Back in August, I found myself in Kabul trying to make small talk with a former Taliban commander.

We were sitting on a carpeted floor in an empty office, his AK47 assault rifle resting on a pile of rugs in the corner.

Abdul Salam Rocketi used to be a Taliban fighter and before that he was a warrior with the Afghan mujahadeen during the Russian occupation. At the time, he became so adept with a rocket launcher that he inherited the nickname Rocketi, which stuck.

The CBC's Susan Ormiston with Afghan MP and former Taliban Abdul Salam Rocketi in August 2009 in Kabul. (CBC)

Rocketi is now a member of the Afghan parliament from Zabul, the province next door to Kandahar, which is why I was interviewing him.

He is a prime example of the handful of former Taliban members who have switched sides.

Some, like him, are trying to mediate between the so-called moderate Taliban and the Karzai government, an on- and off-again process that has not really progressed to anyone's satisfaction.

Rocketi is a burly man with bushy black eyebrows who has clearly seen his share of war.

"Do you have any children?" I asked him, through our translator. "Yes," he nodded. "I have four boys and four girls."

A slight pause. He then looked at me intently and, with a twinkle in his eye, held up an index finger. "One wife," he said.

I laughed. In fact, I tipped my head back and laughed out loud. It was his timing. I knew he was teasing me.

I didn't have to be told that many Taliban men have more than one wife. But here he was assuring me that he had just the one, as if it were his badge of honour as an enlightened Afghan male.

'The only way forward'

Afghanistan is such a tense country these days, it is easy to overlook the humanity and humour that can arise when you least expect it. Even with former warriors.

Rocketi, along with maybe half a dozen others who used to be allied with the Taliban, are quietly trying to keep the channels open with their former brethren.

"Afghanistan is ill," he says. "Negotiation with the Taliban is the only way forward."

What many in the West don't appreciate is how closely the Taliban are interwoven in the fabric of Afghan society. They live in communities where they are often the de facto local leaders, more concerned with settling local grievances than jihadist plotting.

Taliban fighters pose while detaining a man for campaigning for Abdul Salam Rocketi in an undisclosed location in Afghanistan on August 19, 2009. (Reuters)

Still, it is not easy for people like Rocketi to be middlemen.

"I cannot roam about openly," he says, talking about the province that he represents. "The Taliban do not believe in old friendships."

In fact, in the August presidential elections, two of Rocketi's campaign workers were kidnapped by the Taliban and held hostage. Old friendships, indeed.

Michael Semple

The fact is, though, that eight years after the fall of the Taliban, the war in Afghanistan is not going well and there is widespread acknowledgement that a military solution alone won't work, despite the current talk in Washington about ratcheting up the number of U.S. troops.

One of those seeking an alternative is a small but influential group of international diplomats and former NGO workers at Harvard University who are working on strategies to make peace with the enemy.

Its lead guy is Michael Semple, a red-headed, ruddy-faced Irishman who speaks Dari and has spent the last 20 years or so roaming about Pakistan and Afghanistan, first as a development worker, most recently as deputy head of the European Union's delegation in Kabul.

He sees his mission as keeping open the dialogue with the Taliban. In fact, he pursued it so vigorously that last year President Hamid Karzai grew suspicious and had Semple kicked out of the country.

Few, however, would challenge his credentials as one of the foremost Western authorities on Taliban leadership.

Harvard professor Michael Semple, left, meets with Taliban and other Afghan leaders. (CBC)

Semple divides the Taliban into the pragmatic, those who have some kind of political vision for their country, and the jihadist, those who just want to wage war against the West.

"A lot of it comes down to the distinction of those who are allied with al-Qaeda, who believe in that alliance," he says, versus those "who either have little link to al-Qaeda or, if they're doing it, they're only in it for the money and they want to ditch them as soon as possible."

Many of the Taliban grievances are purely local ones, Semple says. And, in what seems like a twist of logic, he argues there is common ground between Barack Obama (or any Western leader), Hamid Karzai and Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban.

"What do they have in common? A desire to see the back of the Western military campaign inside Afghanistan."

The cost to the Taliban

As Semple sees it, even if the timing for a Western withdrawal isn't right today — with NATO forces seemingly on their heels — it is still the basis for a common set of discussions, even perhaps with Taliban hardliners.

However, when I was in Afghanistan this summer with a CBC crew, we contacted Qari Yousif Ahmadi, the Taliban's military spokesperson in southern Afghanistan, where some of the fiercest fighting has taken place.

I asked him whether he accepted the fact that there are moderate Taliban who would be willing to enter into negotiations in the future.

His reply was that the people who say this "do not know anything about the Taliban. They say there are two types of Taliban among us. There is only one type, there is no moderate nor hardline Taliban."

The Taliban has always said there will be no negotiating as long as international forces are still fighting on Afghan soil. Or as Ahmadi put it: "This war has been imposed on us, we are fighting in self-defence."

Doesn't sound as if there is much of a crack to walk through. But Semple says this hardline talk is predictable propaganda. "Forget about the line they give you," he says. "I've asked them what is this war costing you? They say 'it's costing us everything. I cannot sleep the whole night in one place, because if I do, I'm scared of informers.'"

"You know on a daily basis they are looking death in the face," Semple says. "So always remember to look from the other side."

Subtle distinctions

President Karzai has been dabbling with reconciliation efforts. But they have been largely tepid and unsuccessful at luring Taliban to the table.

But his spokesperson, Humayun Hamidzada, assured us that, in this next presidential mandate, negotiations would be front and centre.

"His number one priority is to bring peace to Afghanistan, and to seek peace through negotiations with the armed opposition of the Afghan government," said Hamidzada.

"There will be a very robust, a very serious and even more consulted effort to reach out to the different groups and make sure we have provided opportunity to all those who are willing to lay down their arms, who are willing to accept the constitution of the country."

The catch is in the phrase "who are willing to accept the constitution of the country."

To date the Taliban has not been willing to do that. Though whether that might change if the U.S. ups the stakes with its military surge is probably one of the things weighing on Barack Obama's mind at the moment.

But already in Washington, from people like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, you can hear the subtle distinction between Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The unstated suggestion is that ultimately parts of the Afghan Taliban may be hived off and dealt with differently from those associated with al-Qaeda.

That, of course, could only happen if Western and Afghan leadership knew who was who, itself a big challenge.

Any reconciliation with the Taliban will be a long and difficult negotiation. No one we spoke to believes it is imminent. But there are clearly the beginnings of some kind of political discussion.

Michael Semple feels it is inevitable.

"The thinking the Taliban know they don't have a hope in hell of achieving the kind of victory they say they're fighting towards. They have an incentive to get on board in this peace process."