President Ahmed Karzai moved quickly to dampen the fallout from his alleged meeting with a man named Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour — supposedly one of highest- ranking members of the Taleban council leading the insurgency — by denying the encounter even took place. He dismissed the reports as propaganda. “I did not see Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour and Mullah Mansour did not come to Afghanistan. Don’t accept this news from the foreign press regarding meetings with the elders of the Taleban because most of them are propaganda,” Karzai said.
NATO, which was reportedly deeply involved in the meetings and purportedly flew the impostor to Kabul, did not immediately comment on the reports.
The report about the impostor first appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
An Afghan familiar with the reconciliation efforts confirmed that a delegate claiming to be Mansour “was a fraud.”
He spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize his contacts with both sides.
Gen. David Petraeus said the report is “not a surprise” because “there was skepticism about one of these all along.”
The top US commander in Afghanistan told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday that even Karzai would not be surprised by the report.
Mansour was a well-known Taleban leader and had a high-profile job in the movement’s Cabinet.
It is not clear why officials would have had such a difficult time identifying him.
There are a number of former Taleban in Parliament and in the 70-member High Peace Council recently formed by Karzai to find a political solution to the insurgency. It was reported that the man was believed to be a shopkeeper in Quetta.
Although quite senior in the Quetta Shoura, Mansour was not promoted to second-in-command of the Quetta Shoura following last February’s arrest in Pakistan of Abdul Ghani Baradar.
Mansour was passed over in favor for Maulvi Zakir Qayyum — a former Guantanamo detainee. Released into Afghan custody in 2007, Qayyum was freed four months later and rejoined the Taleban.
According to the reports, the impostor met with Afghan and NATO officials three times — including once with Karzai — before they discovered he was not Mansour. He was allegedly paid to attend.
