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FactCheck: talking to the Taliban?

By Channel 4 News

Updated on 16 January 2008

Prime minister Gordon Brown insists that the UK will not negotiate with the Taliban. But a picture is building that suggests otherwise.

The claim

"I make it clear that we will not enter into any negotiation with these people."
Gordon Brown, prime minister, House of Commons, 12 December 2007

The background

Prime minister Gordon Brown set out a wide-ranging strategy for action in Afghanistan on 12 December all the while insisting that the UK was focused on "isolating and eliminating" the leadership of the Taliban - not negotiating with them.

That morning's newspapers had carried reports that the UK government was preparing to talk to the Taliban. Conservative Leader David Cameron accused Brown of sending out "conflicting messages."

Brown's position was undermined two weeks after his Common's statement after a press report revealed that agents from MI6 had held secret talks with Taliban leaders over the summer.

His stance was further called into question after two senior Western diplomats, including a British UN worker, were accused of holding talks with the Taliban and expelled from the country.

Shadow foreign secretary Liam Fox has called on Gordon Brown to "clarify his position."

The analysis

Gordon Brown insists that the UK will not negotiate with the Taliban.

However, the government does support Afghanistan's reconciliation policy that attempts to persuade mid- and low-ranking militants to switch sides.

The UK military in the south of the country also seeks to forge contacts with tribal leaders - many of whom are assumed to be members of the Taliban or supportive of the Taliban - to win their support for the Afghan government.


The report said Afghan officials were present at the meetings to maintain illusion that it was President Hamid Karzai's government that was leading the talks.

Staff at the Helmand Press Information Office failed to respond to FactCheck's requests for a statement on their meetings with local tribal leaders.

However, the most embarrassing revelation for Brown was a report in the Daily Telegraph that suggested that MI6 agents conducted secret discussions with the Taliban in Helmand last summer.

The report said Afghan officials were present at the meetings to maintain illusion that it was President Hamid Karzai's government that was leading the talks.

The Telegraph cited an unidentified intelligence source as saying: "The SIS [Secret Intelligence Service] officers were understood to have sought peace directly with the Taliban."

The source continued: "These meetings were with up to a dozen Taliban or with Taliban who had only recently laid down their arms. The impression was that these were important motivating figures inside the Taliban."

A spokesperson for the British Embassy in Kabul told FactCheck that it was their policy not to comment on intelligence issues.

Two western diplomats, Michael Semple, acting head of the EU delegation, and Mervyn Patterson, the UN's political affairs officer, were expelled from Afghanistan at the end of last year after being accused of talking to the Taliban in Helmand.

The Afghan authorities accused them of "endangering national security".

The UN stressed the pair were not talking to the Taliban. But a UN spokesman did admit that the organisation needs "the support of the local community and that means we need to talk to people on the ground, and that means people who are supportive of the government and people who are less supportive. Those are the people they have to win over."

The verdict

Brown insists that the UK will not negotiate with the Taliban - mindful that the US is wary of its ally talking to groups that supported the September 11 terror attacks.

But a trickle of stories has emerged over the past six weeks to suggest otherwise.

Perhaps it is time for Brown to be clearer about what the UK's strategy actually is.

FactCheck rating: 3.5

How ratings work

Every time a FactCheck article is published we'll give it a rating from zero to five.

The lower end of the scale indicates that the claim in question largerly checks out, while the upper end of the scale suggests misrepresentation, exaggeration, a massaging of statistics and/or language.

In the unlikely event that we award a 5 out of 5, our factcheckers have concluded that the claim under examination has absolutely no basis in fact.

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