Wheels within wheels

There's been no shortage of news stories lately on successful anti-Taliban efforts in Pakistan. It began with a leaked (but only after they knew it wouldn't hurt national security!) story from the New York Times ("The participation of Pakistan's spy service could suggest a new level of cooperation from Pakistan's leaders...") and for weeks thereafter it seemed a day didn't pass without news of another Taliban operative captured there. Here's a roundup of some of the roundups, crediting both the CIA and Pakistan's intelligence service for their great success. ("...by far the most extensive and successful targeting of the Afghan Taliban since the war began... The raids suggest that the two agencies are working closer together than ever before.")

Hooray for a new era of cooperation - but now comes this:

The former United Nations envoy to Afghanistan accused Pakistan of undermining negotiations with the Taliban by arresting senior Taliban officials.

Kai Eide, a Norwegian diplomat who stepped down from the U.N. post this month, said in a British Broadcasting Corp. interview broadcast Friday that he had been engaged in negotiations about a possible end to Afghanistan's war with "senior Taliban leadership" since last spring, with the apparent blessing of the insurgency's overall chief, Mullah Muhammad Omar.

These contacts, Mr. Eide added, stopped in the past few weeks after Pakistan captured the Taliban's operations chief and effective No. 2 Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Karachi and detained more than a dozen other Afghan Taliban leaders.

Pakistan's motivation, Mr. Eide suggested, was to stop independent negotiations between the Taliban and the international community, so as to ensure its own control over any future settlement--a theory that Pakistani officials have denied.

More from the New York Times

"The Pakistanis did not play the role that they should have played," he said in the interview, which he confirmed to The New York Times.

There has been a swirl of often contradictory reports about the arrest of Mullah Baradar, and a wide range of American and international reactions to it. Some American officials have welcomed Pakistan's new enthusiasm for hunting down Taliban leaders. Others have questioned Pakistan's motivations in detaining Mullah Baradar, who was open to early discussions about peace negotiations.

Eide's BBC interview is here.

Peter Galbraith, once the Obama administration's "man inside" the UN Afghanistan mission, says things weren't as Eide claims.

Mr Galbraith, who had a public falling out with Mr Eide last year, said of his former colleague: "He's had very irregular meetings with people who were once associated with the Taleban, but he has not been in any negotiations with the Quetta Shura. He's simply exaggerated his role."

In his final news conference as the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan earlier this month, Eide "cautioned against excessive militarization of international efforts" there, and "also warned that military operations against insurgents needed to be waged in a manner that did not impede efforts to negotiate a peaceful solution with them."

Prior to the announcement of the Taliban arrests, General McChrystal commented on senior Taliban leaders here.

FT: Do you think then that it would be conceivable that this conflict could end with senior figures in the Taliban perhaps playing a role in a future government in Kabul?

Gen McChrystal: It's hard to speculate about individuals, but I think that anybody who dedicates themselves to the future and not the past, and anybody whose future is focused on the right kinds of things for Afghanistan, under a constitutional fair umbrella, then I think it's likely that it will be a wide participation.

However, he added that the decision wasn't his, and "would be the Afghan people's." Further: "It's not my job to extend olive branches, but it's my job to help set conditions where people in the right positions can have options on the way forward."

General Petraeus commented in an interview here.

Senior commanders right up to the very top if they're willing?

As Secretary Gates observed recently. He noted the possibility of that is probably unlikely given the dynamics at present but I don't think it is something that anyone rules out. Again that was not an option pursued in Iraq. We certainly never approached the most senior al-Qaeda in Iraq or the most senior Sunni extremist leaders. However there were certainly some fairly high-level insurgent leaders who did indeed reconcile with the Iraqi Government so it is not something that can be ruled out but it is also not something that I would anticipate as they say in the United States: coming soon to a theatre near you.

Both those late January comments could be interpreted as a signal to the enemy that negotiations would be welcome - but a few days later came the announcements of the captures in Pakistan.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Afghan President Hamid Karzai discussed the topic during Gates' visit there this month.

On the issue of reconciliation with top Taliban leaders, Gates said it was important that it be done under terms set by the Afghan government. Recent captures of Afghan Taliban leaders by the Pakistani intelligence service have increased speculation that Pakistan is attempting to put its own imprint on any talks that materialize.

Returning to the original New York Times story on the capture of Baradar ("The New York Times learned of the operation on Thursday, but delayed reporting it at the request of White House officials... The Times is publishing the news now because White House officials acknowledged that the capture of Mullah Baradar was becoming widely known in the region...") for the sake of a complete account it's worth noting that the story broke after a weekend of highly-publicized assaults on the Obama administration's anti-terror policies from former VP Dick Cheney.

The thus-timely Times' account prompted responses like this one.

The capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's top military commander, is no small matter. It's a "major victory." Given that Baradar is the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the war began, and his role in leading the Taliban's military operations, this is a success that may very well pay considerable dividends for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

As far as the politics is concerned, it's worth noting that U.S. leaders were well aware of Baradar's capture late last week, but deliberately kept the news under wraps in order to help bolster a sensitive and ongoing intelligence-gathering effort. This prompted Juan Cole to note:

[T]hat Joe Biden and others kept the arrest secret, in order to allow further operations against Taliban leaders in Karachi, shows a discipline that Bush and Cheney never had. They were always happy to prematurely release details of ongoing investigations to get a political bump, even if it meant allowing terrorists to escape.

Right. Dick Cheney was blasting the Obama administration on national security over the weekend, and it might have been tempting for Biden and others to use the Baradar capture as evidence that Cheney doesn't know what he's talking about. But the White House Grown-Ups knew the ongoing efforts were more important than making Dick the Clown look foolish. As Andrew Sullivan noted, the president and his team "are serious about national security and do not put domestic political games before it."

The author was perplexed as to why the Obama administration wasn't drawing even more attention to the great success.

I have my own reasons for taking any report on the CIA, ISI, UN, or the Obama administration (and this story involves all of them) with a grain of salt - perhaps best summed up by this: it seems certain that things are never as they seem.