Rico's rants: Two more down, many to go

18 February 2010

Two more down, many to go

The New York Times article by Dexter Filkins (another great name) about taking down the Taliban, one at a time:

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, was detained in the Pakistani city of Faisalabad, and Mullah Mir Mohammed of Baghlan Province was also captured in an undisclosed Pakistani city, they said.
The arrests come on the heels of the capture of Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s military commander and the deputy to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the movement’s founder. Mr. Baradar was arrested in a joint operation by the CIA and the ISI, Pakistan’s military intelligence agency. The arrests were made by Pakistani officials, the Afghans said, but it seemed probable that CIA 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. It was not immediately clear if the arrests of the Taliban shadow governors were made possible by intelligence taken from Mr. Baradar, but it seemed likely. In the days after Mr. Baradar’s arrest, American officials said they managed to keep his detention a secret from many Taliban leaders, and that they were determined to roll up as much of the Taliban’s leadership as they could. Mohammed Omar, the Governor of Kunduz Province, said in an interview that the two Taliban shadow governors had a close working relationship with Mr. Baradar.
In the days that followed Mr. Baradar’s arrest, American officials say that Mr. Baradar was providing a wealth of information on the Taliban’s operations. For the past several days, he has been interrogated by both Pakistani and American officials. “Mullah Salam and Mullah Mohammad were the most merciless individuals,” said General Razaq Yaqoobi, police chief of Kunduz Province. “Most of the terror, executions, and other crimes committed in northern Afghanistan were on their orders.”
The arrests— all three in Pakistan— demonstrate a greater level of cooperation by Pakistan in hunting leaders of the 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 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 Generals 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 appear to have been enjoying a run of success against Taliban leaders inside Afghanistan.
A 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 Lagman 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 at the around the time of 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.