Bin Laden associate is most senior Afghan Taliban leader caught since ’01
ISLAMABAD — The Taliban's top military commander has been arrested in a joint CIA-Pakistani operation in Pakistan in a major victory against the insurgents as U.S. troops push into their heartland in southern Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the group's No. 2 leader behind Afghan Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and a close associate of Usama bin Laden, was captured in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi, two Pakistani intelligence officers and a senior U.S. official said.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release such sensitive information.
Hiding place
Baradar heads the Taliban's military council and was elevated in the body after the 2006 death of military chief Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Usmani. He is known to coordinate the movement's military operations throughout the south and southwest of Afghanistan. His area of direct responsibility stretches over Kandahar, Helmand, Nimroz, Zabul and Uruzgan provinces.
According to Interpol, Baradar was the deputy defense minister in the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan until it was ousted in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
Karachi is Pakistan's largest city and has been increasingly cited as a possible hiding place for top Afghan Taliban commanders in recent months. It has a large population of Pashtuns, the ethnic group that makes up the Taliban, but it is on the Arabian Sea and far from the Afghan border.
Baradar is the most senior Afghan Taliban leader arrested since the beginning of the Afghan war in 2001 following the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.
9 comments:
sounds like we're getting closer to the head man all the time, doesn't it?
Boy oh boy. We're really making progress now.
And only nine years in.
So I'm sure the righties are all out there congratulating our commander in chief for this one. Bwahahahahahaha!
He could capture Osama himself and they'd still criticize him for it.
Surely Baradar was personally nabbed by Dick Cheney. Just after he accidently discharged his weapon at Corporal Jones?
It would be wonderful to bring the people who attacked this country on 9/11 to justice. And I hope the government extracts information from this guy to that end.
It doesn't matter on whose watch this happened. We should see this capture as a step in the direction of justice for those Americans who lost their lives on the horrid September day.
he laughs, shuckens, shaw, you're scaring me by getting too close to my position on this issue. lol
i agree, it should not matter on whose watch it be done.
Close family friends lost their 41-year old son, father of three children on that day. He worked for Cantor-Fitzgerald.
Notice all the wingers falling all over themselves to give Mr. Obama credit for this? Not!
This must sting their asses.
Shaw: I think this is good news. Capturing the 2nd in command could lead us to other Taliban operatives and possibly to Bin Laden. And being on the "right", I must say that I don't give a rat's butt who gets Bin Laden, just get him already! Those who lost their lives on 9/11 deserve justice--we Americans deserve justice and what better way than to capture Bin Laden, regardless of who's President?
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