OTTAWA—In a significant move, Canadian and NATO officials in southern Afghanistan are involved in sensitive negotiations with Taliban fighters after discreet backroom signals from insurgents that they might be willing to lay down arms. The overture for potential peace came when a faction of Taliban insurgents in Panjwai region southwest of Kandahar signalled it wanted to talk to NATO's International Security Assistance Force or the United Nations about disarming. "They didn't want to have a dialogue on disarming or stopping fighting with the Afghan government directly," one source told the Toronto Star.| Some of the Talibunnies finally figuring out that traipsing around the countryside, AK in hand, isn't as glamorous as it looked on the recruiting poster in Peshawar? |
Publicly, though, allied forces are taking a back seat, anxious not to undermine an already shaky Afghan authority.
| Shaky authority? Karzai and the government seem pretty settled to me. |
Allied troops have had some success convincing individual Taliban fighters to give up their weapons. Canadians scored a victory in June when Mullah Ibrahim, from a district west of Kandahar, repented for his time as a Taliban leader.
But what makes this latest case different is that a group of insurgents has come forward.
"How big they are, that's anyone's guess," one official said.
In the tangled world of Afghan diplomacy, officials were cautioning against hope of a quick resolution. "Nothing is done in a really direct manner. It's protracted," said one official.
Slowing the pace even further is the real risk of reprisal served up by hardliners against the splinter Taliban group for making an offer of reconciliation. A U.S. expert cautioned talks aren't likely bring long-term improvement to Afghanistan's perilous security situation. "What would matter if this became a cascading effort, if you had larger numbers of Taliban that decided to jump ship," said Seth Jones, a political scientist with Rand Corp., a Washington-based think-tank, who's researched the insurgency.