, one of the chief deputies to the Taliban's supreme leader, the one-eyed Mullah Muhammad Omar. The Afghan official declined to say if other Taliban leaders are involved in talks or have been given safe passage by coalition forces. But he did say that the talks with the imposter were thought to be the most promising in a series of parallel efforts to inch forward a peace process that has made little progress since the first discussions were held in Saudi Arabia in the autumn of 2008. The imposter, whose true identity is not clear, "is a very daring man … he thought he was more clever than we were," the Afghan official said. Asked Tuesday at a news conference if he had met Mr. Mansour, President Karzai said he had not, without elaborating. The existence of the imposter was first reported by The New York Times and the Washington Post. The fake Mr. Mansour managed to convince enough people that he was the real deal that British intelligence flew him to Kabul on multiple occasions, Afghan and coalition officials said. He was also given "a lot of money" at one point, said a coalition official. The money was ostensibly to cover the cost of traveling to Kandahar, the southern Afghan city where the man caught his flight with British intelligence, from the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta—the home base of the Taliban's leadership council, known as the Quetta Shura. But the real purpose of the money was to encourage his return to the discussions, the official said. There were conflicting accounts of how exactly the ruse was discovered. The senior Afghan official said a few things about the man seemed off, and his sudden willingness to talk on terms acceptable to the Afghan government eventually raised suspicions. In addition to dropping the standard Taliban demand for a complete withdrawal before the start of talks, the man failed press the insurgents' claim for an eventual role in the Afghan government. The Afghan official said some of his colleagues began circulating photographs of the imposter to people who knew Mr. Mansour when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. None recognized the man in the picture. But a senior Western diplomat said the man met with people who had previously known Mr. Mansour and they did not realize he was an imposter. "He fooled everyone—us and the Afghans," the Western diplomat said. Either way, the Afghan official said everyone should have known better, noting that the talks seemed too easy to get going. No one asked, "Why now?" the official said. Since first disclosing the meetings last month, senior U.S. and allied military officers here portrayed the nascent talks as the clearest evidence to date that American surge forces were pummeling the Taliban and forcing them to the negotiating table. But the Taliban maintained it was not negotiating, and the insurgents began gloating Tuesday as word spread of the ruse. "The Americans and their allies are very stupid and anyone could fool them," said Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi in a telephone interview. The Afghan official said he and some of his colleagues are not sure what motivated the imposter. Maybe it was money or perhaps he was sent by Pakistan's intelligence service, which U.S. and Afghan officials say has deep ties to the Taliban, to find out what the Afghan government was offering in peace talks, the official said. The Afghan official and the coalition official said the man, whom they believe to be Pakistani, may even have been sent by the Taliban to figure out what was on offer. But both acknowledged they were speculating. Pakistan denies supporting the Taliban or harboring its leadership, and officials there could not be immediately reached for comment. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #1 Dope and Change at work. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2010-11-23 19:11 |