Thaindian News

Kabul, Nov 24 (ANI): NATO chiefs in Afghanistan have been severely embarrassed after being let down by a Pakistani shopkeeper who disguised himself as a Taliban commander during secret peace negotiations, and received a substantial amount of money for his presence for two months.

According to the Daily Mail, the shopkeeper was also flown on a British military plane to three meetings designed to end the conflict in the country.

Despite suspicions about his identity, nobody tried to ascertain whether or not his claim to be Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, one of the Taliban’s most senior leaders, had any ground reality.

It was only months later that an old friend of Mansour said that the officials were being fooled by the ‘wrong’ man. The officials also came to know that the man they were dealing with all this while was a shopkeeper from Quetta, in Pakistan.

The whole episode has embarrassed the coalition forces, the Afghan leadership and the intelligence community, the paper said.

One Western diplomat who had been involved in the discussion simply said: “It’s not him. And we gave him a lot of money.”

According to US officials, the fraudster could have posed as Mansour for personal gain or he was possibly planted by the Pakistani intelligence service.

“One would suspect that in our multi-billion dollar intel community there would be the means to differentiate between an authentic Quetta Shura emissary and a shopkeeper.

On the other hand, it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. It may have been Mullah Omar posing as a shopkeeper. I’m sure that our intelligence whizzes wouldn’t have known, a U.S. official in Kabul said.

Before the unexpected development, peace talks with the Taliban had been going smoothly in the presence of the fraudster. Disguising himself as the second in command of the Taliban, after founder Mullah Mohammed Omar, his willingness to talk appeared to be a sign the terror group was serious about ending the war, the paper said.

The shopkeeper even impressed negotiators with his moderate stance and, unlike other Taliban leaders, did not demand a withdrawal of foreign forces. He also reportedly met Afghan President Hamid Karzai in this regard, it added.

It was during a third meeting in Kandahar that a man who had known Mansour for years told Afghan officials that the Taliban leader at the table did not resemble him., the paper said. (ANI)