Whoa: More than a dozen Taliban leaders seized by Pakistan intel

Also among the captured: Mullah Mir Mohammed, the second Taliban “shadow governor” to be pinched by Pakistan in the past few weeks. A senior U.S. official told the Times that Mohammed’s capture was unrelated to the capture of Mullah Baradar, the Taliban’s number two, and he’s probably telling the truth. According to a new AP report, Baradar has tons of info about the Taliban but has provided “limited information” thus far.

Another AP report claims Baradar has provided “useful” information. The $64,000 question remains why Pakistan is suddenly so intent in rolling these guys up. I’ve been speculating about sticks and carrots that Obama might have used to get them to cooperate, but maybe neither are the case. Maybe instead Pakistan feared that the Taliban was about to go rogue by striking a peace deal with Karzai that would have reduced Islamabad’s influence inside the country to an unacceptable degree. (Baradar is reputed to be open to negotiations.) For more on that possibility, I recommend J.E. Dyer’s post this morning in the Greenroom. If his/her theory is correct, we’ve now reached a surreal moment in which Pakistan is pursuing the Taliban for possibly being too friendly to the United States. More from CSM:

I don't think this article has been posted on FreeRepublic....from the LA Times Feb 4

Suicide bombing ring is brought down in Afghanistan, officials say

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Afghan authorities say 17 men in an alleged bombing cell have been arrested. The group is thought to be allied with Pakistani militants and to have received aid from the Pakistan spy agency ISI.

February 04, 2009|M. Karim Faiez and Laura King

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN, AND ISTANBUL, TURKEY — Afghan authorities said Tuesday that they had broken up a suicide bombing cell responsible for a string of attacks in the capital, including a massive explosion last month that killed an American serviceman and wounded five other U.S. soldiers.

In a disclosure likely to stoke tensions with Pakistan, a spokesman for Afghanistan's main intelligence service said the 17 men arrested in Kabul were believed to be affiliated with a Pakistan-based militant group known as the Haqqani network and that the cell's ringleader was a Pakistani national.

The spokesman, Sayed Ansari, also hinted that the plotters were assisted by Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence directorate.

Afghanistan has long accused Pakistan of failing to crack down on insurgents who use Pakistan's lawless tribal areas as a staging ground for attacks in Afghanistan.

Relations between the neighboring nations have warmed considerably since Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, took office five months ago. Afghan President Hamid Karzai attended Zardari's inauguration and hailed what he called a fresh diplomatic start.

But critics and allies alike have questioned the Zardari government's ability to move effectively against insurgents in the tribal areas -- or to rein in the ISI, which has a long history of aiding groups such as the Taliban.

The spy agency's long-standing ties to the Haqqani network, led by veteran Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin, were spotlighted last year when U.S. intelligence backed up Afghan authorities' assertion that the ISI had aided the group in its bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul in July. The attack killed nearly 60 people.

Adding this...mentioned in the article....also at Hot Air

The Pakistan connection

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There’s been a lot of wonder expressed about the recent capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Mullah Omar’s operations deputy, in Pakistan. After the Pakistanis swore off any new offensives against the Taliban this year, and with their intelligence service, the ISI, known to be infiltrated by the Taliban and other Islamist extremists – why would they apparently cooperate in capturing Baradar?

Now the news is out that another Taliban commander has been captured in Pakistan. This time it’s one Mullah Abdul Salam, reportedly the “shadow governor” of Kunduz Province.

Have the Pakistanis done an about-face? Does the ISI now really want to roll up the Taliban? Is there anything that would lead us to believe that, other than the blank fact of two recent takedowns?

The best answers are: Unlikely; Probably not; and No. But there is information readily available that sheds light on what’s going on. And what it points to is the conclusion that Pakistan’s de facto leadership is determined to wield the primary influence over how any accord is negotiated between Afghanistan’s central government and the Taliban.

This priority has arisen just now because of the strong – some sources would say overriding – interest shown by the Obama administration in what’s being called “reintegration”: negotiating with “moderate” Taliban to get them to lay down their arms and reintegrate with Afghan society and politics on a consensual basis. That policy vector, combined with Obama’s 18-month window to begin a drawdown of US forces, means Islamabad has a limited time horizon for making key moves.

The recent captures probably represent one such key move. Baradar, the second-in-command, is reported to have brokered a Taliban meeting in Dubai in January, with the UN’s top representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide. To jog your memory, Dubai is one of the United Arab Emirates over in the Persian Gulf (the insolvent one with the man-made island chain and the famous al-Burj Hotel). And while there is contrary word about this – Baradar reported as denying it, some sources saying he was detained because he refused to meet with Eide – the meeting would be in character. Baradar is considered more conciliating and diplomatic than his chief, Mullah Omar, and was the leader of last year’s Taliban delegation to Kabul for talks with Hamid Karzai’s older brother, Qayyum.

The disquieting aspect of Baradar’s diplomacy for the Pakistanis can be found in this passage from a piece by Nouvel Observateur reporter Sara Daniel in December 2009, based on interviews in Afghanistan (emphasis added):

…i[t] seems that the political leadership of the Taliban, tossing around between Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi, would like to put an end to its wanderings in Pakistan. That’s the sense of the messages from the Quetta choura [shura] and its representatives, Baradar and Mohamed Mansour, former chief education officer. The rebels would like to install themselves somewhere, then form a government-in-exile to elaborate the conditions for a negotiation with the Karzai government. Why not in Saudi Arabia where Mullah Zaeef, former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, has already tried to organize a meeting between the enemy sides? Then from Riyadh, the Taliban leadership could negotiate its own neutrality in exchange for a right to return, amnesty and participation in political life after the withdrawal of foreign troops.

Pakistan’s own extremist mullahs wouldn’t like the sound of that. Now, they may not exert all the control over regional Islamists attributed to them by one of Daniel’s main sources, Maulvi Arsala Rahmani, a member of the Afghan Senate. Rahmani is a one-time Taliban leader who joined the new government after the Coalition victory, and Daniel reports his analysis as follows:

According to him, the key to potential negotiations is in the hands of the Pakistani mullahs, themselves under ISI – the Pakistani secret services’ – control. As are Mullah Fazel Rahman and Sami ul-Haq, who lead the coalition of Pakistani fundamentalist religious parties. “Before the Taliban, it is they who must be convinced to make peace, because today they control al-Qaeda and bin Laden and hold the future of the region in their hands …”

This last is an overstatement. But: to the extent the Pakistani mullahs want to hold the future of the region in their hands, they can’t like the prospect of the Afghan Taliban building a separate power base elsewhere, and negotiating a separate modus vivendi with the Karzai and NATO governments. The Pakistani tribal mullahs have never been fans of corrupt Saudi money anyway, and the Afghan Taliban would only channel that competing influence into the Pakistanis’ back yard by leveraging Saudi assistance to gain a negotiating position.

McClatchy reporter Saeed Shah finds confirmation from Pakistani analysts that the main hope of negotiations for Taliban “reintegration” lay with Baradar, at least before his capture:

Analysts said Baradar was the most likely point of contact for any future talks.
“This is inexplicable. Pakistan has destroyed its own credentials as a mediator between Taliban and Americans. And the trust that might have existed between Taliban and Pakistan is shattered completely,” said Rustam Shah Mohmand, a former Pakistani ambassador to Kabul after the overthrow of the Taliban.
He added: “Mullah Baradar was talking peace. … For the time being, there are no prospects for talks. I think it’s now going to be a fight to the bitter end.”
With his arrest, reaching Taliban officials for contacts is likely to become more difficult. Karzai and Baradar come from the same Popolzai tribe.
“If they want to talk to the Taliban, he (Baradar) was the known person, the known address. But what Pakistan’s done is disappear the address for the Taliban. No Taliban will show themselves now. For a long time, they’ll disappear again,” Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan and a former prisoner at Guantanamo, told McClatchy.

I don’t buy the prediction that this has to be a fight to the bitter end, with Baradar out of the picture. But I think this has happened: the threat of an independent negotiating initiative by the Afghan Taliban has been removed. The Pakistani mullahs have averted, for now, a separate process they didn’t have control over. The Shah article even suggests they may try to make Baradar their own asset, and exert control of any negotiation process through him, after a suitable interim.

As Afghan senator Rahmani implied to Sara Daniel, the government in Islamabad has a mutual interest, with its Islamist party leaders and tribal mullahs, in averting an independent negotiation process that would leave Pakistanis without a central role. For the government itself, this is in large part because of the long-disputed border between the two countries, in theory demarcated by the Durand Line. Pakistan will not easily tolerate the Afghan Taliban, with their strong tribal and ethnic ties to elements within Pakistan, negotiating national reconciliation with outsiders, and abetted by outsiders. That’s how Islamabad ended up with the disputed Durand Line in the first place.

The Great Game continues.

Cross-posted at The Optimistic Conservative.

This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.

Mentioned article:

Leader's arrest could disrupt Taliban and peace talks, analysts say

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Published: Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2010 / Updated: Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2010 07:37 PM

By SAEED SHAH - McClatchy Newspapers

KABUL -- The arrest of the second-ranking Taliban leader last week in Pakistan is likely to throw the Islamist movement into disarray and disrupt the Taliban military campaign, and it could mark a strategic U-turn for the government in Islamabad, former Taliban and Western analysts said Tuesday.

A U.S. counterterrorism official said the arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar would be "a shock to the rest of the senior Taliban leadership" because of his close relationship with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and because it came as U.S.-led forces pressed their military offensive in Helmand province.

"Mullah Baradar is a major terrorist, whose removal will disrupt anti-coalition attacks in Afghanistan for a while," said the official, who refused to be identified.

A senior Western military official in the region said Pakistani cooperation in the capture "is a very big deal" and "the loss of the organization's top strategic and operational figure is a big deal, a huge blow to the enemy at this particular moment in time. Continuity in leadership is going to be extremely difficult," said the official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue with journalists

The White House refused to comment.

The detention of Baradar, by one account in a joint U.S.-Pakistani intelligence operation in the southern city of Karachi, is the most significant arrest of a Taliban leader since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 toppled the Taliban government in Kabul. Taliban, NATO and Pakistani officials confirmed the arrest to McClatchy Newspapers.

Under interrogation, Baradar could yield a great deal of information, including the whereabouts of Omar and even of the al-Qaida leadership.

Baradar was the head of the Taliban's leadership council - the so-called Quetta Shura, which operates in underground exile in Pakistan - and he commanded its military operations. He ranked second only to Omar, who hasn't been seen in public since 2001. Omar acts as the spiritual head of the group, while Baradar had operational control.

However, Baradar's arrest, first reported by The New York Times, also could jeopardize some of the peace overtures that are under way, the officials said.

U.N. officials told McClatchy that Baradar had facilitated an inconclusive meeting last month in Dubai between midlevel Taliban commanders and Kai Eide, the departing top U.N. official in Kabul.

It's conceivable, however, that Pakistan could use Baradar's capture to split the Taliban by offering a forum for him to negotiate with the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

According to Vahid Mojdeh, a former Afghan official who worked under the Taliban, Baradar was instrumental in reining in insurgent violence, by banning sectarian killings and indiscriminate bombings.

"Baradar was an obstacle against al-Qaida, who wanted to make an operation in Afghanistan like they did in Iraq," Mojdeh said. "But Baradar would not allow them to kill Shias" - the minority Muslim sect - "or set off explosions in crowded places."

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