While the ongoing Pakistani crackdown against the Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) led by Mullah Mohammad Omar is being seen by many inside the country as a major policy shift to abandon the former rulers of Afghanistan, there are many others who believe that the arrest of over half members of the Taliban Shura in a short span of six weeks following the holding of the January 28 London moot on Afghanistan might be an attempt by the Pakistani military establishment to lock the stable doors and save the valued QST studs from being stolen by the US through its AfPk diplomacy.
Since the beginning of February 2010, the Pakistani authorities have captured ten of the 18-member Quetta Shura Taliban (QST), including Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the second-in-command of Mullah Omar, Motasim Agha Jan, the son-in-law of Mullah Mohammad Omar and at least half a dozen shadow governors of the Afghan provinces. These high-profile arrests, combined with the ongoing US-led military offensive in Helmand and the unending spate of American drone attacks in the tribal areas of Pakistan have adversely damaged the command and control structure of the Afghan Taliban, which is called the Quetta Shura Taliban (QST), led by Mullah Mohammad Omar.
The Quetta Shura has its origins following the US-led military offensive against the Afghan Taliban in November 2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. The Taliban remnants coalesced around Kandahar in the south of Afghanistan. While Kandahar was occupied by the Allied Forces in December 2001, much of the top Taliban leadership escaped into Pakistan. Mullah Mohammad Omar, the one-eyed ameerul momineen of the Afghan Taliban and the former de facto ruler of Afghanistan, quickly reconstituted an insurgent force now basing itself in the Quetta city. The Quetta Shura was meant to act as a nerve centre for the military operations of Taliban, formulation of their political strategy, appointment of their field commanders and managing a shadow government of Taliban in the war-torn Afghanistan.
Senior American government officials have frequently suspected Afghan Taliban leaders of finding shelter and sympathy in big urban cities of Pakistan, with the authorities in Islamabad constantly refuting the same. Hence the million dollar question: what actually prompted the Pakistani establishment to proceed against the well-entrenched Taliban network? Informed circles say Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was shaping up as a key interlocutor for AfPak diplomacy and Mullah and many of his aides were darting in and out of the Persian Gulf to hold secret meetings with senior US officials. And the agenda of the back-channel diplomacy was none other than a possible American reconciliation with the Quetta Shura. Although these developments were in the knowledge of the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, the fact remained that neither the Pakistan Army nor the ISI was being given any mediatory role by the Americans, mainly due to the ever-growing trust deficit between the actual decision makers in Washington and Rawalpindi.
Then came the January 28 US-sponsored London conference on Afghanistan, that showed the desperation of the western powers to broker a deal with the Afghan Taliban, making many wonder whether the international coalition is indirectly admitting to its inability to vanquish the al-Qaeda-linked militants. But the bitter truth is that the United States and Britain have already been engaged in secret parleys with the Afghan Taliban for nearly two years. America’s AfPak special representative Richard Holbrooke did achieve a notable success in London by rushing an agenda of reintegration and reconciliation of Afghan Taliban through the London moot which was attended by some chronic critics of the doctrine of the ‘good Taliban’ including India, China and Russia. But Holbrooke managed to keep the lot together against all odds.
However, as soon as the London conference concluded, the Pakistani authorities launched a major crackdown against senior Afghan Taliban leadership hiding in Pakistan. They first arrested Mullah Mir Muhammad, the shadow governor of Baghlan on January 30 from Faisalabad, hardly two days after the London moot was over. The next arrest was that of Mullah Abdul Salam, the shadow governor of Kunduz province, who was also nabbed from Faisalabad on February 2, 2010. The third arrest was that of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was detained on February 11, 2010 from the premises of a Sunni-Deobandi-run religious seminary in Karachi. The seminary, Khudamul Quran, is located 10 to 25kms from the toll plaza on the Super Highway in the jurisdiction of the Lonikot police station in Hyderabad district.
The significance of Mullah Baradar’s arrest can well be gauged from the fact that he is credited by the Americans for having rebuilt the Afghan Taliban into an effective fighting force besides coordinating its military operations against the US-led Allied Forces in Afghanistan. There are reports that Baradar represented Mullah Omar in all the peace talks which were in fact mediated by Saudi Arabia, in the past two years. Representative of the government of Hamid Karzai and the Afghan Taliban held secret talks in Mecca between September 24 and September 27, 2008 and the Taliban delegation was led by Mullah Baradar. Supervising the Mecca parleys, were senior American and Saudi officials. Spread over four days, the talks failed to break the logjam. The Mecca talks remained futile due to the inflexibility of the Taliban who first wanted the withdrawal of the Allied Forces from Afghanistan before initiating a formal dialogue.
Well-informed intelligence circles say Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was shaping up as a key interlocutor for AfPak diplomacy as he and many of his associates were darting in and out of the Persian Gulf oasis towns to hold secret meetings with senior American officials. And the agenda of the back-channel diplomacy was none other than a possible American reconciliation with the Quetta Shura Taliban. Although these developments were in the knowledge of the Pakistani intelligence establishment, the fact remains that neither the Pakistan Army top brass nor the ISI was being given any mediatory role by the Americans, mainly due to the trust deficit between the actual decision makers in Washington and Rawalpindi. Pakistan obviously wanted a mediatory role to use it an opportunity to defend its interests in Afghanistan besides circumscribing Indian efforts there. An upset Pakistani establishment, therefore, decided to act against the Quetta Shura Taliban.
Almost a week after Mullah Baradar’s arrest, the Pakistani authorities arrested Maulvi Abdul Kabir, the shadow governor of Nangarhar province on February 20 in Nowshehra. Three other arrested members of Quetta Shura include Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, who used to co-supervise the military affairs of the militia, Mullah Muhammad Hassan, a former foreign minister in the Taliban regime, Mullah Abdul Rauf, the former chief operational commander of the Taliban in northeastern Afghanistan, Mullah Ahmad Jan Akhundzada, the former governor of Zabul province and Mullah Muhammad Younis, an explosives expert who had served as a police chief in Kabul during Taliban rule. The latest prized catch is Motasim Agha Jan, the Taliban’s head of political affairs and the son-in-law of Mullah Omar. Jan was arrested on March 4 during a raid on a house in the Ehsan Abad area of Karachi.
Yet the Pakistani authorities have so far only confirmed the arrest of Baradar, since he was nabbed during a joint operation carried out by the Pakistani ISI and the American CIA. The remaining eight members of the Quetta Shura who are still at large are believed to be Mullah Hassan Rehmani, the former governor of Kandahar province in Taliban regime, Hafiz Abdul Majeed, the former chief of the Afghan Intelligence and the surge commander of the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, Amir Khan Muttaqi, a former minister in Taliban regime, Mullah Abdul Jalil, the head of the Taliban’s shadow interior ministry, Sirajuddin Haqqani, the commander of the Haqqani militant network, Mullah Abdul Latif Mansoor, the commander of the Mansoor network in Paktika and Khost, Mullah Abdur Razaq Akhundzada, a former corps commander for northern Afghanistan and Abdullah Mutmain, a former minister in the Taliban regime who currently looks after the financial affairs of the extremist militia.
Western diplomatic circles in Islamabad say keeping in view the ongoing action against the Quetta Shura Taliban, the message from the Pakistani establishment is simple and clear-cut: any future dialogue with the Afghan Taliban leadership has to be conducted through the proper channel, to be precise the Inter Services Intelligence. And the decision-makers in Pakistani establishment are certain that it is not too much to demand in view the services they have been rendering for the former rulers of Afghanistan, both before and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Therefore, the Pakistani establishment seems in no mood to let Uncle Sam steel the crown jewels – key members of the Quetta Shura Taliban – especially when the hour of glory is nearing and the Americans are already planning their exit strategy for Afghanistan.
The bitter truth for Washington is that Pakistan is now in a strong position to make or break the Obama administration’s much-trumpeted AfPak strategy because it holds the trump cards now – ten key members of the Quetta Shura – to be delivered to the negotiating table in any US-sponsored talks between the Karzai regime and the Quetta Shura Taliban. And the intentions of the Pakistani establishment can well be gauged from the recent refusal of Islamabad to hand over Mullah Baradar and other detained Afghan Taliban leaders either to the US or to Afghanistan, demands by the Karzai’s government and requests by the US authorities. The Pakistani refusal has left little doubt its establishment intends to keep physical custody of the key QST members in a bid to influence the pace of peace negotiations in Afghanistan and the ultimate terms of a settlement with the Taliban.
amir.mir1969@gmail.com