The White House and the Pentagon are refusing to comment on the record about the capture of senior Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Pakistan, but Fox News has learned from senior officials that this individual was a serious player in the region and that his absence will have an immediate impact on the Taliban’s battlefield operations.
Baradar, second in Command only to the Taliban’s notorious leader Mullah Omar, was picked up several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan by a joint CIA and Pakistani intelligence operation. Fox’s Scott Heidler is reporting from the region today that the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, has interrogated Baradar and he’s now in the hands of the CIA.
A senior U.S. official told Pentagon reporter Mike Emanuel “[Baradar] is a major player in the Afghan Taliban, someone with a lot of blood on his hands. If he’s off the streets, it would be a serious setback for the Taliban in the near term and deal a severe personal blow to Mullah Omar, who has relied on him for years as a trusted associate.”
Pentagon Spokesman Col. Dave Lapan would not speak to the specifics of his detainment or capture, but said in the past when major players are taken out of the game it takes a while for them to recover.
“It has an immediate impact to their operations when we kill or capture senior leaders, but we have seen too that they then push successors into their place. So the period of time after the initial incident where somebody of significance is killed or captured there is an impact to their operations, but how long it takes them to sort of reconstitute depends on the situation.”
NATO and Afghan forces are 5 days into their critical offensive operation in the Taliban stronghold of Marjah, Afghanistan. Although it’s estimated there are no more that 400-800 Taliban fighters remaining, it’s safe to say commanders there would welcome a disruption in the Taliban’s leadership.