Brits Blamed in Afghan Impostor Flap

Let the blame game begin. British officials are responsible, says Hamid Karzai’s chief of staff Mohammad Umer Daudzai, for presenting the man who falsely claimed to be Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, the Taliban’s second in command, at high-level negotiations with the Afghan state. An Afghan man at the first meeting knew the man was an impostor, he said, and Afghan intelligence later determined that the man was a shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta. British authorities, Daudzai said, were present during the pretender’s meeting with Karzai. Not present, he said, were the Americans, whose intelligence said the man was significantly shorter than Mansour and who were skeptical from the beginning.