Top commander held, another blow to Taliban

Taliban appears to be nearing collapse as in another blow to the group, Pakistani authorities have captured Mulla Abdul Kabir, a member of the Quetta Shura and the shadow governor of Afghanistan's eastern Nangahar province.

Kabir, a member of the Taliban's inner council was captured in Naushera area of Pakistan's restive northwest in the last few days and is the second member of the Quetta shura to be arrested in recent weeks, The New York Times reported.

His capture comes close on the heels of nabbing of Taliban's number two Mulla Abdul Ghani Barader from Karachi and arrest of two other top commanders of the group, Mulla Abdul Salam, former shadow governor of Kunduz and Mulla Mohammed, shadow governor of Baghlan province.

Times said, the capture of Mulla Kabir appeared to be strictly Pakistani operation and Islamabad had kept his arrest a closely guarded secret even from their American allies. Mulla Kabir is a long time associate of Taliban supremo Mulla
Omar. He was the governor of Nangahar province during the Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001 and military commander of
eastern provinces of Kunar, Nangahar, Nuristan and Laghman.

The Quetta Shura, considered to be the supreme decision-making body of the Taliban, is reported to have 20 members with an inner council of nine commanders. A number of these have been killed in battles over the last two years.

The Times said, along with Kabir another top-rung Taliban leader Mulla Mohd Yunis was also nabbed. He was the shadow governor of Zabul province.

The paper said that the arrest of Barader and Kabir appears to mark a shift in Pakistan's behaviour, although the motive remains unclear.

It quoted a CIA official as saying, "We  still need to see how far it goes, but for Obama and NATO, this is the best possible news".

"If the safe haven is closing then Taliban are in trouble," the CIA official told Times.

The news for Taliban appears to be getting bleaker as yesterday Haji Zaman Ghamsharik, an Afghan warlord accused of helping Osama bin Laden to escape from American dragnet in Tora Bora in 2001, was assassinated by a suicide bomber.

The bomber killed him and 14 others at a ceremony in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, close to the Pakistan border.
Zaman had many enemies and American intelligence officials suspect he took money to join the fight against Al Qaeda and then arranged Osama escape when he was cornered by US forces at Tora Bora.

During the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, Zaman was the Mujahideen commander and later fought for both and against Taliban.

When the Taliban regime collapsed, he was appointed military commander of Jalalabad by president Hamid Karzai.
This put him at odds against another warlord Haji Qadir, the brother of legendary Mujahideen commander Abdul Haq, who later rose to become the vice president.

Zaman is suspected to have engineered Qadir's assassination. An uproar over bin Laden's escape led to Zaman's flight to exile in France and Pakistan till last year when he returned to contest the elections.