Though the concept of Afghan and Western reconciliation with the Mullah Omar-led Taliban has gained much momentum, the consequences of some kind of ad hoc settlement between the Islamists and the government of President Hamid Karzai have not been clearly defined.
Opposition is growing within some quarters in Afghanistan to a settlement that would give the Taliban access to power. Much of this opposition is being led by heirs to the late anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, particularly former foreign minister Dr Abdullah Abdullah and the former head of the Afghan National Directorate of Security, Amrullah Saleh.
As Saleh recently told a rally in Kabul: "We have not forgotten the
burning of our homeland and the humiliation of the men and women of Afghanistan ... But you [Karzai] are still calling these people [the Taliban] 'brother'."
A bitter legacy
Since the Taliban were ejected from central Kabul in November 2001 in the face of the United States-led invasion, the movement has transformed itself from a mostly unrecognized government to a Pashtun ethno-nationalist insurgency with its roots in the anti-Soviet jihad that consumed the country throughout the 1980s.
