Pakistanis and Afghans are divided over what to make of the reported arrest in Karachi of the Afghan Taliban’s top military commander and deputy to Mullah Omar himself, writes Jonathan Miller.
Pakistanis and Afghans are divided over what to make of the reported arrest in Karachi of the Afghan Taliban’s top military commander and deputy to Mullah Omar himself.
“It marks the beginning of a new phase of Pak-US intelligence cooperation,” said Professor Syed Rifaat Hussain, who chairs the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies at Islamabad’s Quaid-i-Azam University.
“Intelligence sharing between the two sides has deepened,” he told me. “The American pressure has become more nuanced and supple and both sides share the strategic belief that it is in the larger interest to put the Jihadists out of business.”
The professor is known to be close to the Pakistan army, and in recent days it has become clear that its chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, is perturbed by suggestions that Pakistan continues to play a double game when it comes to the Taliban.
In a recent meeting at Nato HQ, the general told three senior US military officials that Pakistan was willing to mediate with the Talibs, and work with the Americans.
The professor suggests this represents a realignment of strategic objectives, involving Pakistan is shifting away from its support for the Taliban.
“It indicates that Islamabad is not ideologically committed to bringing about the resurrection of a Taliban-led political order in Afghanistan,” Dr Hussain told me.
Nonsense, say Afghan opposition figures contacted by Channel 4 News in Pakistan today. Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban’s former envoy to Pakistan, who was locked up for three years in Guantanamo, told us: “Pakistan cannot be trusted.” Meaning, I think, trusted by the West.
“It has no sincerity. Pakistan is under pressure [to arrest other Taliban leaders].” Point being that according to him, Islamabad is still playing a double game.
Yes, he would say that, but why else, he points out, would so many Afghan Talibs be wandering around in Pakistan? “And they are very much relaxed here,” a Pakistani journalist friend told me.
“Pakistan has changed its policy and has contacts not only with Afghan Taliban but has also restored relations with Hizb-i-Islami,” he says. Its leader is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose seasoned jihadis actively fight alongside the Taliban and al-Qaida. His son-in-law, Ghairat Baheer, is Hizb-e-Islami’s spokesman in Pakistan and lives freely in Islamabad.
In addition, the Haqqani network – led by the son of another former leader of the anti-Soviet Mujahiddin and described by US commanders as “the most lethal group” fighting Nato soldiers in Afghanistan – still operates out of North Waziristan. Sirajudin Haqqani reportedly lives there, although these days he’ll be busy dodging missiles fired from US Predator drones.
There are other prominent examples – not forgetting, of course, Mullah Omar himself, who is said to have been living in hiding – allegedly under the protection of Pakistani intelligence – in the city of Quetta for years. Pakistan has, of course, long denied this.
There’s been no official word from the Pakistan authorities all day about the arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar – and the Taliban have denied it.
Meanwhile, though, another journalist working for Channel 4 News in Pakistan says the Taliban’s told him that Mullah Baradar had been excommunicated by Mullah Omar’s Quetta shura a month ago, after an apparently serious difference of opinion. Plot thickens. This might explain why he was in Karachi to start with.
Another Taliban commander contacted by this programme, Qayyum Zakir, who operates in Helmand Province, was apparently unaware this had happened.
He said: “Personally I have no information about his arrest but if it proves true, it could be a huge loss for us. However, I would like to make it clear that we will not allow his absence to affect our struggle which has entered into a decisive phase.”
So was this joint CIA-ISI raid led by the latter or the former, or was Mullah Baradar shopped by his own?
The weirdest (and as yet unconfirmed) report is that Abdul Ghani Baradar recently represented the Taliban in secret talks with the US in Saudi Arabia.
That’s where this story really gets very murky, for arresting those you reach out to would indeed seem strange behaviour – unless… no, stop. Do not expect much enlightenment any time soon.