THE secret NATO report on the Taliban leaked to the BBC is full of fascinating stuff, but it mostly confirms what was already known rather than shedding new light on the conflict in Afghanistan. The report, called “The State of the Taliban” and based on interrogations with more than 4,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees is, however, rich in anecdotal evidence about the way that Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, controls and sustains the Taliban and other extremist groups in Afghanistan.

The semi-comforting belief that only “rogue elements” in the ISI have close connections to the Taliban never had much basis in fact and it has less now. A senior al-Qaeda commander in Kunar province (in the wild north-east of the country) says: “Pakistan knows everything. They control everything. I can't [expletive] on a tree in Kunar without them watching. The Taliban are not Islam. The Taliban are Islamabad.” The report also states: “Senior Taliban representatives, such as Nasiruddin Haqqani, maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters in Islamabad, Pakistan.” Nasiruddin, a son of the Haqqani clan's leader, Jalaluddin, and its most prominent fund-raiser, was arrested by Pakistani agents in December 2010 as a sop to American pressure to take action against Taliban leaders in Quetta. If Nasiruddin is indeed free and living in the same neighbourhood as the ISI, suspicions that his detention was a sham will be confirmed.

Gauging how seriously to take the bullish view of the Taliban's prospects reflected in the report is a bit more difficult. In an unusually direct response to the leaking of a secret document, Colonel Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for ISAF (the NATO-led international coalition in Afghanistan), said: “This document aggregates the comments of Taliban detainees in a captive environment without considering the validity of or motivation behind their reflections. Any conclusions drawn from this would be questionable at best.” It is hardly surprising that the detainees want to project an air of confidence in their cause. But some of the things they say are hard to argue with. The report states: “Afghan civilians frequently prefer Taliban governance over GIRoA [Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan], usually as a result of government corruption, ethnic bias and lack of connection with local religious and tribal leaders.” Particularly in Pashtu-speaking areas in the south, swift (and often brutal) Taliban-administered “traditional” justice is sometimes deemed preferable to the sluggish and corrupt courts provided by the state.

Other claims are more questionable. For example, the statement that “almost without exception Taliban members do not receive salaries or other financial incentives for their work”, directly contradicts the experience of Afghan and ISAF officials working with the (admittedly not hugely successful) reintegration programme. They find that even low-level Taliban fighters get a salary of around $120 a month, which is not bad by Afghan standards. Nor is the boast that despite the heavy losses the Taliban have suffered over the past 18 months in Helmand and Kandahar, “commanders and fighters are easily replaced, at least initially, with minimal impact on operations”. The evidence is that the attrition of mid-level commanders has had an effect, with a big decline in complex attacks on security forces, both local and ISAF, and an increase in the indiscriminate laying of roadside IEDs (improvised explosive devices) that kill and wound civilians disproportionately—a tactic that does little to sustain local support for the Taliban.

The report is, however, a timely reminder that despite the mood of (contained) optimism over peace talks, the insurgency remains resilient and confident and is likely to stay that way for as long as Pakistan believes it is in its strategic interests to give it material and moral support. That does not mean that a Taliban victory, in the sense of a Taliban-dominated government returning to Kabul, is inevitable once the bulk of ISAF combat forces have departed, as many of the interviewees claimed to believe. Most of Afghanistan remains firmly opposed to such an outcome and determined to resist it. But it does mean that the strength of the Taliban's negotiating position should not be underestimated. Unfortunately, the announcement by America's defence secretary, Leon Panetta, on February 1st that America would end its combat role in mid-2013 rather than towards the end of 2014 as had previously been expected, can only bolster that position further. The previous timetable was not without risk. For reasons that have little to do with the future security of Afghanistan, Mr Panetta may have triggered an unseemly rush for the exit.

The post has been updated to reflect breaking news