Farcical talks

The element of farce that marks the effort to tackle the Taliban is sometimes hilarious, but also disturbing.

The element of farce that marks the effort to tackle the Taliban and win peace in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region is sometimes hilarious but also immensely disturbing given the gravity of the situation. We have heard accounts recently of the totally inept and confused attempts by the American administration to find a means to tackle the situation. Problems of a different nature exist in Pakistan and now it seems that the Afghan government, which has for some time been promoting peace with the Taliban as a bid to win much-needed peace in a country that threatens to crumble into anarchy, may have been duped by an imposter who portrayed himself as top Taliban commander Mullah Mohammad Mansoor, a member of the Quetta Shura, who reportedly met the top Aghan leadership, including President Hamid Karzai, in Kabul.

To rub salt — and a spot of chilli — into the wounds, Mansoor was stated to have been flown into Kabul by Nato — which has publically claimed it has no role in advocating peace with the Taliban, but is said to be tacitly involved. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke has been the latest to harp this line, which not everyone believes. The embarrassing story of the arrival of the convincing imposter has appeared in the US press and in the International Herald Tribune. President Karzai has denied meeting Mansoor, a man once tipped to take over as deputy head of the Quetta shura, but then the Afghan president’s credibility is not the best among world leaders.

Is it possible Pakistani intelligence had some role in all this? Their links with the Quetta Shura have been commented on often and it is hard to believe they would not know Mansoor. But this is only conjecture. What the latest little side story from a war, that simply refuses to end, tells us is that quite a lot is amiss. Till it is remedied we will see only more chaos, more disarray and, as such, a growing sense of the panic we now see in Washington and also Kabul.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.