The New York Times said yesterday 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 [Afghan] 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 Oct. 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 Kabul 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 Islamist insurgents, said last month the talks were little more than “networking” and were still far from anything like a ceasefire.
The New York Times said yesterday 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 that includes reintegrating Taliban footsoldiers 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 recognized, including in Washington and 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.
Secretive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, believed to be in hiding in Pakistan with the rest of the Taliban leadership, last week again ruled out talks, saying the subject was an attempt to “throw dust in the eyes” of Afghans.
NATO leaders agreed at a two-day summit in Lisbon last week to set 2014 as a target to withdraw all combat forces from Afghanistan, although Sedwill and other leaders have tried to temper that timeline, saying the handover could spill into 2015.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
RSS