Taliban Commander Is Captured

Source Article HERE.

From NY Times: A senior Taliban commander was wounded and arrested by Pakistani forces as he tried to slip across the Afghan border into Pakistan with a small band of men, Pakistani military authorities said Monday. The commander, Mansoor Dadullah, is the brother of one of the Taliban's most prominent and brutal operational leaders, Mullah Dadullah, who was killed last year. The state news agency, The Associated Press of Pakistan, said Mr. Dadullah was critically wounded in an exchange of fire with a unit of the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force deployed along the Afghan border. His capture may indicate greater vigilance by such border units.

The arrest may be more of a propaganda blow to the Taliban than a practical one. In December, the Taliban announced through a spokesman that Mr. Dadullah had been removed from his post as commander of the south because he had been ignoring the movement's rules and regulations. Mr. Dadullah denied he had been removed at the time.

The clash with Mr. Dadullah happened at Gaddal Post in the district of Qila Saifullah, which runs along the Afghan border near the town of Quetta, which the Taliban leadership has long used as a base and sanctuary. Pakistani forces have appeared to be doing more to track Afghan Taliban figures in the last year, and have cooperated in capturing or killing several senior commanders, including Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Osmani, who was tracked crossing from Pakistan into Afghanistan in December 2006 and killed in an American airstrike. Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, a former Taliban defense minister, was arrested in Pakistan in March 2007.

Mullah Dadullah was killed in a special forces operation in Helmand Province of Afghanistan in May 2007. In July, a Pakistani militant, Abdullah Mehsud, who led a large number of fighters into Helmand Province to fight NATO forces, was killed when Pakistani forces surrounded a house in Zhob, a district south of the tribal areas in the province of Baluchistan in Pakistan.