US pressure on Pak led to the capture of Afghan Taliban insurgents
Washington, February 19: Increased pressure of President Barack Obama administration on Pakistan’s powerful security establishment led to the capture of senior Afghan Taliban leaders, including Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.A son of senior Afghan Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani alongwith three associates was killed in a US drone strike in the lawless North Waziristan tribal region in northwest Pakistan. The death of Muhammad Haqqani is the latest in a series of major setbacks for the Taliban leadership.
The new level of cooperation includes Pakistani permission for US intelligence officials to station personnel and technology in Karachi.
Intercepted real-time communications handed over to Pakistani intelligence officials led to the arrests in recent days of Baradar, who is the Afghan Taliban’s No. 2 commander, and two of the group’s “shadow” governors for northern Afghanistan
Baradar, whom the Pakistanis seized in Karachi with Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) help, was operational commander of the Taliban leadership council that American officials say plans its attacks from the western Pakistani city of Quetta but whose existence Pakistani officials declined to acknowledge.
Mullah Abdul Salam, Taliban leader in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province, and Mullah Mohammad, the shadow governor in Baghlan province, were also taken into custody in Pakistan.
“The ISI (Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence) and the CIA are working together, with the Americans providing actionable intelligence and the Pakistanis acting together with them” to track down the insurgent leaders, the media reported quoted a Pakistani official as saying.
Pakistan’s decision to go after the Afghan Taliban leadership reflects a quiet shift underway since a November letter from Obama to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari proved to be the “turning point”.
The hand-delivered letter offered additional military and economic assistance and help easing tensions with India.
The US intelligence buildup in Karachi re-creates a level of cooperation that existed until 2004 and resulted in the arrests of senior Al Qaeda figures in Pakistan, before relations began to sour between George W. Bush’s administration and then Pervez Musharraf government.
Subtle signs of a shift among Pakistani officials have occurred in recent months, as the Taliban’s Pakistani offshoot has unleashed a sustained campaign of suicide bombings.
Some Pakistani security officials had grown concerned that the Afghan Taliban might be aiding the Pakistani franchise, said Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a professor and defence analyst.
—Agencies