Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor

[GUNNER]

British MI6 Promoted Peace Talks Impostor

LONDON, Nov 26, 2010 - British spies promoted an impostor whom they believed was a top Taliban commander key to the Afghan peace process, paying him several hundred thousand dollars, reports said Friday.

Britain's foreign intelligence service MI6 believed the man to be insurgent leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, a figure capable of negotiating with US and Afghan officials, The Times and The Washington Post reported.

Agents even flew the man on Royal Air Force transport planes from Pakistan to Kabul on several occasions, but it now appears he was either a minor rebel, a shopkeeper or even just a conman, the reports said.

In an interview with the Post, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's chief of staff Mohammad Umer Daudzai said the British brought the man purporting to Mullah Mansour to meet Karzai in July or August.

But an Afghan at the meeting knew "this is not the man," the Post quoted him as saying.

"This shows that this process should be Afghan-led and fully Afghanized," Daudzai said.

"The last lesson we draw from this: International partners should not get excited so quickly with those kind of things... Afghans know this business, how to handle it."

Britain's Foreign Office refused to confirm or deny the reports about the fake Taliban leader but admitted that it provides "practical help for Afghan reconciliation initiatives".

"We can neither confirm nor deny operational detail on stories like this," a spokeswoman said.

"Reconciliation is an Afghan-led process. We support President Karzai's three conditions for this: renouncing violence, cutting ties with Al-Qaeda and working within the constitutional framework.

"As the Foreign Secretary has said, we can provide practical help for Afghan reconciliation initiatives."

The Times said MI6 initially believed it had made a "historic breakthrough" in promoting talks between the Afghan government and Mansour, an ex-Taliban government minister and currently second to Mullah Omar in its leadership.

Intelligence officers based in Islamabad made contact with the man and it was believed that the US had helped Britain check the man's bona fides, The Times reported.

He was then flown from the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta to Kabul on Royal Air Force Hercules planes on several occasions.

Afghan officials told The Times that a meeting took place with Karzai in his Kabul palace, although Karzai denied on Tuesday that there had been any such meeting.

"British intelligence was naive and there was wishful thinking on our part," a senior Afghan government official told The Times.

The US Central Intelligence Agency was reportedly sceptical of British claims because the man claming to be Mansour "was a few inches shorter than their intelligence indicated Mansour is," the Post said.

He also failed to turn up with people he promised to bring, it added.

But the former US representative in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, Bill Harris, told The Times that the embarrassing mistake was not Britain's alone, saying "something this stupid generally requires teamwork."

After the story broke Tuesday in The New York Times, General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Afghanistan, told a press briefing in Germany he was not surprised.

"There was scepticism about one of these all along and it may well be that scepticism was well-founded," he said Tuesday.

The New York Times has reported that the man who had been posing as Mullah Mansour disappeared after the farce.

"It should have been the Afghans themselves who should have pointed out the almighty ****-up," a source told the London Times. "Sometimes NATO doesn't know one bearded, turbanned Taliban leader from another."

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

i guess it was a setup to think how the rest of the parties behave...!!!

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

one day theyl get OBL and after DNA testing thel know he was an imposter playing Michal Jackson...!!!

 

[Malik Usman]

If this is true... it will be a big embarrassment to NATO and who knows the guy may actually be Taliban being there on the negotiating table to collect the money. This whole table negotiation thing is turning out to be a mess. The Taliban cannot be trusted on anything.

Reminds me of the Swat negotiation with the Talibs by the Pakistan govt. .. at the end everything goes down the drain with these fellas.

At the moment it is still a speculation. So lets see how the drama unfolds.

This is not Talibans that you can't trust..........its Americans, their history shows they always deceived their friends....two examples are in Iran and Phlipines history. That's why Taliban's are hesitating to trust on them....who knows they will capture and will get info of their safe hidings when that man will return to them after negotiations.

 

[AstanoshKhan]

Karzai Aide Blames British for Taliban Impostor

President Hamid Karzai’s chief of staff has said British authorities brought a fake Taliban commander into sensitive meetings with the Afghan government.

The British embassy refused to confirm or deny the remarks, made in an interview with the Washington Post.

A man described as Mullah Mansour, a senior Taliban commander, was flown to Kabul for a meeting with President Karzai.

Now it is claimed he was really a Pakistani shopkeeper.

UK government officials told the BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner that no British taxpayers’ money was used to fund the bogus Taliban negotiator.

They say the money paid to him was Afghan government money and was a fraction of the amount mentioned in some press reports.

But they confirmed the man in question has disappeared.

The impersonator reportedly met officials three times and was even flown on a Nato aircraft to Kabul.

Mystery man

But doubts arose after an Afghan who knew Mullah Mansour said he did not recognise the man.

The faker then vanished, but not before he had been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to reports.

Mr Karzai’s chief of staff, Mohammad Umer Daudzai, told the Washington Post British diplomats had brought the impostor to meet Mr Karzai in July or August.

“The last lesson we draw from this: International partners should not get excited so quickly with those kind of things,” Mr Daudzai told the newspaper.

He added: “Afghans know this business, how to handle it. We handle it with care, we handle it with a result-based approach, with very less damage to all the other processes.”

UK government officials said on Friday that the money given to the impostor came from Afghan government coffers, not from British taxpayers.

The unnamed officials also told BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner that the payment had been a fraction of the sums reported.

The BBC’s Paul Wood in Kabul says if there was indeed British involvement, the question is whether this was logistical support or something more active.

He says full negotiations to end this conflict still seem a long way off – and the case of the Taliban impostor will not have helped matters.

Unnamed senior US officials told the Washington Post that the Mansour impersonator was “the Brits’ guy”.

They said the Americans had “healthy scepticism” from the start because their intelligence had suggested Mullah Mansour would be a few inches taller than the man claiming to be the Taliban commander.

The UK’s Times newspaper reports that the impostor was promoted by British overseas intelligence agency MI6, which was convinced it had achieved a major breakthrough.

The real identity of the faker remains a mystery.

Some reports suggest he was a shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta.

It is still not clear whether he had any links to the Taliban or if he was simply a conman.

Another theory is he could have been a Pakistani intelligence agent.

Western diplomats have previously conceded that some of those claiming to represent the Taliban have turned out to be frauds.

The real Mr Mansour was civil aviation minister during Taliban rule and is now said to be in charge of weapons procurement for the insurgents.

The Afghan government’s meetings with the Taliban – fake or otherwise – have been described as contacts rather than negotiations.

 

[muse]

This charge against the English is very strong stuff indeed - look for trouble ahead between Afghanistan and the UK and US and the UK ---- but look at who UK are playing it:


November 26, 2010
Britain Keeps Silent on Afghan Impostor Claim
By ALAN COWELL

PARIS — The authorities in London withheld a formal response on Friday to a reported accusation by a senior Afghan official that the British introduced an impostor posing as a high Taliban commander into the presidential palace in Kabul to meet President Hamid Karzai.

News of the embarrassing ruse emerged earlier this week in an article in The New York Times saying that a man identifying himself as Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement, had held three meetings with NATO and Afghan officials, encouraging hopes of a negotiated settlement to a nine-year war.

The fake Taliban leader even met with President Karzai, after being flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace, officials told The Times.

The episode underscored the uncertain and even bizarre nature of the atmosphere in which Afghan and American leaders are searching for ways to bring the American-led war to an end.

In its Friday editions, The Washington Post quoted President Karzai’s chief of staff as saying that the British introduced the impostor and warning that foreigners should not get involved in negotiations with the Taliban.

The chief of staff, Mohammad Umer Daudzai, said that unidentified British officials brought the impostor to meet Mr. Karzai in July or August. Afghan intelligence later determined that the visitor was actually a shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta.

His remarks seemed to reflect a growing hostility among Afghan officials toward Western diplomatic interference in Afghan policy matters, despite the billions of dollars spent by the international coalition to support the Karzai government.

Asked to comment on the report on Friday, a spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office in London said only: “We do not comment on operational matters.”

But, if borne out, the report would come at a delicate time for the British intelligence services, under pressure to be more open about their operations and likely to be deeply embarrassed by the spectacle of being duped in a country where they devote much attention to intelligence-gathering.

Only last month, Sir John Sawers, the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, highlighted cooperation between British and American spy agencies “an especially powerful contributor to U.K. security.”

While there had been whispers in Washington that the British had introduced the impostor, Mr. Daudzai’s comments were the most direct assignation of blame for the debacle, The Washington Post said. It also said that American officials have “long characterized the British as more aggressive than the Americans in pushing for a political settlement to end the war.”