US to press Pakistan to 'squeeze' Haqqani network: Clinton

Πηγή: The Nation
By INP
April 17 2012

The United States has said that it will continue to press Islamabad to 'squeeze' the al-Qaeda linked Haqqani network, as Afghanistan blamed the Pakistan-based group for the latest brazen attacks in Kabul.

Declaring "there were indications of Haqqani involvement" in the weekend attacks in the Afghan capital, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that she had pressed Pakistan to 'squeeze' the Haqqani network when she visited Islamabad last October.

"I will continue to make that point, and press it hard," Clinton was quoted by Fox News as telling reporters in the Brazilian capital Brasilia, where she described the Haqqani network as a 'determined foe'.

Afghan Interior Minister Bismillah Mohammadi had told newsmen in Kabul that one of the militants arrested during the latest attacks on the Afghan capital and three other cities had told the authorities that al-Qaeda linked Haqqani network was behind the assaults.

The Secretary of State said she had spoken to her Pakistani counterpart Hina Rabbani Khar to urge her for a commitment to work closely for peace and stability in Afghanistan and also discussed the recent terrorist attacks in Kabul.

The telephonic talks between Clinton and Khar come a day ahead of a crucial meeting of Pakistan's top civilian and military leadership, who are expected to take a final decision on re-opening of logistic supply lines to Nato troops in Afghanistan. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani will preside over the meeting of the Defence Committee of Cabinet, which will also be attended by key ministers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Khalid Shamim Wayne, Army Chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and chiefs of Air Force and Navy.

The meeting has been called days after the parliament unanimously approved a resolution for resetting the country's strained relations with the US.

The parliament had opposed use of supply route for arms transfer to Nato troops and called for an immediate cessation of US drone strikes on Pakistani soil. In Washington State Department spokesperson Mark Toner told reporters: "They (Clinton and Khar) did discuss next steps in the US-Pakistani dialogue in light of the conclusion of this parliamentary review. They also, of course, discussed the attacks in Afghanistan." "Our posture right now is you know we recognise that this has been a long and difficult road for Pakistan. It speaks to the strength of Pakistan's democratic institutions that this parliamentary review's taken place, that the civilian government has taken the lead on this issue, has owned it, and has come up with a series of recommendations." "I think it's incumbent on us now to engage with them in a discussion about some of those recommendations," he said.

Militants Turn to Death Squads in Afghanistan

An Afghan shopkeeper with an American soldier recently in the Sabari district, where militants have been intimidating residents.

Πηγή: New York Times
By RAY RIVERA, SHARIFULLAH SAHAK and ERIC SCHMITT

Nov 28 2011

SABARI, Afghanistan — As targeted killings have risen sharply across Afghanistan, American and Afghan officials believe that many are the work of counterintelligence units of the Haqqani militant network and Al Qaeda, charged with killing suspected informants and terrorizing the populace on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Military intelligence officials say that the units essentially act as death squads and that one of them, a large group known as the Khurasan that operates primarily in Pakistan’s tribal areas, has been responsible for at least 250 assassinations and public executions.

Another group, whose name is not known, works mainly in Afghanistan and may be responsible for at least 20 killings in Khost Province over the summer alone, including a mass beheading that came to light only after a video was found in the possession of a captured insurgent. The video shows 10 headless bodies evenly spaced along a paved road, while their heads sit nearby in a semicircle, their faces clearly visible.

It is another indication that the Haqqanis, a mostly Pakistan-based faction, remain the most dangerous part of an insurgency that makes full use of a porous and often ill-defined border, as the NATO strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers over the weekend showed.

Though the circumstances of that strike remain murky, it has now further upset relations between Pakistan and the United States, even as it once again demonstrated how havens inside Pakistan remained a critical part of the insurgent strategy.

The Americans have geared their offensive around bloodying the insurgents as they enter Afghanistan. But the new wave of assassinations shows that, even as NATO portrays the insurgents as a weakening force, the Haqqanis can still assert their influence, not only with headline-grabbing bombings but also through intimidation and by controlling perceptions.

One chilling case attributed to the second death squad came after American forces captured the senior Afghanistan-based leader for the Haqqanis, Hajji Mali Khan, and killed his top deputy this summer. Just days later, the bodies of two men accused of helping the Americans turned up near the village where Mr. Khan was captured. Scalding iron rods had been shoved through their legs. One victim had been disemboweled, and both had been shot through the head and crushed by boulders. Fear shot through the entire village.

“You could hardly recognize them,” said a witness who viewed the bodies.

Across Afghanistan, assassinations have jumped 61 percent, to 131 reported killings, through the first nine months of this year, compared with the same period in 2010, according to NATO statistics. United Nations officials say they began noticing a sharp increase in 2010, with 462 assassinations according to their records, double the number from the previous year. The figures may not include many killings in remote areas, like the mass beheading, because fearful villagers never reported them.

American intelligence officials say the Afghanistan-based group and the Khurasan seem to operate in much the same manner. The Khurasan is believed to have formed in early 2009 in the North Waziristan area of Pakistan, the Haqqanis’ headquarters, in response to intensified drone attacks by the United States. The group is said to wear black clothing with green armbands bearing its full name, Itihad al-Mujahedeen Khurasan, and works closely with Al Qaeda in the region. Estimates of its size range from 100 to 2,000 members.

During his interrogation, Mr. Khan suggested that other weapons were involved in the battle for influence, as well. According to four officials familiar with the questioning, the Haqqani leader told his interrogators that the Taliban had been approaching Afghan government and military officials throughout the summer, persuading them to sign a five-page document secretly pledging their loyalty to the Taliban leadership. Mr. Khan boasted that he had signed up 20 officials himself.

“They tell the officials that the Taliban is going to be back in power within 20 days of NATO leaving, so if they want to live, they’ll sign,” said one of the American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified interrogations. Officials say they have found no confirmation of such oaths, however.

In places like Sabari, a rural district in Khost that sits about a dozen miles from the Pakistan border, the targeted killings are producing their intended effect. After a daylight execution of three men in a bazaar in the village of Maktab about four months ago, shop owners were so traumatized that they never reported the killings to the authorities.

Often, the victims may have had little more than passing encounters with coalition forces, or no involvement at all, according to officials, witnesses, and friends and relatives of victims.

American and Afghan officials learned about the killings only later when a video of the episode was found on a captured insurgent’s cellphone. Even then, American officials who showed the video to a New York Times reporter could cite the place where the killings had taken place but believed that they had occurred in October, about three months after witnesses say the actual episode happened.

The video showed a number of gunmen shooting to death two men as shop owners scrambled for cover. The militants then shot a third man as he sat in a white plastic chair in front of his shop. As the man fell backward, one of the gunmen shot him 10 more times in the face and chest.

“Whoever tries to help the Americans and spies for them will face this,” one of the men shouted after the killings, according to a witness, Ahmadullah, 25, a shop owner who like many Afghans goes by one name.

Ahmadullah said no one dared report it, even the men’s families, who carried the bodies away. “We just had to watch and stand quiet and watch what was happening to these poor people,” he said.

“I knew those men,” he added. “One was just a shop owner, the other two were laborers. They were innocent.”

An American military official who saw the video said he was not surprised that local villagers failed to report the episode.

“People in Sabari are living in abject terror, 24 hours a day,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the death squad. “When we conduct a raid on a Haqqani leader,” he said, a group of about 15 death-squad members “go in and massacre people.”

Last month, insurgents killed another man in the bazaar, about two days after a night raid in the village by Afghan and American troops. This time the victim was a visiting merchant from Khost City named Nasib, who was pulled out of his car as his 5-year-old son watched from the passenger seat. His abductors dragged him to the bazaar and killed him in broad daylight.

Yet when asked about the killings, the district governor and the local police chief in Sabari said they knew nothing about them. “I totally deny such reports,” said Dawlat Khan Qayoumi, the district governor. “I can tell you in the last five months we have not seen any such incidents.”

Questions also surround the videotaped beheadings. Muhammad Zarin, the commander of a special undercover police unit that has been investigating the death squads, would say only that the men were from Khost and were killed about three months ago in the Mangal area in the province’s mountainous Musa Khel district, where Mr. Khan was active. Neither NATO nor the United Nations, both of which track assassinations, had any record of the mass beheadings, of the Maktab Bazaar killings or of the two men killed after Mr. Khan’s capture, reflecting the intense secrecy with which villagers have guarded the deaths.

After an earlier raid that failed to capture Mr. Khan in the Musa Khel area, coalition forces got a report that three village elders had been kidnapped and three teenagers had been beheaded. “When we went up to investigate, we could never get any bodies or any proof,” said Col. Christopher R. Toner, commander of the First Infantry Division’s Third Brigade Combat Team, based in Khost and Paktia Provinces. “But there was enough going around that I suspect it was true.”

Public health officials likewise say they hear of dozens of such killings but are seldom able to confirm them. “People don’t bring the bodies in to the hospital for fear of the Taliban,” said Dr. Fazal Mohammad Mangal of the Khost provincial hospital.

Zabit Amen Jan, a former Musa Khel resident, has lost four brothers to insurgents, including two students in their 20s whose bullet-ridden bodies were found in June. A hand-scrawled letter found on one of the bodies said the men had ignored repeated warnings to stop working with the coalition forces. “There was no other way except doing this,” the letter said.

Mr. Jan said his younger brothers had no connection to the coalition and were killed only because he and another brother had been involved in politics.

“People used to come to our district for picnics because our area is full of mountains and covered with pine and walnut trees,” he said. “Now people are fleeing to Khost City or Kabul or Pakistan, because there are so many killings and they know the government can’t protect them.”

Could Pakistan dump the U.S. for 'all-weather friend' China?

Πηγή: LATimes
By Alex Rodriguez and Barbara Demick

Oct 1 2011

Though Islamabad likes to play that card, analysts say, Beijing could never replace the billions in aid that Washington provides. Nor is China likely to risk its own bid to become an economic superpower.

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Beijing— With every new trough in U.S.-Pakistanrelations, talk among Pakistanis of paring down their dependence on Washington and throwing in with China grows louder.

Just days after the U.S. accused Pakistan's premier spy agency of aiding insurgent attacks against U.S. targets in Afghanistan, Chinese Vice Premier Meng Jianzhu appeared this week in Islamabad reassuring Pakistani leaders that China backed Pakistan's efforts to protect its sovereignty.

The vice premier's comments apparently referred to Pakistani worries of a future U.S. airstrike or targeted ground operation against Taliban-allied insurgents in the tribal belt along the border with Afghanistan.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani beamed when talking about his country's friendship with China, deeming it "higher than the mountains, deeper than the oceans, stronger than steel and sweeter than honey."

But could Pakistan ever afford to turn away from the U.S. as an ally and replace it with China, which Islamabad routinely calls its "all-weather friend?"

Analysts say such a move is highly unlikely. With nearly $9 billion in annual trade with Pakistan, China is Islamabad's biggest trading partner, as well as its leading arms supplier. But it could never replace the billions of dollars in economic and military aid that Pakistan gets from the United States, experts say, as well as billions more in loans from international lenders heavily influenced by the U.S., including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

"If Pakistan thinks China will compensate for the loss of American ties, they are overestimating," says Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Lahore-based security analyst. "The kind of economic assistance that Pakistan gets from the U.S. cannot be replaced by the Chinese. And the Chinese recognize that they cannot do it."

Yet even if the notion of China becoming Pakistan's dominant foreign benefactor is unrealistic, Pakistan doesn't hesitate to use its strong ties with Beijing — and the prospect of deepening those ties — as leverage against Washington. The tactic becomes particularly evident during moments of crisis in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship.

After the U.S. commando raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May in the Pakistani military city of Abbottabad, a secret, unilateral operation that Pakistanis decried as a blatant breach of their country's sovereignty, Gilani was welcomed by Chinese officials in Beijing with a gift of 50 JF-17 fighter jets. Gilani also heard comforting words from Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who advised the U.S. to respect Pakistan's sovereignty.

The assertion last week by Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, that one of the most dangerous factions in the Afghan Taliban insurgency, the Haqqani network, was "a veritable arm" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency deeply angered Pakistanis and prompted officials to seek out expressions of solidarity from long-standing allies like China and Saudi Arabia.

Mullen bluntly accused the ISI of helping Haqqani militants in attacking the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital, on Sept. 13 and in a truck bombing in Afghanistan's Wardak province Sept. 10 that injured more than 70 American troops. Pakistani officials have vehemently rejected the allegations.

"Clearly Pakistan is playing that card, whether it's the China card or the Saudi card," said Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and an expert on South Asia affairs. "They would like to show themselves, and the U.S. and the rest of the world, that they have other friends if the U.S. seeks to make trouble with them."

Pakistan's ties with China date to 1950, when Pakistan became one of the first countries to recognize the communist government of the People's Republic of China.

Beijing has invested heavily in several major infrastructure projects in Pakistan. They include nuclear power plants, gold and copper mines, major highways and the construction of a deep-water port at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, envisioned as a future strategic site for Persian Gulf oil destined for China.

Beijing also sees its alliance with Pakistan as a valuable counterweight to its chief South Asian rival, India. For its part, Pakistan has looked for ways to ratchet up the relationship. In an unusual decision announced this month, officials in Sindh province said they would require all students in sixth grade and higher to learn Chinese, beginning in 2013.

While Pakistan's ties with China have grown stronger, its relationship with the U.S. has been weakened by deep mutual distrust.

Lawmakers in Washington have threatened to freeze all economic and military aid to Islamabad if Pakistan doesn't act against the Haqqani. The network uses the North Waziristan tribal region along the Afghanistan border to launch suicide bombings and other strikes on U.S., North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Afghan forces in eastern Afghanistan and Kabul.

Some Pakistanis believe that with China's backing, their country could withstand whatever punitive action Washington takes.

"If the U.S. does this, of course China has promised us that they will stand by Pakistan in every condition," said Hamayoun Khan, an expert in Pakistan-China affairs and a former analyst with Pakistan's Institute for Strategic Studies. "China has said it considers Pakistan as a core interest.... China has made it clear that Pakistan is a trusted ally. So anything done against Pakistan would be considered an act against China."

Other experts, however, say China's ambitions to become an economic superpower supersede its relationship with Pakistan. Though Pakistan and its role in South Asia are important, China takes care to avoid undermining crucial, complex ties with the U.S. and the West.

"China's relations with the U.S. are extremely important," said Rizvi, the security analyst. "They have investments in the U.S., and U.S. multinational corporations are investing in China. And the Chinese have long-term goals of becoming an economic giant on a global scale. So they're not going to act in favor of Pakistan and in the process disrupt their relations with the U.S."

China also has its own counter-terrorism concerns involving Pakistan: Islamist Uighur separatists who Beijing says train in northwestern Pakistan and then slip across the border to carry out attacks in the Xinjiang region. China has been pressing Pakistan to clamp down on Uighur separatists training in tribal regions along the Afghan border. In late July, Uighurs conducted a series of ambushes on police and firefighters in the western Chinese city of Kashgar, leaving 22 dead.

"I don't think the Pakistani government's perception that China comes to do business without any preconditions — that it doesn't have any counter-terrorism concerns — is altogether right," said Ed Husain, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Despite what the Pakistanis would wish to convey to the West, the relationship with China is not as deep or as free-ranging as Pakistanis would want us to believe."

Nuclear war between Pakistan, US closer than many realize

It may seem unimaginable – but could a conflict between Pakistan and the U.S. lead to nuclear war?

Πηγή: newstype
By Steve Tarlow
September 27, 2011


Recently, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen testified before Congress that Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), which has supposedly been an ally to the U.S., has actually supported terrorist actions by al-Qaeda and the Haqqani syndicate. In light of this, some media sources believe that the U.S. should be prepared for war against Pakistan.
‘Pakistan is the enemy,’ writes Hitchens

The writing is on the wall, suggests Christopher Hitchens in Slate. Pakistani intelligence is known to have aided the Taliban and provided refuge for Osama bin Laden during his final days in Abbottabad. The New York reports that a 2007 ambush on American and Afghan soldiers in a Pakistani border town was a “complex, calculated assault” arranged by Pakistani military. Various border skirmishes involving “unknown assailants” are believed to have been ISI-backed Taliban militants, but exact details remain classified.

Apparently, some officials want to sweep this under the rug. From the Times:

“At first, the meeting to resolve the border dispute seemed a success. … Then, as the Americans and Afghans prepared to leave, the Pakistanis opened fire without warning. The assault involved multiple gunmen, Pakistani intelligence agents and military officers, and an attempt to kidnap or draw away the senior American and Afghan officials.”

Various U.S. military officials familiar with Pakistan note that border attacks have tended to follow a pattern: retaliation for accidental U.S. attacks upon Pakistanis.

“(They made) a point to the Americans that they could not be pushed around,” said an unnamed former U.S. military officer who served in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Plausible deniability of acts of war

Understandably, Pakistan has officially denied any ties to al-Qaida and the Haqqani syndicate, as such relations would violate the nation’s sovereignty. Hitchens attacks these claims, wondering what possible motivation Mullen would have to lie, considering that U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was seated next to him as he gave his testimony to Congress. The ISI has made the U.S. government look like “fools and suckers” who cannot defend their own troops and civilian staff and encampments.

If Pakistani intelligence can be linked to the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan would be in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1368, which was approved on Sept. 12, 2001. Resolution 1368 states that anyone found to be “supporting or harboring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these acts will be held accountable.” Resolution 1368 is unambiguous, and as Hitchens believes, Pakistan has violated it, in attacks on the Indian embassy in Kabul in 2008, in Pakistan border attacks and on 9/11. The fact a war has not already occurred can likely be attributed to the fact that Pakistan is known to supply various countries with nuclear material.

‘War of words’ between Pakistan, US

Sources

Gawker: http://gawker.com/5844318/you-should-probably-start-preparing-for-war-with-pakistan

New York Times: http://nyti.ms/pkL0H0

Politico: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/64515.html

Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2304641/

The Telegraph: http://tgr.ph/ocAVVm

U.S. links Pakistan to group it blames for Kabul attack

Πηγή: Reuters
By Qasim Nauman

Sep. 17 2011

The United States accused Pakistan on Saturday of having links to a militant group Washington blames for an attack on the U.S. embassy and other targets in Kabul and said the government in Islamabad must cut those ties.

"The attack that took place in Kabul a few days ago, that was the work of the Haqqani network," the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, told Radio Pakistan in comments aired on Saturday.

"There is evidence linking the Haqqani Network to the Pakistan government. This is something that must stop."

The Haqqani network is one of three, and perhaps the most feared, of the Taliban allied insurgent factions fighting U.S.-led NATO and Afghan troops in Afghanistan.

Insurgents in a bomb-laden truck occupied a building in Kabul on Tuesday, raining rockets and gunfire on the U.S. embassy and other targets in the diplomatic quarter of the Afghan capital, and battled police during a 20 hour siege.

Five Afghan police and 11 civilians were killed.

Washington has long blamed militants sheltering in Pakistan for violence in Afghanistan. Islamabad says its forces are taking high casualties fighting insurgents, and bristles at any suggestion it provides support for fighters.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Pakistan on Wednesday the United States would "do everything we can" to defend U.S. forces from Pakistan-based militants staging attacks in Afghanistan.

Munter suggested ties with Pakistan, which relies heavily on billions of dollars of U.S. aid, were still heavily strained, despite recent comments from both sides on strong counter-terrorism cooperation.

"These relations today need a lot of work," he said.

The Haqqani network is perhaps the most divisive issue between the two allies, whose ties have been badly damaged by the unilateral American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani town in May.

Pakistani officials were not immediately available for reaction on Munter's comments.

"The key here is that this is going to take a real effort to work together, to agree who the enemy is, to make sure that we identify those people who will attack Pakistanis, Afghans, and Americans, that we do not give them any space anywhere," Munter told Radio Pakistan.

"These people have to be pursued everywhere. We will work with our Pakistani friends to make that happen but we cannot put up with this kind of fight. We have to make sure that in our talks with your leadership, we figure out the best way to put these attacks to an end."

The United States has repeatedly pressed Pakistan to go after the network, which it believes is one of the most lethal organizations in Afghanistan and enjoys sanctuaries in North Waziristan, a global hub for militants near the Afghan border.

Pakistan's powerful Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has long been suspected of maintaining ties to the Haqqani network, cultivated during the 1980s when its founder Jalaluddin Haqqani was a feared battlefield commander against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Asked if the Haqqani network was behind the Kabul assault, Sirajuddin Haqqani, the group's leader, told Reuters in a telephone interview on Saturday from an undisclosed location:

"For some reasons, I would not like to claim that fighters of our group had carried out the recent attack on U.S. embassy and NATO headquarters. Our central leadership, particularly senior members of the shura, suggested I should keep quiet in future if the US and its allies suffer in future."

The Haqqanis are thought to have introduced suicide bombing to Afghanistan, and are believed to have been behind high-profile attacks there, including a raid on Kabul's top hotel and an assassination attempt on the president.

In one example of the Haqqani group's effectiveness, they are believed to have helped an al Qaeda suicide bomber who killed seven CIA agents at a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan last year, the deadliest strike on the agency in decades.

US-Taliban Talks Were Making Headway

Πηγή: ABC News
By ANNE GEARAN and KATHY GANNON (Associated Press)

August 29, 2011

AP- Direct U.S. talks with the Taliban had evolved to a substantive negotiation before Afghan officials, nervous that the secret and independent talks would undercut President Hamid Karzai, scuttled them, Afghan and U.S. officials told The Associated Press.

Featured prominently in the talks was the whereabouts and eventual release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl of Hailey, Idaho, who was captured more than two years ago in eastern Afghanistan, according to a senior Western diplomat in the region and a childhood friend of the Taliban negotiator, Tayyab Aga.

The U.S. negotiators asked Aga what could be done to gain Bergdahl's release. The discussion did not get into specifics but Aga discussed the release of Afghan prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in Afghanistan at Bagram Air Field.

Published reports about the clandestine meetings ended the talks abruptly, and sent Aga into hiding.

Collapse of the direct talks between Aga and U.S. officials probably spoiled the best chance yet at reaching Mullah Mohammed Omar, considered the linchpin to ending the Taliban fight against the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan. The contacts were preliminary but had begun to bear fruit, Afghan and U.S. officials said.

Perhaps most importantly they offered the tantalizing prospect of a brokered agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban — one that would allow the larger reconciliation of the Taliban into Afghanistan political life to move forward. The United States has not committed to any such deal, but the Taliban wants security assurances from Washington.

In a series of interviews with diplomats, current and former Taliban, Afghan government officials and a close childhood friend of Aga, the AP learned Aga is hiding in Europe, and is afraid to return to Pakistan fearing reprisals.

The United States has had no direct contact with him for months.

A senior U.S. official acknowledged that the talks imploded because of the leak and that Aga, while alive, had disappeared. The U.S. will continue to pursue talks, the official said. Current and former U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the talks.

The U.S. acknowledged the meetings after Karzai, who apparently fears being sidelined by U.S.-Taliban talks, confirmed published accounts about them in June, but has never publicly detailed the content, format or participants.

The first was held in late 2010 followed by at least two other meetings in early spring of this year, the former U.S. official said. The sessions were held in Germany and Qatar, the official said.

The childhood friend of Aga's, who spoke to the AP on condition he not be identified because he feared retaliation, said Aga was in Germany. A diplomat in the region said Aga fled to a European country after his contacts with the United States were revealed.

The talks were deliberately revealed by someone in the presidential palace, where Karzai's office is located, said a Western and an Afghan official. The reason was Karzai's animosity toward the U.S. and fear that any agreement Washington brokered would undermine his authority, they said.

The AP sought comment from Karzai's office but was referred to palace press department spokesman Hamid Elmi, who did not answer his phone during repeated calls.

Pakistan had also been kept in the dark about the talks, people knowledgeable about them said. An Afghan official with contacts with the Taliban said the insurgents decided not to tell Pakistan about the meetings with the United States.

At the time of the leak, Washington had already offered small concessions as "confidence-building measures," a former senior U.S. official said. They were aimed at developing a rapport and moving talks forward, said a current U.S. official on condition he not be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic.

The concessions included treating the Taliban and al-Qaida differently under international sanctions. The Taliban had argued that while al-Qaida is focused on worldwide jihad against the West, Taliban militants have focused on Afghanistan and have shown little interest in attacking targets abroad.

Other goodwill gestures that were not made public included Aga's safe passage to Germany, U.S. officials said. The U.S. also offered assurances that it would not block the Taliban from opening an office in a third country, the official said.

Aga slowly established his bona fides with the U.S. officials, who had initial doubts both about his identity and his level of contact and influence with Omar, former and current U.S. official with knowledge of the discussion said. For example, a coded reference to the talks appeared on a Taliban-affiliated website following one meeting, just as Aga said it would, one official said.

Aga sought the freedom of Taliban fighters in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay and Bagram Air Field, north of the Afghan capital where an estimated 600 Afghans are being held. Still at Guantanamo Bay is former Taliban Defense Ministry Chief of Staff Mullah Mohammed Fazil, Taliban intelligence official Abdul Haq Wasiq and former Herat governor Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa.

Afghanistan's High Peace Council tasked by Karzai with finding a negotiated settlement with insurgents has requested Khairkhwa's release.

A former U.S. official familiar with the talks said the loss of the Aga contact dismayed and angered the U.S. side, and further eroded thin trust in Karzai. There is a difference of opinion among U.S. diplomats, military officials and others about how directly Karzai should be blamed, but several officials agreed that the leak was an attempt to torpedo a diplomatic channel that Karzai and his inner circle worried would sideline and undercut the Afghan leader.

As the Afghan war slides into its 10th year and Washington plans to withdraw its combat forces by the end of 2014, a negotiated settlement between the Karzai government and the Taliban has become a stated goal for the United States. It is the centerpiece of efforts by Marc Grossman, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Karzai has launched a separate peace outreach, with the High Peace Council representing numerous political factions.

A member of that High Peace Council, who asked not to be identified by name so he could talk candidly, told the AP that the leaking of the talks reveals the level of mistrust and the lack of coordination among the key players in any eventual peace deal.

He said all the key players — the United States, Afghan government, Afghan National Security Council and the High Peace Council — are holding separate and secret talks with their own contacts within the insurgency.

The United States, for example, has also held secret talks with Ibrahim Haqqani, the brother of Jalaluddin Haqqani, who heads the notorious Haqqani network considered by U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan to be their biggest threat. That contact was confirmed by officials from Pakistan, Afghanistan and the U.S.

Karzai met with representatives of wanted rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is seeking greater involvement at the peace table and direct talks with the United States, said diplomats in the region.

The flurry of meetings the United States is holding with the various factions in the Afghan conflict has also extended to Pakistan, where the most powerful insurgents have found safe havens.

A month ago, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. John Kerry and Pakistan's Army chief of staff Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani met for a marathon eight hours in a Gulf country. Peace negotiations with Afghanistan's insurgents featured prominently, said both Pakistani and U.S. officials who would not be identified by name because of the secret nature of the meeting.

A U.S. official familiar with the talks said Kayani made a pitch during his marathon meeting with Kerry that Pakistan take on a far larger role in Afghanistan peacemaking. The United States considers Pakistan an essential part of an eventual deal, but neither the U.S. nor Pakistan trusts the other's motives in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, an unexpected consequence of attempts to find peace with the Taliban has been the rearming of the so-called Northern Alliance, that represents Afghanistan's ethnic minorities and who were partnered with the coalition at the outset of Operation Enduring Freedom to topple the Taliban regime.

For the warlords that make up the Northern Alliance, Martine van Bijlert, co-director and co-founder of the Afghan Analyst Network in the capital, Kabul, talk of peace threatens their survival.

Warlords-cum-government ministers and vice presidents are watching attempts at finding a peaceful end to the war with trepidation, each wondering "what if it unravels, who is going to come after me? Will I be the weakest in the room? They are feeling very vulnerable," van Bijlert said.