Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Captured In Karachi

[pChan]

When Karzai becomes a Maliki, it's very unlikely that he would accept American prescriptions on the Durand line. Now is the time for America to bear down on the Afghans, to accept the Durand line, for it would also bestow on America the benefit of mollifying the Pakistanis & nudge them into yanking support for Taliban.

The lands to the east of the Durand line will remain under Pakistani control no matter what. Afghanistan can only benefit from removing Pakistani suspicions regarding the sanctity of the Durand line.

My 2 cents.

[S2]

Mihais Reply

"I'm not saying that Pakistan plays at two heads,but they could."

Anything is possible. It would certainly be interesting to know the results of prisoner interrogation. Further, Hekmatyar has never had perfectly cordial relations with the Quetta Shura. Acrimonious would be closer. Haqqani remains the interesting wild card here and I'm confident that we'd like very much to remove it from the deck without assistance...though any port in a storm.

The possibilities here are too much to speculate but there have been enough meetings of import lately to suggest "arrangements" are in the offing. I note that Shuja Pasha has recently been extended for one year and Gen. Kiyani has a request before him to accept a two year extension. A lot has happened quickly.

[n21]

While our leadership principles have no doubt delivered a drum-beat message, I don't think he's the kind of man to be pummelled into submission. More likely, he's seen the light and "come to Jesus" as we say.

S-2,

I am not sure if this step is taken keeping the effect of TTP in mind. If you look at the reason given by TTP for fighting PA, is that PA is taking order from US and killing Pashtuns.

Now when US leaves the region, would PA be able to tell TTP, "look the Americans have left, we are not listening to them, so lets stop fighting".?

PA can bring back the old days where they stay out of Waristan/Pashunisitan. PA gets to divert the Taliban back in Afghanistan and there will no insurgency within Pakistan.

I still remember the PA commander calling Mehsud a "Pakistani Patriot".

[S2]

n21 Reply

"I still remember the PA commander calling Mehsud a "Pakistani Patriot"."

Interesting. I'm having a discussion about those exact same words elsewhere.

[S2]

Pakistani Gov't Denies Baradar Arrest

This is getting VERY rich...

Mullah Baradar Arrest Reports "Propaganda": Rehman Malik-DAWN Feb.16, 2010

What a government!

[zraver]

S-2 over on pak Asim posted an article that basically says the ISI brought him down to derail US/Afghan talks with the Taliban.

[sumob]

S2 Reply- Pakistani Gov't Denies Baradar Arrest

Rehman Malik is the joker in the GOP. It is always advisable to take his statements with a bag full of salt ( Pinch will not help)

However there is a domestic audience who has to be reassured that the ISI is not collaborating with the Great Shaitan. In the days to come there will be many a spin to this arrest news.

[n21]

S-2 over on pak Asim posted an article that basically says the ISI brought him down to derail US/Afghan talks with the Taliban.

Yeah, NYT a piece on it. Indeed as I thought there must be a price ISI has in mind to have a change in heart.

Arrest of Taliban Chief May Be Crucial for Pakistanis - NYTimes.com

An American intelligence official in Europe conceded as much, while also acknowledging Mullah Baradar’s key role in the reconciliation process. “I know that our people had been in touch with people around him and were negotiating with him,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue.

“So it doesn’t make sense why we bite the hand that is feeding us,” the official added. “And now the Taliban will have no reason to negotiate with us; they will not believe anything we will offer or say.”

[Mihais]

S-2 over on pak Asim posted an article that basically says the ISI brought him down to derail US/Afghan talks with the Taliban.

Makes sense.IIRC the coverage on him presented him as one of the most decent and honorable of the whole bunch of leaders.Even as one that was most likely to negociate a peace.

[Vinod2070]

When Karzai becomes a Maliki, it's very unlikely that he would accept American prescriptions on the Durand line. Now is the time for America to bear down on the Afghans, to accept the Durand line, for it would also bestow on America the benefit of mollifying the Pakistanis & nudge them into yanking support for Taliban.

I doubt USA can really solve this issue between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Any decision forced on Afghanistan in their moment of weakness will not be honored when they are no longer week.

If even Taliban didn't accept the Durand line, that means that the feeling among Afghans is deep seated and Pakistan has to come to a mutually acceptable solution with the Afghans themselves. If you can't do that, your Western border will always be a hotbed of conspiracies as it has been before 1979 and after Taliban.

The lands to the east of the Durand line will remain under Pakistani control no matter what. Afghanistan can only benefit from removing Pakistani suspicions regarding the sanctity of the Durand line.

My 2 cents.

No one knows what will happen tomorrow, let alone in the long term. This statement sounds more a hope than a statement of facts.

[Vinod2070]

Anyway, I think what Pakistan can reasonably hope is that Afghanistan is not used actively against Pakistan by others as Pakistan had used it during the Taliban rule for spreading terror against India. This only when they stop trying to use the lever of Taliban as a blackmailing chip.

Trying to dictate what is acceptable for Afghanistan to do won't work, nor the attempt to force a government that is not representative of the majority of non Pushtun population of Afghanistan.

[S2]

Zraver Reply

Yeah, I saw it. Carlotta Gall's article is speculative and, I suspect, just scratches the surface of what's out there. I noted what I consider one definitive comment by an American official and that's we're not aware of any negotiations of substance.

I come back to a change in strategic thinking by Kiyani. How he got there, I'm unsure, but we saw a host of American strategic players in Pakistan through January and early February, a NATO conference in Brussels, and a Corps Commanders conference two weeks ago in Rawalpindi. That remains the COAS power-base. What was conveyed is beyond me but, voila!, Baradar is delivered...or delivered himself.

Baradar is the man and wouldn't be tossed under the bus by hard-line taliban elements without a transition of financial controls and operational authority in place. There are many operational commanders whose fealty is to Baradar and he controls the purse-strings (or did). Ridding themselves of him would alienate commanders and break financial links critical to continued operations.

Rapproachment is in the wind with this bust, IMV. The form it takes will be fascinating but I'd rather not speculate. Baradar isn't simply going to be interrogated and tried, IMV. The former will happen. The latter may happen but his personal penalty for such will likely be modest. End of S-2 speculation.:)

[pChan]

I doubt USA can really solve this issue between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Any decision forced on Afghanistan in their moment of weakness will not be honored when they are no longer week.

Afghanistan will never be strong enough to do anything about it.

If even Taliban didn't accept the Durand line, that means that the feeling among Afghans is deep seated and Pakistan has to come to a mutually acceptable solution with the Afghans themselves. If you can't do that, your Western border will always be a hotbed of conspiracies as it has been before 1979 and after Taliban.

Agreed, we need to look no farther than India, and yet, Pakistan can be discounted from gifting an inch of land to the Afghans.

No one knows what will happen tomorrow, let alone in the long term. This statement sounds more a hope than a statement of facts.

Hope? Nah, I just see another festering border dispute that will do no good to anybody in the region.

S-2 does not like his threads hijacked, so let's cut short this little detour. :))

[Tronic]

In Blow to Taliban, 2 More Senior Leaders Are Arrested

KABUL, Afghanistan — Two senior Taliban leaders have been arrested in recent days inside Pakistan, officials said Thursday, as American and Pakistani intelligence agents continued to press their offensive against the group’s leadership after the capture of the insurgency’s military commander last month.

Afghan officials said the Taliban’s “shadow governors” for two provinces in northern Afghanistan had been detained in Pakistan by officials there. Mullah Abdul Salam, the Taliban’s leader in Kunduz, and Mullah Mir Mohammed of Baghlan Province were captured about two weeks ago in a raid on a house in Akora Khattack, according to a leader at the Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqaniya madrasa there.

The arrests come on the heels of the capture of Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s military commander and the deputy to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the movement’s founder. Mr. Baradar was arrested in a joint operation by the C.I.A. and the ISI, Pakistan’s military intelligence agency.

The arrests were made by Pakistani officials, the Afghans said, but it seemed probable that C.I.A. officers accompanied them, as they did in the arrest of Mr. Baradar. Pakistani officials declined to comment.

Together, the three arrests mark the most significant blow to the Taliban’s leadership since the American-backed war began eight years ago. They also demonstrate the extent to which the Taliban’s senior leaders have been able to use Pakistan as a sanctuary to plan and mount attacks in Afghanistan.

A senior United States official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the arrest of the two shadow governors was unrelated to Mr. Baradar’s capture.

Even so, Muhammad Omar, the governor of Kunduz Province, said in an interview that the two Taliban shadow governors maintained a close working relationship with Mr. Baradar.

“Mullah Salam and Mullah Mohammed were the most merciless individuals,” said Gen. Razaq Yaqoobi, police chief of Kunduz Province. “Most of the terror, executions and other crimes committed in northern Afghanistan were on their orders.”

The immediate impact of the arrests of the two Taliban governors was unclear. In the short term, it could probably be expected to hurt the Taliban’s operations somewhat and possibly demoralize their rank-and-file fighters, but probably not for long. In the past the Taliban have proved capable of quickly replacing their killed or captured leaders.

The three recent arrests — all in Pakistan — demonstrate a greater level of cooperation by Pakistan in hunting leaders of the Afghan Taliban than in the entire eight years of war. American officials have complained bitterly since 2001 that the Pakistanis, while claiming to be American allies and accepting American aid were simultaneously providing sanctuary and assistance to Taliban fighters and leaders who were battling the Americans across the border.

In conversations with American officials, Pakistani officials would often claim not to know about the existence of the “Quetta Shura,” the name given to the council of senior Taliban leaders that used the Pakistani city of Quetta as a sanctuary for years. It was the Quetta Shura — also known as the Supreme Council — that Mr. Baradar presided over.

It is still far from clear, but senior commanders in Afghanistan say they believe that the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies, led by Gens. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Ahmed Shuja Pasha, may finally be coming around to the belief that the Taliban — in Pakistan and Afghanistan — constitute a threat to the existence of the Pakistani state.

“I believe that General Kayani and his leaders have come to the conclusion that they want us to succeed,” a senior NATO officer in Kabul said.

Word of the arrests of the shadow governors came as American, Afghan and British forces continue to press ahead with their largest military operation to date, in the Afghan agricultural town of Marja. Earlier this month, on the eve of the Marja invasion, Afghan officials also detained Marja’s shadow governor as he tried to flee the country.

The Taliban figures are commonly referred to as “shadow governors” because their identities are secret and because they mirror the legitimate governors appointed by the Afghan government. The Taliban’s shadow governors oversee all military and political operations in a given area.

Even before the arrests in Pakistan, the American and Afghan military and intelligence services appeared to have been enjoying a run of success against Taliban leaders inside Afghanistan.

The senior NATO officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said American forces had detained or killed “three or four” Taliban provincial governors in the past several weeks, including the Taliban’s shadow governor for Laghman Province.

Another NATO officer, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Mullah Zakhir, the Taliban’s military commander for southern Afghanistan, had been ordered back to Pakistan before the Marja offensive.

Indeed, the capture of two Taliban governors inside Pakistan may reflect the greater level of insecurity that all Taliban leaders are feeling inside Afghanistan at the moment.

“The Taliban are feeling a new level of pain,” the senior NATO officer said.

Mark Mazzetti and Pir Zubair Shah contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, Abdul Waheed Wafa from Kabul and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar.
In Blow to Taliban, 2 More Senior Leaders Are Arrested - NYTimes.com

Alright, Now I'm more inclined to believe something has changed. Have the Pakistanis finally decided to come to the winning side?

S-2, How much leadership does the Quetta Shura have on the TTP? Pakistan has faced hell the last few months, and could this be their way of saying, reign these guys in, or we reign you in? What will be most interesting to see is if these men are tried by Pakistan, or if they are simply "re-educated" and let go (a much used Pakistani tactic in the past). That is what I'm waiting to see.

[S2]

Tronic Reply

"S-2, How much leadership does the Quetta Shura have on the TTP?"

I don't know. How much control can any militant group's leadership ever really hold over its own potential rogues? What do you make of this?

Pakistan Militant Group Attacked By Suicide Bomber-BBC Feb. 18, 2010

"At least 15 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in a suicide bomb attack on a militant gathering in north-western Pakistan, officials say.

The bomber had blown himself up among pro-Taliban militants meeting in a compound by a crowded market selling hashish, a witness told the BBC."

"...could this be their way of saying, reign these guys in, or we reign you in?"

It appears, if that was ever an option for the Afghan taliban leadership, it's now been taken off the table. Matters have moved beyond that when you start busting the likes of Baradar.

"What will be most interesting to see is if these men are tried by Pakistan, or if they are simply "re-educated" and let go (a much used Pakistani tactic in the past)."

The ISI's laundry is now waving in the wind for all to see. There's no going back at this point without serious repercussions, IMHO. That dance is over. I'm of the belief that COAS has made a strategic reversal. What compelled such-inducement or coercement- is unknown. It could be as simple (but profound) as his reassurance of an enduring American engagement in the region that will stabilize Afghanistan to his satisfaction.

Just too soon to know.