In Our Deal with Mullah Abdul Salaam we discussed the mid-level commander Taliban defector who first promised fighters against the Taliban and then holed himself up in a room and screamed for help from the British and U.S. when the battle for Musa Qala started.  The whole “talk with the moderates” thing didn’t work out very well.

 But this tactic will not go away, it seems.  There are recent reports that talks are still ongoing.

The country’s most powerful opposition group announced last week that they have been engaging in peace talks with the Taliban. The move signals both the growing divisions within the Afghan government and the increasing possibility that elements of the insurgent group could be drawn into the political process, say analysts.

If successful, officials argue that the talks will change the way the United States deals with Afghanistan, by forcing Washington to contend with the opposition.

Representatives of the United National Front – an assemblage of ministers, members of parliament, and warlords led by former Northern Alliance commanders – say they have held secret talks with the Taliban for at least five months.

“Leaders of some Taliban sections contacted us,” says Front spokesman Sayyid Agha Hussein Fazel Sancharaki, “saying, ‘We are both Muslims, we are both Afghans, and we are both not satisfied with the government’s performance.’ ”

The government, which has had a series of secret talks with the “moderate Taliban” since 2003, has in contrast taken a different approach to negotiations. It insists that the Taliban must first surrender completely – disavow armed insurrection and accept the foreign presence.

Of course, the Taliban will not surrender their weapons and stand down.  The idea of talks has been pursued recently by local Afghanis to no avail.

“At first, we negotiate. Otherwise the fight is the only way we can solve the problem. It’s the second best way,” Haji Hashem, chairman of Zabul provincial council, told Canwest News in an exclusive interview from the capital of remote and impoverished Zabul province that borders Pakistan.

“I don’t like to hear about death,” Mr. Hashem said. “Sometimes NATO has to fight.”

Mr. Hashem’s comments came after a weekend in which a major offensive by coalition and Afghan forces left several dozen Taliban fighters dead in neighbouring Uruzgan province. Here in Zabul, nestled between Canada’s base in Kandahar province and the border with Pakistan, the local Afghan police also killed four Taliban insurgents on the weekend.

“If they stand against the government, we should get rid of them,” Mr. Hashem said. “I am hopeful we will have good police.”

Zabul ranks a close fourth behind Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan as the most violent of Afghanistan’s southern provinces. But its proximity to the Pakistan border, where al-Qaeda and Taliban militants regroup and re-energize to launch attacks in the south on coalition troops, poses an additional security threat.

As he sipped tea, Mr. Hashem recalled for the first time the clandestine negotiations that took place in December.

Elders and local politicians here tell of repeated abductions, especially of schoolteachers and local mullahs, threats, intimidation and mutilation of local people. All of this has continued in a desperately poor, illiterate region that has traditionally relied on opium farming.

So Mr. Hashem said local elders felt they had little to lose by reaching out to the Taliban. “We had a jirga of peace and security and it was the decision of the jirga to talk to those guys.”

But they did not tell U.S. authorities, which have jurisdiction over this region and have pumped more than $140-million in aid into the province. Nor did they tell their own government. “We just brought the result (of the negotiation) to the governor,” Mr. Hashem said.

They arranged a meeting in Sharizifat, a remote rural region.

“We asked them, don’t burn our schools, don’t bother those doing construction, don’t torture or kill,” he recalled.

But the message that came back from the four Taliban commanders sent to talk was firm.

“We got orders from Pakistan. We got orders to burn reconstruction projects,” he recalled.

Talks with the Taliban will not redound to any good for Afghanistan or the counterinsurgency campaign.  When pondering strategy and counterinsurgency doctrine, it is best to give up believing in myths and face reality.

Prior: Talking with the Enemy