Although ground commanders have been skeptical of negotiations, a senior military official said that all wars “end in a political process” and that “this one is no exception.” He described progress thus far as “getting the car out of the garage” in preparation for “a difficult journey ahead.”
An official said meetings with Mohammed Tayeb al-Agha, an aide to Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, began in November 2010. To convince themselves that Agha had authority from the top Taliban leadership, “we tried to develop questions,” the official said, “tests, if you will, to see if he could receive a question, seek an answer from people senior to him and then stick with it.”
Agha, the official said, has been “shown on a number of occasions to accurately reflect the leaders” of the organization. “He is very consistent in what he seeks and how he seeks it.” The last meeting, in Qatar, was in October.
Throughout the process, the administration briefed Karzai and congressional leaders, officials said, particularly as they neared tentative agreement on confidence-building measures.
Among those measures, the United States asked for a public Taliban renunciation of international terrorism — in essence, a repudiation of al-Qaeda — and a separate statement of support for democracy in Afghanistan.
The Taliban wanted an office outside Afghanistan where they could operate beyond the supervision of their hosts in Pakistan, the officials said. The Americans said they considered the neutral location a place where the insurgents could begin talking to the Afghan government.
The insurgents also presented a list of five Guantanamo detainees, all of whom held positions in the Taliban government in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. Human rights organizations have said that several of them were responsible for severe abuses, although U.S. officials said they have ascertained that the militants were not involved in killing Americans.
The five were to be transferred to house arrest in Qatar, a move that would require Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta to certify to Congress that they would not be released and would not pose a threat to the United States. Qatar also would agree not to transfer them onward to another location, including Afghanistan.
The final conversations, before Karzai squelched the deal, were over “sequencing,” one of the officials said. “Who goes first? What do they say?”
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