Not content to pull out of Basrah before the security situation there could be settled, it seems the British have again sought to conduct negotiations with the Taliban, the group that sheltered al Qaeda prior to and after September 11.
On December 11, This is London reported that Prime Minister Gordon Brown was set to tell Parliament that "negotiation [with the Taliban] is the only way to bring peace to the war torn country." This report was not substantiated by the major British news outlets, and in fact the next day Prime Minister Brown stated there would be no negotiations with the Taliban.
But it appears the British have already conducted negotiations with the Taliban. The Telegraph reports:
Agents from MI6 entered secret talks with Taliban leaders despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain would not negotiate with terrorists, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Officers from the Secret Intelligence Service staged discussions, known as "jirgas", with senior insurgents on several occasions over the summer.
An intelligence source said: "The SIS officers were understood to have sought peace directly with the Taliban with them coming across as some sort of armed militia. The British would also provide 'mentoring' for the Taliban." ...
MI6's meetings with the Taliban took place up to half a dozen times at houses on the outskirts of Lashkah Gah and in villages in the Upper Gereshk valley, to the north-east of Helmand's main town.
The compounds were surrounded by a force of British infantry providing a security cordon.To maintain the stance that President Hamid Karzai's government was leading the negotiations the clandestine meetings took place in the presence of Afghan officials.
"These meetings were with up to a dozen Taliban or with Taliban who had only recently laid down their arms," an intelligence source said. "The impression was that these were important motivating figures inside the Taliban."
According to the paper, the Tory opposition is now looking into the report to determine if Prime Minister Brown misled them during the December 12 question and answer session in the House of Commons.
It should not be surprising that the British are willing to sit down with the Taliban to conduct direct talks. The source for the This is London report [which is no longer available online] stated that the British government does not view the Taliban as "united force," but a "disparate group of tribesmen infiltrated by foreign fighters." The same source held up Musa Qala as a success story:
"Musa Qala was a good example of what we are planning - once the town was stabilized people were ready to appoint judges, local police chiefs, start laying on service and start putting in power lines. But the Afghan government has got to demonstrate they can deliver and alternative strategy."
The British view of Musa Qala is quite different from what really occurred in the district over the past year. In October of 2006, the British withdrew from their small outpost in the district center after negotiating with who they claimed were "tribal elders" not aligned with the Taliban. Within days, the Taliban ran up the al rayah, the black banner of the terror group, in the district center.
By February 2007, the Taliban took overt military control of the district--it had de facto control from October 2006 onward. The Taliban opened recruiting centers, taxed residents, mounted attacks on neighboring districts, hanged and beheaded numerous "spies" in public, and implemented sharia law. The British, U.S., Afghan, and NATO allies just liberated Musa Qala from Taliban control this December.
The British view is that radical elements of the Taliban are controlled by "only a few hundred" leaders considered "'Tier 1' ... religious extremists and hard-core idealists, fully committed to a state governed by their own interpretation of Sharia law," but the Taliban has integrated with al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. The Taliban and al Qaeda cross train in camps, and have launched coordinated campaigns in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Members of the Taliban sit in on al Qaeda's Shura Majlis. As Sahab, al Qaeda's propaganda wing, releases Taliban media products.
The idea that the Taliban is a party that can be negotiated with led directly to the Taliban takeover of Musa Qala, which sparked a year of fierce fighting in the south. The Taliban viewed the handover of Musa Qala as a sign of weakness and redoubled efforts to take over districts in Helmand, Kandahar, and Farah provinces. Meanwhile, the Brits sent the absolute wrong message to the Afghan people by turning them back over to the Taliban.
