Mullah Zaeef: My Life with the Taliban

Here is Chinmaya R. Gharekhan's review in Outlook India of Taliban Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef's My Life with the Taliban.

Of current relevance:

Tripartite talks between Afghanistan, US and Pakistan were sabotaged by Pakistan, he says. He told the American ambassador more than once that he should contact him directly. “Pakistan is never an honest mediator and will control and manipulate any talk they mediate or participate in,” Zaeef told him.

There is a much harsher characterization of Pakistan found in the review that I do not reproduce here. It is probably a bit of Pot, Kettle, Black.

PS: An example of Pakistani duplicity in the WaPo

The recent capture of the Afghan Taliban's second in command seemed to signal a turning point in Pakistan, an indication that its intelligence agency had gone from helping to cracking down on the militant Islamist group.

But U.S. officials now believe that even as Pakistan's security forces worked with their American counterparts to detain Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and other insurgents, the country's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI, quietly freed at least two senior Afghan Taliban figures it had captured on its own.

U.S. military and intelligence officials said the releases, detected by American spy agencies but not publicly disclosed, are evidence that parts of Pakistan's security establishment continue to support the Afghan Taliban.