Karzai aide blames British for Taliban impostor

[Magda Hassan]

Reminds me of the time a taxi driver was waiting in the BBC foyer to collect his passenger and the next thing he knows he is being whisked through the building and ended up in a studio on the set of some deep and meaningful current affairs programme being interview about his thoughts on a matter of great importance of the day. He was bemused and confused at what had happened and broke it to them gently that he was a taxi driver.

Karzai aide blames British for Taliban impostor

Few if any Afghan or US officials have ever set eyes on Taliban leaders, such as Mullah Omar
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President Hamid Karzai's chief of staff has said British authorities brought a fake Taliban commander into sensitive meetings with the Afghan government.
The British embassy refused to confirm or deny the remarks, made in an interview with the Washington Post.
A man described as Mullah Mansour, a senior Taliban commander, was flown to Kabul for a meeting with President Karzai.
Now it is claimed he was really a Pakistani shopkeeper.
The impersonator reportedly met officials three times and was even flown on a Nato aircraft to Kabul.
Mystery man But doubts arose after an Afghan who knew Mullah Mansour said he did not recognise the man.
The faker then vanished, but not before he had reportedly been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Mr Karzai's chief of staff, Mohammad Umer Daudzai, told the Washington Post that British diplomats had brought the impostor to meet Mr Karzai in July or August.
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Paul Wood BBC News, Kabul
Given the British policy of not commenting on "operational matters", all we have is the Afghan government's version of events, as given to the Washington Post.
That version smells of people trying to pass the blame. There may be enough blame to share around: the CIA, MI6 and the Afghans themselves.
Why, for instance, did Afghan officials not spot this man earlier? Mullah Mansour was civil aviation minister during Taliban rule.
The question remains: who is this man who met President Hamid Karzai? A Pakistani shopkeeper, a gifted conman or a junior member of the Taliban (or all three)?
If there was British involvement, did they simply fly the impostor to Kabul? Did they take Mullah Mansour off Nato's capture-and-kill list? Or was the impersonator actively sought out and promoted by the British?
Given that we're dealing with the murky world of spying and intelligence it may be a long time before we get answers to those questions.

"The last lesson we draw from this: international partners should not get excited so quickly with those kind of things," Mr Daudzai told the newspaper.
He added: "Afghans know this business, how to handle it. We handle it with care, we handle it with a result-based approach, with very less damage to all the other processes."
The BBC's Paul Wood in Kabul says if there was indeed British involvement, the question is whether this was logistical support or something more active.
He says full negotiations to end this conflict still seem a long way off - and the case of the Taliban impostor will not have helped matters.
Unnamed senior US officials told the Washington Post that the Mansour impersonator was "the Brits' guy".
They said the Americans had "healthy scepticism" from the start because their intelligence had suggested Mullah Mansour would be a few inches taller than the man claiming to be the Taliban commander.
The UK's Times newspaper reports that the impostor was promoted by British overseas intelligence agency MI6, which was convinced it had achieved a major breakthrough.
The real identity of the faker remains a mystery.
Some reports suggest he was a shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta.
It is still not clear whether he had any links to the Taliban or if he was simply a conman.
Another theory is he could have been a Pakistani intelligence agent.
Western diplomats have previously conceded that some of those claiming to represent the Taliban have turned out to be frauds.
The real Mr Mansour was civil aviation minister during Taliban rule and is now said to be in charge of weapons procurement for the insurgents.
The Afghan government's meetings with the Taliban - fake or otherwise - have been described as contacts rather than negotiations.