US officials have blamed Britain for an embarrassing fiasco in which an impostor met Afghan and Nato officials before it was discovered he was not the Taliban leader they thought he was, according to sources familiar with the incident.
It was revealed this week that the man – understood to be a shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta – was masquerading as Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the second highest-ranking official in the Taliban. He attended three meetings in Kabul.
The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported today that people familiar with the con – as she described it – said "the British spent a year developing the fake Taliban leader as a source".
She added that General David Petraeus, the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, reportedly was "buying into it".
Officials who insisted on remaining anonymous because of the sensitivity of the matter confirmed that Britain was being held responsible for the episode. There was said to be "some truth" in the US reports.
The impostor is understood to have been paid a large sum in the hope that he would remain in the talks.
Curiously, since Mansour was a high-profile Taliban leader, foreign and Afghan officials only came to suspect anything when an Afghan negotiator who had met Mansour said he did not recognise the man at the talks.
Separately, General Sir David Richards, the head of Britain's armed forces, has said in an article that former warlords and their private militias have a "positive role" to play in Afghanistan's future.
"Many Afghan warlords have transformed themselves into businessmen, and many of them are well connected in the political world," he said.
"Curbing the excesses of these powerbrokers is essential. At the same time, however, the stability that they and their private militias offer can be utilised for the good of Afghanistan."
Richards co-authored the article, for the US journal Foreign Affairs, with Greg Mills, a former adviser to Afghan forces in Kabul and now the head of the Brenthurst Foundation, a South Africa-based thinktank set up by the Oppenheimer family.
The authors added: "For example, the border town of Spin Boldak, located south of Kandahar, serves as the gateway to and from northern Pakistan. It is controlled by its own generalissimo, Abdul Razziq. The thirtysomething de facto commander of the 3,500-strong border police is said to earn an estimated $5m-$6m per month from his various border businesses.
But he also contributes to stability, not only in the border region but in Kandahar City itself, as his positive military contribution in the Afghan-led Malajat operation in August illustrated.
The authors said that, following the failure of an earlier operation hastily organised by the regional governor, Razziq's forces quickly swooped on the area, arresting Taliban fighters and seizing explosives.
"Whether western leaders like it or not, powerbrokers such as Razziq have a positive role to play in developing Afghanistan," the article said.
"But that role can only be fulfilled if the government can stop them from perniciously distorting the country's economy ... The international community's first priority is to find the means to make aid more than just a feeding trough for local warlords."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/no ... ban-leader 
duly impressed 
