by Eric Martin
If there was any one incident that could serve as a microcosm of our increasingly muddled, aimless and confused mission in Afghanistan, this would deserve serious consideration:
For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all.
In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little."It's not him," said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. "And we gave him a lot of money."
Joshua Foust is appropriately harsh:
Think about this for a moment: a man whose identity no one was able to verify was flown, by NATO, for face-to-face meetings with high-ranking members of the coalition (though Karzai denies having met Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the impersonated Taliban leader in question). We don't know what his intentions were, nor do we know what information he may have stolen for whatever his ultimate goals are. We can speculate all we want about what really happened: the impostor was out to grab cash ("we gave him a lot of money," one U.S. official lamented), he was an ISI agent sent to penetrate the negotiations process, and so on. But no matter how we spin it, this is hugely embarrassing for ISAF, for the war, and for any prospects of ending it soon.
Mullah Omar, who leads one group of Taliban fighters based in Quetta, has insisted from the beginning that the [widely reported] talks last month were not taking place. At the time, Filkins had written that Omar was being "explicitly being cut out" of the talks. Now, it seems that is because the talks weren't really occurring. [...]
But ISAF and Afghan officials spun the talksas evidence that the new, aggressive stance taken by General Petraeus, focused on killing mid-level commanders to ‘force' the Taliban to the negotiating table, was working. They were partially right: something had changed. But it wasn't the effectiveness of their tactics or strategy. Instead, this episode confirms what many Afghanistan watchers have long feared: the leadership of ISAF doesn't seem to have any idea what it's doing, who it's talking to, and (probably) who it is really killing.
Regarding that last point, Steve Hynd applies some gallows humor to reveal the very real limitations we face in that theater, and the tragic and likely counterproductive outcomes that result:
Can't ID a Talib leader across a table - but via a drone lens from 1000s of miles? No problem!
There has been a concerted effort of late to shift the narrative on the Afghanistan war from quagmire to discernible progress, from stalemate to progress, and this PR campaign is in the service of extending the war indefinitely (with some factions attempting to push the aspirational date to commence withdrawal from 2011 to 2014). Alex Strick van Lischoten points out, however, that there is little empirical basis to justify this optimism and, in some cases, the assertions seem little more than wishful thinking and self-delusion masquerading as fact.
There's a lot of that going around these days.
[UPDATE: Michael Cohen has a less snarky take, laying down some solid ideas to begin disengagement in earnest.]
an Afghani national ID should fix this
Posted by: cleek | November 23, 2010 at 03:40 PM
For me the defining incident of the war in Afghanistan took place on Sept. 5, 2002, less than a year after we attacked when an assailant dressed in the new uniform of the Afghan army tried to assassinate Karzai in Kandahar, a bystander grabbed the gunman probably saving Karzai’s life although one person in the entourage was wounded. I have never read a very detailed account of the event but American bodyguards (Navy special forces) who were in a trailing car then opened fire killing the assailant, the young citizen, and one of Karzai’s bodyguards.
And eight years later we are still killing innocent Afghan’s trying to do the right thing but caught in the crossfire. What an unholy mess.
Posted by: RogueDem | November 23, 2010 at 03:52 PM
Well, yeah, OK. But did they get any significant concessions from the guy?
Posted by: bobbyp | November 23, 2010 at 03:59 PM
my favorite bit from the article...
...after the first meeting, photos of him were shown to Taliban detainees who were believed to know Mr. Mansour. They signed off, the Afghan leader said.
gee, I wonder why "detainees" would tell their keepers what they wanted to hear? They "signed off" on his identity, which means that they didn't actually identify the person in the photograph, but merely confirmed that it was the person that the authorities wanted them to say it was.
Posted by: paul lukasiak | November 23, 2010 at 04:02 PM
This just proves we have to stay! I mean, how many other potential double agents/con men/Pakistani intelligence personnel have we been secretly negotating with and handing out substantial sums of cash to? If we leave now, we'll never know, plus all the time and money spent negotiating with the Faux Mr. Mansour will have been wasted.
Posted by: Ugh | November 23, 2010 at 04:38 PM
Ugh is right. There's a whole industry of double agents/con men/Pakistani intelligence personnel out there who are dependent on US investment. They need the stimulus.
Posted by: chris y | November 23, 2010 at 04:47 PM
Hmmm...
the Taliban leadership, ... is largely made up of barely literate clerics from the countryside,
And has been able to hold out against the most powerful military machine in the history of man for more than 9 years. Time to pack up and go.
Posted by: Ugh | November 23, 2010 at 04:51 PM
How can we be sure Eric Martin really wrote this post? And did Mansour ever room with Steven Wright?
Posted by: hairshirthedonist | November 23, 2010 at 04:56 PM
And has been able to hold out against the most powerful military machine in the history of man for more than 9 years.
Red Dawn wasn't so silly after all.
Posted by: hairshirthedonist | November 23, 2010 at 04:58 PM
Red Dawn wasn't so silly after all.
Yes it was. The Afghans have a whoooooole lot more experience at killing invaders than just about anyone else on earth. What they hadn't learned by the time of the Red
DawnMenace we taught them!Win! Win!
This would be tragic by its lonesome but to have compounded the ruination with Iraq, well, there's nothing to say.
Posted by: Tom M | November 23, 2010 at 05:08 PM