ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In another blow to the Taliban senior leadership, Pakistani authorities have captured Mullah Abdul Kabir, a member of the group’s inner circle and a leading military commander against American forces in eastern Afghanistan, according to a Pakistani intelligence official.
American officials in the region and in Washington said they had received some indications of Mullah Kabir’s detention but that they could not confirm it.
Mullah Kabir was detained several days ago in Nowshera, in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, the Pakistani official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Mullah Kabir is a member of the Quetta Shura, the small group of leaders who direct the Taliban’s operations and who report to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the group’s founder. The group is named for the Pakistani city where many of the Taliban’s leaders are thought to be hiding.
Mullah Kabir is the second member of the Quetta Shura to be captured in Pakistan in recent weeks. Last month, American and Pakistani intelligence agents captured Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s top military commander and the head of the Quetta Shura. He was hiding in Karachi.
The capture of Mullah Kabir appeared to be a strictly Pakistani operation, and Pakistani officials appeared to be keeping Mullah Kabir’s arrest a closely held secret, even from their American allies.
Mullah Kabir is a longtime associate of Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s founder. He was the governor of Nangarhar Province, in eastern Afghanistan, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Since then, he has overseen military operations in eastern Afghanistan, including those in Kunar, Nangarhar, Nuristan and Laghman Provinces.
The immediate impact of Mullah Kabir’s arrest remains to be seen. The Quetta Shura is thought to have roughly 20 people. A number have been killed or captured over the years, but the shura, and the Taliban, have gone on.
The Pakistani intelligence official also confirmed the arrest of another Taliban official: Mullah Mohammed Yunis, the Taliban’s shadow governor of Zabul Province. The official gave no details of Mullah Yunis’s arrest. He is the third Taliban governor to be detained in Pakistan in recent weeks.
Together, the arrest of Mullah Kabir, Mullah Baradar and the others appeared to mark a shift in Pakistani behavior. Although the motive remains unclear, the change is significant.
“This indicates Baradar was not a one off or an accident but a turning point in Pakistan’s policy toward the Taliban,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow of Brookings Institution and a former C.I.A. official. “We still need to see how far it goes, but for Obama and NATO this is the best possible news. If the safe haven is closing then the Taliban are in trouble.”
For years, Pakistani military and intelligence leaders have supported the Taliban, and allowed their leaders to carry on unmolested inside Pakistan, even as Pakistan’s leaders claimed to be allies of the United States.
The Pakistani interest in the Taliban has always been as a means to influence events inside Afghanistan, particularly if the Americans leave.
Also on Monday, Hajji Zaman Ghamsharik, an Afghan warlord accused of helping Osama bin Laden escape from the Americans at Tora Bora, was assassinated by a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest. The bomber killed him and 14 others as they gathered at a ceremony to distribute land to returning refugees at a village in his tribal stomping grounds near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.
He had so many enemies that his assassination was not particularly surprising. There was a blood feud between him and the family of another warlord, which blamed Hajji Zaman for his assassination in 2002. There were rivals to his large and powerful Khugiani tribe in Nangarhar Province, and rivals within the tribe. And there were furious American Special Forces and C.I.A. operatives who believed that he was a mercenary who took money to join the fight against Al Qaeda, but then helped arrange Mr. bin Laden’s escape.
Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan are usually quick to take responsibility for suicide bombings. Not in this case; when asked about Hajji Zaman’s killing, the usually garrulous Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said he did not know who did it.
The police in Nangarhar Province said the bombing took place in the village of Dasht-e-Chamtala, about 10 miles west of Jalalabad, during a ceremony for local residents lured by land grants to return from camps for the displaced, according to a police official, Gen. Mohammad Ayob Salangi. In addition to the 15 killed, 20 people were wounded, many of them critically, the general said.
“He was a warlord, and he was fighting since 1980,” Mirwais Yasini, a member of the Afghan Parliament from Nangarhar, said of Hajji Zaman. “He was bitterly disliked by very many people. And then there were business interests, too.”
During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Hajji Zaman was a mujahedeen leader, and later fought both for and against the Taliban. When the Taliban regime collapsed, President Hamid Karzai appointed him military commander of Jalalabad and a large part of eastern Afghanistan, including Tora Bora.
That put him at odds with another warlord in the area, Hajji Qadir, who later ousted him in Jalalabad. When Mr. bin Laden and his Qaeda followers took refuge in the Tora Bora mountains south of Jalalabad in late 2001, Hajji Zaman and another warlord, Hazrat Ali, offered the services of their armed followers to help the Americans flush them out.
Instead, Mr. bin Laden and his group escaped. Many American officials were convinced they could not have done so without collusion from the Afghan warlords.
The uproar over Mr. bin Laden’s escape led to Hajji Zaman’s flight and exile to France and Pakistan for most of the next eight years. During that time, he was accused of engineering the assassination in Kabul of Hajji Qadir, who by then had become a vice president in Mr. Karzai’s government. Hajji Zaman’s brother was detained in connection with the case for several years but never convicted.
Finally Hajji Zaman announced that he would return last year to take part in the election campaign as a Karzai supporter. When he crossed the Torkhum border from Pakistan, a huge motorcade and throngs of cheering supporters greeted him. Many were from his Khugiani tribe, whose support Mr. Karzai was courting.
“He came back just a few months ago; it’s really tragic,” said Anwar al-Haq Ahadi, a former finance minister in Mr. Karzai’s government. “He was going to play quite a larger role in the future.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 24, 2010
An article on Tuesday about the reported capture in
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