Article content It began with Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s first president after 9/11, who was forever pleading with the Taliban, his “brothers,” his fellow Pashtuns, his “sons of the soil,” to talk peace. The surviving leaders of the resistance during the dark Taliban years warned loudly and often that any effort to reconcile with Mullah Omar’s mass murderers would end in disaster. We apologize, but this video has failed to load. Try refreshing your browser. Glavin: As Afghanistan crumbles, Canada should at least rescue its friends Back to video Down through the years, among Afghans, the woolly idea of peace talks was dismissed time and again as a dangerous folly. The Afghan Women’s Network said so. Afghanistan’s legendary spy chief Amrullah Saleh said so. Even Burhanuddin Rabbani, who headed up Afghanistan’s High Council for Peace before the Taliban assassinated him, said so.