It is comparable to Adolf Hitler sending a message to Winston Churchill in the middle of World War II. "Let's chat, Winston." Mullah Omar, the elusive leader of the Taliban movement is reported to have sent a message through mediators to a NATO general in Brunssum (the Netherlands). Radio Netherlands Worldwide's defence specialist Hans de Vreij reports.

According to NATO General Egon Ramms, Mullah Omar has expressed an interest in open talks with the alliance. General Ramms oversees alliance operations in Afghanistan:

"We have people living in Germany, Afghans who are going to Afghanistan, who have relationships with certain areas of the population of Afghanistan. From them I received the message that there would be a high-ranking interest to talk to ISAF."

Infidels
The big question, of course, is: why would the leader of the Taliban movement want to talk to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), routinely described as 'kafirs' and 'infidel crusaders’? The official line from NATO is that the Taliban might believe they are losing the population’s support. General Ramms:

"If you see the development during this year, if you see the measures taken to get the support of the population and all the other issues, I believe that to a certain extent the Taliban are going to fear that the support of the population could slip away from them, at least in the Southern part. And that would mean they would lose the ground to act further on Afghanistan itself."

Taliban demands
But it may well be that the Taliban believe they are in a strong position to talk to ISAF. What Mullah Omar wants to talk about has not been made public. In previous statements, the Taliban have always demanded a full withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan as a precondition for talks. The fact that such a demand is now reportedly not included, could be seen as a new development.

But General Ramms makes it clear that real negotiations with the Taliban are a matter for the Afghan government, not for NATO. He has passed on the reported preliminary to a lower-ranked ISAF official in Kabul:

"ISAF has established someone who is dealing with reintegration issues. (...) I have handed over that hint to those people to deal with the issue in the country itself, because it doesn't make sense to do that from our end in Brunssum."