The question of how third-party talks are going between the active Taliban insurgency and representatives of the Afghan and U.S. governments depends on who you ask. Certain Taliban leaders say there is progress, but some Afghan officials have their doubts. Charles Sennott of GlobalPost visited Afghanistan in the summer of 2009 and spoke with four former Taliban leaders about the talks.

Abdul Hakim Muhajid
Former Taliban representative to the U.N.

Abdul Hakim Muhajid met with GlobalPost in June 2009 in a heavily guarded residence in Afghanistan's capital Kabul. He represented the Taliban to the United Nations in New York for four years, and was living in Flushing, Queens as the events of Sept. 11, 2001, unfolded.

Muhajid said he and his colleagues came to Afghanistan in 2005 to try to bring mutual understanding between the Afghan government and the armed opposition, though they weren't given specific responsibility to do so. The Taliban is not a revolutionary group of radicals, he said, rather "a traditional people who rose up here in Afghanistan with no affiliation with religious movements."

Maulana Arsallah Rahmani
Taliban senator from Paktika province

Maulana Arsallah Rahmani was head of the Ministry of Higher Education and a minister of the Haj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, before the United States ousted the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001. He told GlobalPost executive editor Charles Sennott that negotiations between the Afghan government and Taliban are gaining momentum.

Rahmani is now a member of the Lower House, or Senate, appointed by President Hamid Karzai. He said the Afghan government should stop holding prisoners indefinitely and searching homes without solid information.

Abdul Salam Zaeef
Former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan

Abdul Salam Zaeef was the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan before the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. While he condemned the attacks of 9/11, he has said Osama bin Laden was not responsible and would not be handed over to authorities.

Zaeef spent four years in U.S. detention facilities at Bagram Air Field and Guantanamo Bay. After his release, he moved to Kabul, where he remains under house arrest and continues to express his support for the Taliban resistance to coalition forces.

Wakil Ahmad Mattawakil
Former Taliban foreign minister

Wakil Ahmad Mattawakil was the last Taliban foreign minister before the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. After the Northern Alliance and U.S. and British forces ousted the Taliban, Mattawakil surrendered in Kandahar to the new government.

In an interview with Charles Sennott of GlobalPost, Mattawakil said he was opposed to the Taliban destroying the Buddha statues of Bamyan in 2001 and was always uncomfortable with the infiltration of al-Qaida into the Taliban government.