From Dubai to the remote villages of the Pashtun people, an uneasy alliance of clerics, generals and terrorist paymasters is edging towards a diplomatic solution to end the insurgency. Jason Burke travels across Afghanistan to trace the complex web of negotiations that some say could end the war.
The red plastic sofas in the living room of Maulvi Mohammed Rahmani in Kabul's Deh Bori quarter are rarely empty these days. The pitted dirt road in front of the home of the tribal elder and former Taliban minister is as busy as the lumber yard behind it.
"For a long time, no one came to see me, then our Arab brothers started coming, then our European friends and now, most recently, the Americans," he said last week.
The cleric owes his sudden popularity to his leadership of a group of former Taliban who are now acting as a channel of communication to the insurgents waging a bitter war against coalition and Afghan forces across the south and east of Afghanistan.
Since Rahmani and several others travelled to Saudi Arabia last year for a first meeting aimed at preparing a dialogue, revealed by the Observer, initiatives to find a negotiated solution to the conflict in Afghanistan have gathered pace - now with the blessing of the new American administration.
Last week, US ambassador Bill Wood said that, although his government opposed anyone "shooting their way to power" and was against any agreement involving "power-sharing or an enclave for the Taliban", there was "room for discussion on the formation of political parties or running candidates for elections".
"Insurgencies are like all wars: they end when there is an agreement," Wood said in an interview in the vast, heavily guarded US embassy in Kabul. "[The Taliban] have said 'no start of negotiations without prior departure of foreign forces'. That's not serious. Let's get serious."
Such talk would have been inconceivable even six months ago. Now, in an astonishing U-turn, Kabul diplomats are privately discussing what concessions could conceivably be made to insurgents.
There is talk of the Afghan government releasing certain prisoners from detention centres in return for a halt to attacks on government buildings and infrastructure such as schools or roads; the removal of key insurgents from United Nations blacklists, which render them diplomatic outlaws; and even changes to the Afghan constitution to allow a "political wing" of the Taliban to integrate disaffected, ultra-conservative, rural Pashtun tribes - the insurgents' key constituency - into the political process.
The process has gathered pace since the meeting in Mecca last year. Dozens of such encounters between possible mediators are taking place.
Nothing involves direct talks - simply exploratory discussions involving trusted intermediaries such as Rahmani. Many meetings are held in Dubai, a two-hour flight from Kabul. Others involve tribal elders representing communities that have sided with the insurgents travelling to Kabul to talk to senior former Taliban figures or President Hamid Karzai's brother, Qayum.
Such trips are not without risk. Recently, a senior elder from the southern province of Helmand was arrested and imprisoned by American forces on his way to Kabul to negotiate, angering the Afghan intermediaries who had arranged the journey.
However, attempts to establish dialogue continue at a frenzied pace. In addition to contacts with the Taliban, overtures to mediate between other key insurgent leaders are being made.
Two weeks ago, the Observer has learnt, a meeting was held in Dubai with representatives of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister and an Islamist warlord who has been fighting in alliance with Mullah Mohammed Omar's Taliban.
Though inconclusive, more such encounters are planned. "We have kept all channels of communication open," said Humayun Hamidzada, Karzai's spokesman, confirming the talks.
Rahmani, the former Taliban minister, said that Jalaluddin Haqqani, a powerful cleric and tribal leader in eastern Afghanistan, has also been approached. And visitors to Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, who spent two years in Guantánamo Bay and who is now based in Kabul, have included scores of ambassadors as well as European Union and Nato officials. Abdullah Anas, a London-based former militant, is another channel of communication.
Despite the sudden enthusiasm for contacts with representatives of the Taliban, seasoned observers are wary about predicting their outcome for a number of reasons.
First, Afghan politicians, including the president, are in election mode. Polls are set for August and only a newly re-elected leader with a strong mandate could make the dramatic gesture necessary to establish a serious dialogue. Until then, no candidate will risk the votes of Afghanistan's ethnic minorities and women by reaching out to the Taliban. Analysts dismiss Karzai's previous loud offers to talk to Mullah Omar in Kabul as grandstanding.
Equally, the gap between insurgent demands and the government's position is vast. The mantra repeated by the Afghan government and British and Nato officials is that any reconciliation has to be in accordance with the Afghan constitution, ie that the Taliban have to stop fighting. "We are not going to say, 'OK, we will give you half the government," said Hamidzada, the government spokesman. Few expect the insurgents to drop their weapons any time soon.
Second, this is all very new. "The American position on war and peace is still developing," said Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador. "We have to wait and see." A major review of US policy is expected in coming weeks.
Third, the Taliban are an extremely complicated and diverse phenomenon, with fighters with a range of motivations and from different backgrounds in their ranks. Though the former Taliban insist otherwise, it is not certain that they will all necessarily obey Mullah Omar, their nominal leader, if he did decide to accept a deal.
"We do not have a proper party on the other side to deal with," said Hamidzada. "They are a variety of groups with different hierarchies."
The Taliban recognise this. Last week, the Taliban leadership council, after some debate, accepted a request from the family of former president Daoud Khan for a 24-hour ceasefire to mark the reburial of their relatives' remains that were found recently in a communist-era mass grave. Though Taliban guns fell silent for the day in some areas, in others attacks continued.
While, as dozens of interviews with local officials and MPs reveal, the Taliban have made efforts to strengthen discipline over the winter, reshuffling their shadow administration in areas where they are strong and executing commanders who have not obeyed orders, it remains a problem.
The Taliban "governors" of Wardak and Logar provinces, neighbouring Kabul, were recently ordered to exchange posts, but both are resisting the order. Though intelligence sources say that complaints among frontline commanders about the senior leadership, common last year, have died away, the Taliban remain fragmented.
The final reason why the peace bids will probably fail is that the Taliban, whatever their internal problems, give little sign of believing they need to negotiate. "If they win, it is victory; if they are killed, it is victory," said Zaeef. From total defeat in 2001 through the grand offensive of 2006 to today's bloody stalemate, the insurgents have suffered tactical defeats and heavy casualties, but have made significant strategic progress.
Even General David McKiernan, the American who commands the 59,000 Nato troops in Afghanistan and the 14,000 US troops of Operation Enduring Freedom deployed along Afghanistan's frontier with Pakistan, admitted in an interview in his Kabul headquarters that "in some parts of the south and the east... we are not winning", although he points to the relative stability of much of the north and of cities such as Jalalabad, Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat as examples of progress.
Nato commanders hope the 17,000 new US troops being "surged" in coming months will make the crucial difference. Equally, the current weakness of the Afghan government - which, despite some islands of honesty and efficiency, remains riddled with corruption and incompetence - encourages the insurgents.
"This government does not have the moral authority needed to negotiate," said opposition MP Daoud Sultanzoy. One Nato officer defined "winning" as simply creating a "viable governance capacity at provincial and district levels". "Then we can think about leaving," he said.
Forty miles east of Kabul and its fevered speculations, 278 French infantrymen, 24 soldiers from the Afghan National Army and seven interpreters cluster in a new base perched high on a cliff above the town of Sorobi. Reached by steep tracks, ringed with barbed wire, the French base, like many Nato positions, is built over trenches and bunkers once occupied by Soviet troops.
The French arrived last summer - a new contribution to the 41-nation coalition decided by France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, in the teeth of fierce domestic opposition. Sent to secure the rough mountain valleys and gorges around Sorobi, the troops ran into immediate trouble, losing 10 men in an ambush in the Uzbeen valley to the north.
One consequence, officers at the base said, was that early plans of leaving armoured vehicles in the base and patrolling "à la française" - rather than putting their own security first, "à l'américaine" - were ditched. The political fall-out of further casualties at home would be too damaging.
But the French, like troops elsewhere, have found it difficult to connect with locals. "Security will not be improved if development is not improved at the same time and political dialogue is not promoted," said Colonel Jean-Michel Baillat. 'But... we need deeper tribal knowledge and our reconstruction and development work is probably not on a scale that is meeting the needs."
In fact, the French budget for their zone, in which 140,000 people live, is €400,000 (£375,000). According to Baillat, "the security situation is so bad for three years that there has been no NGO or United Nations presence". However, a school has been restored within the seven-mile perimeter currently considered "secure" by the French, and a thriving cottage industry of honey production created.
The population of the two more prosperous of the three valleys around the French position pose little threat, said Colonel Franck Chatelus, who commands the troops. But Uzbeen is hostile. After a "clearing operation", the French called a shura, or council, to tell the locals that they were there to help and that they did not seek revenge for the previous year's deaths. "There was a muted response," Chatelus said.
Uzbeen is a good measure of the complexity of the situation in Afghanistan and the consequent difficulties of any negotiations or reconciliation process. Since the war against the Soviets, the valley has been a stronghold of commanders loyal to Hekmatyar, the very man to whom the Afghan government is now reaching out.
Hekmatyar's son-in-law, released from US detention in Afghanistan, recently travelled to London and attended at least one of the recent meetings with government intermediaries in Dubai.
But, on the ground, it is a local family, partly protected by a member of parliament who is a relative, who are behind much of the violence. "We see them driving around, but because they are unarmed we cannot touch them. One was locked up, but got out because of his connections," said one officer.
Much of the current thinking is focused on how to win over such lower-ranking commanders. In Helmand, the British are pioneering a new district council system that, even though it is aimed more at "community outreach" than reconciling local Taliban, is one way of establishing a dialogue at a grassroots level.
The Afghan government has sponsored a separate programme, designed at identifying mid-level commanders who could be brought over from the insurgents. In the eastern province of Nangahar, governor Gul Agha Sherzai, a potential election candidate, called a huge meeting of tribal elders last week and told all his district governors to find, contact and talk to the Taliban commanders.
One programme that most agree functions poorly is the official reconciliation process. Though 7,000 names are on its lists, most are foot-soldiers, of whom the insurgents have an apparently exhaustible supply. The new and controversial Afghan Public Protection Force, in which the young jobless men who constitute most of the recruits for the Taliban will be enrolled as auxiliary policemen, may help. But an increasingly brutal and technically competent Taliban have a power in the villages that is difficult to counter.
With talks unlikely to be fruitful, the current enthusiasm for dialogue may simply be a morale-booster for an international alliance badly in need of a sign that an endpoint - any endpoint - in Afghanistan is visible. Western objectives have been "relooked", General McKiernan said. The west is hoping that the coming election will "re-energise" the project, but Nato officers talk of achieving a "tipping point" in three to five years.
One critical question is how long domestic opinion in the west will back continued - indeed, increasing - expenditure of blood and treasure. Wood, the US ambassador, said that he "couldn't guarantee [US commitment] for the whole life of the sun", but that the US was in Afghanistan "for the long term". Few doubt, however, that international will is fickle at the best of times.
Just round the corner from the house of Maulvi Rahmani, the former Taliban mediator, lives Sediqa Mobariz, a member of parliament from the central region of Bamiyan, which is still peaceful. From the Hazaran minority, who suffered terrible ethnic violence under the Taliban, she has strong views about any dialogue. "As an Afghan woman, I don't think you can negotiate with the Taliban. They cannot forget the past and nor can we."
