Top Taliban Commander Captured
The security-net is buzzing today with the PR release of the news that a top Taliban Commander, Abdul Ghani Baradar has been captured in the large port city of Karachi.
This is the next best thing to catching the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar himself and alive too!
Pakistan’s oft (and perhaps rightly)maligned ISI in collaboration with America’s Central Intelligence Agency caught the Taliban leader thousands of miles away from what is now the front-lines of Operation Moshtarak, proving that the Taliban are not only Pakistan based but able to freely carry out operations across both countries.
With the deaths of Baitullah Mehsud in August 2009 and Hakimullah Mehsud in January 2010, the capture of Abdul Ghani Baradar marks another -and perhaps the largest- setback for the Afghan insurgency.
With this combined show of NATO, Afghan and Pakistani strength in Afghanistan and Waziristan and the combined cunning in Pakistan’s Sindh, the ideological fence sitting Pashtun tribesmen on both sides of the border will be much more amenable to the offers of peace that the West now holds out.
While the core Taliban will undoubtedly hold out to the end, outfits like Al Qaeda are finding their support dwindle still further.
The main source is the New York Times but this has filtered through various agency and news channels.
My own personal favorite:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/16/taliban-second-commander-captured
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