Mullah Baradar’s capture and the future of the Afghan Insurgency
By Waliullah Rahmani
The capture of the Taliban’s leading military commander, Mullah Berader in Pakistan last week was widely heralded as an important victory in the war on terror currently raging in Afghanistan. But in addition to the hopes, Mullah Beradar’s arrest also raised questions. Why was he arrested in Pakistan in the first place? And secondly, what does his capture really mean?
Before we try and answer these questions, we need to review Mullah Beradar’s background and how he became Mullah Omar’s deputy commander.
Berader was born in Veetmok, a village in the Dehrawood District of Urozgan in 1968, according to Interpol. He is said to be a close relative of Mullah Omar’s, the Taliban’s supreme leader. When the Taliban was first established in 1994, Mullah Berader was one of the four founding members. During the group’s reign of power, 1996 to 2001, he was the organization’s deputy defense minister.
Mullah Berader became notorious in Afghanistan during this time when he was held responsible for the slaughter of Hazara in Mazar-e Sharif and then later the destruction of the Buddhist statues in Bamiyan. However, it was only after the Taliban was removed from power in 2001, that Mullah Beradar achieved real prominence. With the group now on the lam, he emerged as leading military commander and financial planner. Mullah Beradar, unlike other Taliban players, raised his own profile by regularly appearing in the Taliban media. In 2008, for example, Al Samood famously interviewed him about the Taliban’s military strategy to recapture Kabul and he was happy to talk.
Now back to our questions: Why was he captured in Karachi of all places?
Afghan officials have long pointed the finger at Pakistan as the leading source of support of the insurgency in Afghanistan, so most Afghans were hardly surprised but they did wonder, why now.
Islamabad has always denied Afghanistan’s accusations regarding its tortuous interference in Afghanistan. Moreover, the international community has always been very careful to resist piling on to the accusations. The capture of Mullah Beradar in Pakistan’s major financial center, Karachi, however, would send to lend credence to the Afghan allegations, however. So the question is, has Pakistan suddenly come around? There are at least two possible answers to this question.
First, Pakistan might not have had anything to do with Mullah Beradar’s capture but become involved once it was forced to by, say, the CIA who might have done everything to get to this point but actually arrest Berader. In this scenario, Pakistan only stepped in once it became clear that there was no other choice: Help arrest him or sacrifice the American aid on which Pakistan has become famously dependent.
The other possibility is that it was the Taliban leadership who led the Pakistani authorities to Mullah Berader. Rumors have long been circulating that Mullah Berader was in the process of trying to negotiate some kind of peace deal.
If this is what was going on, maybe Mullah Omar was getting nervous that Mullah Beradar, with all the men under his control, could become a break-away leader if he, say, wanted to strike a deal and Mullah Omar did not (or vice versa). Under this scenario, Mullah Omar, feeling threatened by Mullah Benader, drops a dime on his deputy commander by placing a call to his friends in the ISI to have him arrested.
Maybe this is why Mullah Omar appointed so many rival commanders in recent months – men like Mullah Agha Jan Mu’Taism, Mullah Abdullah Zakir, Mullah Mohammad Hassan Rahmani and Mawlawi Abdul Kabir. Anticipating problems with Mullah Berader, he puts these alternative commanders in place to effectively neutralize Mullah Beradar before he has him turned over to the Americans by his ISI buddies. By arranging for the arrest to be made in Pakistan, Mullah Omar can plausibly deny that he had anything to do with it, and even better, he can no doubt now guarantee his friends in the ISI who turn Mullah Berader over to the Americans billions more in the military aid that for a while there was looking like it was in jeopardy.
Regardless of which scenario really just played out in Karachi, one thing is certain about Mullah Berader’s capture. It does not mean the fight for Afghanistan is over just yet.
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