Once considered so entwined that they were twin targets of a U.S. invasion, al-Qaida and elements of Afghanistan's Taliban are now being surgically separated — one careful stitch at a time.
The move by the United Nations last week to remove five former Taliban members from its official sanctions list reflects a growing belief by U.S. and international officials that some less-active leaders of the Afghan Taliban are no longer tightly linked to the al-Qaida network they sheltered before the terror attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
The decision anchors an Obama administration policy shift that would transform the Afghanistan war from a broad international conflict into an internal political struggle largely handled by the Afghans themselves. Key to that change would be an effort to negotiate with and buy out midlevel Taliban figures willing to renounce violence and abandon their fight.
But in paring back some of the Taliban's connections to al-Qaida, the move risks running up against the American public's ingrained perception that the Afghan faction remains a national enemy and that there is no ideological daylight between the two groups.
A few other Taliban figures have been dropped from the target list in recent years, but the latest round signals a more comprehensive approach. Any large-scale tinkering with the U.N. target list would have a tangible impact on American counterterror moves: The U.S. typically has a strong behind-the-scenes role in the U.N.'s decision and the U.N. list is often used by the U.S. to identify its own targets for diplomatic and economic punishments.
U.S. officials are quick to say that the decoupling is limited and proceeding carefully. Some Taliban leaders, they say, may never come off the list — such as Mullah Mohammed Omar or the leaders of the Haqqani network, which directs the fight against U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan from the Waziristan tribal region in Pakistan.
By: Brant
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