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By Hamid Shalizi | Reuters – 1 hour 38 minutes ago
By Hamid Shalizi | Reuters – 1 hour 38 minutes ago
KABUL (Reuters) - The killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by an elite U.S. team has sapped Taliban morale and encouraged fighters to join peace talks, while piling pressure on insurgent leaders living in Pakistan, an Afghan intelligence official said on Wednesday.
Lutfullah Mashal, spokesman for the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan's intelligence service, also warned however that opposition to peace talks among powerful factions in Pakistan, where key insurgent groups fighting in Afghanistan are based, would slow progress in negotiations.
Taliban fighters were demoralised by news that the man who masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks was living in relative suburban comfort while they risked all in Afghanistan's inhospitable mountains and deserts, he said.
"The Afghan Taliban have realised that al Qaeda is not fighting for Islam and for Allah," he told a news conference in the Afghan capital.
"They live under patronage of intelligence agencies and have comfortable lives and the poor Afghan Taliban die every day in clashes with Afghan forces," he said, apparently referring to Pakistani intelligence services as bin Laden's protector.
Many people question how Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency could have failed to pick up that the United States' most wanted man was living on the doorstep of an elite military academy a couple of hours drive from the capital.
The Afghan Taliban, when they acknowledged bin Laden's death in a statement days after it was announced, said that it would only revitalise their fight against "occupiers" in Afghanistan.
But Mashal said the government was seeing a steady flow of fighters wanting to join the peace process.
"The realisation of these fact have encouraged Taliban who join the peace process in groups every day," he said.
A very gratifying development, I wish it were true!
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