Word: talibans
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...Zaeef took a different route. The ex-commander with a scholarly side who had risen in the Taliban government to become a deputy minister of mines, and the ambassador to Pakistan shortly before 9/11, now writes books on the Afghanistan conflict. Published in five languages, Zaeef's latest book, My Life with the Taliban, has received noteworthy mention in the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker. And his message to the U.S. and his erstwhile Taliban comrades is that the conflict in Afghanistan will have to be settled through negotiation. "I believe that is the only solution...
...parallel stories of Zakir and Zaeef embody the complexities that exist within the Taliban. Their shared religious fervor may explain why - despite NATO's intention to extend its massive assault on Marjah into a sweep through the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan - it may take years to militarily defeat the Taliban...
...Zakir, meanwhile, was engaged in hunger strikes to protest what he claimed was the guards' "disrespect to the Koran." Throughout his interrogation, he managed to hide the fact that he had been one of Taliban leader Mullah Omar's trusted deputies and a front-line commander against the forces of Northern Alliance chieftain Ahmed Shah Masood. Zakir duped his interrogators into believing that he was a nobody who had been dragooned into the ranks of the Taliban and who had never even heard of Osama bin Laden. All Prisoner No. 8 wanted, he told a military review board...
...Unlike other Taliban officials who defected after U.S.-led forces swept into Afghanistan, Zaeef still has credibility with Taliban fighters. He is said to be respected by Omar, whom he has known and fought alongside since he was a teenager in the 1980s, taking potshots at Soviet soldiers. Zaeef's views are said to reflect those of the Taliban leadership. As such, he may be poised to play a key role in any future peace talks between Karzai and the Taliban's governing council. And, according to Zaeef, there is room for maneuver. He insists that the Taliban...
...Pentagon policymakers insist that peace talks can't be held until the Taliban has been militarily weakened to the point where they no longer believe they can win the war. Nonsense, says Zaeef: "If America is honest about wanting peace, they should negotiate with us now." Washington, he says, is sending contradictory signals. "On one side, they say they want to talk, and yet they are sending more soldiers." And until U.S. intentions are clarified, he says, men like Zakir will keep on fighting...