AfPak: an overview of Pakistan / Afghanistan

[tequila]

Namely of the Quetta Shura Taliban:

From Anand Gopal in the CSM:

Pakistan has arrested nearly half of the Afghanistan Taliban’s leadership in recent days, Pakistani officials told the Monitor Wednesday, dealing what could be a crucial blow to the insurgent movement.

In total, seven of the insurgent group’s 15-member leadership council, thought to be based in Quetta, Pakistan, including the head of military operations, have been apprehended in the past week, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.

Western and Pakistani media had previously reported the arrest of three of the 15, but this is the first confirmation of the wider scale of the Pakistan crackdown on the Taliban leadership, something the US has sought.

News of the sweep emerged over the past week, with reports that Pakistani authorities had netted Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the movement’s second in command, as well as Maulavi Abdul Kabir, a prominent commander in charge of insurgent operations in eastern Afghanistan, and Mullah Muhammad Younis.

Pakistan has also captured several other Afghan members of the leadership council, called the Quetta Shura, two officials with the Pakistani Intelligence Bureau, and a United Nations official in Kabul told the Monitor.

These include: Mullah Abdul Qayoum Zakir, who oversees the movement’s military affairs, Mullah Muhammad Hassan, Mullah Ahmed Jan Akhunzada, and Mullah Abdul Raouf.

At least two Taliban shadow provincial governors, who are part of the movement’s parallel government in Afghanistan, have also been captured.

A Taliban spokesman denied the arrests, saying that they were meant to hide the difficulties that United States and NATO forces were having in Afghanistan.

Remarkable if it pans out.

[Firn]

It does indeed sound great.


Firn

[Fuchs]

They seem to fail permanently to catch Omar and OBL.
One possible explanation is the avoidance of martyrs, another is that these heads have much better security, which almost inevitably means that they're in poor communication with others and thus not leading that much.

[JM2008]

I don't think it was a matter of security... the ISI has long been able to roll these guys up if they wanted, eh hum, needed to. But why now... what makes now so much different than anytime previous? What could these 7 have done that led the ISI to need to remove them? After all it is widely believed that the Quetta shura is empowered by the ISI to maintain influence and some level of control in Afghanistan. What are the thoughts that these 7 began talks of reconciliation? A reconciled shura that deals directly with the Karzai gov't and the coalition means significantly lower ISI influence and control.

Just curious what the rest of you think of this theory.
-James

[davidbfpo]

(Moderator's Note another thread 'Nearly half of Afghan Taliban leadership arrested in Pakistan', which was started 25/2/10 merged into this and re-named as 'Rounding Up').

[davidbfpo]

The BBC commentary:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8533448.stm

A succession of senior Afghan Taliban leaders have reportedly been seized in Pakistan in recent weeks. The world has been left guessing as to what might lie behind these arrests. But answers will take time in coming.

On Abu M Londonistani prefers to listen a little longer before commenting:http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawam...tta-shura.html

Some of these issues appear on another thread on US-Pakistani relations: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=2313 I particular recommend reading some recent items, e.g. Stephen Tankel.

So watch and wait for more information, maybe some better analysis then.

[davidbfpo]

Stephen Tankel on ICSR blog weighs in:http://icsr.info/blog/Busted

He starts with:

The full consequences won't become clear for a while, and a number of questions now loom....The biggest question, for me at least, is what this says about Pakistan's calculus.

With a pithy conclusion:

...maybe Pakistan concluded that the best way to guarantee a seat at the table was to show the U.S. that it deserved one.

[omarali50]

Will these men be handed over to Afghanistan? It would seem that if they are Afghan citizens, they can be easily "deported" back to Afghanistan (easily in legal terms) but a court in Lahore has just ordered the government NOT to hand them over. Given that this is Pakistan, one wonders if the court was given some "guidance" in this matter.....
If the government wants, it can probably contest the court's jurisdiction in this matter and even have this overturned fairly quickly by the supreme court, so it will be interesting to see how the state proceeds in this matter.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/02...y6246486.shtml

[davidbfpo]

Hat tip to Abu M by Londonistani on: http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawam...an-united.html:

We have touched in this blog on developments that seem to suggest the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban groups have started working ever-more closely together.

The review cites an article or book review by David Rohde (A NYT reporter who was kidnapped by the Haqqani faction of the Afghan Taliban): http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/...m_medium=emailand notes:

In his conclusion, Giustozzi offers a bit of cautionary advice to American and Afghan leaders... “Today, when the Taliban have grown rapidly and seemingly become confident in final victory,” he concludes, “the prospects of having genuine peace negotiations with the movement’s hierarchy seems debatable.”

Rohde's final remark:

(In part) Another scenario is more likely, and arguably more frightening. There is one prospect worse than Pakistani influence over the Afghan Taliban, and that is the Afghan Taliban’s immunity to Pakistani influence. Pakistan’s generals may find that in fact they now do not have the influence over the hard-line Afghan Taliban that they believe.

The article and books were written before the "round up".

Joy and gloom in quick succession - the way of the old Imperial NWFP border methinks.

[davidbfpo]

Actually not the article's title, but an indicator of this short analysis:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article..._hole?page=0,1

The military and political madness of the AfPak Wonderland has entered a new chapter of folly with the detention of a few Taliban mullahs in Pakistan, most notably Mullah Baradar, once the military strategist of the Quetta Shura, the primary Taliban leadership council headed by Mullah Omar...

In fact, it is no such thing. Pakistan has not abandoned overnight its 50-year worship of the totem of "strategic depth," .....What has happened is, in fact, a purge by Taliban hard-liners of men perceived to be insufficiently reliable, either ethnically or politically, or both.....

This explains why when Mullah Zakir, the hard-line military chief of the Quetta Shura along with Baradar, was detained near Peshawar two weeks after Baradar was detained, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) - Pakistan's powerful military spy service -- released him immediately.

[davidbfpo]

Hat tip to other sites. This one from al Sahwa:

According to multiple reports coming out of Pakistan, senior al Qaeda spokesman and leader Adam Gadahn aka Azzam al Amriki was captured by Pakistani Special Forces in Karachi. For more details, check out Bill Roggio's excellent post at the Long War Journal. If the initial reports are true, this would be a significant capture. Gadahn has quickly risen within the ranks of AQ's senior leadership over the last several years (in part due to his value to the organization as an American citizen). Successful and rapid exploitation of Gadahn could potentially provide actionable intelligence on senior AQ leaders, including Ayman al Zawahiri and Abu Yahya al Libi. More to come on this topic as details continue to emerge...

Note reported in the Pakistani press and not confirmed.

al Sahwa:http://al-sahwa.blogspot.com/2010/03/afpak-update.html
FBI Wanted: http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/gadahn_a.htm
LWJ:http://www.longwarjournal.org/archiv...l_qaeda_sp.php
BBC:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8554707.stm

[jmm99]

See this post & PS in War Crimes.

CBS News is also back-tracking with the NYT.

Regards

Mike

[davidbfpo]

Taken from a SWJ article's conclusion: A Sea Change in Pakistan?
Breaking Down the Arguments by Jeffrey Dressler and Reza Jan

In the end, it’s too early to tell if the Pakistanis have reversed their policy towards the QST—or even if they will. It would be equally shortsighted to ignore the significance of the recent actions Pakistan has taken. We do not have all the pieces of the puzzle, nor do we really know which pieces are missing. For the first time we are seeing significant pressure being put on the QST in Pakistan at the same time that they are being squeezed militarily in Afghanistan. This novel situation and the opportunities it presents require careful consideration and are in many respects more important than understanding what exactly caused it.

Link:http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/jou...7-dressler.pdf

Comments on the SWJ link.

[davidbfpo]

This could appear elsewhere and I may cross post.

Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, director general of the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, was due to retire this month but will remain in office for another year, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani's office said in a statement.

From:http://watandost.blogspot.com/2010/0...extension.htmlWhich has links to two Pakistani press comments.

[davidbfpo]

An odd 'background briefing' report on the background behind the recent arrests and I suspect much of this is diplomatic "smoke".

The Afghan government was holding secret talks with the Taliban's No. 2 when he was captured in Pakistan, and the arrest infuriated President Hamid Karzai, according to one of Karzai's advisers....

What actually precipitated Baradar's arrest remains a mystery.

Some analysts claim Pakistan wanted to interrupt Karzai's reconciliation efforts or force Karzai to give Islamabad a seat at a future negotiating table.

"I see no evidence to support that theory," Richard Holbrooke, U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, told reporters this month. "I know somewhat more than I'm at liberty to disclose about the circumstances under which these events took place and every detail tends to work against that thesis."

Another theory is that Baradar, deemed more pragmatic than other top Taliban leaders, was detained to split him from fellow insurgents. McChrystal said recently that it was plausible that Baradar's arrest followed an internal feud and purge among Taliban leaders.

Link to AP:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...R5EHAD9EFIV9O0

[davidbfpo]

A different UK angle on the US report:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ghanistan.html

The Afghan president was furious about the seizure of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Karachi last month as the men had been negotiating, according to his aides.

Diplomats have claimed at least one of Mr Karzai's brothers held talks with the Taliban's number two at a private house near Kandahar two months ago.

The meeting at a residence in Spin Boldak is believed to have included discussion on the lucrative opium and heroin trade in southern Afghanistan.

Nice to see so many factors - allegedly - overlap.

[marct]

From CBC.ca

Pakistan's recent arrests of top Taliban leaders have halted the United Nation's secret talks with the insurgency, the former UN envoy to Afghanistan says. Kai Eide, a Norwegian diplomat who just stepped down from the UN post in the Afghan capital of Kabul, told the BBC that discussions with senior Taliban members began a year ago and included face-to-face conversations outside Afghanistan.

More...

It does make you wonder if the arrests weren't an inside-job purge by radicals inside the Quetta Shura...

[lars]

I was wondering if you could maybe interpret the Kai Eide statements as an indirect criticism of US and UK strategy for talks with Taliban.

He is a former top Norwegian diplomat and the Norwegians have been critical towards the "buying off" the low and mid-level Taliban forces and instead advocated talks with Taliban decision makers (i.e. the Quetta Shura).

As I've understood, Pakistan has advocated the buying them off strategy.

So maybe by blaming Pakistan, mr. Eide is indirectly critizising the UK and US strategy for Afghanistan?

[marct]

Hi Lars,

That's certainly a possibility, although I don't think we actually have enough data to either support or rule it out. Besides that, bashing the US is a pretty common game played outside the States (okay, and sometimes inside it too ). My gut guess is that there was some kind of play on involving Pakistan, but that's just a guess...

Cheers,

Marc

[lars]

Well, for sure, everyone has been saying that if there is to be a dialogue, Pakistan needs to be involved.

Data is scarce, yeah, but we do know that there is a disagreement, question is only how substantial and if Taliban could maybe be able to make gains from this.

Too early to tell, but one might ask...