My colleagues and I spoke with four people: two former members of the Taliban government (one of them a founder member of the movement), a senior former Mujahedin commander with close ties to the Taliban, and a non-official Afghan mediator with the Taliban. All emphasised the realism of the Taliban leadership, born of their experiences of the past decade, and their willingness to break with al-Qaeda and exclude it and other international terrorist groups from areas under their control.
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