The report goes on to say that there was substantial friction between the groups’ leaders before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that hostility has only intensified.
The authors, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, have worked in Afghanistan for years and edited the autobiography of a Taliban diplomat, many of whose ideas are reflected in the report. The authors are among a small group of experts who say the only way to end the war in Afghanistan is to begin peace overtures to the Taliban.
The prevailing view in Washington, however, is “that the Taliban and Al Qaeda share the same ideology,” said Tom Gregg, a former United Nations official in Afghanistan and a fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at N.Y.U., which is publishing the report. “It is not an ideology they share; it is more a pragmatic political alliance. And therefore a political approach to the Taliban ultimately could deliver a more practical separation between the two groups.”
Some American officials have argued that the military surge in Afghanistan will weaken the Taliban and increase the incentive to negotiate. But the report cautions that the campaign may make it harder to reach a settlement.
The report, “Separating the Taliban from Al Qaeda: The Core of Success in Afghanistan,” says attacks on Taliban field commanders and provincial leaders will leave the movement open to younger, more radical fighters and will give Al Qaeda greater influence. The authors suggest that the United States should engage older Taliban leaders before they lose control of the movement.
The authors do not oppose NATO’s war, but suggest that negotiations should accompany the fighting. A political settlement is necessary to address the underlying reasons for the insurgency, they write. Otherwise, they warn, the conflict will escalate.
The report draws on the authors’ interviews with unnamed Taliban officials in Kabul, Kandahar and Khost, and on published statements by the Taliban leadership. The authors indicate that Taliban officials fear retribution if they make on-the-record statements opposing Al Qaeda.
Nevertheless, Taliban leaders have issued statements in the last two years that indicate they are distancing their movement from Al Qaeda. The report says the Taliban will not renounce Al Qaeda as a condition to negotiations, but will offer to do so in return for guarantees of security.
The report reflects many of the arguments put forward by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, whose autobiography, published in English as “My Life With the Taliban,” the authors edited. Mullah Zaeef lives under a loose house arrest in Kabul after being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and has been an intermediary between the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and the Taliban.
The report argues that Taliban leaders did not know of the Sept. 11 attacks in advance and that they appeared to have been manipulated by Osama bin Laden, who then lived in Afghanistan.
In November 2002, the report says, senior Taliban figures gathered in Pakistan and agreed to join a process of political engagement and reconciliation with the new government of Afghanistan. Yet the decision came to nothing, since neither the Afghan government nor the American government saw any reason to engage with the Taliban, the report says.
A member of the Haqqani family, which leads what American officials regard as the most dangerous Taliban group, came to Kabul in 2002 to discuss reconciliation, but he was detained and badly treated, the report states.
Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer who prepared a strategic policy review on Afghanistan and Pakistan for President Obama in 2009, places the Afghan Taliban alongside Al Qaeda in the “syndicate of terrorists” threatening the United States. Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, has maintained an “alliance, even friendship” with Mr. bin Laden that “seems to have remained intact to this day,” Mr. Riedel writes in his book “Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of the Global Jihad.”
Yet others say that there is a clear ideological divide between the two groups and that the Taliban are not engaged in international terrorism.
“Al Qaeda is an organization that has a clearly articulated vision of global jihad, and that is not the case with the Haqqanis and the Taliban,” Mr. Gregg said. “Their focus is on Afghanistan, the country they are from.”
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