LET'S HOPE THIS IS TRUE

(h/t David Dayen at Firedog Lake)

Last Friday, the Boston Globe ran a very interesting article about Afghanistan that seems to agree with the DNI memo about the relatively small number of hardcore Taliban members:

Taliban not main Afghan enemy
Few militants driven by religion, reports say
By Bryan Bender
Globe Staff / October 9, 2009

WASHINGTON - Nearly all of the insurgents battling US and NATO troops in Afghanistan are not religiously motivated Taliban and Al Qaeda warriors, but a new generation of tribal fighters vying for control of territory, mineral wealth, and smuggling routes, according to summaries of new US intelligence reports.

Some of the major insurgent groups, including one responsible for a spate of recent American casualties, actually opposed the Taliban’s harsh Islamic government in Afghanistan during the 1990s, according to the reports, described by US officials under the condition they not be identified.

“Ninety percent is a tribal, localized insurgency,’’ said one US intelligence official in Washington who helped draft the assessments. “Ten percent are hardcore ideologues fighting for the Taliban.’’

Even a war whore like neocon Fred Kagan pretty much agrees with this assessment:

“The term [Taliban] has come to have a meaning far beyond what the United States should care about’’ militarily, said Frederick W. Kagan, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who is advising US military commanders.

This leads us to a possible solution:

America may pay Afghan fighters to ditch Taliban
Sunday Times, London 12 October 2009, 02:19am IST

Paying Taliban foot-soldiers to switch sides could spare US lives and save money, say its advocates.

A recent report by the Senate foreign relations committee estimated the Taliban fighting strength at 15,000, of whom only 5% are committed idealogues while 70% fight for money — the so-called $10-a-day Taliban. Doubling this to win them over would cost just $300,000 a day, compared with the $165 million a day the US is spending fighting the war.

The tactic was used to good effect in Iraq where the US put 100,000 Sunni gunmen on its payroll for $300 a month each.