Report: Afghan Govt Leaks Kill Secret US-Taliban Talks

Talks Were 'The Real Thing' Before They Failed, Officials Insist

According to a new report by the Daily Telegraph, unnamed officials are insisting that the most recent “secret US-Taliban” talks, which one of the officials termed “the real thing” have collapsed.

The talks came to an abrupt halt after members of the Karzai government, reportedly nervous about being cut out of the deal, leaked information about the talks, including the identity of a top Taliban negotiator, Tayeb Agha, to the media.

The officials say the Taliban were split on the talks to begin with, with a number of the commanders expressing concern that they were just a US effort to divide the insurgency. This belief was fueled in no small part by US officials who have said publicly that the talks were just a US effort to divide the insurgency.

The Taliban involvement in the talks was therefore conditional, and one of the key conditions was absolute secrecy about the details of the discussion. Once this condition was broken the talks immediate collapsed, to be discarded on the ever-growing pile of talks which either failed, turned out to be lies, or turned out to be a scam by some random guy from Pakistan to bilk NATO out of money.

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.