Dadullah's death hits Taliban
hard By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Now that Taliban commander
Mullah Dadullah is dead, everybody, including
Pakistani militants, al-Qaeda, Washington, Kabul
and Islamabad, is weighing how this will affect
the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
The
one-legged Dadullah, 41, was killed on Saturday in
the southern province of Helmand, US and Afghan
officials said on Sunday. The North Atlantic
Treaty Organization's International Security
Assistance Force confirmed the death, saying that
after Dadullah had left his "sanctuary" in the
south, he was killed in a
US-led coalition operation
supported by NATO and Afghan troops.
One
thing is clear. Dadullah's death will have
no impact on the Taliban's formal political
command structure. Mullah Omar remains firmly as
head of the Taliban, with Jalaluddin Haqqani as
his deputy chief.
However, Dadullah's
death is certainly a serious blow to the Taliban's
"soul" and their field strategy, as Dadullah had
emerged as a ruthlessly efficient leader in the
battlefield.
He was to be the driving
force behind this year's spring offensive -
Ghazwatul Badr - and he had enhanced his influence
in the North and South Waziristan Pakistani tribal
areas, and even made contact with the Pakistani
establishment.
While Dadullah lacked much
formal education, his unschooled intelligence gave
him an astute understanding of the human mind. In
2005-06 he brokered a peace deal between the
Pakistani armed forces and the Pakistani Taliban
in North and South Waziristan and then worked to
recruit Pakistani nationals into the Taliban. He
advised Pakistani militants to be focused against
NATO troops in Afghanistan rather than taking the
war to Islamabad against President General Pervez
Musharraf.
Dadullah was a natural leader
in the battlefield as well as in strategic back
yards. He rose to prominence in the Taliban
movement in the mid-1990s, but did not have the
wealth of war veterans of the Afghan resistance
against the Soviets in the 1980s, like Ahmad Shah
Massoud, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jalaluddin Haqqani
and Ismail Khan, who received millions of dollars
in international aid to fight the Soviets.
Dadullah's popularity was not because he
distributed cash and goods among the mujahideen
and then enjoyed his tea on a ridge while his men
fought. He derived loyalty because he fought
alongside his men and suffered the same harsh
conditions as them. This is how he died, in a
fight with his men at his side.
Under
Dadullah's command, the Taliban had taken over
almost 80% of southwestern Afghanistan, and both
Kabul and NATO-led forces have trumpeted his death
as a major breakthrough.
And beyond the
propaganda boost, they are correct, as the impetus
of the insurgency will suffer, at least in the
short term. And significantly, Dadullah's demise
marks a shift of the Taliban's military command
into the hands of "non-Taliban" and non-Kandahari
commanders of southeastern Afghanistan, such as
Haqqani.
The Taliban's spiritual home is
Kandahar in the province of the same name, from
where most of the Taliban leaders come, including
Mullah Omar. With Dadullah gone, and before him
leading commander Mullah Akhtar Osmani (killed in
December), there could be a weakening of Mullah
Omar's iron grip on Taliban military affairs.
The movement could become more reliant on
southeastern Afghanistan, away from the Kandahar
heartland, where Haqqani and Saifullah Mansoor
hold sway, as well as Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan's
commanders under Hekmatyar.
Haqqani had
recently been sidelined by Dadullah (see Pakistan gains from Taliban
split, Asia Times Online, May 9), and
now he could reassert himself.
Dadullah's
cooperation with the Pakistani Taliban in the two
Waziristans was unacceptable to Haqqani, who had
been settled in North Waziristan for decades and
had dreamed of the emergence of a conflict waged
under his command from his bases in North and
South Waziristan through 30,000 suicide bombers.
Instead, many of these recruits were
diverted to fight with Dadullah. The face of the
battlefield in Afghanistan could change yet again
if Haqqani gets his way.
And Pakistan will
be looking on with concern: its recently struck
cooperation deal with Dadullah could be in
jeopardy, as people like Haqqani were against it.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia
Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be
reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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