With mixed feelings of anger and amusement, the shrewd diplomatic negotiators in Kabul blinked in disbelief as they realised that the bearded man with his trademark turban that they had paid handsomely for participating in the crucial political talks was not after all the number two Taliban leader after Mullah Mohammad Omer.
Secret or open talks with the former mujahideen or the present Taliban representatives have been going on for the last many years. In what appeared to be the latest round in the fall of 2010, preliminary talks between some Taliban men and the government of President Hamid Karzai began near the Afghan capital with the help of American and NATO forces, which gave safe passage to Taliban negotiators. Much to the chagrin of Islamabad, the talks did not involve the Pak government, known to have a clout with the Taliban. Cynical observers believed that Kabul probably hoped to split the Taliban but the strategy risked a backlash from Pakistan, which understandably wanted a role in any future settlement.
Much like it happened in a Shakespearean comedy of errors, a participant in the November talks, believed to be Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, one of the senior men in the Taliban movement, was unmasked as an impostor. The episode underscored the bizarre nature of the atmosphere in which Afghan and American leaders searched for ways to bring the nine-year-old war to an end.
Supposedly the second-ranking Taliban man after Mullah Omar, the impostor in the garb of Mullah Mansour met Karzai and other officials at least twice in recent months to discuss peace negotiations. Officials in Afghanistan said that the man was flown to Kabul on British military aircraft for the meetings and persuasively portrayed himself as an insurgent who spoke for the dissident movement. However, when photographs of the man were shown to experts who actually knew the insurgent leader, the Afghan officials brushed him aside as an impostor.
The incident once again highlighted the difficulty of separating truth from deception on the path to peace and had a visibly sobering effect on those who initially had high hopes about how quickly the negotiations were progressing. Commenting on the development, a senior Nato official said: “The verification of who is representing who and who they actually claim they represent, is going to be an early part of the problem but eventually if the other side gets more serious about the exercise, it will be less of an ambiguity”. The clarification appeared to be meant for the audience back home but speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said that no American money went to the impostor.
Afghan officials said that they were unaware of motivations the man was pursuing in taking the risk to claim he was a member of the Taliban’s leadership council, known in the West as the Quetta Shura, and daring to be escorted to Kabul to meet Karzai.
Islamabad has so far been silent on the matter which led to speculation that Pakistan might have sent the man to test the waters and to see what the Afghan government was offering. They also thought that it might have been a business opportunity as insurgents potentially stand to make large sums of money if they defect.
Mansour was said to have taken over as the number two Taliban commander after Abdul Ghani Baradar was arrested in February this year by Pak officials. The Afghans felt convinced that Islamabad arrested Baradar because he had begun hobnobbing with the Afghan government about possible negotiations without its consent. American officials pursuing lower-level Taliban defections have also struggled with identifying who they are dealing with. For example, a senior NATO official said that about 40 per cent of the time the men turning themselves over to the government might not actually be the Taliban fighters they claimed to be but rather were looking for money, protection or something else.
Equally perplexed was a US official who commented: “One would suspect that in our multibillion-dollar intelligence community there would be the means to differentiate between an authentic Quetta Shura emissary and a shopkeeper. On the other hand, it does not surprise me in the slightest. It may have been Mullah Omar posing as a shopkeeper; I’m sure that our intelligence whizzes wouldn’t have known”.
However, General David Petraeus was more forthright. Speaking in Berlin, he seemed to confirm the incident, first reported in The New York Times and Washington Post, that the man claiming to be Mullah Mansour during negotiations was an impersonator. The General described the Taliban outreach over the past six-to-eight months as preliminary, saying some of the Taliban leaders had been recognised as being legitimate – but not all. Showing a realistic attitude, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said he did not have much information about the issue, but admitted to the fact that intelligence was a difficult thing in these circumstances.
Like some people in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Karzai felt offended. Challenging reports about Mansour, he said he never met anybody by that name and dubbed them as propaganda: “Don’t listen to the international media regarding news about Taliban. Most of it is propaganda. The rest of the media may be fine but don’t trust the New York Times,” he warned.
The real Mansour was the civil aviation minister during Taliban rule and now acts as a senior member of the Taliban’s ruling council in Quetta. If true, the claims that he was not really involved in talks would be a blow to Kabul’s bid to find a solution to the ongoing war. It also raised questions about the credibility of some NATO officials who facilitated contacts between Taliban figures and Afghan officials.
The impostor was believed to be a shopkeeper in Quetta. It was not clear why officials found it difficult to identify him especially when a number of former Taliban were in parliament and also in the 70-member High Peace Council recently formed by Karzai to find a political solution to the insurgency.
Although senior in the Quetta Shura, Mansour was not promoted to second-in-command after Mullah Baradar’s arrest. Mansour was passed over in favour for Maulvi Zakir Qayyum, a former Guantanamo detainee. Released into Afghan custody in 2007, Qayyum was freed four months later when he rejoined the Taliban.
http://statesman.com.pk/buk-2/bk%2011%2029.htm
