(16 Feb 2010)
US and Pakistani officials Tuesday announced the arrest of Taliban''s top military commander in a joint CIA-Pakistani operation in Pakistan, as US troops push into their heartland in southern Afghanistan.
Two Pakistani intelligence officers and a senior US official said Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was captured in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi.
Baradar is said to be the Number Two behind Afghan Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and a close associate of Osama bin Laden.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to release such sensitive information.
One Pakistani officer said Baradar was arrested 10 days ago with the assistance of the United States and "was talking" to his interrogators.
A Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan told The Associated Press that Baradar was still free, though he did not provide any evidence.
He said the report was Western propaganda aimed at undercutting the Taliban fighting against an offensive in the southern Afghan town of Marjah, a Taliban haven.
In Karachi on Tuesday, one local Urdu-language newspaper had news of the arrest on the front page, with the headline "US Forces operation against Taliban in Karachi."
Opinions amongst local residents were divided on the alleged arrest of Baradar.
Shoaib Momon said he thought the arrest was a good thing for Pakistan while Muhammed Rafiq was sceptical the arrest had taken place at all.
One local journalist Afzal Nadeem Dogar claimed the apparent arrest of Mullah Baradar "shows the efficiency of the Pakistani agencies."
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 said 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 defence minister in the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan until it was ousted in the 2001 US-led invasion.
Word of Baradar''s capture came as US Marine and Afghan units pressed deeper into Marjah, facing sporadic rocket and mortar fire as they moved through suspected insurgent neighbourhoods on the third day of a NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) offensive to reclaim the town.
Pakistan''s spy agency has been accused in the past of protecting top Afghan Taliban leaders believed sheltering in the country, frustrating Washington.
Moving against Baradar could signal that Islamabad increasingly views the Afghan Taliban, or at least some of its members, as fair game.
The arrest also comes amid a new push by the United States and its NATO allies to negotiate with Afghan Taliban leaders as a way to end the eight-year war in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is or will play an important role in that process because of its close links with members of the movement, which it supported before the September 11, 2001, attacks.
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.

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