Afghan Peace Talks: The Soap.

By Steve Hynd

Today's announcements about talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban read like a script for the old sit-com "Soap".

Basically, the White House supports but says it is not participating in - and the U.S. military does not support but credits the "surge"(tm) for creating the opportunity for - talks that the Afghan government denies are happening in the first place. Talks that everyone, even the U.S. military, agrees are the only way out of the mess.

Confused? You will be.

It all began with reports today that:

Taliban representatives and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai have begun secret, high-level talks over a negotiated end to the war, according to Afghan and Arab sources.

While emphasizing the preliminary nature of the current discussions, the sources said that for the first time they believe that Taliban representatives are fully authorized to speak for the Quetta Shura, the Afghan Taliban organization based in Pakistan, and its leader, Mohammad Omar.

"They are very, very serious about finding a way out," one source close to the talks said of the Taliban.

The White House was swift to lend some support, if not actual involvement:

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the Obama administration is "supportive" of "the nature of" reconciliation talks between Hamid Karzai's government and the Taliban to try to end the violence and instability there. But he said the U.S. isn't directly participating in such talks.

"It has to be done by the Afghans," Gibbs told reporters in an off-camera briefing this morning. "This is not something that we (the U.S.) do with the Taliban. This is something the Afghan government have to do with people in Afghanistan and we have always been supportive of that" process.

Gibbs said for the U.S. to formally support any agreement down the road "largely requires a reununciation of al Qaeda, following Afghan law and renouncing violence."

And the U.S. military were equally swift to take credit, claiming the "surge" was responsible:

The spokesman for ISAF forces Wednesday said an increase in pressures on the Taliban helps get them into Afghan government peace process

...The ISAF General said the Taliban can play an effective role in bringing stability to the country, but the pressures should be increased till they lay down their arms and renounce violence.

"We have to fight Taliban and insurgency as long as they are fighting us and the Afghan population and there is no way around, but on top of that we can synchronies and reconcile very easily there is an offer from the Afghan side to the Taliban and to the insurgency to give up and to lay down their weapons," said General Blotz.

But ISAF obviously hadn't spoken to the Pentagon to co-ordinate their messaging. There, the message was one of non-support until more war had been waged, suggesting message discipline between White House and Pentagon isn't all it could be either.

This is not the right time for reconciliation efforts with the Taliban, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters. More progress was needed with regard to security on the ground, he said."The secretary of defence believes we still need to make more progress with regards to security on the ground. We need to take the fight more aggressively and for a greater duration to the Taliban�," Morrell added.

Shades of last week, where we had Mark Sedwill, the senior NATO civilian in Afghanistan, saying talks were "embryonic" while Gen. Petraeus was saying "very high-level Taliban leaders � have sought to reach out to the highest levels of the Afghan government."

(And what exactly is with the Pentagon's hostility to talks, anyway?)

But finally, after all of this frantic and contradictory statement making from Western spokesthings, the Afghan government said the talks weren't all they were hyped up to be:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government on Wednesday denied reports that secret high-level talks with the Taliban had begun, although signals from various quarters suggested back-channel contacts with the insurgency were gathering momentum.

...Karzai's deputy spokesman, Hamed Elmi, said Wednesday there were "no contacts on the high levels" between the government and the Taliban but acknowledged that indirect lower-level talks had been taking place. The president last week named a 70-member "peace council" tasked with overseeing any formal negotiations.

Waheed Mojdeh, who was a member of the Taliban government during the movement's five-year reign, expressed doubts that Omar had yet authorized anyone to speak for him directly.

"As far as I know, there is nobody who can represent" Omar, he said. "For a long time now, there have been these kinds of talks and contacts."

Mojdeh, who is generally seen as familiar with the thinking of the Taliban leadership, says any substantive talks would be covert and that the peace council Karzai had named is likely "for show."

We've had nine whole years of Afghan occupation (tomorrow is the anniversary of the invasion). That various key actors like the Afghan government, White House, Pentagon and ISAF command either have no idea what is going on or, more likely, cannot agree on how best to spin events for public consumption, is just plain depressing at this late stage.

Update: Associated Press has spoken to various Pakistani and Afghan officials and intelligence types - anonymously, of course - and all of them say that any talks so far have been exploratory and through indirect message exchanges so far. AP's Kathy Gannon also spoke to former Pakistan ISI boss Hamid Gul:

Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan's main intelligence service who has had longtime ties to the Taliban, told The Associated Press that the insurgents have laid down three preconditions for formal negotiations � a timetable for a NATO withdrawal, release of all Taliban prisoners and a deal to drop the terrorist label which the religious movement was given after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.

For their part, the Taliban have repeatedly denied any such contacts, saying they will not talk peace so long as U.S. and NATO troops remain in the country.

It's been suggested often enough that a timetable for NATO withdrawal would be enough to bring the Taliban to the table, with everything else up for negotiation. Trouble is, no-one has realistically offered such a timetable so we just don't know. All the prevarication about Obama's 2011 "start of a drawdown, maybe" date may have actively worked against a peace deal. As Petraeus himself has said, talks are the way you end insurgencies. Maybe everyone should take their fingers out of their asses and and actually try to have talks.