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Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s most public face who led peace talks with the US, was physically attacked by a leader of the US terrorist-designated Haqqani Network in early September.... ...The Taliban co-founder was at the presidential place to discuss the structure of the government as he pushed for an “inclusive” cabinet that would have been more acceptable to the international community, as per multiple reports. Amid the heated discussion, Khalil ul Rahman Haqqani, a minister and senior leader of the Haqqani Network, rose from his chair began punching Baradar, reported Bloomberg citing people familiar with the development. The...

The chaos in Afghanistan could have reportedly been avoided altogether if President Joe Biden had accepted the Taliban’s initial offer for the U.S. to have full control of Kabul and the airport. According to a report from the Washington Post, as the Taliban began taking control of Afghanistan, senior U.S. military leaders met with Taliban political leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Doha, Qatar, where an offer was made for the United States to have control of Kabul until all U.S. troops had withdrawn; the offer was declined.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan has decided to release the most senior Afghan Taliban prisoner it is holding and could do so as soon as this month to jumpstart the struggling peace process, a senior Pakistani official said Tuesday. The Afghan government has long demanded that Pakistan release Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's former deputy leader. He was arrested in a joint raid with the CIA in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi in 2010. Sartaj Aziz, adviser to the Pakistani prime minister on national security and foreign affairs, said the government has agreed to release Baradar to help the...

Group is funded by donations in mosques and Muslim community centres around the country. “We are not like a government, we depend on individuals,” a Taliban commander told Sky News. “We get donations from our Muslim brothers in Britain for jihad and they help us. It is the duty of all Muslims to pay towards fighting a jihad. And this is how we get our money and buy our weapons and carry on fighting.” The commander added that an attack on Britain and Europe could happen “at any time”. However, in what was seen as a blow to the insurgents,...

The Obama administration approved the release of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar with the assumption that he would join peace talks with the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai. The TalibanÂ’s supreme commander in Afghanistan, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was captured in Pakistan earlier this year. He was the highest ranking Taliban commander ever arrested. But instead of his extradition to Afghanistan or hand-over to the U.S., he was kept in a cozy house in Islamabad.On Saturday, he was freed.Yes, the man second in command only to Mullah Omar, the one-eyed leader of the Taliban, has reportedly been released and no one...

This would be the same interrogation team — the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group — that was created last August as a kinder, gentler version of the Bush/Cheney CIA Inquisition, yet somehow wasn’t up and running in time to question Abdulmutallab after the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Flight 253. Fast-forward two months and the HIG is now ready to roll. So why aren’t they in Pakistan questioning Mullah Baradar? Well, funny thing: No one seems to know why. [S]ome sources say that U.S. intelligence personnel in Pakistan, who are believed to include both CIA and military counterterrorism experts, were not...

One of Pakistan's top courts has blocked the extradition of five senior Afghan Taliban commanders to Afghanistan, the United States, or any other country. The Lahore High Court has prohibited the Pakistani government from transferring Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Afghan Taliban's second in command, and four other members of the Quetta Shura to foreign custody after receiving a petition from a lawyer with known links to the Taliban and al Qaeda. Over the past two months, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, aided by the CIA, has detained Mullah Baradar; Maulvi Abdul Kabir, the leader of the Peshawar Regional Military Shura;...

Zamari Bashari, spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, speaks during a press conference held in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Feb. 25, 2010. Afghan Interior Ministry said Thursday that the Pakistani authorities have agreed to handover Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the seized number two leader of the Taliban, to Afghanistan. (Xinhua Photo)  Zamari Bashari, spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, speaks during a press conference held in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Feb. 25, 2010. Afghan Interior Ministry said Thursday that the Pakistani authorities have agreed to handover Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the seized number two leader of the Taliban, to Afghanistan....

Kabul, Afghanistan — Pakistan has arrested nearly half of the Afghanistan Taliban’s leadership in recent days, Pakistani officials told the Monitor Wednesday, dealing what could be a crucial blow to the insurgent movement. In total, seven of the insurgent group’s 15-member leadership council, thought to be based in Quetta, Pakistan, including the head of military operations, have been apprehended in the past week, according to Pakistani intelligence officials. Western and Pakistani media had previously reported the arrest of three of the 15, but this is the first confirmation of the wider scale of the Pakistan crackdown on the Taliban leadership,...

KABUL -- The Afghan government said Thursday that Pakistani authorities have agreed to hand over several suspected insurgents whom Pakistan has taken into custody, including the Taliban's No. 2 commander. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a member of the Taliban's high leadership council, and the other prisoners are "accused of criminal acts" in Afghanistan and will be extradited, according to a statement from the office of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Baradar and other Afghan militants will be extradited under a prisoner exchange agreement that is still being hammered out by both countries, according to Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik and an...

Rehman Malik, Pakistan's Interior Minister, quickly backed away from reports by an Afghan official that Pakistan will turn over Mullah Baradar, Mullah Omar's deputy, to the Afghan government. From CNN: However, Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik told CNN there is no agreement to hand over Baradar as part of a prisoner swap and Afghanistan has not made a formal request for Baradar to be extradited. "No such agreement has been reached between the two governments and no formal request has been received for the handing over of Mullah Baradar by the Pakistani government," he said. "A prisoner swap was discussed...

WASHINGTON: The CIA wants Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar transferred to an American prison near Kabul for interrogation, US officials said. The Taliban military chief, who was captured in Karachi earlier this month, is in Pakistan’s custody and is being interrogated mainly by ISI officials, but CIA representatives also have participated in some of these sessions. Senior US officials, who spoke to various media outlets on the condition that they are not identified, said the Americans were not satisfied with the interrogation and wanted to take charge. “CIA Director Leon E. Panetta and other officials have proposed moving Mullah Baradar to...

Yesterday, the New York Times broke the story that one of the Taliban’s top military commanders, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, had been captured in Karachi during a joint raid by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the CIA. Baradar is reportedly second only to Mullah Omar in the Taliban’s loose hierarchy. The Times reported this as a huge victory, and the Obama administration took a few well-deserved bows. At first blush, and based solely on the Times’s reporting and the administration’s reaction, this did indeed appear to be a major achievement. We noticed something odd with the triumphant tone, however. The...

February 17, 2010 The Strange Case of Mullah Baradar [Dana M. Perino and Bill Burck] Yesterday, the New York Times broke the story that one of the Taliban’s top military commanders, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, had been captured in Karachi during a joint raid by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the CIA. Baradar is reportedly second only to Mullah Omar in the Taliban’s loose hierarchy. The Times reported this as a huge victory, and the Obama administration took a few well-deserved bows. At first blush, and based solely on the Times’s reporting and the administration’s reaction, this did indeed appear...

Pakistan will not turn over the Afghan Taliban's No. 2 leader and two other high-value militants captured this month to the United States, but may deport them to Afghanistan, a senior minister said Friday. Interior Minister Rahman Malik said Pakistani authorities were still questioning Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the most senior Taliban figure arrested since the start of the Afghan war in 2001, and two other senior militants arrested with U.S. assistance in separate operations this month. If it is determined that the militants have not committed any crimes in Pakistan, they will not remain in the country, he said....

After years of deflecting US pressure to rein in the Afghan Taliban, Pakistan has arrested in rapid succession the group's No. 2 Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, two shadow provincial governors, and up to nine Al Qaeda-linked militants.Plain-clothes policemen escort a man, who was arrested Wednesday, to a district court in Karachi, in this photo released Thursday. The man is a Pakistan Taliban commander from the Bajaur region, a police official said. Akhtar Soomro/ReutersNew Delhi Pakistan has reportedly detained two more top Afghan Taliban commanders, building on its arrest of the Taliban's No. 2 man, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, earlier this...

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan confirmed for the first time Wednesday that it has the Afghan Taliban's No. 2 leader in custody, and officials said he was providing useful intelligence that was being shared with the United States. The confirmation came as the Pakistani government defused a political crisis that threatened to distract from the fight against militancy by backing off on judicial appointments opposed by the Supreme Court. The Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was arrested earlier this month in a joint operation by CIA and Pakistani security forces in the southern port city of Karachi, U.S. and Pakistani...

U.S. officials late Wednesday confirmed the capture of another top Taliban leader in Pakistan, Fox News reported. "The capture of an Afghan Taliban 'shadow governor' is positive, good news," an official told Fox News. "This does not solve all of the problems, but going after the Afghan Taliban leadership has been important. Whenever the Pakistanis arrest somebody, that is a plus." News of the arrest was reported earlier by Newsweek, which cited Taliban sources and counter-terrorism officials in Washington who named the detained man as Mullah Abdul Salam.

Another high-ranking leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan has been captured by a joint U.S.-Pakistani intelligence operation in Pakistan, Fox News has confirmed. The capture of the Taliban leader, Mullah Salam, first reported by Newsweek magazine, comes on the heels of news that Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's No. 2, had been captured early this month in Pakistan. A Pakistani officer told the Associated Press that Baradar "was talking" after his capture, but there is no indication that he provided information leading to the apprehension of Salam, who is known as a "shadow governor" in his region of Afghanistan.

Another leader of the Afghan Taliban has been captured by authorities in Pakistan working in partnership with U.S. intelligence officials. Taliban sources in the region and a counterterrorism officials in Washington have identified the detained insurgent leader as Mullah Abdul Salam, described as the Taliban movement's "shadow governor" of Afghanistan's Kunduz province. Taliban sources told NEWSWEEK's Sami Yousafzai that Salam was grabbed by Pakistani security forces in the city of Faisalabad about a week ago—close to the same time that Pakistani forces, again with American support, captured the Afghan Taliban's No. 2 leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Karachi. The...