Word: zaeef
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Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul and Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef were both held by the U.S. at Guantánamo. Both were senior Taliban commanders, and both say they were subjected to solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, countless interrogations and beatings. But when they were released back home in their native Afghanistan, the two men's paths diverged radically...
...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...
...with former Taliban leaders and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in Mecca to discuss Afghanistan's problems over a sunset feast of more than 100 dishes. Both Karzai's government and Afghanistan's current Taliban leadership deny that any negotiations took place. But one of the attendees, Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former representative of the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in Pakistan before its overthrow in 2001, characterized the meeting to TIME as a "consultation about the future of Afghanistan, about stability, about peace and what we can do to bring it to our country...
...problem with any potential Taliban agreement lies in incentives. Chaos in Afghanistan has always played to the Taliban's advantage, which makes the notion that its leaders could be seduced by promises of stability myopic. Besides, Zaeef, who is no longer a member of the Taliban leadership but still adheres to the Taliban philosophy, says the Taliban are not fighting for power but for ideology. "Until the Americans and other foreigners leave, this war is not for share in the government, but a war of obligation, a holy jihad...
...group is still a principal financial supporter, and as such would have input on major decisions that the Taliban make. Needless to say, it will be impossible for any negotiations to take place unless the Taliban renounce all ties with the terrorist group. That's an unlikely scenario, says Zaeef. "I am not sure the Taliban will say to al-Qaeda, 'Leave the country and don't support us,' because there is no one else funding the Taliban, so there is no way they would beak with their key supporters...