Pakistan arrests one of Taliban’s top three
PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN: Pakistani security forces captured one of the
Taliban’s three most senior leaders just hours after U.S. Vice President
Dick Cheney’s unannounced visit to Pakistan earlier this week, a senior
security official and Taliban sources said.
The capture of Mullah Obaidullah Akhund marked the first Pakistan
arrest of a senior leader of the Islamist militia since it was driven
from power in Afghanistan in 2001 when thousands of its fighters fled
into Pakistan.
The sources told Reuters that Akhund, the third most senior member of
the Taliban’s 10-member leadership council, was arrested late on Monday
in the southwest city of Quetta.
Government and military spokesmen denied the arrest had been made —
or said they had no knowledge of it — when asked by Reuters, but the
story was also front page news in Dawn, a leading Pakistani daily, on
Friday.
“Mullah Omar’s deputy Obaidullah captured” was the headline in a
report that was also sourced to an unnamed official.
Aside from being on the leadership council headed by Mullah Mohammad
Omar, Akhund was also defence minister in the Taliban government before
it fell.
The arrest comes at a time when the Bush administration is facing a
welter of scepticism from Democrats, the American media and several
think-tanks over Pakistan’s role as an ally in the war on terrorism.
Cheney had asked Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to do more to
stop al Qaeda rebuilding from safe havens in Pakistani tribal lands and
step up efforts to thwart a spring offensive by the Taliban against
Afghan and NATO troops.
The Pakistani security official said Akhund’s arrest was the
culmination of a planned operation and not a result of Cheney’s visit.
Taliban sources, speaking on satellite telephones from undisclosed
locations, said Akhund was caught at the home of one of his relatives at
the Baluchistan provincial capital.
They said two other Taliban leaders had been arrested in Quetta this
week, but the Pakistani security official could not confirm this.
While Akhund’s capture would represent a major coup, it sits uneasily
with Pakistan’s past denials of allegations that Taliban leaders were
running the Afghan insurgency from Quetta.
Musharraf said last month that he was “500 percent” sure that Mullah
Omar was in Afghanistan, though he admits there are Taliban fighters in
Pakistan.
The lack of arrests in the past fed speculation that Pakistani
intelligence services or rogue agents have allowed Taliban leaders to
operate freely.
Having supported the Taliban prior to al Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks on the United States, Pakistan has struggled to shake off
suspicions that its spies continue to play a double game in case the
West’s commitment to Afghanistan does not last.
U.S. generals have spoken of Taliban “command and control” centres on
Pakistani territory.
Yet NATO officials have thanked Pakistan for its help in several
recent counter-insurgency operations, including a U.S. air strike that
killed a senior commander, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, in southern
Afghanistan on Dec. 19.
Islamabad, Kabul, Friday, Reuters |