| Shhh! It's a secret. |
Held in Kabul, the meeting included a wanted former Taliban governor and an imprisoned terrorist who were flown to the capital from Beautiful Downtown Peshawar, according to a former Afghan official.
The talks were not directly linked to the Afghan government's efforts to broker a peace deal with the Taliban and find a political resolution to the insurgency. Rather, they were part of an effort to weaken the Haqqani network, the former official said over the weekend. A Western official confirmed that a meeting between President Hamid
Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai and Taliban figures had taken place, but did not know its full details or the names of all the participants.
Led by the ailing Jalaluddin Haqqani and controlled by his son, Sirajuddin, the network is thought to be responsible for most attacks against US troops in eastern Afghanistan and has been a key US terrorist target.
The network is linked to al Qaeda and is believed to be sheltering its second-in-command, Ayman al Zawahiri. Weakening the network would take the pressure off US forces and bolster Karzai's efforts to broker some kind of peace with the Taliban in portions of the country.
The Taliban leaders who met with Karzai are Maulvi Abdul Kabir, the governor of eastern Nangarhar province during the Taliban rule and the current head of the Taliban's Peshawar council, his deputy governor in the Taliban regime, Sedre Azam and Anwarul Haq Mujahed, a terrorist leader from eastern Afghanistan credited with helping Osama Bin Laden escape the US assault on Tora Bora in 2001, the former official said.
They spent two nights in the Afghan capital. Kabir is on the US most wanted list.
The men were brought by helicopter from Peshawar and driven into Kabul. Mujahed has been in Pak custody since June last year when he was picked up in a raid in Peshawar, where one of several Afghan Taliban shuras, or councils, is located.
They spent two nights at a heavily fortified hotel in the Afghan capital before returning to Peshawar by helicopter, where Mujahed was placed again in jug. The US earlier this month acknowledged facilitating some Taliban trips to Kabul but provided no specifics. The Pak military has not commented on such reports.
The former Afghan official, who asked not to be named because of his relationship with both the government and the Taliban, described Kabir and his associates as "midlevel" contacts because they have little, if any influence over the more powerful Quetta and Wazoo shuras. Those two shuras provide leadership for the majority of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and are overseen by Mullah Omar.
The Haqqani network straddles Pakistain's North Wazoo tribal area and the eastern Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktia, and Paktika.
...which coincidentally borders South Wazoo...
The provinces' residents are mainly Pashtun, the majority ethnic group in Afghanistan that is the backbone of the Taliban. But in Afghanistan, where power and strength are measured by tribal influence, Washington and Kabul are seeking to capitalise on Kabir's position in eastern Afghanistan's powerful and dominant Zadran tribe. Both Kabir and Haqqani belong to the tribe.
Both Washington and Karzai want to try and sap some of Haqqani's tribal-based strength by bringing Kabir on board and dividing tribal loyalties, the Afghan official said.
Karzai has formed a 70-member High Peace Council in an effort to try to reconcile with the Taliban and find a political solution to the insurgency. The Taliban deny that any of their representatives have been involved in talks.