The capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a top Taliban commander who reputedly ran the raging insurgency in southern Afghanistan, suggests a new era of co-operation between Pakistan and the United States.
"We've seen an increase in Pakistani pushback on extremists in their own country, which I think is beneficial not simply for us," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, although he declined to explicitly confirm reports that a joint U.S.-Pakistani team was interrogating Mullah Baradar after his capture in the sprawling port city of Karachi late last week.
President Barack Obama has massively escalated the war in Afghanistan, sending more than 50,000 additional troops to crush the raging Taliban insurgency that threatens the shaky and corrupt government of Hamid Karzai in Kabul. The U.S. President and his envoys have also pressed hard for greater co-operation from the embattled Pakistani government, which has long maintained discreet ties - and thus influence - with the Taliban in Afghanistan and its fugitive leadership hiding out in Pakistan.
The arrest of Mullah Baradar, regarded as the Taliban's second-in-command to the ailing Mullah Mohammed Omar and the day-to-day operations chief, is the latest in a series of setbacks for the Taliban. In Afghanistan, thousand of U.S. Marines have launched the largest military operation in years against the insurgency; in Pakistan, U.S. missile-firing drone aircraft have killed several top commanders and a major Pakistani military push into the lawless zones along the border has squeezed extremist elements.
Pakistan's government moved quickly, however, to deny reports that the capture was a joint operation with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and there was no suggestion that Mullah Baradar might be handed over to the Americans like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key al-Qaeda leader, was seven years ago.
On the contrary, Pakistan's Interior Minister flatly denied reports that the CIA had located Mullah Baradar or that his capture was a joint operation. "We have joint intelligence sharing, not joint investigations, nor joint raids," he said.
Many Pakistanis seethe at the notion of U.S. interference, and the government in Islamabad must "constantly distance itself from any American involvement," said Reza Jan, a specialist in Pakistan and researcher at the Critical Threats project of the American Enterprise Institute. "Although there is fairly entrenched co-operation, the question for Pakistan is: At what point does it become too much for the public to tolerate," Mr. Jan said.
Although Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency has long been accused of turning a blind eye to high-ranking Afghan Taliban who fled to Pakistan after the U.S.-led war ousted the Taliban from power in Kabul in 2001, it remains unclear whether ISI operatives moved against Mullah Baradar under U.S. pressure or to flex Pakistan's own muscle in the intricate power dance in South Asia.
With both the Obama and Karzai administrations making clear a new-found willingness to engage with moderate Taliban, the Pakistani government may have moved to demonstrate that it remains a key player.
"The arrest of Baradar helps bring U.S. and Pakistan policy toward Afghanistan in closer alignment," Arif Rafiq, an analyst, wrote in the widely followed Pakistan Policy Blog. "The Pakistan Army is willing to work with Afghan moderates and, at the same time, retains significant leverage over the country's insurgents. It has the capacity and willingness to engage, if not manage, a broad spectrum of Afghanistan's major Pashtun actors - both 'good' and 'bad,' " Mr. Rafiq wrote yesterday.
The full significance of Mullah Baradar's capture may not be evident for months. Although reports in Pakistan and the United States quote unnamed intelligence sources as saying he was providing valuable intelligence to his interrogators, counter-terrorism agents rarely say the information they extract is worthless.
Senior Democrats said the capture demonstrates that Mr. Obama's so-called Af-Pak strategy of dealing with the Taliban threat on both sides of the border and engaging Islamabad is paying off.
"It's evidence of a new level of co-operation which is very, very important," said Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee. "The Pakistanis understand this is a fight for them."
But Pakistanis are also keenly aware that the United States has a track record of walking away from the region once it's immediate security goals have been achieved. After funding, arming and backing Islamic and other militants to wage an insurgency that eventually drove the Soviet Union's army from Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Americans largely abandoned the region. Many in Pakistan fear that U.S. interest will quickly wane if the current insurgency can be quelled, even briefly in Afghanistan.
THE DEAD
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is one of the few senior Taliban or al-Qaeda leaders to be captured in Pakistan or Afghanistan. The top figures in the insurgency are more likely to be killed in the rising number of missile attacks by unmanned U.S. aircraft. These are some of the figures who have died recently.
Mansur al Shami: An al-Qaeda ideologue and aide to Mustafa Abu Yazid, his exact date of death is now known but he was last seen on January 4, 2010.
Abdullah Said al-Libi: The top commander of the Lashkar al Zil, al-Qaeda's shadow army, was killed around Dec. 17, 2009.
Zuhaib al-Zahib: The commander in the Lashkar al Zil was also killed around Dec., 17, 2009.
Saleh al-Somali: The leader of al-Qaeda's external network was killed Dec., 8, 2009
Mustafa al Jaziri: A senior military commander for al-Qaeda who sits on al-Qaeda's military shura, killed Sept., 7, 2009
Mufti Noor Wali: A suicide-bomber trainer for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, killed July 3, 2009.
Abdullah Hamas al-Filistini: A senior al Qaeda trainer, killed April 1, 2009
Osama al-Kini (aka Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam): al-Qaeda's operations chief for Pakistan who was wanted for the 1998 bombings against the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Killed January 1, 2009
Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan: A senior aide to Osama al-Kini, also wanted for the 1998 African embassy bombings, was killed Jan., 1, 2009.
Source: The Long War Journal
MULLAH ABDUL GHANI BARADAR
Origins
According to Interpol, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was born around 1968 in Weetmak, in the Afghanistan province of Uruzgan. Like Afghan President Hamid Karzai, he is a member of the Durrani Pashtun subset of the Popalzai tribe.
Training
Fought with the Afghan mujahedeen against Soviet forces in the 1980s, during which time he met Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar. After the Soviet withdrawal, the two operated madrassas in the Maywand district of Kandahar province, and reportedly married sisters. When his mentor started a revolt against local warlords in 1994, Mullah Baradar was among the first recruits of what would become the Taliban. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, he reportedly ferried his leader to safety in the mountains on the back of his motorcycle.
Leadership
Regarded as second in command of Taliban, he led the winter offensives of 2008 and 2009, a dramatic change in tactic from the traditional May to November fighting season. The arrest of Mullah Obaidullah in 2007 removed a key rival and facilitated his rise in the ranks, as did the killing that year of Mullah Dadaullah, a popular young field commander. Most recently, Mullah Baradar was said to be heading the group's leadership council, known as the Quetta Shura, named for the city in southwestern Pakistan where the group's senior leadership is now based
Influence
Since Mullah Omar has isolated himself from view in recent years, his No. 2 has widely been seen as the strategic force behind the Taliban, and the link with other foreign militant groups. Said to manage the day-to-day business of the insurgency, he reportedly appoints and fires the Taliban's commanders and defacto governors, presides over its top military council and issues the group's public statements. He also controls the Taliban's well-stocked treasury, which is believed to contain hundreds of millions of dollars in narcotics funds, ransom payments, highway tolls, and foreign donations. "He commands all military, political, religious, and financial power," Mullah Shah Wali Akhund, a guerrilla subcommander told Newsweek. He was also reportedly behind several attempts at peace talks in 2004 and 2009.
Previous attempts to apprehend
Under UN sanctions, Mullah Baradar has had his assets frozen and is under a travel ban and an arms embargo. But that didn't make him easy to catch. The New York Times reported that he was captured along with several other Taliban leaders in November of 2001 by Afghan militia fighters. But Pakistani intelligence operatives intervened, and the group was released. He was wrongly reported to have been killed by an air strike in Helmand Province on August 30, 2007.
Siri Agrell