Wow. What a catch, and I certainly hope they are able to get all the information they can out of this guy in order for us to get closer to Usama Bin Laden or Mullah Omar. We can only hope, and this is some outstanding war news. –Matt
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Afghan Taliban Military Chief Captured, Aides Confirm
By Eltaf Najafizada and James Rupert
Feb. 16, 2010
The Afghan Taliban’s top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was captured by U.S.-led forces in what may be the most significant blow to the eight- year insurgency.
Baradar, who has directed daily operations as deputy to Mullah Omar, was seized last week, two Taliban officials said. They disputed a report by the New York Times earlier today that he was nabbed in Karachi by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence teams. Baradar is undergoing joint interrogation, the Times said, citing unnamed American government officials.
The capture of Baradar, whom various reports say is about 40 years old, comes as U.S., British and Afghan soldiers advance into Southern Afghanistan in the biggest offensive against the Taliban since the beginning of the war in 2001. His detention could hamper insurgent operations for months, said Waheed Mujda, an Afghan analyst and former Taliban official.
“He is very important, the mastermind of their operations,” Mujda said in a phone interview from Kabul. Still, “the Taliban have faced this problem before,” when three top deputies to Mullah Omar were killed or reported captured within six months in 2007, he said.
Weekend Fighting
Taliban commander Akhtar Mohammad said by phone that Baradar was taken during weekend fighting in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. Another Taliban official, Abdul Qayum, said he “was captured by foreign troops on Sunday, along with some of his bodyguards, during the operation in Marjah,” a town in Helmand attacked by U.S. Marines on Feb. 13. Qayum also spoke by phone from an unspecified place in Afghanistan.
Baradar is the deputy leader of the “Quetta shura,” the top council of Taliban leaders, which analysts and U.S. officials say fled into hiding near the Pakistani border city of Quetta after being driven from Afghanistan in 2002. Pakistan denies that the Taliban leadership operates on its territory.
His capture could provide information on the whereabouts of Omar, the one-eyed cleric who is the group’s spiritual leader. Omar’s “relative lack of operational experience” means that the Taliban leadership council’s “day-to-day operations are handled by” Baradar, said a report last month by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
“Omar and Baradar have a close, long-standing relationship. Both fought side-by-side against the Soviets” in the 1980s, the report said. Baradar comes from the same ethnic Pashtun tribe as Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Akhtar Mohammad said.
Taliban Losses
Baradar is the highest-ranking Taliban official reported killed or captured since May 2007, when top military chief Mullah Dadullah was killed. Dadullah’s death came within six months of the Taliban losing their previous top commander, Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, and their former defense minister, Mullah Obaidullah.
In an attempt to improve the Taliban’s standing inside Afghanistan, Baradar last year helped issue a “code of conduct” for the group’s fighters. The handbook told Taliban guerrillas how to avoid civilian casualties and win the support of villagers.
The raid that grabbed Baradar was carried out by Pakistan’s military spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, with the assistance of CIA operatives, the Times said.
Karachi, a port city of 18 million people, has attracted fighters belonging to Pakistan’s own Taliban movement who have moved from the tribal northwest to escape missile attacks by U.S. unmanned aircraft and an offensive by Pakistan’s army, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, New York, said in a Jan. 26 report.
Karachi Bombs
Karachi also has one of Pakistan’s biggest populations of ethnic Pashtuns, the group within which the Taliban movement arose. Largely spared the retaliatory suicide bomb attacks the campaign triggered, Karachi religious processions by the city’s Shiite Muslim community were bombed in December and earlier this month, killing nearly 70 people.
The Marjah area of southern Helmand Province, where the current U.S.-led offensive is under way, is one of Afghanistan’s biggest opium-production areas.
The offensive is the allied forces’ effort to consolidate their biggest previous attempt, in July 2009, to establish government control in Helmand, where opium and smuggling trails to adjacent Pakistan have provided the guerrillas with revenue and supply routes. Controlling Marjah would connect areas seized by U.S. and British forces last year, according to U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan.
Story here.