Now, just a few weeks ago, the Taliban were dealt a pretty serious setback. Mullah Omar's deputy, Cmdr. Mullah [Abdul Ghani] Baradar, was captured in Karachi. How significant a development was that?
First it is surprising. I mean, a few days before the capture of Baradar, I was asking my colleagues working in Pakistan if they thought something was going to move. And they said, "No, it is business as usual; the Pakistani generals are supporting the Taliban." And then we see the arrest of the number two of the Taliban. And actually, in operational terms, he is the number one -- the guy who knows everything about the organization.
So, yes, it's a huge development. But we don't know exactly what it means. ... Does this mean the start of a huge shift in Pakistani strategy? In that case, you're going to see all the major Taliban commanders being killed or captured in 2010, let's say. And then the Americans will give something to Pakistan. There must be a deal somewhere. Or the second hypothesis is, there is no deal, and that this was more of a random operation. In that case, it's not going to change things at all.
It is widely believed that Mullah Omar, and the shura, the leadership council, are in Quetta inside Pakistan.
It seems like it is in Karachi and Quetta. But I wasn't surprised by the fact that Baradar was arrested in Karachi since the Americans more and more are seen as [likely] to strike in Quetta. The big surprise is that they arrested the second-in-command. It could be that the CIA had very precise information because they have arrested Al Qaeda or people linked to the network in the Middle East. They received good information, and they put pressure on the Pakistanis, saying, "Come on, Baradar is in this house in Karachi; we know exactly where. And you are obliged to arrest him. Otherwise, this is a huge problem." That's one hypothesis.
If we were to see some activity in, say, Quetta, and it appeared there was a pattern going on, then is it fair to say there's a deal going on behind the scenes?
The real test will be the Haqqani network [controlled by Jalaluddin and Siraj Haqqani from Pakistan's tribal area in North Waziristan. U.S. commanders say the group has been the most effective in attacking coalition forces in Afghanistan.] If the Pakistanis are striking the Haqqani network -- Jalaluddin Haqqani and his major players in east of Afghanistan -- if these guys are out, then we can say that Islamabad has changed its mind about the war in Afghanistan. Until then, we have to be extremely careful.
We've seen in recent weeks that a deal was made with the Shinwari tribe in Jalalabad [Eastern Afghanistan] going over the top level of the central government. Buying them out, essentially, for however long, to fight the Taliban. That's not a vote of confidence for the government. What, if anything, can be done to make the government in Kabul more viable?
It's interesting. Last August, there was the so-called re-election of Karzai. It was a huge fraud and Karzai basically lost all his legitimacy. Then, instead of reinforcing Karzai, the U.S. government began working more directly with local powers. And remember that there's more than $1 billion in emergency aid, and the U.S. command can spend it as they want. They can pay local strongmen, heads of militia, whatever. That's what we're going to see more and more of in Afghanistan: local deals between the Americans and the guys the Americans think are OK. And it probably is going to work in terms of fighting the Taliban. But what is that? It's the end of the Afghan state, basically.
It is like we're rewinding the clock back to the circumstances that set the Taliban up.
Exactly, we're back to the '80s. And there are things that we are seeing that are much more to do with Karzai himself, not the coalition. He has made a lot of deals with people who are very strong locally but with no national perspective. Gen. [Abdul Rashid] Dostum [the Uzbek warlord], for example, supported Karzai in the 2009 election. He was offered return to Afghanistan from Turkey where he has been living for the past few years because he had been accused of kidnapping one of his rivals. He was accused of raping a woman. He was accused of war crimes in 2001, killing probably 2,000 or 3,000 Taliban prisoners. And Karzai is working with these kinds of people. So is this a reform of the state? I don't think so.
Is the bolded part true?
) and we're paying a price for it. But we're better off working this in a decentralized manner anyway, we should be dealing with the various tribes as autonomous entities. As for Al Qaeda - it doesn't matter where they "train". This is a policing matter and the idiots in charge after 9/11 decided to nation build in 2 ME hellholes.
