Islamabad:
Pakistan's arrest of the top Taliban military commander may be a tactical victory for the United States, but it is also potentially a strategic coup for Pakistan, officials and analysts in Islamabad and Afghanistan said.
In one stroke, Pakistan has eliminated a key Taliban commander, enhanced its cooperation with the United States, and ensured a place for itself when parties explore a negotiated end to the Afghan war.
The arrest followed weeks of signals by Pakistan's military chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani - to North Atlantic Treaty Oranization (NATO)
chiefs, western journalists and military analysts - that Pakistan wanted to be included in any attempts to mediate with the Taliban.
Even before the arrest of the Taliban commander, Mullah Adbul Ghani Baradar, a senior Pakistani intelligence official expressed irritation that Pakistan had been excluded from what he described as American and Afghan approaches to the Taliban.
Baradar had been a key contact for the Afghans for years, Pakistani and Afghan officials said. But Obama administration officials denied that they had made any contact with him.
Whatever the case, with the arrest of Baradar, Pakistan has effectively isolated a key link to the Taliban leadership, making itself the main channel instead.
"We are after Mullah Baradar," the Pakistani intelligence official said in an interview three weeks ago. "We strongly believe that the Americans are in touch with him, or people who are close to him," he said.
The official said the U.S. action of excluding Pakistan from negotiations with the Afghan Taliban, who have long been proteges of Islamabad, was making things "difficult."
"You cannot say that we are important allies and then you are negotiating with people whom we are hunting and you don't include us," he said.
A US official in Washington who has been briefed on the arrest denied that there had been negotiations with the Taliban commander or that Pakistani intelligence engineered the arrest to ensure a role in negotiations. "That's a conspiracy theory to which I give no credit, because it's just not true," the official said.
But whether or not that was Pakistan's intention, it may be the effect.
The Taliban are longtime Pakistani allies in Afghanistan, and Pakistan has signaled its interest in preserving a sphere of influence in Afghanistan.
Though the Obama administration has itself been divided on whether and how to deal with the Taliban, the Pakistani move could come at the expense of the Karzai government and complicate the reconciliation efforts his government has already initiated.
A US intelligence official in Europe conceded as much, while also acknowledging Baradar's key role in the reconciliation process.
"I know that our people had been in touch with people around him and were negotiating with him," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue.
"So it doesn't make sense why we bite the hand that is feeding us," the official added. "And now the
Taliban will have no reason to negotiate with us; they will not believe anything we will offer or say."
Baradar's arrest comes at a delicate time, when the Taliban are undergoing a fierce internal debate about whether to negotiate for peace or fight on as the United States prepares to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan this year.
He is one of the most senior military figures in the Taliban leadership who is close to the overall Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, and has been one of the main Taliban conciliators, Afghan officials said.
It has been clear from interviews with commanders and ordinary members of the Taliban in recent weeks in southern Afghanistan and in Pakistan that the notion of talks has seriously divided the Taliban, including its leadership.
Some hardliners are arguing to continue the fight. But in recent weeks the balance has been increasingly towards making peace, according to Haji Muhammad Ehsan, a member of the Kandahar provincial council.
Officials in Kandahar, the former base of the Taliban government, have some of the closest links to the Taliban leadership, who are mostly from southern Afghanistan and are now living across the border in Pakistan.
"He was the only person intent on or willing for peace negotiations," said Haji Agha Lalai, the former head of the government-led reconciliation process in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, who has had dealings with members of the Taliban leadership council for several years.
He and other officials in Afghanistan who are familiar with the Taliban leadership said Baradar's arrest by Pakistani intelligence, and his interrogation by them and American agents, could play out in two ways. Baradar might be able to persuade other Taliban to give up the fight. Or if he is perceived to be mistreated, that could end any hope of wooing other members of the Taliban.
"Mullah Brother can create change in the Taliban leadership, if he is used in mediation or peace talking efforts to convince other Taliban to come over, but if he is put in jail as a prisoner, we don't think the peace process will be productive," said Haji-Baridad, a tribal elder from Kandahar.
The Afghan government did not react to the news of Baradar's arrest, an indication that it was upset at Pakistan's unilateral action. Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the president, who has held indirect contacts with Baradar in the past, welcomed his arrest as serving a "death blow" to the Taliban leader Omar.
"We value the help of Pakistani officials in helping to arrest Baradar, this is actually a positive step, and we hope they will continue this kind of contribution," he said.
But the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, who has led efforts on behalf of President Hamid Karzai to persuade the Taliban to negotiate an end to the war, attacked Pakistan's action as destroying all chances of reconciliation with the rest of the Taliban leadership.
"If it's really true, it could seriously affect negotiations and can gravely affect the peace process," he said, speaking in Kabul where he has resided since his release from Guantanamo Bay several years ago. "It would destroy the fragile trust built between both sides and will not help with the peace process," he said.