'Arrest of Taliban leaders just Pakistan's tact'

The series of arrests of some of the high profile Taliban leaders in the recent past is a reflective of only a tactical change in Islamabad's policy and there is no strategic shift in its counter-terrorism strategy, a leading US scholar has said.

"Recent arrests of high profile Afghan Taliban leaders by Pakistan do not indicate a strategic change in Pakistan's counter-terrorism strategy. In reality, Pakistan wants to assume a leading role in negotiating and reconciling with the Afghan Taliban to ensure a friendlier neighbour after the US withdraws," said Ashley J Tellis from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The dramatic captures of some Taliban officials by Pakistan during the last several weeks have turned out to be less significant than they first appeared, Tellis concluded in his latest paper "Beradar, Pakistan, and the Afghan Taliban: What Gives?" released on Wednesday.

"Far from presaging surrender, or the demise, of the Taliban's senior 'shura ', these arrests -- at least those that were not accidental -- represent an effort by Islamabad to exert control over the process of negotiation and reconciliation that all Pakistani military leaders believe is both imminent and inevitable in the Afghan conflict," he said.

"And it is emphatically motivated by the conviction that India, not the Afghan Taliban, represents the main enemy to be neutralised in the Afghan endgame.

Given these complex impulses, the recent seizures of a few Taliban leaders by Pakistan aren't much of a turning point in Islamabad's traditional strategy after all," he observed.

Tellis said a closer look at the recent arrests suggests that the seizure of Mullah Beradar and some others was prompted by the US intelligence initiatives, was entirely fortuitous, and certainly not part of any premeditated detention plan by Pakistan.

Although several other arrests have taken place entirely on Pakistani initiative, some of these detentions involve low-level Al Qaeda associates, whose arrests are consistent with Islamabad's standing policy of aiding the US.

"Of the remaining Afghan Taliban leaders arrested independently by Islamabad, many are either not particularly significant or represent a housecleaning by Pakistan's military intelligence," Tellis said.

As a result, the Afghan Taliban's leadership in Pakistan is certainly not decimated, he said, adding nor do Pakistan's actions constitute the "sea change" in its behaviour, as some observers have argued.

Instead, they represent a recalibration of Pakistan's evolving policy: rather than supporting the declared US goal of defeating the Taliban, the recent arrests exemplify a Pakistani effort to seize control over the process of negotiations and reconciliation that its military leaders believe is both imminent and inevitable in the Afghan conflict.