According to international sources and man posing as a Taliban leader has been captured in Afghanistan. It was believed that the man Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour is a shopkeeper from Pakistan. Not a Taliban commander as he had previously claimed.

“Far from being a former Taliban government minister, the individual concerned is now thought to have been a shopkeeper, a minor Taliban commander, or simply a well-connected chancer from the Pakistani border city of Quetta,” the New York Times said.

You see the thing is, the UK has been paying him several hundred thousand dollars to have secret peace talks with US and Afghan officials. This was part of their plan to negotiate with the Taliban to end the brutal conflict and hopefully end the illegal occupation.

The British are now claiming that this man tricked them into believing that he was second-in-command to Mullah Omar who is a major player in the Taliban. Apparently he was flown from Quetta to Kabul several times to conduct peace talks.

The Times quoted a senior Afghan government official as saying on Thursday:

“British Intelligence was naive and there was wishful thinking on our part.”

Officials from the US told the media that they had checked the man’s background and seemed like he was connected to the Taliban. He gave inside information that US intelligence had been able to verify. All signs pointed to the man being legit. This demonstrates that it was an intelligence failure by all three sides.

Bill Harris, the former US representative in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar said:

“Something this stupid generally requires teamwork.”

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On a personal note, I’d like to announce to the British government that I am in fact an official of the Chinese Communist Party. And for several hundred thousand dollars I’ll have talk with my boss and make this whole currency conflict situation go away. Do we have a deal?