Asia-Pacific

Taliban's top commander 'captured'

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-02-17 10:05

ISLAMABAD: The Taliban's top military commander has been arrested in a joint CIA-Pakistani operation in Pakistan in a major victory against the insurgents, Pakistan and US officials said Tuesday.

U.S. Marines from Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines lie on the ground during an operation in the town of Marjah, in Nad Ali district of Helmand province February 16, 2010. [Photo/Agencies]

But Taliban militants in Afghanistan utterly rejected the reported arrest as baseless and mere propaganda.

"Any report about the arrest of Mullah Baradar is entirely wrong and baseless. Mullah Baradar is in Afghanistan and commanding the war against NATO troops in Marja district of Helmand province," Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, told Xinhua from an undisclosed location.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the No 2 behind Afghan Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and a close associate of Osama bin Laden, was captured in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi, two Pakistani intelligence officers and a senior US official said.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release such sensitive information.

One Pakistani officer said Baradar was arrested 10 days ago with the assistance of the US and "was talking" to his interrogators. The New York Times first reported the arrest late on Monday.

There was speculation that the arrest could be related in some way to a new push by the US and its NATO allies to negotiate with moderate Afghan Taliban leaders as a way to end the eight-year war in Afghanistan.

Baradar heads the Taliban's military council and was elevated in rank after the 2006 death of military chief Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Usmani. He is known to coordinate the movement's military operations throughout the south and southwest of Afghanistan. His area of direct responsibility stretches over Kandahar, Helmand, Nimroz, Zabul and Uruzgan provinces.

According to Interpol, Baradar was the deputy defense minister in the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan until it was ousted in the 2001 US-led invasion.

The Times said it learned of the operation against Baradar last week, but delayed reporting it at the request of White House officials, who argued that publicizing it would end a valuable intelligence-gathering effort by making Baradar's associates aware of his capture. The newspaper said it eventually decided to publish the news after White House officials acknowledged Baradar's capture was becoming widely known in the region.

Word of Baradar's capture came as US Marine and Afghan units pressed deeper into Marjah, facing sporadic rocket and mortar fire as they moved through suspected insurgent neighborhoods on the third day of a NATO offensive to reclaim the town.

US-based global intelligence firm Stratfor said the reported arrest was a "major development", but cautioned it may not have a significant impact on the battlefield in Afghanistan.

"It is unlikely that a single individual would be the umbilical cord between the leadership council and the military commanders in the field, particularly a guerrilla force such as the Taliban," it said in an analysis of the arrest.

AP - Xinhua