Continuing with Douglas Valentines work...The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World.

....After eight years of waging a “dirty war” against the Taliban (whom Obama had described a month earlier as a “cancer” that must be irradiated out of existence), the US government and its NATO allies tried a different tack in 2010. For the first time they acknowledged that the “insurgent” enemy was, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, part of the “fabric” of Afghan society. 1

Having acknowledged the humanity of Muslims in Afghanistan, the plan was now to entice low- and mid-level Taliban to switch sides. High-level Taliban and anyone connected to al Qaeda (now manifest as ISIS), however, maintained their exalted status on Obama’s hit list.

In January 2010, US and NATO officials started offering bribes drawn from a multi-million-dollar program “Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund” to get Taliban fighters to betray their leaders and become, as General Stanley McChrystal said, “part of solution in Afghanistan.” 2

In the US, the peace plan horrified some women’s rights advocates, but appealed to elements of the public who were already weary of endless war. Taliban leaders condemned the buyout strategy as a “trick” and warned that offers of reconciliation were futile unless all foreign troops left Afghanistan. 3

As ever, there was a darker CIA side to the “reconciliation” plan.

https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2019/09/part-4-cia-as-organized-crimevietnam.html