Taliban Hold Secret Talks with Hamid Karzai

KABUL: Three Taliban leaders secretly met Afghanistan’s president two weeks ago in an effort to weaken the US-led coalition’s most vicious enemy, a powerful al-Qaeda-linked network that straddles the border region with Pakistan.

Held in Kabul, the meeting included a wanted former Taliban governor and an imprisoned extremist who were flown to the capital from the Pakistani city of Peshawar, according to a former Afghan official.

The talks were not directly linked to the Afghan government’s efforts to broker peace with the Taliban and find a political resolution to the insurgency. Rather, they were part of an effort to weaken the Haqqani network, the former official said over the weekend.

A Western official, who spoke anonymously, confirmed that a meeting between President Hamid Karzai and Taliban figures had taken place but did not know its full details or the names of all the participants.

Led by the ailing Jalaluddin Haqqani and controlled by his son, Sirajuddin, the network is thought to be responsible for most attacks on US troops in eastern Afghanistan and has been a key US military target. The network is linked to al-Qaeda and is believed to be sheltering its second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri.

Weakening the network would take the pressure off US forces and bolster Karzai’s efforts to broker some kind of peace with the Taliban in portions of the country.

The Taliban leaders who met Karzai were Maulvi Abdul Kabir, the governor of eastern Nangarhar province during Taliban rule and the current head of the Taliban’s Peshawar council; his deputy governor in the Taliban regime, Sedre Azam; and Anwar-ul-Haq Mujahed, a militant leader from eastern Afghanistan credited with helping Osama bin Laden escape the US assault on Tora Bora in 2001, the former official said.

The source told men were brought by helicopter from Peshawar in neighbouring Pakistan and driven into Kabul. Mujahed has been in Pakistani custody since June last year when he was picked up in a raid in Peshawar. Kabir is on the US most wanted list.

They spent two nights at a heavily fortified hotel in the Afghan capital before returning to Peshawar by helicopter, where Mujahed was placed again in custody.

The US earlier this month acknowledged facilitating some Taliban trips to Kabul but provided no specifics. The Pakistani military has not commented on such reports.

The former Afghan official, who asked not to be named, described Kabir and his associates as “mid-level” contacts because they have little, if any, influence over the more powerful Quetta and Waziristan shuras.

Those two shuras provide leadership for the majority of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and are overseen by Mullah Mohammed Omar, the fanatical one-eyed Taliban leader.

Karzai has formed a 70-member high peace council in an effort to try to reconcile with the Taliban and find a political solution to the insurgency.

The Taliban say their leaders will not discuss peace with the government unless foreign troops first leave Afghanistan.

Taliban Talks Part of US Strategy on Afghanistan

WASHINGTON: The United States said Thursday it cannot see Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar meeting criteria for peace talks with the Afghan government and playing a constructive role in Afghanistan’s future.

US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said Taliban foot-soldiers and leaders could participate in Afghanistan’s future if they renounce violence, cut ties with Al-Qaeda and support the Afghan constitution.

But he doubted the opportunity would be seized by Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s one-eyed leader who is believed to be hiding in Pakistan and who, the Washington Post said last week, backs secret high-level peace talks with Kabul.

“From our view, Mullah Omar has been attached at the hip to bin Laden for some time. So, based on everything that we know about him today, in fact he will not meet the criteria that we have laid out,” Crowley told reporters.

“He had many opportunities during the ’90s and even after 9/11 to disassociate himself from Osama bin Laden. He chose not to,” Crowley said.

“So you know, there’s nothing that we see that indicates that Mullah Omar will, in fact, change his stripes. As a result, we don’t see that he qualifies to play a constructive role in Afghanistan’s future.”

Last week The Washington Post cited unnamed Afghan and Arab sources as saying the high-level peace talks were believed to involve delegates authorized by Mullah Omar and his Quetta Shura, the Afghan Taliban group based in Pakistan.

Mullah Omar and other top Taliban figures have insisted for years that US-led foreign forces must first leave Afghanistan before peace talks can begin.

But a source close to the talks told the Post that the leadership knows “that they are going to be sidelined,” and was negotiating with the government of President Hamid Karzai to ensure their positions are protected.

A senior State Department official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, suggested Quetta Shura members would be taking part in the talks, just not those close to Mullah Omar.

“I don’t think we’re ruling out participation by members of the Quetta Shura. I happen to believe personally that certain members of the Quetta Shura will not qualify,” the official said.

“The Quetta Shura includes Mullah Omar but we’ll see who’s willing to actually disassociate himself from Al-Qaeda and who won’t.”

US trying to thin Taliban with jobs, cash offers

The United States and its allies are stepping up efforts to persuade Afghan insurgents to put down their arms by negotiating with representatives of Mullah Mohammed Omar and other Taliban commanders and offering cash and jobs to low-level fighters, according to Pakistani, Middle Eastern and U.S. officials and analysts, The Washington Times has reported.

The efforts, coupled with an increased U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, are meant to weaken the insurgency and promote a negotiated end to the region’s violence, the paper said. “The strategy is to peel away so many fighters” from the insurgent chiefs that they will be left like “floating icebergs and have no one left to command,” the paper quoted Kenneth Katzman, an Afghanistan specialist at the Congressional Research Service as saying.

A Western diplomat based in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, who asked not to be named, confirmed that Pakistani and Saudi officials are using their “connections and influence within Afghan Taliban to elicit some meaningful way to end the deadlock,” the paper reported.

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US trying to thin Taliban with jobs, cash offers was first posted on December 18, 2009 at 6:53 pm.