Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s Interior Minister, quickly backed away from reports by an Afghan official that Pakistan will turn over Mullah Baradar, Mullah Omar’s deputy, to the Afghan government. From CNN:
However, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik told CNN there is no agreement to hand over Baradar as part of a prisoner swap and Afghanistan has not made a formal request for Baradar to be extradited.
“No such agreement has been reached between the two governments and no formal request has been received for the handing over of Mullah Baradar by the Pakistani government,” he said.
“A prisoner swap was discussed but the Afghan Taliban we arrested are not prisoners. They have been detained and are being interrogated. We are examining if they’ve committed any crimes in Pakistan. Once they’ve gone through the legal scrutiny in Pakistan then we will consider any requests by the Afghan government to hand them over.”
It is ironic that the person who assured us last October that “the fact is, the Quetta shura does not exist” now has to discuss the possibility of turning over the leader of said shura to Afghanistan.
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6 Comments
So I’m confused, has the CIA had any opportunity to interrogate him or just the Pakistanis? Every day that goes by is another day any intel we might get from him could become outdated.
The million dollar question is ‘has the minister any say in the matter?’.
Since US is consistently killing top Taliban/AQ leaders..Pak must be “arresting” them to save them for the rainy day. Its now kind of obvious, they dont want any strong Taliban leader killed otherwise Taliban “representation” in Kabul after US exit will be toothless. The general strategy will be to incrementally usurp power like Hizbullah in Lebanon(or Al-Sadr in Iraq)..and gradually turn it into a Sunni Caliphate. Good luck to US/NATO with that.
I’m pretty sure the CIA spent a lot of time talking to him BEFORE it was made publicly known that he had been captured. From some of the Talib responses the “he hasn’t been captured” could be either deception or just being caught not knowing where he is. It can be disturbing when a leader just disappears especially when he doesn’t phone in every few hours.
The other useful info captured at the meeting will be pocket litter, laptops and cellphones and the info they contain especially when the latter is used in conjunction with recent SIGINT. Even if he says nothing his electronically connected network will have become vulnerable.
Even after the time-sensitive intel has been used there will still be plenty other background that the CIA and friends will want to talk about. Who, what, when and where for the past few years. Comparing what he says to what is already known. And extending info on organizational, logistic, political and operational structures. And methods of communication with the the top guys.
Surprisingly it seems that Pakistan has agreed to do so. ‘Dawn’ has reported that as per a statement from the government of Afghanistan,
“”The government of Pakistan has accepted Afghanistan’s proposal for extraditing Mullah Baradar and other Taliban who are in its custody and showed readiness to hand over those prisoners … on the basis of an agreement between the two countries,”
Ironic is the nice way to put it.