Word: baradar
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...arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Mullah Mohammad Omar's vaunted No. 2, seems to have reversed the momentum. Talking to TIME inside the 2,000-year-old Bala Hissar fortress jutting above Peshawar's old bazaar, Tariq Khan, frontier corps commander major general, admitted that "at first, that commitment with the Americans wasn't there." Now, however, Khan says the U.S. and Pakistani forces along the border are sharing intelligence "in real time, as it's happening." (See why Pakistanis believe there is a U.S. conspiracy against them...
Counter-arguments abound, of course. There are two interpretations regarding Baradar, who was leaving a seminary in a dingy slum outside Karachi when Pakistani operatives, acting on a tip from the CIA, picked him up. The first theory is that Pakistan owed the U.S. big time for knocking out one of their troublesome insurgents and could not dither when the CIA demanded that Baradar be grabbed. But the second theory, put out by local Pakistani journalists with reliable Taliban contacts, suggests that Baradar was dispensable for the Pakistani intelligence since he broke last December with Omar. According to Peshawar journalist...
...drone strike earlier this month that either killed or severely wounded Hakimullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistani Taliban. Knocking Mehsud out of commission may have been the favor Islamabad was repaying with the capture of Baradar and three Afghan Taliban "shadow" governors who were operating out of Pakistan. Mehsud had masterminded a suicide-bombing campaign that hit schools, police stations, bazaars and garrisons across the country, killing hundreds. (On Tuesday, another Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Qadir, ex-governor of Afghanistan's Nangahar province, was reportedly arrested, though neither Pakistan nor the Taliban spokesman would confirm the capture.) (See pictures...
...Thursday for talks with Pakistani generals and President Asif Ali Zardari, lauded the arrest of the Taliban commander as a "tremendous achievement for Pakistani intelligence and American collaboration." As the Taliban's second in command - after spiritual leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, also in hiding - and its top war strategist, Baradar has firsthand knowledge of the links between the Taliban and al-Qaeda's operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Washington says he is willing to share his secrets with Pakistani and CIA interrogators. Unidentified U.S. officials quoted by the New York Times, which broke the news of Baradar's arrest...
...Thursday, possibly acting on information provided to interrogators by Baradar, security forces arrested three suspected top al-Qaeda militants, who according to Pakistani intelligence sources quoted in the local press were in Karachi on a shopping trip for washing-machine timers and other parts for triggering bombs. Most important among the trio of suspects was Ameer Mauawia, described by Pakistani intelligence officers as the commander of al-Qaeda's foreign fighters on the Pakistani tribal lands along the Afghan border. Mauawia is said to be a trusted and longtime ally of bin Laden's, whom he allegedly followed when...