Taliban leader in secret talks an impostor, report says

2010-11-24 01:59:31 GMT+7 (ICT)

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (BNO NEWS) -- The supposed Taliban leader that engaged in the reported secret talks with the Afghan government was an impostor, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

The Afghan government believed it was meeting with Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement. Afghan officials even announced at that moment that the talks appear to be showing promise towards a peaceful coexistence.

Recent developments unearthed that the alleged Taliban leader was in fact an impostor. In consequence, the NATO-assisted talks achieved little and the impostor ran away with money that the government gave him.

American officials said on Monday that they have given up hope that the man that held high-level discussions with Afghans was Mansour or any other member of the Taliban leadership. NATO and Afghan officials met three times with the man who came from Pakistan, where the Taliban have taken refuge.

The impostor even met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai as was flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and received at the presidential palace. The Afghan government agreed to the talks in the latest effort to end the nine-year war.

The leaders of the Taliban are believed to be hiding in Pakistan, possibly with the assistance of the Pakistani government, which receives billions of dollars in American aid. Most of the Taliban leaders have never been seen in person by U.S., NATO or Afghan officials.

U.S. officials said that they doubted from the start about the identity of the alleged Taliban leader Mansour, who is said to be the second-ranking official in the Taliban organization behind the founder Mullah Mohammed Omar.

The U.S. doubts increased after the third meeting held in Kandahar, as a man who met Mansour years before said that the alleged leader did not resemble him. Despite these claims, the Afghan government gave the supposed leader a large amount of money to persuade him to return to the talks.

The identity of the impostor is not known and others suspect that he may have been sent by the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence center. Pakistan is known to have helped harboring Taliban leaders as the same time it is helping the U.S. chasing Taliban cells in its territory.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2010-11-24

If you can't trust the Taliban, who can you trust...