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This could be a breakthrough in capturing Taleban leadership and military commanders who have pledged an increase in hostilities and suicide attacks in Southern Afghanistan this year as U.S. forces are pulling back.
KANDAHAR (BBC News) May 19 — A top Taleban leader, Mullah Dadullah, has been captured in Afghanistan, Afghan officials have told the BBC. The senior military commander was said to have been detained by international troops in southern Kandahar province.
Governor Assadullah Khalid told Reuters: “We’ve arrested three high-ranking Taleban, members of their leadership council.” Mullah Dadullah was a member of the Taleban’s 10-man leadership council before the US-led invasion in 2001.
Mullah Dadullah: «We will continue our jihad»
The BBC’s Alastair Leithead in Kabul says Mullah Dadullah is very close to the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar. Mullah Dadullah has survived a number of attacks and lost one leg in battle. He has a reputation for being one of the Taleban’s most brutal commanders.
High-ranking Afghan officials have told the BBC that he was captured in Kandahar and is being held by the coalition forces. There are no details as to how he was caught.
KANDAHAR (CBS News) May 19 — The militant was captured in a joint Afghan-coalition operation in Kandahar province, said Gen. Rehmatullah Raufi, head of the Afghan military’s southern region.
Mullah Dadullah, who lost a leg fighting for the Taliban during its rise to power in the mid-1990s, is one of the hard-line militia’s top commanders, responsible for operations in eastern and southeastern Afghanistan.
Raufi said coalition troops captured the militant in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province during fighting that led to the deaths of 18 militants and a female Canadian soldier. About 35 militants were detained in that fight.
Raufi said the militant without a leg was seriously wounded and unconscious in a military hospital. He said there was a “good chance” the fighter was Dadullah but that he did not know for sure.
A senior Afghan government official said “we’re pretty sure” Dadullah was in custody, though officials had not confirmed his identity. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter publicly, said “a couple of other big fish” may have been caught, but he gave no further details.
Both Dadullah and Taliban leader Mullah Omar are Pashtun, and Dadullah is one of the most trusted followers of Omar.
RISE IN HOSTILITIES IN AFGHANISTAN
What the Taliban wants, ideally, is to fill the void in each village as U.S. forces pull out of southern Afghanistan later this year and hand over operations to ISAF/NATO.
“The Taliban never really went away,” CBS News consultant Jere Van Dyk says. “What happened was the Americans felt, and a lot of observers felt throughout the world, the Taliban were defeated very easily. But, in fact, what they did was move back into the countryside, they took off their black turbans, went and became farmers, and they observed.”
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Yes, indeed it could mean a breaktrough in capturing Taleban leadership and military commanders much because this guy was known to be a close aid to mullah Omar, the nr. 1 in the Taleban leadership. Still, bear in mind that the Taleban leadership is military decentralized and that the loss of Mullah Dadullah could mean, which is most likely, that another guy would take over his position.
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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) May 23 — President Hamid Karzai ordered an investigation into the deaths of at least 16 civilians in one of the deadliest U.S. airstrikes since the American-led invasion in 2001. Another 19 people, meanwhile, were killed in new violence.
Karzai expressed “concern at the coalition forces’ decision to bomb civilian areas” at the village of Azizi in Kandahar province, but he also strongly condemned the “terrorists’ act of cowardice” in using civilians as human shields.
U.S. A-10s bombed the Islamic school, or madrassa, where the militants were suspected of hiding, before hitting surrounding homes as the insurgents took shelter. At Azizi, where a religious school and mud-brick homes were hit by the airstrike, angry villagers buried their dead. One villager, Haji Ikhlaf, told The Associated Press that 26 civilians had been buried by early Tuesday higher than the official toll.
Afghan child Mohammad Imran, who got wounded by a coalition airstrike in Panjwai district of Kandahar province, is treated at a hospital in Kandahar. AP Photo/Noor Khan“We’ve buried women. We’ve buried children,” Ikhlaf, 40, said by cell phone from the area, which has been closed off to reporters by local security forces. “They are killing us. We are so angry.”
… In 2004, the U.S. military said it had modified its rules of engagement following outrage by Karzai over the deaths of 15 children in two airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan.
… The deadliest of the two incidents which occurred within days of each other in December 2003 took place in Ghazni province, when an A-10 Warthog ground-attack aircraft killed nine children as they played in a field. The military apologized for the deaths.
… Militants have repeatedly targeted aid workers, including doctors and teachers. Last month, gunmen stormed a medical clinic in a northwestern province and killed five doctors and nurses. The Taliban opposes the presence of the development workers because they believe they bolster Karzai’s U.S.-backed government.
● Human Rights Watch
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