Counterinsurgency made-man Dave Kilcullen — you remember him: counterinsurgency adviser to David Petraeus and Condoleezza Rice — has expressed skepticism about negotiating with the Taliban in the past. But that may have been a definitional issue, whereby ‘Taliban’ works as a stand-in for ‘Afghan insurgency.’ Because in an interview with Reuters, via Small Wars Journal, Kilcullen suggests that a massive amount of the insurgency — everyone who isn’t in Mullah Omar’s Quetta-based clique, basically — are people with whom the U.S. and the Afghan government can cut deals. Here’s what he told a Reuters reporter who asked if the U.S. should negotiate with the Taliban:

The answer to that question depends on who you think the Taliban are. I’ve had tribal leaders and Afghan government officials at the province and district level tell me that 90 percent of the people we call Taliban are actually tribal fighters or Pashtun nationalists or people pursuing their own agendas. Less than 10 percent are ideologically aligned with the Quetta shura (a Taliban leadership council) or al Qaeda.

I would divide the enemy in Afghanistan into two very broad categories, people who are directly aligned with the Quetta shura or al Qaeda. Those people are probably beyond negotiating and I don’t think we’d gain anything significant from trying to negotiate with them."

The others are almost certainly reconcilable under some circumstances.

Laura Rozen reports that Kilcullen is literally going to have dinner tonight with Vice President Joe Biden. Watch what Biden has to say about this in the coming days.

Crossposted to The Streak.