A death and a detention--Turbulent times for the Taliban

Mehlaqa Samdani

The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban suffered setbacks last week when Pakistani officials captured Mullah Baradar, Mullah Omar's deputy, and confirmed the death of Hakeemullah Mehsud, the head of Pakistan's Tehreek-e-Taliban.  Speculation is rife as to what this might mean for the two Taliban movements, reconciliation efforts and a possible strategic shift in Pakistan's policy viz. a viz. the Afghan Taliban.

To some Baradar's arrest and subsequent detention of three other top Taliban leaders by Pakistan's ISI suggested a "changed attitude toward an insurgent force that the country had allowed to operate with relative impunity for the past eight years." 

Others felt the capture demonstrated "that the  the Pakistan Army, under the command of Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, has a more flexible approach toward Afghanistan, guided by the realization that it has permanent interests,  not permanent allies in its neighbor to the northwest" and thus reflected "the Kayani Doctrine in full effect".

Thus Pakistan's arrest of Baradar was a way to compel the Afghan Taliban to hold talks with the Afghans/Americans while at the same time emphasizing Pakistan's importance to the overall reconciliation effort.

Another variation of this view holds that the Pakistanis captured Baradar to prevent him from reaching Kabul and hold talks with the Karzai government directly, where he was to emerge as a "key figure in reconciling with moderate elements of the insurgency he once organized." When Pakistani officials "caught wind of Baradar's role (they) swept in to forestall the process and detain(ed) him for questioning." This was a way for the Pakistanis to assert to Kabul and Washington that talks between the Taliban and Karzai's administration needed to take place through Islamabad.

In an interview with RFE/RL, Ahmed Rashid maintained:

"There is concern in Kabul, and perhaps some quiet anger, about (Baradar's) arrest and not quite knowing what the Pakistanis are going to do with him," 

On Friday, however, Pakistan's Interior Minister, Rehman Malik hinted that Baradar and others captured with him might be deported to Afghanistan rather than be handed over to the US if it is found that they did not perpetrate crimes in Pakistan.

If indeed Mullah Baradar was en route to Kabul to launch reconciliation initiatives, it is unclear whether he had the blessings of Mullah Omar. There have been reports of differences between Mullah Omar and Mullah Baradar although other former Taliban leaders have dismissed them as rumours.  Still, there is a possibility that tribal differences may have been used by the Karzai administration to drive a wedge between Omar and Baradar. Mullah Omar and other leaders of the Afghan Taliban, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, are Ghilzais while Karzai and historically most of Afghanistan's ruling elite have belonged to the Durrani tribes, leading some to "portray the Taliban insurgency as a Ghilzai uprising against a Durrani government" (Giustozzi's"Decoding the New Taliban", pg. 161) The Ghilzais are supposed to be "more numerous, poorer and more conservative than the Durranis" while the Durranis are "considered the most urbanized, educated and liberal Pashtuns".  The only prominent and high-ranking Durrani within the Taliban insurgency is Mullah Baradar, who is a Popalzai Durrani like Karzai. This left Afghanistan expert Thomas Ruttig to wonder whether when "Karzai was talking about ‘brothers’ on ‘the other side,' he might have (had) a very certain ‘brother’ in mind."

While there seems to be some movement towards reconciliation among the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban it seems have grown ever-closer to Al-Qaida and the takfiri ideology, "which deems fellow Muslims of a different strain of Islam to be heretics and therefore open to attack." Syed Saleem Shahzad of the Asia Times describes Baitullah Mehsud's death and Hakeemullah's succession as a "pivotal moment for the TTP", when "what had been a tribal outfit allied with the Afghan Taliban became allied with al-Qaeda and moved from being a Pakistani outfit to becoming an important component of al-Qaeda's
regional plans".  According to Shahzad:

"After Baitullah's death, al-Qaeda moved quickly to prevent the installation of Taliban leader Mullah Omar's favorite, Mufti Waliur Rahman Mehsud, as TTP chief...and..(I)nstead, Hakeemullah Mehsud, a known hardliner and an ally of the anti-Shi'ite militant group Laskhar-e-Jhangvi, was promoted from being
Baitullah's deputy."
 
Now with Hakeemullah Mehsud confirmed dead, reports indicate that the next to lead the TTP will be Maulvi Noor Jamal also known as Mullah Toofan (Storm) from Orakzai.  If this indeed happens it "would be a strong indication that the Pakistan Taliban is on the path to strengthen the anti-Shi'a orientation it has
increasingly exhibited. As a leader of the Taliban in Orakzai and Kurram, Jamal enforced a blockade of Parachinar -- the biggest town in Pakistan's tribal areas, where most of the 500,000 residents are Shi'ite.  Jamal also enforced a tax on Shi'a in his native Orakzai in the name of protecting them. The region is home to Sunni extremist fugitives from Pakistan's eastern Punjab Province, where thousands have died in simmering Shi'ite-Sunni violence over the past three decades."

It should also be mentioned that unlike his predecessors, Jamal is not a Mehsud and might actually be able to bridge some of the tribal differences (Mehsud-Wazir rivalry) that had prevented greater cohesion within the TTP under Hakeemullah and Baitullah Mehsud. While it appears Pakistan might have an increasingly brutal entity on its hands under the new TTP leadership, chances are that with TTP's closer ties to Al-Qaida, the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban might actually drift apart.  

Flickr photo by Afghan LORD used under a Creative Commons license.