A letter from Mullah Omar to Obama?

Telegraph:

The unsigned note claims to carry a message directly from the one-eyed militant to Barack Obama, urging the US president to release senior Taliban fighters from Guantánamo Bay as a first step towards peace talks in Afghanistan.

If the letter is confirmed to have come from the fugitive mullah it would be the strongest indication yet that the upper echelons of the Taliban movement are prepared to come to the negotiating table after ten years of insurgency.

This week, Leon Panetta, the US Defence Secretary, said that the US wanted to end its combat role in Afghanistan by the middle of 2013, a year earlier than previously publicised, enabling an expedited draw-down of the US’s current 90,000-strong fighting force.

Last month, the Taliban made a surprise announcement that it would open a political office in Qatar, although questions remain over whether the movement is serious about a long-term settlement or wants to bargain for prisoner releases.

A leading scholar on the Afghan insurgency said last night that if the letter was genuine, it would answer a key question about whether the hoped-for negotiations with the Taliban had the potential to deliver real results.

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I am skeptical.  I am not aware that the illiterate religious bigot could read or write.  Perhaps someone wrote the note for him.  Even if it is from Omar, I doubt the Taliban will live up to any deal that Obama might reach with them.  They certainly have not lived up to any of the Geneva Conventions that they are supposed to be bound by.  They are also not will to exchange any of their own prisoners for the thugs we would be releasing.