After Arrests, Taliban Promote a Fighter ;NYT

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KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban’s supreme leader has replaced his top deputy with a relatively young but hardened fighter, an indication of the Taliban’s determination to push ahead with its insurgency despite the recent arrests of a handful of high-level commanders in Pakistan, according to Afghans and Pakistanis close to the Taliban.

The new deputy, Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, a former detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who is believed to be in his mid-30s, has a reputation as a tough fighter with few political skills. He was most recently the Taliban’s commander in southern Afghanistan, but he was pulled back into Pakistan, the Taliban’s rear base, earlier this year out of fear that he would be killed or detained, a senior NATO officer said.

He replaces Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was arrested in late January in Karachi, Pakistan, in a joint operation by American and Pakistani intelligence agents. Most of the Afghans and Pakistanis interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for their safety.

Mr. Baradar is one of a number of Taliban leaders captured recently in Pakistan, where the government has historically granted the group sanctuary. He had been the leader of the Taliban leadership council known as the Quetta Shura, named for the Pakistani city where many of the group’s leaders are believed to be hiding.

American officials believe that the Taliban’s leadership is still brimming with confidence about their position inside Afghanistan, making it unlikely that the movement’s chieftains would be inclined to enter substantive negotiations in the near term.

“The Taliban still believe they are winning and can wait us out,” said one senior American intelligence official. “They are not inclined to accept a bargain.”

Still, the arrests in Pakistan have sown nervousness among Taliban leaders. The Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, appointed Mr. Zakir as his deputy himself, without convening the leadership council, according to Waheed Muzhda, a former Taliban official in Kabul who speaks regularly with Taliban leaders.

The Quetta Shura members, Mr. Muzhda said, felt too insecure to gather in large numbers. “Everyone is worried,” he said.

In addition to Mr. Baradar, Pakistani authorities recently detained Mullah Kabir, another member of the Quetta Shura, and two of the group’s “shadow governors” in Afghanistan. Mullah Kabir was later released, however, for reasons that are unclear, according to a Western diplomat in Pakistan and a Pakistani with close ties to the group.

Pakistan also detained another member of the Taliban’s inner circle, Agha Jan Motasim, who was a former finance minister of the Taliban government before it was driven from power in 2001, according to a Pakistani with close ties to the Taliban. Mr. Motasim, a son-in-law of Mullah Omar, was captured in Karachi late last month, the Pakistani said.

There were conflicting reports, meanwhile, about the status of another senior Taliban leader, Mullah Mansour, the brother of one of the most brutal of the Taliban commanders, Mullah Dadullah, who was killed by American and British troops in 2007.

A Pakistani with close ties to the Taliban said Wednesday that Mr. Mansour had also been promoted to serve as a deputy alongside Mr. Zakir, though some Afghans disputed that.

The arrests appear to represent a significant shift in tactics by Pakistani security officials, who have allowed Taliban leaders to operate freely in their country for years. The Pakistani military and intelligence services helped create the Taliban in the mid-1990s, and elements of their security services have maintained a shadowy relationship with the group ever since.

Pakistan’s policy of supporting the American mission in Afghanistan and simultaneously aiding the Taliban has been a source of extreme tension for American officials. They have pressured the Pakistanis to cut their ties to the Taliban and, at least, to shut down the sanctuaries used by the Taliban’s leaders and fighters.

American officials say they are encouraged by some of the recent Pakistani actions — but not all of them. The exact motives of the Pakistani government are murky.

Many people here, in Pakistan and in the United States speculate that Pakistani officials have been detaining the Taliban’s senior leaders to gain a measure of influence over any peace negotiations that may begin between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

There were signs that those Taliban leaders still at large were taking extreme precautions to avoid being detained. Mr. Muzhda, the Afghan analyst who follows the Taliban, said that some Taliban leaders hiding in Pakistan had vanished.

It was unclear, he said, whether the Taliban leaders have been arrested or whether they have gone into hiding, afraid that they will be.

Among those Taliban leaders whose whereabouts are unknown, he said, were Mullah Hassan Rahmani, the former Taliban governor of Kandahar and a member of the Quetta Shura, and Mullah Afghan Tayyib, a longtime spokesman for the group.

“When I talk to the Taliban, they say they have disappeared,” Mr. Muzhda said of the leaders.

In 2001, the new Taliban deputy, Mr. Zakir, then known as Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, was captured on the battlefield and sent to the American detention camp at Guantánamo Bay until 2007, when he was turn over to the Afghan government and later released.

“The fighters who have been to Guantánamo are seen as heroes,” Mr. Muzhda said.

According to transcripts of a hearing in 2007, Mr. Zakir told American officials that he had no intention of returning to the battlefield. “I want to go back home and join my family and work in my land and help my family,” he said, according to a transcript reviewed by The Associated Press.