Alex Thomson blogs about the fight against the Taliban as military commander Mullah Baradar is reportedly arrested in Karachi.
It is a good morning to be the Pakistani government in Islamabad.
The reaction to the apparent arrest of the Taliban’s Mullah Baradar will be summed up in a phrase like:
“There you go – told you we could be trusted.”
Such will be their message to the outer world. Already we are seeing evidence.
For the first time Pakistan is saying quite openly the arrest operation – if it’s true – was the result of close co-operation between Pakistan’s intelligence service the ISI and the Americas’ parallel outfit, the CIA.
Let’s face it the two have not exactly been kindred spirits down the years.
The ISI has been routinely accused of being far too close to the Talibs because it regards them as a key bulwark against Indian influence in Afghanistan.
To this day many in the ISI will have New Delhi firmly fixed as Public Enemy Number One – to the Taliban nor al-Qaida come to that.
And the recent events down in Karachi are not about to change that culture overnight. Nonetheless, it is a significant coup and not the first either.
And therein lies the sting in the tail for Pakistan, the US and the West.
Because we have been here before from the death of Mullah Dadullah onwards. The killing or arrest of high-value Taliban targets (as the Pentagon would say) is rather like sharks’ teeth: knock one out and another moves forward into place to replace and bit again.
That is what has happened both in Pakistan in the Talibanistan zone, and also in Afghanistan proper of course.
In that sense it mirrors the continuing Operation Moshtarak in central Helmand in Afghanistan itself.
You can remove the Taliban from any given area but they will regroup and possibly return or move to fight in other areas.
None of this Nato would take issue with either. They are only too well aware of this.
The name of their game being to make life so inhospitable on both sides of the Afghan-Pak border, that enough Talibs decide to take the Nato shelling and settle down to do whatever former Talib fighters do – but not fight.
That is what Moshtarak is really all about.
The denial of enough ground for a long enough period on a wide enough area must surely mean the governance and real rebuilding of the country can take place.
The answer of course to this, is that nobody will know until we get there but everybody knows that getting there will be a long, long haul.