Talking To The Taliban

There are no Taliban distinct from the Pashtun community as a whole. There are ultra-Islamist Pashtun nationalists, and we call them the Taliban. But that is all that they are. They want what they want in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or at any rate in the Pashtun parts of both. But that is all that they want. Objectionable they certainly are. A threat to us they certainly are not.