In 2010, the Obama administration changed attitudes and put in place a strategy to allow for possible political negotiations to resolve the war. [48] The Taliban themselves had refused to speak to the Afghan government as an American „doll.“ Sporadic efforts at peace talks between the United States and the Taliban then took place, and in October 2010 it was reported that Taliban commanders (the „Quetta Shura“) had left their sanctuary in Pakistan and were safely escorted by NATO aircraft to Kabul, with the assurance that NATO personnel would not arrest them. [49] At the end of the talks, it turned out that the head of that delegation, which claimed to be Akhtar Mansour, the second taliban commander, was in fact a crook who had deceived NATO officials. [50] A Taliban commander from Wardaks Day Mirdad district, named Keramatullah, confirmed this. Before the Doha agreement, „we suffered a lot from the airstrikes,“ he said by telephone. „So we`re less stressed than we used to be.“ Since there is no U.S. air support to disrupt attacks, he said, „You can spend a lot of time fighting.“ The Taliban`s plan for the day when foreign troops leave Afghanistan has always been vague. It is generally accepted that even the group`s little-modernized political leaders will never accept democracy and will not be willing to negotiate for much less than a return to a system as it was practiced before its fall in 2001. Michael Semple, a scholar and conflict resolution advisor at Queens University in Belfast, told me recently that „I have seen no evidence that they are waiting for a result of the negotiations.“ According to him, their motivations for agreeing to the negotiations with Kabul were only the price to pay for the opening of the Doha agreement and the legitimacy that resulted from it. „Their long-term goal and expectation,“ he says, „is that they will rebuild the emirate with a total political monopoly.“ Unlike the Americans, the Taliban have not wavered in their determination or calls for what will happen after the negotiations, and there is no reason to believe that they will lose their temper.
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