Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy to Mullah Omar and commander of the Taliban’s military forces, was captured by U.S. and Pakistani intelligence in Karachi last week. The news has now leaked out. While you’re not going to see any Paul Bremer-esque “We got him!” preliminay end-zone dances, More…
Great reporting from Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball about the Obama administration’s debate over CIA (and maybe Joint Special Operations Command) drone strikes in Pakistan against senior al-Qaeda leadership:
One person standing in the way of expanded missile strikes: President Obama. Five administration officials tell NEWSWEEK that the president has sided
One of the points that Gen. Stanley McChystal, Amb. Karl Eikenberry and Gen. David Petraeus emphasized over three congressional hearings today and yesterday is that they want to help the Afghan government provide a path for insurgents to “reconcile” themselves with the Afghan government. McChrystal even has a deputy, a More…
I don’t know if this is wishful thinking or solid intelligence work. But Josh Partlow at The Washington Post has a spectacular story today from Kabul about possible fissures between al-Qaeda in Pakistan and elements of the Afghan Taliban coalition. Partlow’s sources indicate that the relationships are undergoing a More…
Last week, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Maples, acknowledged a simple truth about the presence of the Taliban senior leadership in Pakistan. “Sir, the Quetta Shura is operating openly, as you know, in Quetta,” Maples told Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed More…
I have to admit: I didn’t think it would take less than a full working day for Taliban spokesmen to deny reports that Mullah Omar was willing to negotiate an end to the war with the Karzai government. Bill Roggio has a roundup of denials:
“These reports are
Consider this one unverified, but The Australian (h/t Small Wars Journal) is reporting that Capital-T Taliban leader Mullah Omar has reversed his position on negotiating a peace deal with the Karzai government:
“Mullah Omar has given the green light to talks,” said one of the mediators, Abdullah
In Afghanistan, you’ve got a war of unclear goals that everyone agrees has no military solution. But it’s also not clear if the alternative to open-ended conflict is to cut some kind of deal with Taliban elements — as increasingly-out-of-American-favor President Hamid Karzai has More…
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