U.S. sets its sights on Taliban's 'little T' Experts question plan to find, sway group's less extreme members

(Analyst's note:  And how are we going to make sure that they don't simply stick out two hands, one to us and one to the side who is already paying them ... I'm just saying.)

 

By Karen DeYoung

"Not every Taliban is an extremist ally," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last week. One of the primary tasks of President Obama's Afghanistan strategy review, she said, is "trying to sort out who is the real enemy." 

Trying to persuade those insurgents deemed less extreme to lay down their arms or switch sides will be a major component of the Obama administration's new approach, regardless of whether the president approves the massive troop deployments requested by his military commander, according to administration officials.

But sorting the "reconcilables" -- what the U.S. military calls the "little T" -- from the "big T" of hard-core Taliban members is no small task. Even if the Americans and Europeans are able to tell them apart, neither they nor Afghan officials have a comprehensive plan to persuade them to stop fighting.

And many analysts, particularly in the CIA, do not believe that a substantial "little T" exists among what the agency estimates is a total of about 25,000 fighters in the Afghan Taliban and related insurgent groups. "Small pockets of Taliban members may be convinced under certain conditions to enter into such a process," a U.S. counterterrorism official said, but "it's an uphill battle for most."

"I'm not saying you can't buy off a few guys or get a faction to turn," he added, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. "But as a general matter, our view is that it would be a very difficult thing to accomplish." The prospects for reconciliation, he said, are "dim and grim."

 

A better paycheck

Others within the administration and the military are convinced that many fighters, even if culturally and religiously attuned to the Taliban, are doing a job that they might abandon for more money. "Our analysis," and that of the Afghan government, Clinton said in an interview with ABC's "Nightline," is that "there are people, quote 'Taliban,' who are hiding because they get paid to fight. They have no other way of making a living . . . [and] get paid more to be in the Taliban than they get paid to be, like, say, a local police officer." ....