The Obama administration and Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, are determined to reject talks with Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, and have consistently worked to split his movement, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

"We have no illusion that Mullah Omar could ever join the government," General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Afghanistan, is quoted as saying in a cable to Washington on 20 January 2009.
"There will be no power-sharing with elements of the Taliban," said Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, in another cable citing the Taliban's "unpalatable social programmes" and links with al-Qaida.

Holbrooke led the US talks with the warring parties in Bosnia in 1995 and is sometimes described as a dove on whether the US should engage with Taliban leaders with a view to a coalition government in Kabul.
The secret cables show a united US front against talks – a position shared by Karzai. He has sometimes publicly floated the idea of dialogue with Omar and other top Taliban, but the cables show his private position is the opposite.

Karzai wants to persuade Taliban commanders and foot soldiers to defect and surrender. At the end of last year he even approached Saudi Arabia for cash to pay lower-level Taliban commanders to switch sides. The Saudi government responded favourably and offered to give defectors free trips for the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. A cable from January this year reports that an Obama adviser approved the idea, saying it would "offer a strong religious motivation and undercut the Taliban".

The cable from the US embassy in Kabul summarises a conversation between Karzai and Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, on 16 January. A key subject was what became known as the reconciliation and reintegration strategy when it was announced a few weeks later. Reintegration meant to get Taliban to surrender.

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November 05, 2013, 12:37:06 PM