As most Taliban begin to hunker down in far-flung villages or pull back to safe havens inside Pakistan, preparing for another brutal Afghan winter, insurgent leaders are thinking further ahead—and their individual takes are strikingly divergent. Just how far apart they are can be seen from two recent insurgent documents obtained by Newsweek. The Taliban’s top ranks are passing around a closely held 3,000-word letter bluntly examining the failings and disastrous excesses of Mullah Mohammad Omar’s defunct regime and recommending major changes. But meanwhile, the de facto head of the lethal Haqqani Network, Sirajuddin Haqqani, has published his own take on the future of Afghanistan and the world: a jihadist how-to book urging readers to emulate Al Qaeda’s terrorist tactics against Western targets far from home.

Both documents represent significant departures from the insurgents’ old ways. Although Taliban leaders have always been reluctant even to acknowledge the many glaring errors of their five years in power, the letter seems to reflect a new, more open-minded, and less doctrinaire attitude within the group’s ruling council, the Quetta Shura. The fact is that real peace can never come to Afghanistan without that kind of progress. Unfortunately, that apparent shift is offset by Haqqani’s move in the opposite direction. His men have long been the insurgency’s most ruthlessly effective killers, but they’ve never been directly linked to attacks outside Afghanistan. Now Haqqani’s book leaves no doubt that he’s out to promote worldwide jihad. And in that case, U.S. officials are wasting their time trying to coax him to the negotiating table.