Capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar may be turning point in Taliban fight

Washington (CNN) -- The seizure of the Afghan Taliban's top military leader in Pakistan represents a turning point in the U.S.-led war against the militants, U.S. officials and analysts said.
The arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar represents the most significant Taliban capture since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a senior Obama administration official said Tuesday.
Baradar has been a close associate of Osama bin Laden's and is seen as the No. 2 figure in the Afghan Taliban, behind Mullah Mohammed Omar.

"If anyone would know where the senior leaders are of al Qaeda and the Taliban, then Baradar is someone who would be privy to that kind of information," said M.J. Gohel, executive director of the Asia-Pacific Foundation.
It's "major success for the CIA" and "a major blow for the Taliban," Gohel said.
A look at the Taliban's leadership
Video: Why capture viewed as significant

The United States has tried to target Baradar for years, a senior U.S. official said.
The arrest also represents a "new level of cooperation" between Pakistani and American forces working to rout the Taliban, said U.S. Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and co-author of legislation designed to improve cooperation between Pakistan and the United States.
Described as a savvy and modern military leader, Baradar was arrested in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi several days ago, a senior Pakistani intelligence official said. The official asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Baradar is being held in joint custody and investigated by both the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, another senior Pakistani source said.
Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan, denied that Baradar had been captured. He said Baradar is continuing his operations and is in Afghanistan.

Another Afghan Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, also denied Baradar had been arrested. He said reports of his arrest are designed to demoralize the Afghan Taliban.
Despite confirmation of the arrest by Pakistani sources, Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said he could not verify reports of the capture. He also denied reports the CIA and ISI conducted a secret raid that captured Baradar, saying the agencies share intelligence but that the CIA does not conduct raids on Pakistani soil.
Afghanistan Crossroads blog: More on Baradar and the Taliban
Several raids in Karachi last week netted dozens of suspected Afghan militants, and intelligence agencies are in the process of verifying their identities, Malik said.

Baradar's arrest occurred as some 15,000 Afghan and NATO forces were battling the Taliban in the Marjah region of southern Afghanistan's Helmand province in the largest NATO offensive since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
It also comes weeks after the CIA ratcheted up its operations against the Taliban in apparent response to a December suicide attack that killed seven CIA officers in eastern Afghanistan.

And the arrest comes amid reports of major successes for the United States in its battle against the Taliban and associated militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, died recently after reports that a suspected U.S. drone strike targeted him in January, according to Taliban and Pakistani intelligence sources. The previous leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, also died in a suspected U.S. drone strike.

CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen called Baradar's capture a "huge deal," saying he is "arguably more important than Mullah Omar from a military point of view, because Mullah Omar really is more of a religious figure than an operational commander of the Taliban."

"This guy also is the No. 2 political figure in the Taliban. The fact that he was discovered in Karachi is very significant. Karachi is the largest city in Pakistan. It's a long way from where the war is being fought," Bergen said Monday on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360°." The capture "indicates that the Pakistani intelligence services and CIA [are] cooperating very closely on a very high-value target."

A number of high-value targets, including Omar, have moved into Karachi from a region near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where the Pakistani military and suspected U.S. drones have battled Taliban militants, a senior U.S. official said.
Bergen said the operation suggests the Pakistanis are willing to move not only against the Pakistani Taliban but also against the Afghan Taliban, which has its headquarters in Pakistan. Baradar also would have been in regular contact with Omar, Bergen added.

Robin Wright, a fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, called the move a "huge catch in terms of understanding the organization," but she also said the "Taliban is in many ways a decentralized force, and it's not necessarily that he is going to be involved in knowing what every single unit on the ground is doing."

"The critical issue is how much will he talk and provide information on where other assets are, potentially where the Taliban in Pakistan are, and, of course, the United States would love to know where Osama bin Laden himself is," Wright said on "AC 360."
Wright also raised the issue of what will happen to Baradar when the interrogation concludes.
"One of the big questions, of course, is, what are they going to do with him?" Wright asked. "They can't take him to Guantanamo Bay. Are the Pakistanis going to prosecute him?"
According to Interpol, Baradar was born in 1968 in Weetmak village in the Dehrwood District of Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan.

Bergen said Baradar and Omar run the Quetta Shura, which operates in southern Afghanistan.
"In terms of the information about the southern Afghanistan operations of the Taliban, this guy is potentially a gold mine," Bergen said. "I suspect he's not being read his Miranda rights by these Pakistani people who are interrogating him."
Muhammad Amir Rana, director of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, a Pakistani think tank, called Baradar "basically the de facto leader" of the Taliban.
"With Mullah Omar staying out of the scene, Baradar was running the operations of the Taliban."
Baradar and Omar "started the Taliban together. He was in the movement since the very beginning," Rana said.
"He is a very skilled military tactician. When the Taliban were in government in Afghanistan, he was the supreme commander of the army and was heading the charge against the Northern Alliance holdouts at that point in time."
Rana said the setback is significant because Baradar was directing the Taliban's activities in Afghanistan at the time of his arrest.

"His capture would be a severe blow to the Taliban morale at a time when the operation in the Helmand province is under way."

Rana said Baradar and Afghan President Hamid Karzai hail from the same Popalzai tribe.
Karzai has talked about reaching out to some Taliban members, and a Newsweek profile of Baradar last year said that "Baradar once authorized a Taliban delegation that approached Karzai with a peace offer" and that he approved peace feelers to Karzai's brother. Those efforts didn't go anywhere, the magazine said.
Reva Bhalla, director of analysis at the Stratfor think tank, said Baradar has been representing Omar at some of the peace talks going on behind the scenes with the Saudis and describes his capture as a big catch.

Bhalla said the Pakistanis didn't do this for free; they want concessions from the United States, and it's a shift in the strategy on how it's dealing with the Afghan Taliban in its own territory. The Pakistanis have launched offensives against the Pakistani Taliban, and now the move indicates they might plan to get tough on the Afghan Taliban.
"It's not like you have one guy, and that immediately opens the door to everyone else. It's hard to believe that this will lead to this huge intelligence coup. But if the Pakistanis are shifting their mode of cooperation, that is significant."

U.S. MDA: Laser Plane Shoots Down Test Missile

By JOHN REED
Published: 12 Feb 2010 12:34 PRINT | EMAIL
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency's airborne laser this week achieved a record first when it shot down a ballistic missile launched off the California coast.

The MDA's Airborne Laser Testbed, a Boeing 747 with a massive chemical laser in the nose, took off from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., on Feb. 11 and fired its laser at "a short-range threat-representative ballistic missile … launched from an at-sea mobile launch platform," reads a Feb. 11 MDA announcement.

The laser locked on to the missile as it was rising in its boost phase and heated it to the point of "critical structural failure," the MDA statement said.

The agency said this was the first time a laser fired from an airplane in flight has been able to destroy a ballistic missile on the rise.

"This experiment marks the first time a laser weapon has engaged and destroyed an in-flight ballistic missile, and the first time that any system has accomplished it in the missile's boost phase of flight," reads a Feb. 12 Boeing announcement. The laser is the most powerful ever installed on an aircraft, according to the company.

The Airborne Laser (ABL) plane is designed to fly just beyond the range of enemy air defenses and use its laser cannon to shoot down ballistic missiles as they are taking off, which is extremely difficult to do today due to the incredibly high speeds that missiles fly.

"Having the capability to precisely project force, in a measured way, at the speed of light, will save lives," said Michael Rinn, Boeing's ALTB program manager, of the ABL in a Feb. 12 statement.

Operation Moshtarak isn't a walk in the park

Marjah, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The Taliban put up a stiff resistance Sunday, as a coalition assault against the militant group entered its second day in southern Afghanistan.

Officials said they did not know how many Taliban fighters remained in the Marjah region of Helmand province but think they may be in the hundreds -- some of whom are holed up in civilian compounds.
Dawoud Ahmadi, the provincial spokesman, said 27 Taliban fighters have been killed. Afghan and international forces also discovered 2,500 kilograms (5,500 lbs) of explosives.

The Taliban spokesman for the Marjah area claimed six Taliban casualties and said militants had killed 192 Afghan and coaltion troops.

In the past, the Taluban has often inflated casualty fighures.

"NATO forces have not captured any areas in Marjah from the Mujahadeen," said Qari Yousif Ahmadi, the Taliban spokesman.

Dubbed Operation Moshtarak, the offensive was launched early Saturday by an international coalition of 15,000 troops including Afghans, Americans, Britons, Canadians, Danes and Estonians.
Hours into the offensive, small-arms fire killed a U.S. Marine, and an explosion killed a British soldier, according to a U.S. military official.

"The Taliban appear confused and disoriented," said Maj. Gen. Gordon Messenger, a British military spokesman. However, he tempered his optimism with the reminder that the operation was not over.
Long a bastion of pro-Taliban sentiment and awash with the opium used to fund the insurgency, the Marjah region has been known as the heroin breadbasket of Afghanistan and a place where the Taliban h

U.S. Marines swept into the area from north and south, a U.S. Marine Corps official told CNN. They established a ring of security, preventing anyone from leaving or entering the area, the official said.
In an effort to establish a foothold, troops launched air assaults followed by a ground offensive in rough terrain, a region crisscrossed by canals.

The terrain is so tough that four lightly wounded troops whose injuries normally wouldn't need medical evacuation had to be airlifted for treatment.
NATO forces announced the offensive before it started so that citizens could get out of harm's way.
In the past few days, forces from Afghanistan, Britain and other nations dropped leaflets in and around

Marjah warning residents not to allow the Taliban to enter their homes.
And meetings with local leaders, or shuras, have been held, as NATO forces tried to get Afghans on their side, the British military official told CNN.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday urged Afghan and international troops to exercise "absolute caution" and ensure civilian safety.
However, there were at least two civilian injuries -- two teens whose house was taken over by the Taliban and used to attack U.S. troops, the Marines said.


Key challenges are determining the strength of the remaining insurgency and whether, after the offensive, Afghans will stick with their government.

Officials said they hope Afghan forces and the government will maintain control, win allegiance from the citizens and provide farmers with an alternative to the poppy crops that pervade the region.

Operation Moshtarak— under way

HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan –NATO troops in Afghanistan launched their biggest offensive of the war early Saturday, attacking what they call the last Taliban stronghold in a war-scarred southern province.

Military officials said the offensive—dubbed Operation Moshtarak— got under way at 2 a.m. (4:30 p.m. ET Friday).

Some of about 15,000 troops from the United States, Afghanistan and Canada attacked Taliban targets in and around Marjah, a city of 80,000 to 100,000 where the Taliban has set up a shadow government, coalition military authorities said.

The coalition said its troops expected to confront up to 1,000 entrenched Taliban fighters. It expected foreign Taliban fighters to battle to the death but is prepared for local Taliban members in Marjah to try to escape.

“We will follow the enemies and bring them to justice,” said Gen. Mohiyiden Ghori of the Afghan National Army.

In the past few days, forces from Afghanistan, Britain and other nations have conducted air and ground operations to prepare for the assault and dropped leaflets in and around Marjah warning residents not to allow the Taliban to
enter their homes.

The allies had been unusually vocal in describing their plans for the assault. (Related: Why the military publicized operations)

“I think there’s a certain strength in the Pashtunwali culture just from laying it out there in saying, ‘Hey, we are coming. Deal with it,’” U.S. Marine Gen. Larry Nicholson has said.

Some of the 30,000 additional U.S. troops that President Barack Obama sent to Afghanistan will take part in the fight.

The goal is to force the Taliban from Marjah so that people there can live free of Taliban influence and drug traffickers in a province with a major source of the world’s opium. It’s an example of a U.S. strategy to focus on population centers and separate the Taliban from Afghan civilians. (Related: Why Marjah, why now?)

“It’s about the security of the population, not fighting down insurgent numbers,” British Gen. Gordon Messenger has said.

About 3,000 U.S. Marines are involved in the fight.

The advance notice given to residents will help avert civilian casualties, a problem that has hurt the military’s credibility among Afghans. They are also trying to get those Taliban who aren’t hard-core to turn in themselves and their weapons.

Reaching the battleground could be one of the biggest challenges for NATO and Afghan troops. It’s a tough terrain hard to cross with tanks.

The town of Marjah is surrounded by a deadly ring of roadside bombs, military officials say.

They say the Taliban has had months to plant bombs in the ground, most of them homemade mixes of ammonium nitrate, shrapnel fuel, salt or flour.

Such bombs have caused about 80 percent of the deaths in past fighting in Helmand province, military officials said. They are detonated remotely or by pressure plates.

“This is possibly the largest IED threat NATO has ever faced,” Nicholson has said.

Massive armored vehicles, called assault breacher vehicles, were to lead the charge into Marjah, coalition authorities said before the offensive.

The tank-like vehicles can destroy roadside bombs. Even with their help, though, military officials have increased staff at the hospital at Camp Bastion, in the capital of Helmand province, in anticipation that roadside bombs would cause casualties.

Troops also expect to encounter booby-trapped houses, as well as fierce urban combat.

New 9-11 Images released

The New York City police department released aerial photographs that officers took of the attack on the World Trade center on 9/11 after ABC News filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2009 with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which had collected as part of an investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center.

These photos give an aerial view of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. From whatever angle these photos are viewed, they are all haunting reminders of the more than 2800 lives that were taken that day.

The photos, obtained exclusively by ABC, include 2,779 pictures that have never been published. The ABC website has posted 12 of these photos that should prompt everyone to take pause.

The newly released images spread quickly on the Internet on Wednesday after ABC posted them on their site. The images can be viewed on the ABC site.

On a positive note, there are pictures and videos showing the rebuilding at the World Trade Center site on two social networking sites. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says it added the viewsfrom One World Trade Center to photo sharing site flickr.com and online video service YouTube.com on Tuesday.