Taliban Military Chief Mullah Baradar captured by Pakistan

[DaRk WaVe]

CIA post in Karachi helped catch top guns of Taliban

WASHINGTON: Pakistan allowed the US Central Intelligence Agency to set up a post in Karachi and the data collected by this post led to the arrest of a key Taliban commander and two ‘governors’, officials said.

Describing this as “a high-level of cooperation between the United States and Pakistan,” The Washington Post reported on Friday that it signalled a major change in Islamabad’s attitude towards the Taliban movement.

This enhanced cooperation between the CIA and the ISI led to the arrests of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Afghan Taliban’s second in command, and two Taliban shadow governors for northern Afghanistan, the report said.

“The ISI and the CIA are working together, with the Americans providing actionable intelligence and the Pakistanis acting together with them” to hunt the insurgency’s leaders, a Pakistani official told the paper.

The Post noted that Pakistan’s decision to aggressively search for Afghan Taliban leadership reflected a shift that had been in the works since autumn last year when US President Barack Obama wrote to President Asif Ali Zardari.

The letter offered additional military and economic assistance and help in easing tensions with India.

The Post noted that with US facilitation, India and Pakistan had agreed to restart their stalled talks. President Obama’s letter also contained a warning that Pakistan’s use of insurgent groups to achieve policy goals would no longer be tolerated.

The arrests of Mullah Baradar and other leaders represented “major progress,” a US intelligence official told the Post. “No one has forgotten Pakistan’s complex history with the Taliban. But they understand how important this is to the United States, the region and to their own security.”

The CIA post in Karachi intercepted communications which were later handed over to ISI officials. The two agencies then planned a joint operation to catch Mullah Baradar and ‘governors’.

Final agreement on the operation came in the last week of January.

The detentions, which have taken place since early last week, were initially kept secret to allow intelligence operatives to use information gleaned from the captured men to reach other militants.

The Post claimed that the arrests offered evidence of something that has long been suspected: Top Afghan Taliban leaders have found refuge across Pakistan, particularly in its cities, something the government long denied.

 

[waraich66]

Do you know what this movement was not supported by any Major Political Muslim & same was the case with Khilafat Movement guess who 'used' Khilafat movement 'Gandhi', & these are same Maulana's who declared Sir Syed Ahmed Khan 'infidel', so better keep this discussion out of this thread
Thanks

Can you provide any link for your statement "these are same Maulana's who declared Sir Syed Ahmed Khan 'infidel'

 

[DaRk WaVe]

Can you provide any link for your statement "these are same Maulana's who declared Sir Syed Ahmed Khan 'infidel'

Sir Syed ahmed khan Kafir - Google Search

Sir Syed ahmed khan declared kafir - Google Search

 

[S-2]

"Is it just yellow journalism or ppl are realy pissed at the Fact that it was Pakistan which caught this high value target.."

I believe that most are very glad that Pakistan has captured Baradur. Who appeared unhappy early in the thread of the foreigners here? I'm personally extremely pleased.

"I wonder why some US officials deny the great efforts made by Pakistan to catch these maniancs"

Those officials would be...?

"...is it for face saving , is it to appease some specific audiances with whome they do buisness with , is it to scapegoat Pakistan for US failures , or is it the pressure tactics which they think is workable ..or may be all of them ..?"

Again? Whom do you mean specifically that's an official of the United States?

"I suspect that , people in US are comfortable in bashing Pakistan for their own stake instead of recognizing its role and importance in this whole fiasco..!"

I suspect that you're wrong. There are a lot of people in America with a lot of different views regarding Pakistan...some better than others. Some worse than others. Not unlike Pakistani views of America and Americans here.

Thanks.

 

[waraich66]

Sir Syed ahmed khan Kafir - Google Search

Sir Syed ahmed khan declared kafir - Google Search

You said same Mulanah's , can you inform me about names of Molanah's, i could not find any name of Mulanah's started Rashme Rumal Tehrek in your links

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

Who appeared unhappy early in the thread of the foreigners here?

Nobody , but some didnt want acknowlage the fact that it was Pakistan who cought him, infact they carried on with their typical wild speculations ..!.

Those officials would be...?

Those who whine abt ISI's double dealing and Pakistan providing sanctuary to the OBL & hardcore millitants every now and then, not knowing the ground realities ..!

Pakistani views of America and Americans here.

That would be ....?
Same goes for Pakistan too , that there are alot of ppl here in Pakistan with alot of different views regarding America , some are better , some are not . not unlike the westren media which portrays Pakistan as the Land of extremists and all the evil only ..!

 

[S-2]

"...some didnt want acknowlage the fact that it was Pakistan who cought him, infact they carried on with their typical wild speculations ..!."

Nobody here denied that Pakistan caught him.

Plenty here have questioned whether we helped. So much so that A.M. removed Joint from the title. That was wrong.

" not unlike the westren media which portrays Pakistan as the Land of extremists and all the evil only ..! "

Some do and some don't. Some will and some won't...but when the shoe fits-wear it.

Thanks.

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

Nobody here denied that Pakistan caught him.

ok thats , wonderful , no problemo then
Plenty here have speculated , that it was all US help and Pakistan just acted upon the knowledge given to them ..! anyways shows over ..!

 

[s90]

CIA wants Baradar sent to Afghanistan

WASHINGTON: The CIA wants Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar transferred to an American prison near Kabul for interrogation, US officials said.

The Taliban military chief, who was captured in Karachi earlier this month, is in Pakistan’s custody and is being interrogated mainly by ISI officials, but CIA representatives also have participated in some of these sessions.

Senior US officials, who spoke to various media outlets on the condition that they are not identified, said the Americans were not satisfied with the interrogation and wanted to take charge.

“CIA Director Leon E. Panetta and other officials have proposed moving Mullah Baradar to the US-run prison at the Bagram Air Base north of Kabul,” said a US media report.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Friday that once Pakistani agencies completed their investigation, Mullah Baradar could be handed over to his country of origin, which is Afghanistan, but not to the US.

And US officials indicated in Washington that the plan could be acceptable to them because they did not want to bring him over to the United States. Instead, they would prefer to interrogate him at the Bagram base where senior Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects were often kept.

“Mullah Baradar is an Afghan, so it’s only logical that his home country might be considered as an ultimate destination,” said a US official.

The US media claimed that Washington’s proposal to bring Mullah Baradar to Bagram reflected America’s frustration with the Pakistani investigation process.

Although Mullah Baradar had been with the Pakistanis for several weeks, they had not been able to extract any useful information from him, the reports said.

As the main architect of the Taliban’s insurgent campaign, Mullah Baradar is believed to have extensive knowledge of the militant networks’ operations and finances.

The US media also claimed that the CIA was denied direct access to Mullah Baradar for about two weeks after his arrest, and had since worked alongside Pakistani interrogators who continued to control the questioning.

Some US media outlets have alleged that Mullah Baradar also had longstanding ties to Pakistan’s intelligence service and that’s why Pakistan may be reluctant to turn over a prisoner who could reveal details about that relationship.

The media also noted that Mullah Baradar’s capture was portrayed as a breakthrough in US efforts to get Pakistan to pursue Taliban leaders in the country.

“But emerging details about the arrest challenge that conclusion,” said one report.According to these reports, Pakistani and CIA operatives did not know they had captured Mullah Baradar until after they began sorting through a group of suspects arrested in a raid on the outskirts of Karachi on Jan 26.


©2010 DAWN

 

[iPhone]

The Pakistani government and its spy agency ISI have never been keen to see a peaceful Afghanistan in the past. Now when the peace process was on its way, the Pakistani government arrested the negotiation facilitator, in order to sabotage the peace process in Afghanistan.

but he was arrested with the help/intel of CIA, didn't you get the memo? so would you say CIA wasn't interested in talking to the guy and sabotaged the peace process?

 

[hembo]

Pakistan may hand over captured Taliban commander to US
Mon, Feb 22 09:45 PM

Islamabad, Feb 22 (IANS) Pakistan will consider extradition of Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar to the US if such a request is received from Washington, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Monday.

The Taliban leader was captured in Karachi, Geo TV reported.

'No such request has so far been received,' Malik told reporters here.

The minister said Chinese-made scanning devices would be installed in four provincial capitals by next year as part of the government's anti-terror measures.

He said several high-ranking terrorists have been apprehended recently and the government would make public about the arrests only after their identification process is completed.

 

[hembo]

Mullah’s arrest is ‘own goal’ for US
Christina Lamb in Washington and Daud Khattak in Peshawar

ON the face of it the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s top strategist, as he came out of a madrasah in Karachi seemed a coup.

Jubilant American officials described it as a “game- changer, even more important than the battle in Marjah”, where 15,000 Nato and Afghan soldiers are engaged in their biggest offensive.

“A tremendous achievement for Pakistani intelligence and American collaboration,” crowed the US special representative Richard Holbrooke, in Islamabad last week for talks with Pakistani generals and President Asif Ali Zardari.

After years of handing Islamabad billions of dollars for co- operation in the war on terror, the combination of money and pressure seemed to be finally working.

Unidentified US officials quoted by The New York Times said Baradar was providing a “wealth of information”. His arrest was followed by a round-up in Quetta which netted two other senior Taliban figures, Mullah Abdul Salam and Mullah Mir Mohammad, said to be the shadow governors of the provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan.

While this was the first time Pakistan had acted against the Taliban leadership, Afghans involved in western-backed attempts to start talks with the Taliban to end the war were furious, warning that the arrest might have ruined chances of negotiations.

“It’s a spectacular own goal [for the US],” said one official. “They want to wreck talks,” said a close aide to Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai.

“Mullah Baradar was independently in contact with the Afghan government to find a way for reconciliation and the Pakistanis knew that from their secret agents.”

Baradar had participated in meetings, including one in Saudi Arabia with Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali. Other Taliban leaders are sceptical about talks, saying foreign troops must withdraw first.

“The timing of this arrest was very peculiar,” said Barmak Pazhwak, a senior official for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the United States Institute of Peace, a think tank. “The fact he was one of the key Taliban leaders advocating talks suggests the Pakistanis either want more control or to sabotage the process altogether.”

The arrest came days after Pakistan had publicly stated it needed a role in any negotiations. Pakistan has invested a lot in the Taliban, with whom it has worked for more than 20 years. Its military intelligence service, the ISI, helped them to take control of Afghanistan in the 1990s and its generals refer to the Taliban as “assets”.

“The ISI is arresting the Taliban leaders who are reconcilable,” said Idrees Khan, a human rights activist in Peshawar. “By doing this, they want to save them from being killed by those Taliban who don’t want to accept peace.”

After the arrest, US officials said Pakistan should have a place at the negotiating table. But some experts believe that Pakistan’s military has little interest in peace in Afghanistan because then they would no longer be needed by the US and the dollars would dry up.

They point out that the only previous senior Taliban figure to be arrested in Pakistan, Mullah Mansoor Dadullah, had also opened talks with Kabul.

Islamabad’s motive may be financial. Pakistan is bankrupt and the US had blocked $1.3 billion (£840m) of aid because of a dispute over a refusal to grant visas to American security officials. The first $349m tranche of this will be released next week following Baradar’s arrest.

Pakistan has received more than $12 billion in US aid since 2001, and in October the Obama administration agreed a further $7.5 billion over five years.

“I’m not sure I would read too much into this in terms of a major shift by Pakistan,” said Shuja Nawaz, an expert on the Pakistani military.

Others point to Pakistani intelligence co-operation in the recent deaths in a US missile strike in North Waziristan of Muhammad Haqqani, the 30-year-old son of Jalaluddin Haqqani and brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, Afghan warlords with close links to Al-Qaeda.

Pakistan’s military has long-standing ties to the Haqqanis and previously resisted US pressure to act against them.

“This proves our sincerity in this fight,” said a senior ISI officer after the Haqqani killing. Others question what help they gave.

As always where Pakistan and the Taliban are concerned, the facts are murky.

One thing is clear: Pakistan can no longer claim the Taliban leadership is not in its country. The question is, if it can arrest Baradar, what about the others?

 

[Spring Onion]

Pakistan agrees to hand over Mullah Baradar

KABUL: Pakistan has agreed to hand over to Afghanistan captured Afghan Taliban number two, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and other militants, the president's office said on Thursday.



Three senior Taliban officials were captured in Pakistan this month, including Mullah Baradar - the highest profile Taliban leader to be held.



“The government of Pakistan has accepted Afghanistan's proposal for extraditing Mullah Baradar and other Taliban who are in its custody and showed readiness to hand over those prisoners ... on the basis of an agreement between the two countries,” a statement from President Hamid Karzai's office said.



Baradar, second only to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, was captured in Karachi in what US media reports said was a joint raid by US and Pakistani intelligence agents, dealing a major blow to the movement.



Bashary said Baradar was one of 42 people, including other Taliban figures, Kabul wants returned from neighbouring Pakistan, which is under strong US pressure to crack down on militants in both countries.



Another Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Kabir, is also believed to have been detained by Pakistani security forces in recent weeks, but Islamabad has yet to officially confirm his detention.



The prisoners “are accused of criminal acts”, it said.



The Taliban, who have made a steady comeback since being ousted by US-backed Afghan forces in late 2001, are under pressure in Afghanistan.



Nato is pushing ahead with one of its largest assaults in Afghanistan since the start of the war, aimed at driving the Taliban from their last big stronghold in the country's most violent province to make way for Afghan authorities to take over.

DAWN.COM | World | Pakistan agrees to hand over Mullah Baradar

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

New York Times chief explains Baradar news delay


The paper delayed reporting the capture after a White House request


The New York Times delayed reporting news of the capture of top Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar , after a request by White House officials.

Speaking on The Takeaway , a BBC co-production, Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, explains why the decision was made to delay publication of the exclusive.

PRESENTER CELESTE HEADLEE: Good morning Bill.

BILL KELLER: Good morning Celeste.

HEADLEE: So explain the delay, the White House called you and asked you not to print the story?

KELLER: Well, actually, we called them, Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins had the story pretty well nailed down last Thursday and they took it to the White House for comment, of course, as we routinely do, and the folks at the White House said, well hold on for a second we need to talk to you about this, and several of the people from our Washington bureau went over to the White House and sat down with people from the National Security Council and the press office and they said that they were pretty sure that Mullah Baladar's colleagues in the Taliban were not yet aware that he was in custody. I don't know the details of it, but they thought it had been a clean snatch and they were afraid once the word got out, other Taliban officials would go deeper underground or take measures to cover their tracks, so they asked us to hold off for a while.



HEADLEE: I'm going to ask you in a moment what went into your decision to do as they asked, but let me get the timeline of events down clearly. Your reporters from independent sources learned about this out of Pakistan.

KELLER: Yes Pakistan and Afghanistan.

HEADLEE: Then you went to the White House to get comment on it and that's when they told you we want you to hold the story?

KELLER: That's correct.

HEADLEE: Until today or until last night?

KELLER: Until last night, right.

CH: So why did you decide to do this? You don't always acquiesce to these kinds of requests.

KELLER: No, we get asked to withhold information, not often but from time to time. Sometimes it's a no-brainer, you know we have reporters embedded in military operations - obviously they don't file information that would put troops at risk. We've had other stories that were much more controversial where we decided that we would publish. This one was not, honestly, a very hard call. Obviously we were eager to break the story, it represented a lot of resourceful reporting by Mark and Dexter, but there was no obvious public interest reason to rush the story into print and you know we are responsible people; we didn't want to compromise what sounded like a possible intelligence coup.

HEADLEE: And certainly, the story retains just as much power more than a week later as it would have had you broken it right at the time, is that kind of your thought process?

KELLER: Yeah, I think that's kind of the thought process. What actually happened, was yesterday our stringers in Pakistan and Afghanistan started calling our bureaus there and saying, we're hearing reports that Mullah Baladar is in Pakistani custody, we took that to the White House and they said, yeah we understand it's not holdable anymore.

HEADLEE: Right, so you published it. Now you visited the White House in 2006 while President Bush was in office and you were getting ready to publish a story about domestic wire tapping and very famously you were told if you published that story you'd have blood on your hands. Is that the kind of dire warning you got from the Obama White House?

KELLER: No, first of all this didn't even get to my level, they dealt with Dean Baquet, the Washington bureau chief, I mean obviously if they felt they needed to call me, I'm always willing to take a call, but it didn't even rise to that level. Back in 2006 the conversations were professional and civil, but in the end when we didn't agree to hold the story as they wanted us to, it was a kind of firestorm of criticism from the White House aimed at the Times. So far anyway we haven't had that acrimony with this administration, nor as far as I know have other news organisations.

HEADLEE: What's the kind of bar that you have to come up to in order to decide that a story is worth holding at someone else's request? Do you have to check in to make sure the White House isn't making that request for their own spoken selfish reasons?

KELLER: It's complicated. On the one hand I don't have subpoena power, I don't have spies in the National Security Agency, so knowing whether publishing a story would actually put national security at risk is a harder thing for me to figure out than it would be for somebody who's actually in the government. But we do our best job at doing that and we take these requests quite seriously. I think the first one that I ever dealt with was when I was foreign editor in the Clinton administration, and we learned that there was a large unsecured stash of highly enriched uranium in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. We held the story until the material was secured. That was not that hard a call. There are others where to this day we can't talk about things we've held out because they would, for example endanger agents who are working in foreign countries.

BBC News - New York Times chief explains Baradar news delay

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

Pakistan’s decisive action to aid Afghan conciliation: US

US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. -File Photo
​

WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s ‘decisive’ action against the Taliban is already showing results, says the US State Department, adding that such measures would encourage militants to seek reconciliation.

“This is expressly the kind of decisive action that we sought in our strategy from the outset, and that has been the basis upon which we have worked with Afghanistan, worked with Pakistan,” said the department’s spokesman P.J. Crowley.

Talking to reporters at the State Department on Thursday evening, Crowley, however, warned that it was too early to declare victory.

There has been a positive response in the US to Pakistani military and intelligence operations over the last several weeks that resulted in the capture of some key Taliban leaders, including the group’s military chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Crowley said that Pakistani actions were linked to a joint strategy for dealing with militants, which began with the recognition that they were an adversary of the United States as well as Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

“But as to what conclusions those who are associated with political violence will draw from this, that is expressly why we have included in our strategy the concept of reintegrating those who are currently engaged in the fight,” he added.

To join this reintegration process, the militants will first have to lay down their arms, disassociate themselves from Al Qaeda and accept the Afghan constitution or the rule of law in Pakistan, he said.

Responding to a question about a possible reconciliation with the Taliban leadership, the spokesman said the US and its allies were “not too far down that road at this point”.

Such decisions, he added, would ultimately be made by the Afghan leadership on their side, the Pakistani leadership on their side. “But certainly, I think we are encouraged by the broad trends that show the results of Pakistan’s decisive action.”

Crowley claimed that in southern Afghanistan, where the US was conducting a major military operation, the militants were already showing interest in the reintegration process.

“We’re now moving ahead with being able to bring more civilians into that region and demonstrate to the Afghan people that there are clear benefits to them in the immediate term and the long run.”


DAWN.COM | Front Page | Pakistan?s decisive action to aid Afghan conciliation: US