Karzai Claims ‘Taliban Impostor’ Story a Lie

Insists He Never Met With Fake Mullah Mansour

While most of those involved in the scandal regarding the impostor Taliban leader Mullah Mansour are scrambling to do damage control or trying to figure out where the peace talks stand now that it turns out the leader of the insurgents side was just some guy looking to bilk them out of money, Afghan President Hamid Karzai took an entirely different tack.

He insists it never even happened.

Despite being independently reported by a myriad of media outlets the world over and a number of officials confirming the situation, Karzai insists the entire thing was invented by the Taliban and is “propaganda.”

Karzai added to that the claim that no official in the government ever met with any Mullah Mansours, fake or otherwise, and that the foreign press was responsible for trying to embarrass him. Reports suggest that the fake Mullah was escorted to Karzai’s palace and was given large sums of money during “reconciliation” talks.

President Karzai’s claims of media complicity in Taliban plots against him are nothing new, but the claim in this case seems particularly difficult to defend, as so many different outlets appear to have confirmed the fake mullah story.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.