When in doubt, blame the Brits! Just kidding, I have a lot of British readers of this blog. But this really is a funny story that’s leaving egg on the faces of all concerned that got bamboozled by a con man.
The Washington Post reports that President Hamid Karzai's chief of staff on Thursday said that British authorities were responsible for bringing a Taliban impostor into the presidential palace and that foreigners should stay out of delicate negotiations with the Afghan insurgent group.
In an interview, Mohammad Umer Daudzai said that the British brought a man purporting to be Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, a senior Taliban leader, to meet Karzai in July or August but that an Afghan at the meeting knew "this is not the man."
Afghan intelligence later determined that the visitor was actually a shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta, he said.
"This shows that this process should be Afghan-led and fully Afghanized," Daudzai said. "The last lesson we draw from this: International partners should not get excited so quickly with those kind of things. . . . 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."
More details here
Maybe the British should reconsider cutting their Intelligence budget?
Memeorandum
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