The Afghan embassy did not respond to a request to discuss the plan.

“By 2015, Taliban, Hezb-e-Islami and other armed groups will have given up armed opposition, transformed from military entities into political parties, and are actively participating in the country’s political and constitutional processes, including national elections,” says the plan’s preamble. “NATO/ISAF forces will have departed from Afghanistan, leaving the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) as the only legitimate armed forces delivering security and protection to the Afghan population.”

Despite that optimistic forecast, however, the plan may rest on shaky legs. Its far-reaching assumptions not only could doom it to failure, but risk an all-out civil war before the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, completes its pullout.

“This is living in a dream world of wishful thinking,” said Marvin Weinbaum, a Middle East Institute scholar who served as a State Department intelligence analyst on Afghanistan. “It is not based on anything that the Taliban has given us reason to expect.”

A major assumption is that all insurgent leaders and their fighters will participate even though the Taliban have consistently rejected negotiations with Karzai, who they denounce as an American puppet. Moreover, the insurgency is far from being monolithic and many leaders are known to distrust each other and Pakistan.

Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar and other leaders based in Pakistan could come under pressure from the Pakistani military to take part if they balk. But such pressure could backfire, risking Afghan militants joining Pakistani Islamists fighting to topple their government.

In an incident underscoring the hurdles, two Taliban factions claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack on Thursday that wounded Asadullah Khalid, the chief of Afghanistan’s intelligence service. Karzai on Saturday alleged that the attack was planned in Pakistan, but he denied that the Taliban were responsible.

The new plan would preserve Afghanistan as a parliamentary democracy, denying the militants the Islamic rule for which they’ve spent years fighting.

It also appears to ignore warnings from politicians of the former Northern Alliance against giving the Taliban and their allies power that they hadn’t won in elections. The Northern Alliance, dominated by ethnic minorities, battled the Taliban, which is made up primarily of the dominant Pashtun ethnic group, until the 2001 U.S. invasion. Many former alliance members now head Karzai’s political opposition and hold key army, police and intelligence posts.

"Any Afghanistan reconciliation effort will have to address varied and complex ethnic concerns,” acknowledged a U.S. official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss the issue.

Finally, the key role that the plan confers on Pakistan could inflame suspicion among many Afghans that Islamabad plans to exert influence in a post-war Afghanistan – especially to block a pro-India tilt – by placing former insurgents in cabinet posts, ministries, provincial governorships and positions like police chiefs and district administrators.

“The northerners won’t buy this,” said Weinbaum, referring to former Northern Alliance leaders. “So what you get then is the beginning of a civil war.”