Daily Beast reports: Nearly one year after announcing it was “suspending all dialogue” with the U.S. over its “ever-changing position,” the Taliban seem keen to enter into preliminary peace talks once again. The Taliban’s sudden desire to reopen talks with the U.S., and perhaps even with the government of President Hamid Karzai, whom the insurgency has consistently denounced as an unrepresentative American puppet, represents a sudden and dramatic U-turn. Over the past month a number of high-ranking Taliban officials have been traveling between their Pakistani safe haven in Quetta and the Gulf state of Qatar, the scene of the previous talks, apparently in an effort to set up shop and to rekindle the dialogue. “Our leaders are now regularly running between Qatar and Quetta,” says Zabihullah, a Taliban political operative whose information has proved reliable in the past.

Amir Khan Motaqi, the important head of the insurgency’s propaganda office recently made the trip, and reported back to Quetta. Abdul Wasi, the former deputy head of the Taliban’s Red Crescent Society, who was released from an Afghan jail one year ago, arrived in Qatar last month in order to set up a permanent office for negotiations. Several Taliban officials who are now in Qatar living in guesthouses are in the process of moving into apartments and houses. Some are bringing their families.

According to two high-ranking Taliban, the family of deceased Defense Minister Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, who died in Pakistani captivity nearly three years ago, is being moved from Karachi to Qatar, along with the family of former insurgent spokesman Ustad Yasir, who is still imprisoned in Pakistan, in an effort to begin building a small Taliban-friendly community in Qatar and receive released insurgent prisoners.

All this recent traffic between Quetta and Qatar, with Pakistan’s approval and assistance, shows that the growing Taliban delegation is no longer isolated from the leadership council in Quetta as it was in the past. Over the past two years, timely communication between the negotiating team in Qatar and the ruling shura, or council, in Quetta was practically nonexistent.

Not anymore.

“The communication gap between Quetta and Qatar has been removed,” says a former senior Taliban minister. [Continue reading…]

Rajiv Chandrasekaran reports: As U.S. and NATO forces have evicted insurgents from a broad swath of southern Afghanistan, senior Taliban commanders have shifted toward a new battlefield strategy, one less focused on reclaiming lost territory and more on winning the next phase of the 11-year-old war.

U.S. military and intelligence officials believe that Taliban commanders, driven by a combination of desperation and savvy, have started assigning more of their suicide fighters to conduct audacious attacks against prominent targets across the country, including the U.S. Embassy and well-fortified NATO bases.

Insurgent leaders, they say, have redoubled a campaign to assassinate key Afghan government and security officials who are likely to play leadership roles in the country once foreign troops depart. And by happenstance or meticulous planning — U.S. military officials are not sure which — the Taliban has managed to kill numerous Western troops by joining the ranks of the Afghan army.

“The Taliban are fighting a political war while the United States and its allies are still fighting a tactical military war,” said Joshua Foust, a former U.S. intelligence analyst who has worked in Afghanistan and is now a fellow with the American Security Project. “We remain focused on terrain. They are focused on attacking the transition process and seizing the narrative of victory.”

The impact of the strategic shift, which has occurred gradually over the past year, has been profound. The high-profile assaults and assassinations have prompted new doubts among Afghans about the ability of their government and security forces to keep the insurgents at bay once NATO’s combat mission ends in 2014. The infiltration of the security forces led the top allied operational commander in Kabul on Monday to order extraordinary new restrictions on joint patrols and other missions, a move that strikes at the heart of the U.S. and NATO strategy to operate in closer partnership with Afghan soldiers. [Continue reading…]

Matt Waldman writes: We should welcome the news that the Taliban are reportedly open to the idea of negotiating a general ceasefire and even a peace settlement. The peace process in Afghanistan is at risk from spoilers on all sides and fraught with challenges. But we owe it to the Afghan people, and to all those who have suffered in the conflict, to give it a try.

It would be a grave mistake to assume the Taliban would only settle for absolute power. Taliban leaders know they stand no chance of seizing power now or in the near future. They know that even coming close would reinvigorate and potentially augment the coalition of forces ranged against them. That could trigger a civil war, which they are anxious to avoid. Even if they could seize power, they would be pounded by drones, ostracised and dependent on Pakistan. The leadership craves the opposite: safety, recognition and independence.

The Taliban rose to power in the 1990s, promising to bring order in place of turmoil. But since 2001, the expectations of ordinary Afghans have changed. They not only want order and justice but reliable public services, basic freedoms and a say over their own affairs. Antediluvian theocracy has had its day, and thinking Talibs know it.

The Arab awakening has not gone unheeded. A Taliban think-piece leaked last year asked what kind of elections they should support and how the government should meet the people’s needs. They yearn to be taken seriously as a credible, national political force. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: In the cloistered circles of the Taliban high command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar had no equal.

As military chief of the hardline Islamic movement that once ruled Afghanistan and was ousted by a U.S.-led alliance, he oversaw the campaign of ambushes and roadside bombings that proved his fighters could threaten the most advanced armies.

When the talismanic leader was caught in the Pakistani city of Karachi in 2010, some Afghan officials hoped the magnetism he forged in war would persuade his former comrades to start talking peace. Indeed, news that Islamabad had allowed Afghan officials to visit Baradar two months ago sparked speculation in both countries of the prospects for a settlement.

Instead, Pakistan’s refusal to hand him over to Afghanistan symbolises one of the biggest obstacles to negotiations: a legacy of bone-deep suspicion dividing the neighbours.

Afghanistan fears that Pakistan is only pretending to support dialogue while its intelligence agencies harbour Taliban leaders to project influence across their shared frontier.

Any move to repatriate Baradar would raise Afghan hopes that Pakistan is willing to play a genuinely constructive role and open the door to other prominent insurgents.

“Releasing Mullah Baradar would encourage other Taliban leaders to embrace reconciliation,” Ismail Qasemyar, an adviser to Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, told Reuters. “It would be a huge symbolic step.” [Continue reading…]

Julian Borger reports: One of the Taliban’s most senior commanders has admitted the insurgents cannot win the war in Afghanistan and that capturing Kabul is “a very distant prospect”, obliging them to seek a settlement with other political forces in the country.

In a startlingly frank interview in Thursday’s New Statesman, the commander – described as a Taliban veteran, a confidant of the leadership, and a former Guantánamo inmate – also uses the strongest language yet from a senior figure to distance the Afghan rebels from al-Qaida.

“At least 70% of the Taliban are angry at al-Qaida. Our people consider al-Qaida to be a plague that was sent down to us by the heavens,” the commander says. “To tell the truth, I was relieved at the death of Osama [bin Laden]. Through his policies, he destroyed Afghanistan. If he really believed in jihad he should have gone to Saudi Arabia and done jihad there, rather than wrecking our country.”

The New Statesman does not identify the Taliban commander, referring to him only as Mawlvi but the interview was conducted by Michael Semple, a former UN envoy to Kabul during the Taliban era who has maintained contacts with members of its leadership, and served on occasion as a diplomatic back-channel to the insurgents.

Semple, who is now at the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, said the commander’s identity had to be protected because the Taliban was highly sensitive about unauthorised pronouncements on the movement’s behalf, but he added there was no doubt about Mawlvi’s role within the movement.

“I maintain dialogue over time rather than have one-off contacts so I know who Mawlvi is and I know everyone he is talking to,” he said. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: India has done well to resist U.S. calls for greater involvement in Afghanistan, the Taliban said in a rare direct comment about one of the strongest opponents of the hardline Islamist group that was ousted from power in 2001.

The Taliban also said they won’t let Afghanistan be used as a base against another country, addressing fears in New Delhi that Pakistan-based anti-India militants may become more emboldened if the Taliban return to power.

The Afghan Taliban have longstanding ties to Pakistan and striking a softer tone towards its arch rival India could be a sign of a more independent course.

Direct talks with the United States – which have since been suspended – and an agreement to open a Taliban office in Qatar to conduct formal peace talks have been seen as signs of a more assertive stance.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta this month encouraged India to take a more active role in Afghanistan as most foreign combat troops leave in 2014. The Taliban said Panetta had failed.

“He spent three days in India to transfer the heavy burden to their shoulders, to find an exit, and to flee from Afghanistan,” the group said on its English website.

“Some reliable media sources said that the Indian authorities did not pay heed to (U.S.) demands and showed their reservations, because the Indians know or they should know that the Americans are grinding their own axe.”

There had been no assurance for the Americans, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters on Sunday.

“It shows that India understands the facts,” he said.

India is one of the biggest donors in Afghanistan, spending about $2 billion on projects ranging from the construction of highways to the building of the Afghan parliament. It has also won an iron ore concession in a $11 billion investment.

But New Delhi has avoided involvement in bolstering Afghan security, except for running courses for small groups of Afghan army officers at military institutions in India.

“No doubt that India is a significant country in the region, but is also worth mentioning that they have full information about Afghanistan because they know each other very well in the long history,” the Taliban said.

“They are aware of the Afghan aspirations, creeds and love for freedom. It is totally illogical they should plunge their nation into a calamity just for the American pleasure.” [Continue reading…]

Luke Mogelson writes: When the stranger unbolted the cell door and whispered for them to hurry, Rahim assumed that somewhere in the prison a fight must have broken out. It was the middle of the night, and normally the heavy metal door remained locked until the morning call to prayer. For the past five months, Rahim had shared this cell, in Kandahar’s Sarposa Prison, with five other captured insurgents, two of whom he’d fought alongside in the fiercely contested district of Panjwai. Now, from where they lay on old blankets and cushions on the floor, all five gazed uncertainly at the man standing in their doorway. “We are your friends,” the man said. “There is a tunnel over here. Come quickly and get inside it.”

Rahim and his cellmates stepped into the prison’s dimly lit lime green corridor. At the passageway’s far end, a metal gate sealed the cell-block entrance. Every ten feet or so, solid black doors led to more communal cells. Nearly 500 Taliban occupied this part of Sarposa, called the political block. Some were military commanders and shadow-government officials, others hardened foot soldiers and young recruits. Their arrests represented years of effort by coalition forces to quell a resuscitated insurgency and impose some semblance of law in one of the least stable regions in Afghanistan. Following the stranger down the long hall, Rahim noticed that most of the cells were now empty.

The group made its way quietly but without too much concern for the guards; Sarposa’s officers seldom patrolled the political block. Once in the morning and once in the evening they came to take attendance; otherwise, the Taliban were left to care for themselves. Within the block’s three contiguous wings, a council of elders resolved disputes, prisoners knitted blankets and clothes for those lacking them, and in an enclosed courtyard a detained imam led prayers five times a day. The cells themselves were lavishly furnished with comfort items delivered in large plastic bags by visitors every weekend—cushions, blankets, rugs, electric fans, and lamps. Periodic security checks invariably uncovered mobile phones secreted in the floors and walls. Since the Taliban consider music un-Islamic, radios were nonexistent. Instead, for amusement, inmates flipped over metal soup bowls and beat them in time with religious chants. As Rahim and his cellmates moved down the corridor, their footfalls were mu±ed by such a drumming.

Near the gated entrance at the end of the corridor, the stranger ushered the group into a cell adorned with old maps, embroidered tapestries, and a mirror hanging from a coatrack, decorated with an etching of an AK-47. A blue carpet had been pulled back from one corner of the cell to reveal a triangular hole in the floor. Rahim approached the jagged opening and peered inside. The striated walls tunneled down through half a foot of concrete, through an equally thin layer of foundational stone, and finally through some six feet of brown earth. Several prisoners gathered at its edge. Some were young fighters; a few were geriatrics or amputees. Rahim was in his early twenties but had lost his left leg a year earlier to an IED and now used a prosthesis. He watched an old man toss his crutches aside and lower himself into the floor. Rahim did the same.

The dirt below was dry and soft. It was so crowded that when Rahim fell to his knees and started to crawl, he bumped into the man ahead of him. As he inched forward, another prisoner jumped into the hole behind him. On all fours, his back scraping against the ceiling, Rahim wormed his way forward. Whoever had burrowed the passage had installed a series of light bulbs that hung from an electrical cord. But by now many of the bulbs had shattered, broken by passing prisoners, and pieces of glass littered the tunnel floor. After a few hundred feet, it was almost completely dark. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s one-eyed leader, seems to have taken a page from George W. Bush’s playbook.

Just as the former president declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq years before the war there ended, the Taliban made their own victory declaration this weekend, even though roughly 130,000 coalition troops were still fighting in Afghanistan — and keeping the Afghan government firmly in power.

No matter, suggested the Taliban, which calls itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, in a statement bluntly titled: “Formal Proclamation of Islamic Emirate’s Victory.” The American push to open talks is proof that the insurgents are winning, the Taliban reasoned.

“It is but sheer determination, religious and ideological adherence and unequalled sacrifices displayed by true Afghan Mujahid nation for the last decade that today regional and world powers are after to reach mutual understanding about the country,” the statement said in the Taliban’s typically fractured English.

The coalition declined to comment on the Taliban’s statement.

Most American and Afghan officials would surely dispute the Taliban’s logic. But taken as a statement of intent, the Taliban’s declaration offers an instructive glimpse into their thinking. For them, a seat across the table from the Americans – and, if a settlement is reached, a formal role in the Afghan government — may be the victory they’ve been fighting for.