ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – The Pakistani military and a senior US diplomat confirmed yesterday that the Afghan Taliban’s top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, had been captured.
Baradar, the most senior Taliban commander ever arrested in Pakistan, was picked up in the southern city of Karachi this month in a raid by Pakistani and US agents.
The capture came as US forces spearheaded one of NATO’s biggest offensives against the Taliban in Afghanistan in an early test of US President Barack Obama’s troop surge policy. It also comes as momentum builds for talks with the Taliban to end a war Western commanders say they can’t win militarily. Officials in Kabul and in the Maldives, the Indian Ocean state, said Taliban-allied representatives and members of Afghanistan’s parliament held secret talks at a resort there in January.
They did not give details but said more meetings would be held.
Pakistan wants to play a major role in any peace talks and limit the influence in Afghanistan of its old rival, India.
Pakistan has said little about the rare arrest of a top member of a Taliban leadership council the United States says has long been based in Pakistan.
“At the conclusion of detailed identification procedure, it has been confirmed that one of the persons arrested happens to be Mullah Baradar,” the military said.
It gave no details, citing security reasons.
US special envoy Richard Holbrooke also confirmed the arrest but declined to give details.
“It is a significant development,” he told reporters in Kabul. “We commend the Pakistanis for their role in this and it is part of a deepening cooperation between us.”
US officials and analysts said it was too soon to tell whether Pakistan’s cooperation against Baradar would be extended to other top militants on the US hit list.
The arrest followed months of behind-the-scenes prodding by US officials who saw inaction by Islamabad as a major threat to their Afghan war strategy.
