The ISI, Pakistan's spy service, helped form the Taliban movement that took Kabul in 1996.
The country's largest ethnic group, Pushtuns, make up about 40% of the population, dominate the south and form the Taliban's main support base.
"I would very much hope that we could find a formula for keeping some form of Taliban representation in New York," he said.
Following the Soviet invasion, the export of the fundamentalist Saudi interpretation of Islam – Wahhabism – fused with Afghan Pashtun tribal code and helped to form the Taliban.
In later years Mr. Wilson insisted that the United States had not made a mistake by supporting the Afghan rebels, among them Osama bin Laden and the Islamists who would form the Taliban regime.
The two Waziri commanders, Maulvi Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadar, control territory that surrounds the lands that are home to the rival Mehsuds and that form the Taliban stronghold where the army has begun its push.
Among the reasons he gives are the shortsighted support Washington extended, during the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, to religious fundamentalists who later helped form the Taliban; the United States' role in the erosion of west Pakistan's tribal system; and its failure to recognize early on the scope of Islamic militancy along the border.
That decision, Mr. Cameron suggested, was directly linked to situations in which British troops had to close on the enemy in armored vehicles and on foot, rather than aboard helicopters that would reduce their exposure to the most deadly form of Taliban attack, roadside bombs.
In 1979, the Soviets invaded, occupied Afghanistan for the next decade and were finally driven out by American-backed mujahedeen fighters, some of whom went on to form the Taliban, an Islamic student militia, which took control in Kabul in 1996.
Most often, militants who have inched toward reconciliation with the government or form anti-Taliban militias with the Pakistani military's support are attacked by hard-core elements within the Taliban.
