Captured Taliban chief is saying little
But there is growing hope among U.S. and Pakistani officials that he could act as a broker.
WASHINGTON - The capture and interrogation of Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar could help unravel the Afghan insurgency, but it's less likely to lead U.S. forces to Osama bin Laden.
In nearly two weeks of interrogation in Pakistan, the Taliban operations chief has provided limited information, officials said. In his discussions with his Pakistani captors, Baradar has focused on his own fate and not provided full details about the location of fellow insurgents or weapons caches.
That means the immediate benefit from Baradar's arrest has been his sudden absence as the Taliban's daily battlefield commander. But if he decided to cooperate, the growing hope among U.S. and Pakistani officials is that he would play the broker in negotiating a cease-fire between the Afghan Taliban and the U.S. and NATO-led forces fighting in Afghanistan.
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss classified intelligence issues, said Baradar did have a wealth of in-depth information on other Taliban leaders and could point to moderates who are approachable and warn away from hard-liners unwilling to get involved in the peace process.
It is not clear, though, whether the United States shares the broader belief apparently held by Pakistan's government that Baradar could be a direct player in eventual peace negotiations across the border in Afghanistan.
But some officials who have dealt with the Taliban in the past see positive signs in Baradar's push last year inside the Taliban's command to have the faction's leaders focus on governing as well as controlling territories.
"It seems he was trying to shift the organization from purely military to partly also political," said Richard Barrett, the head of a U.N. group that monitors the threat posed by al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "That seems to be a prelude to Taliban sitting down at table or at least talking."
Baradar is known as a savvy and powerful leader who "could issue an order which would be not only transmitted within a relatively short period, like 24 hours or so, down to the district level, but also would be obeyed," Barrett said. "That's quite significant."
The operations chief was centrally involved in the distribution of a manual in July that cautioned Taliban fighters against brutalizing civilians and pressing them to try to avoid killing innocents in suicide bombings. A similar push against civilian casualties has been a top priority of the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
Afghan civilian deaths, U.S. military officials stress, have made it more difficult to win the hearts and minds of Afghan citizens.
Baradar was arrested earlier this month in a joint operation by CIA and Pakistani security forces in the southern port city of Karachi, according to U.S. officials. Both the Pakistani army and the White House yesterday publicly confirmed the arrest.
In Islamabad yesterday, a conflict over who can appoint judges was resolved. Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced that three judges agreeable to the Supreme Court would join the bench. On Saturday, President Asif Ali Zardari appointed a judge to the court against its recommendation.
Now, the man Zardari had chosen as acting head of the Lahore court will instead be among the three named to the Supreme Court. The decision was another blow to the already weak Zardari, who has repeatedly clashed with the judiciary.
