Taliban #2 Captured in Pakistan 02/16/2010
This is big news, and causes a pause to reconsider how half-assed the original invasion of Afghanistan was. I personally was surprised that Mullah Baradar was found in Karachi, not in the tribal regions. Karachi is Pakistan's biggest city and financial center. Juan Cole's analysis:
Obama's drone attacks on the Taliban leadership forced Mullah Baradar and some other commanders to relocate to the southern port city of Karachi, hundreds of miles from the action in the tribal areas of the northwest. He is said to attempted to restructure the military command of the Taliban in fall of 2009, but met a good deal of resistance. The episode is said to have resulted in poor morale in the Old Taliban.
My own suspicion is that Mullah Baradar was behind the violence against Shiites in Karachi this winter. Provoking Sunni-Shiite violence so as to destabilize Pakistan's financial and industrial hub would be a typical al-Qaeda tactic. The bombings succeeded in provoking major riots and property damage. But when you hurt stock prices and harm government revenues, you rather draw the attention to yourself of the country's elite and their security forces, since you have mightily inconvenienced them. As long as the Old Taliban were mainly bothering the government of Hamid Karzai over the border in Pakistan, the ISI might have been able to turn a blind eye to them. But if they were going to cause billions of dollars of damage to Karachi, which they did this winter, that is intolerable.
I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that Mullah Baradar's capture will destroy the Old Taliban. And even if that organization is weakened, there are at least three other major insurgent groups only loosely connected to them, which have the operational autonomy and resources to go on fighting.
Certainly, we shouldn't jump to any conclusions that this will precipitate the collapse of the Taliban. However, the same was said about killing Zarqawi and the durability of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Combined with the surge and proposals for buying off middle and lower ranking insurgents, this does start resembling the Iraq case. If the recent events also signal a change in Pakistan's posture-- then, perhaps, this could be the beginning of the end.
Update: Members of the Taliban moved to Karachi to get out of the range of drone attacks. Karachi has 3 million Pashtuns, mostly living in ghettos where the Taliban can blend in.
Obama's drone attacks on the Taliban leadership forced Mullah Baradar and some other commanders to relocate to the southern port city of Karachi, hundreds of miles from the action in the tribal areas of the northwest. He is said to attempted to restructure the military command of the Taliban in fall of 2009, but met a good deal of resistance. The episode is said to have resulted in poor morale in the Old Taliban.
My own suspicion is that Mullah Baradar was behind the violence against Shiites in Karachi this winter. Provoking Sunni-Shiite violence so as to destabilize Pakistan's financial and industrial hub would be a typical al-Qaeda tactic. The bombings succeeded in provoking major riots and property damage. But when you hurt stock prices and harm government revenues, you rather draw the attention to yourself of the country's elite and their security forces, since you have mightily inconvenienced them. As long as the Old Taliban were mainly bothering the government of Hamid Karzai over the border in Pakistan, the ISI might have been able to turn a blind eye to them. But if they were going to cause billions of dollars of damage to Karachi, which they did this winter, that is intolerable.
I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that Mullah Baradar's capture will destroy the Old Taliban. And even if that organization is weakened, there are at least three other major insurgent groups only loosely connected to them, which have the operational autonomy and resources to go on fighting.
Certainly, we shouldn't jump to any conclusions that this will precipitate the collapse of the Taliban. However, the same was said about killing Zarqawi and the durability of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Combined with the surge and proposals for buying off middle and lower ranking insurgents, this does start resembling the Iraq case. If the recent events also signal a change in Pakistan's posture-- then, perhaps, this could be the beginning of the end.
Update: Members of the Taliban moved to Karachi to get out of the range of drone attacks. Karachi has 3 million Pashtuns, mostly living in ghettos where the Taliban can blend in.
Comments
Leave a Reply
Loading
