Taliban Two-Step: Can’t Sit Down Yet

Don't even ask Mullah Sabir about peace talks. There's nothing to talk about, says the tall, burly Afghan, one of the Taliban's highest-ranking commanders. "This is not a political campaign for policy change or power sharing or cabinet ministries," he tells NEWSWEEK at a textiles shop on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. "We are waging jihad to bring Islamic law back to Afghanistan." The refusal to negotiate comes straight from the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, says Sabir, who did not want his full name used: "The tone of his rejection has been so strong from the first that no one would dare to raise the subject with him." The trouble is, Sabir hasn't seen Mullah Omar in years, and he doesn't know of anyone who has. Internet posts released in Mullah Omar's name on Muslim holy days are the only hint that the one-eyed Commander of the Faithful is still alive. All the same, Sabir says he and thousands of other Taliban won't stop fighting until they're back in power.

Everyone seems eager to talk peace in Afghanistan—except the only people who can turn the wish into a fact. The Taliban's brutal insurgent ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has endorsed the idea of negotiations; so has the U.S. defense secretary, Robert Gates. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah personally hosted an exploratory discussion in Mecca between Afghan and Pakistani officials and former Taliban members during Ramadan, and last week Afghan and Pakistani tribal elders and politicians held a two-day meeting in Islamabad. But Mullah Omar's fighters aren't about to quit while they're on a roll. The number of Coalition deaths in Afghanistan since May has exceeded U.S. deaths in Iraq for the first time since the invasion of Iraq. The Afghan insurgency, which seemed as good as dead in 2004, has come back strong.

The Americans aren't racing to the peace table either, despite Gates's in-principle support for negotiations. Big moves are likely to wait until the next U.S. president takes office, and the consensus in any case is that the situation on the ground isn't right yet. "If you go into these talks when you appear to be militarily weak, you're negotiating a partial surrender," warns Robert Neumann, who was U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007. The hope is that Gen. David Petraeus, the architect of the surge strategy in Iraq, will find a way to fix that problem in his new role as CINCCENT—commander in chief, U.S. Central Command.

Iraq's turnaround came when tribal leaders in Anbar province, fed up with the brutality of Al Qaeda in Iraq, banded together against the insurgency. But the Taliban are running their own war, not taking orders from psychopathic foreigners. Taliban commanders say Osama bin Laden's global jihadists are not a significant force in Afghanistan anymore. "If they want to hide and fight here with us, we won't stop them," says Mullah Sabir. "But they have no bases here, and we will not let them use our territory as they did before their strikes on the United States." The 9/11 attacks and the resulting U.S. invasion are a source of deep resentment among the Taliban. "Today we are fighting because of Al Qaeda," Sabir complains. "We lost our Islamic state. Al Qaeda lost nothing." Still, talks with any segment of the Taliban will have to be predicated on a complete break with Al Qaeda.

If that condition can be met, there are fissures that Petraeus might find ways to exploit. Some fighters are Pashtun nationalists; others are strict Islamists; still others are mere thugs. "Based on what we heard while we were there, a lot of these guys are involved in the insurgency for economic reasons first and ideological reasons second," says Nathaniel Fick, who served as a Marine officer in Afghanistan during the first year of the war and returned this summer to do research for the Center for a New American Security. "Eighty percent of the fighters are part-timers. We know that from data the military has collected. Most of those part-timers, one would think, are 'reconcilable' "—that is, they could be persuaded to leave the insurgency. Even some high-ranking members are showing interest in the Saudi meeting. "Now the Taliban know there's another way besides the military option," says Zabibullah, a senior Taliban political operative in Pakistan. "Talks may be something to consider." (Nevertheless, a Taliban spokesman adamantly denies reports that Mullah Omar sent representatives or even a list of demands to Mecca.)

The Taliban has always been basically a loose amalgam of regional and tribal militias. Individual commanders have enormous autonomy in their home areas: some continue to enforce the medieval dictates of Mullah Omar's defunct regime, but others tolerate music, Qur'an classes for girls, even televisions. In hard-line Helmand province, barbers are allowed to trim beards.

Distrust is spreading in the ranks. Off the battlefield, Taliban fighters wonder aloud what has become of Mullah Omar. Some think he may have been put under house arrest—or worse—by his second in command and brother-in-law, Mullah Baradar. "He may have removed himself, or someone may have removed him," says a former Mullah Omar aide, unnamed so his worries don't land him in trouble. "For the past two years, no one that I know has any hard evidence of where he is or what he's doing." What would Mullah Omar say about mowing down civilians and beheading captives in the name of jihad? the aide asks, describing his former boss as a simple, decent village mullah who was always upset to hear of his men doing bad things.