The “Fake Taliban Negotiator”: Was it a Double Hoax?

Does this Official Story make sense to you? According to the Official Story, sometime in the middle of last year a simple shopkeeper from Quetta (Pakistan) passed himself off as a high-ranking member of the Taliban and persuaded someone to introduce him to someone who would put him into contact with NATO command in Afghanistan. Then, “on behalf of the Taliban,” he had at least three “negotiating sessions,” possibly including one attended by President Karzai himself, in which he put forth very accommodating terms upon which the war in Afghanistan could be settled. News leaks from “informed sources” reported that NATO was even helping the Negotiator with safe passage from Quetta to Kabul. Sometime after his third session, by which time he had been paid more than $300,000, the Negotiator’s true identity was revealed by someone in Kazai’s circle. But by this time the Negotiator had fled and was never seen again. The simple shopkeeper from Quetta had tricked NATO, the Karzai government, the White House, and the world’s media. No one knows his true identity, and no one knows if he ever had any connection with the Taliban. No one knows if he’s dead or alive. All we know is that the shopkeeper and his $300,000 payday had vanished. That’s the Official Story.

In November 2010 the finger pointing began. Had this been a disinformation ploy by the Taliban, who throughout the news reports speculating/hinting at high-level negotiations had denounced the idea that the Taliban negotiator was genuine? (Dastardly clever.) Was the hoax pulled off by Pakistan’s ISI, who wanted to humiliate their rivals, the US CIA? Informed opinion reached a consensus that it had probably been the British forces that had first been taken in and had then persuaded others that this was the Negotiator was real thing. Although many high-ranking military and political people (including General Petraeus) had stated earlier in the fall that it looked like sensitive but promising negotiations were under way, now many victims of the Hoax declared that they had been suspicious all along (including General Petraeus).

That’s the Official Story, and it seems weird enough. But then we wonder why the Afghan or NATO intelligence, or the western mass media, did not investigate the Hoax energetically after it was revealed. Is this a Rolling Stone blockbuster or not? But that’s what happened, as far as I can see from a scan of News Google or Lexis. There was simply no follow up, and the case disappeared.

The fact that this colossal hoax vanished into the memory hole just raises more questions, and prompts the following thoughts and speculations.

First of all, intentionally or not, the Negotiations Hoax had important consequences. They centered around the NATO conference held in Lisbon, Portugal on the weekend of November 6-7, 2010. This conference was itself a follow-up to a NATO conference in Kabul in early June, where the military and financial investors in the Afghanistan war assembled to review the state of things. It was not a pretty picture, as President Karzai had been recently re-elected in a poll everyone agreed was about the most corrupt election on record. At the June conference NATO essentially put Karzai and his regime on probation. The Afghans had to clean up their act before NATO’s next scheduled meeting, in November. Among NATO’s demands were: increased legitimacy and transparency in government, an end to official and unofficial corruption, and some measurable progress in training Afghan police and military forces, considered a necessary condition for NATO’s exit from the war, which is very unpopular throughout Europe and an election liability for the incumbent governments.

Let’s start with “who benefited?” from this hoax (not including the shopkeeper from Quetta.) What the Negotiations Hoax did was to crowd out the projected Lisbon conference agenda with breathless reports that the Taliban appeared to be ready to come to terms. According to General Petraeus’s grand plan, this was just the result he predicted from the US military “surge.” Moreover, the Taliban appeared to be willing to give away the store, having dropped their demand that foreign forces leave before any negotiated settlement was possible. Needless to say, the Good News dominated the Lisbon conference, and I can find no record of a public scolding of Karzai, or of further non-negotiable conditions from European governments upon which their continued support of the war depended. While we outsiders don’t know much about the discussions at the Lisbon conference, the Obama/Petraeus plan to commit NATO forces to the war until the end of 2014 seems to have been carried by acclamation. All this on the weekend of November 6-7, 2010.

There are two other “who benefits?” that may be relevant. The first is that the sudden optimism that the end was near may have worked to reduce antiwar/anti-Obama attitudes just in time for the US congressional elections, which took place on November 2nd. Secondly, the apparent success of General Petraeus’ fight/negotiate strategy may have lightened congressional and White House skepticism about his handling of the war just weeks before the General’s end-of-the-year report was due. I don’t give great weight to these circumstances, especially as the war was a non-issue in the election, but still, it didn’t hurt to have a few moments of apparent success re: the war.

Keeping the Lisbon conference in mind, the way the hoax worked, intentionally or not, was to sway European opinion about the war, and to offset whatever skepticism the NATO governments might bring to the conference. For this to work, the signs of progress could not be passed in secret from military leaders in Afghanistan to their respective home governments. Rather, the negotiations ploy would work only if the world’s media carried the ball. This seems to have been the case. While I haven’t done a systematic media study, the articles and essays about negotiations for the appropriate period (late September through the first week in November) that are linked in the Afghanistan War Weekly show an increased certainty and a building excitement that peace may have been at hand. Though there were skeptics, such as Richard Holbrook and the Taliban (“no negotiations are underway”), the dominant voice from “sources” was that the story was credible. At one point it was even reported that the White House had asked reporters to keep this story, and the identity of the Taliban negotiator, under their hat, lest the Negotiator’s life be endangered.

Within days of the conclusion of the Lisbon conference, the story about the Hoax became the Official Story. Everyone’s face was red. But this part of the tale also has a “who benefits?” NATO was now locked into the 2014 Obama/Petraeus plan. Moreover, “negotiations” were dead; been there, done that. To my knowledge, there are no media reports of formal or informal talks between NATO or Karzai people and the real Taliban from mid-November until just recently. The Hoax had closed down all the paths in Afghanistan except On to Victory.

All of this may have been coincidence, good or bad luck, and the Official Story might be the real one. But we are dealing here with General Petraeus, and so it’s worth some deeper thought. The General is certainly the most political general we’ve had since General MacArthur in the late 1940s. He has been considered a candidate for the Republic presidential nomination ever since Obama took office. As such, he either has to win in Afghanistan or get out of the way before the war was lost. As he is retiring in December, this is in fact what is happening. Moreover, General Petraeus displayed MacArthur-like insubordination while President Obama was considering his Afghanistan options late in 2009, culminating in his “surge” speech at West Point in December. Through the world’s media General Petraeus made it clear that only a fool without military experience would fail to support his request for more troops, proven to work in Iraq and now needed in Afghanistan.

General Petraeus is not the only person/agency with the means and the motive to pull off the Negotiations Hoax. Just recently, in the reporting about the Raymond Davis case in Pakistan, we learned that the United States has several hundred non-diplomats with diplomatic cover in Pakistan, either US CIA, other official action/intelligence agents, or contractors from outfits such as Blackwater. Also, the recent story about US General Caldwell’s use of a psy/ops team to brief visiting congressmen gives us food for thought regarding possible operational personnel behind the Hoax. I don’t think it would take many people to make the Hoax work.

Is all this just speculation? Perhaps. But the Official Story sounds so stupid, the Who Benefits? seems so suggestive, and the failure to follow up on the story or chase the money seems so baffling that I hope this story will be pursued by people who have more investigation resources than I do.

Frank Brodhead fbrodhead@aol.com

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