Email This Story
As if by magic - but more by way of wily stagecraft - U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials have “arrested” one of the Afghan Taliban’s top military commanders, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.
The spymasters’ dramatic account of a clandestine early morning raid to capture Baradar at a madrassa near Karachi, complete with breathless speculation that Baradar might lead stalwart Pakistani spy chiefs "to Mullah Omar himself”, is sharply at odds with evidence of the I.S.I.’s long-standing complicity with Afghanistan’s anti-Western opposition groups.
“Of course this is absurd,” says Abdullah Abdullah, who ran strongly as a candidate in last year’s Afghan presidential election.
Shortly after the New York Times published the C.I.A.’s claims about Baradar's arrest, Abdullah told Skyreporter: “At any time the I.S.I. could apprehend these Taliban leaders.
“When I was Foreign Minister (from 2002-2006) we would provide our Pakistani counterparts with the names of the Taliban leadership, and details of their activities. But the Pakistanis would joke that these were common names, and they needed even more specifics from us. Of course it was a deception.”
Abdullah’s statements are echoed by a highly-placed security source in Kabul, who requests that his identity not be revealed “because of concerns by my American friends.”
He tells Skyreporter: “Baradar is a military commander whose whereabouts have been well known by the Pakistanis. His operations would not have been possible without the help of the I.S.I.” (the Pakistan Army’s Interservices Intelligence branch).
As detailed previously here, sources within the Afghan government’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, have confirmed that the I.S.I. sustains all the leading Afghan militant groups operating from Pakistan.
For example, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar resides in I.S.I. safehouses while in Peshawar and Rawalpindi. His party’s base near Peshawar operates “like a Pakistan Army reservation,” according to another Afghan police source.
Jalaluddin Haqqani, the ailing patriarch of the Afghan guerrilla faction that has fielded the greatest number of suicide bombers and gunmen, is regularly treated in Pakistan by physicians supplied by the I.S.I.
For its part, Mullah Omar's Baluchistan-based Taliban shura, of which Baradar is a prominent member, has never been the target of determined political pressure, much less military strikes, from either the Pakistan Army or U.S. forces based in neighboring Afghanistan.
Afghan army and security officials maintain that the Taliban are little more than a proxy force, a covert instrument that has enabled the Pakistan military establishment to project its power across Afghanistan since the early 1990’s.
As for the C.I.A.’s posturing, Abdullah says: “The agency had a great setback with the suicide attack on its base near Khost. They lost seven of their people. I think this is a face-saving gesture from Pakistan, one that relieves the pressure to take real action against the Haqqanis, Mullah Omar and the others.
“I don’t believe this is a breakthrough, but let’s see how it is used in the weeks to come. It is probably most important for the positioning of Pakistan and the United States in forcing some kind of compromise on the Afghan people.”
Another authoritative source, a seasoned former member of the Kabul government’s security apparatus, offers a harsher assessment.
“Baradar has lived openly for years in Quetta (capital of Baluchistan). This so-called arrest is about the I.S.I. protecting an asset, not shutting him down.
“But it’s the kind of story that will let the U.S. declare ‘mission accomplished’. They can blame the Afghans for the state of the war, and allow the Pakistanis to dictate a settlement that works mainly for Pakistan, and marginally for Washington.”
Amidst all of this, however, lurks an explosive subplot. Word has been spreading in Kabul for some months that a most unlikely government insider has maintained regular contact with Mullah Baradar.
His name?
Ahmad Wali Karzai, President Karzai’s younger brother, linked both to the heroin trade in Kandahar and Helmand provinces – and to the C.I.A., as one of the agency’s informants and facilitators.
Says Abdullah: “All of these intrigues, along with Pakistan’s growing influence through the Taliban, take us back to the dangerous situation that existed prior to the 9/11 attacks in 2001. That is why our international friends should not allow a secret peace deal with the Taliban.
“The Taliban and other opposition leaders have no respect for Mr. Karzai and his government. They see no need to compromise if they can win everything they wish with Pakistan’s help.”
Next on Skyreporter, the logical result of big power machinations in Afghanistan: not peace, but full scale civil war.
