For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement....
United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor.
Apparently, they also mistook the gentlemen as the Taliban-representative of a large bank.
“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”
This seems appropriate (NSFW if the volume is up).