Taliban leaders killed, surrender in Afghanistan

[ejaz007]

Taliban leaders killed, surrender in Afghanistan
Dated 22/7/2008

A senior Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan surrendered to Authorities and British forces killed another leader, dealing a "shattering blow" to the militant group's leadership, the British army said on Tuesday.

Mullah Rahim, the top commander for southern Helmand province, gave himself up after British forces had killed two other Taliban leaders in little over three weeks.

Hours after his surrender, another senior Taliban commander, Abdul Rasaq, also known as "Mullah Sheikh", was killed in a British missile strike 15 km (9 miles) north of the town of Musa Qala in Helmand on Monday morning, the British army said in a statement. Three other insurgents also died.

Rasaq headed Taliban actions around Musa Qala and was active in the insurgency for a number of years, it said.

"The Taliban's senior leadership structure has suffered a shattering blow," British army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Robin Matthews said in the statement.

Musa Qala town holds a symbolic importance after Taliban fighters forced British troops out of the dusty opium-trading centre in late 2006. The Taliban then seized it in February last year making it the only town of any size held by the rebels.

Afghan, British and U.S. forces took back Musa Qala in an offensive in December but Taliban insurgents are still active around the town.

Elsewhere, U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces backed by airpower killed or wounded more than 30 Taliban insurgents in fighting in the west of Afghanistan, a senior police official said on Tuesday.

Fighting broke out in the Bala Boluk district of Farah province on Tuesday, regional police chief Ikramuddin Yawar said.

"The toll might be more than 30 because the operation is ongoing," Yawar told Reuters.

SUICIDE ATTACK

A U.S.-led convoy was hit by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades on Tuesday morning in Bala Boluk, a U.S. military spokesman said.

Air strikes were called in but no munitions were dropped. The U.S. military could not confirm if any Taliban were killed dead. International forces do not usually give casualty figures for insurgents.

In the capital, Kabul, a Taliban suicide bomber wounded five civilians when he blew himself up as he was challenged by police on Tuesday, the Interior Ministry said.

Taliban militants have launched some 100 suicide attacks so far this year, mostly targeting Afghan and international security forces but as many as 80 percent of their victims are civilians, security experts say.

The bomber struck in the morning in the Gozargah area of the capital, next to the walls of the historic tomb of Babur, the 16th century founder of India's Mughal dynasty. Only a leg of the bomber remained, lying on the ground, Reuters witnesses said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

Taliban leaders killed, surrender in Afghanistan | India Defence

 

[fatman17]

Taliban arrest in Pakistan raises Western hopes

Wed Jul 23, 2008

By Simon Cameron-Moore

ISLAMABAD, July 23 (Reuters) - Pakistan's security forces made a rare arrest of a senior Afghan Taliban commander near the southwestern city of Quetta on Saturday, Pakistani security officials and coalition forces in Afghanistan told Reuters.

A statement issued by British forces in Afghanistan late on Tuesday said Mullah Rahim, operational commander of Taliban forces in Helmand, had surrendered to "authorities in Pakistan".

Western officials in the past have suspected the Pakistani security services of turning a blind eye to the presence of Taliban leaders in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan.

Recent unpublicised arrests in Quetta, however, raised hopes of a sea-change in Pakistan, a senior Western official said.

"We've seen signs of change ... yes, and arrests," said an official in Islamabad earlier this week.

Pakistan had still to confirm Rahim's capture, but Pakistani security officials, who had requested anonymity, had told Reuters on Monday that a suspect believed to have been the Taliban commander in Helmand, had been caught over the weekend.

They said the man had been caught during a raid on a house in Kharotabad area of Quetta.

"We conducted a raid three days ago based on very credible information that some important Taliban figures were hiding with an Afghan family there," a senior intelligence official said.

Western allies suffering mounting casualties among troops in Afghanistan have put Pakistan under pressure to act against Taliban taking sanctuary on its territory.

The intensity of the pressure and more frequent U.S. drone aircraft missile attacks on militant targets in Pakistani tribal areas have led to frenzied speculation in Pakistani media that Western forces in Afghanistan could soon take unilateral action.

Deployment of more NATO troops near the Pakistan border has prompted fears they could be ordered across on "hot pursuit" or covert missions to eliminate "high value targets".

Pakistan opposes any such action that would violate its sovereignty and risk escalating the conflict in ethnic Pashtun lands straddling the frontier.

PATCHY RECORD

The British statement said that hours after Rahim's arrest in Pakistan British forces killed another senior Taliban leader, the third in as many weeks.

Abdul Razaq, alias Mullah Sheikh, was killed along with three fighters in a missile strike after midnight on Sunday at Musa Qala, a town in Helmand that has changed hands several times.

Similar successes have been trumpeted in the past, and Taliban sources told Reuters on Wednesday that Rahim had already been replaced by Mullah Nayeem as commander in Helmand.

Last December, the Afghan Defence Ministry said Mullah Rahim Akhond, the Taliban's governor for Helmand, and Mullah Mateen Akhond, district governor in Musa Qala, had been caught.

Various reasons have been put forward for Pakistan's inaction against Taliban in and around Quetta since the Islamist militia was driven from power by U.S. backed forces in late 2001.

Pakistan has said it has been given no actionable information by Afghanistan or NATO and maintained that top leaders, including Taliban supremo Mullah Mohammad Omar, were in Afghanistan.

Some analysts say Pakistan fears a violent backlash from the Taliban and their sympathisers if they actively hunt down leaders of a movement that had been supported by the Pakistani military from the mid-1990s until late 2001.

Other Pakistani, Afghan and American analysts say Pakistani intelligence is playing a double-game to keep alive Taliban assets to use as leverage to re-assert influence in Kabul once Western forces pull out of Afghanistan.

Pakistan has actively hunted al Qaeda fighters in tribal areas, and been sucked into a conflict among the Pakistani Taliban based in the region. But Pakistan's record in combating Afghan Taliban has been patchy. In February, Mullah Mansour Dadullah, a commander who had been dismissed by Mullah Omar, was caught in Baluchistan.

In March last year, Pakistani security forces in Quetta arrested Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, a former Taliban defence minister and third most senior member of its leadership council.

Akhund's arrest was disclosed to Reuters by several security officials, though it was never confirmed by Pakistani authorities. (With additional reporting by Gul Yousafzai and Saeed Ali Achakzai and Mirwais Afghan; Editing by Alex Richardson)

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