WORLD / Asia-Pacific
Taliban chief's death a big US victory
(AP)
Updated: 2007-05-14 08:47
KABUL, Afghanistan - The killing of the top Taliban commander Mullah
Dadullah, a one-legged fighter who orchestrated suicide attacks,
beheadings and an ethnic massacre, marks a major victory for the US
campaign at a time of flagging Afghan support over civilian killings.
An Afghan man looks at the dead body of Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's
most prominent military commander, in Kandahar, south of Kabul,
Afghanistan, Sunday, May 13, 2007. [AP]
As victims of Dadullah's brutality celebrated his death Sunday, analysts
called the killing the most significant Taliban loss since the 2001
US-led invasion. But even NATO acknowledged that Dadullah, who directed
some of the Taliban's most notorious violence, would soon be replaced.
Dadullah, a top lieutenant of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, was killed in
the southern province of Helmand during a US-led operation that also
involved NATO and Afghan troops, NATO's International Security Assistance
Force said.
Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid, who called Dadullah a "brutal and cruel
commander" showed the body to reporters in Kandahar who saw a one-legged
corpse with bullet wounds to the head, chest and stomach.
Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a purported Taliban spokesman, denied that the
Taliban commander had been killed, but there appeared little doubt
Dadullah was dead.
Dadullah is the second top-tier Taliban field commander to be killed in
the last six months, after a US airstrike killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad
Osmani in December. Dadullah, Osmani and policy-maker Mullah Obaidullah
had been considered to be Omar's top three leaders.
Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Peshawar-based editor for the Pakistani newspaper
The News and an expert on the Taliban, said Dadullah's death was "the
biggest loss for the Taliban in the last six years." But he noted that
even though the Taliban were demoralized after Osmani's death in
December, they quickly resumed attacks.
"I don't think they can find someone as daring and as important as
Dadullah," Yusufzai said. "I think maybe temporarily some of their big
operations will be disrupted, but i don't think it will have a long-term
effect."
Mustafa Alani, director of security and terrorism studies at the
Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, noted that insurgent attacks in Iraq
did not abate after the killing of al-Qaida's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, last June.
"In this sort of organization, people are replaceable, and always there
is a second layer, third layer. They will graduate to the leadership,"
Alani said. "He is important, no doubt about it. Yes, it is a moral
victory, but he's replaceable."
Still, Dadullah's particular brand of cruelty was unmatched inside the
Taliban.
Dadullah's men videotaped beheadings of Afghans suspected of cooperating
with international forces or the Afghan government, and the suicide
bombers he is believed to have commanded have killed or injured hundreds
of Afghan civilians, soldiers and police, as well as dozens of
international forces.
In 1999 he led a Taliban massacre of ethnic Hazaras in the province of
Bamiyan, where the Taliban in 2000 destroyed two ancient Buddha statues
carved into a hillside cliff.
"This morning a friend told me that Dadullah had been killed and I wanted
to shout out to the people 'Congratulations! Congratulations!' I was so
happy I started crying," said Munir Naqshbandi, brother of Ajmal
Naqshbandi, the Afghan journalist who was believed to have been kidnapped
and beheaded by Dadullah's men last month.
"Dadullah was a cancer on the body of the Afghan people. It is good news
for all the people of Afghanistan, not just the Naqshbandi family," he
said.
The Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said
Dadullah's death would stir more violence and could motivate supporters
to take revenge. He said negotiations were the only way to end the
insurgency, echoing a call by Afghanistan's upper house of parliament
this week for talks with Afghan Taliban fighters.
"When they are killing one Mullah Dadullah, they are creating 10 more,"
Zaeef said. Yusufzai said many Taliban fighters had been unhappy with
Dadullah, saying he maligned the militant group with his beheadings, a
rash of kidnappings and boastful videos that starred himself firing guns
and walking in Afghanistan's mountains.
"They thought he had become too big for his shoes," Yusufzai said.
NATO said Dadullah moved into Afghanistan from his "sanctuary" - a
reference to Pakistan - where he trained suicide bombers. Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf admitted in February that Dadullah had been in
Pakistan several times and eluded capture.
Dadullah "will most certainly be replaced in time, but the insurgency has
received a serious blow," NATO said.
The Defense Ministry spokesman, Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, said Dadullah
was killed in the Sangin area of Helmand province, a region that has seen
heavy fighting in recent weeks and where airstrikes on Tuesday killed
between 20 and 40 civilians, according to Afghan officials and villagers,
the latest in a series of civilian deaths that has weakened support for
the international mission.
Azimi said Dadullah was killed Friday, though the intelligence service
and Kandahar governor said he died Saturday. He said Dadullah died in a
shootout alongside 10 other fighters, and that military officials had
reports Dadullah may have been at the battle site but weren't positive
the information was true.
An ethnic Pashtun, the group that makes up the core of the Taliban and is
prominent in eastern and southern Afghanistan, Dadullah lost a leg
fighting against the Soviet army that occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s.
He emerged as a Taliban commander during its fight against the Northern
Alliance in northern Afghanistan during the 1990s, helping the hard-line
militia to capture the city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
Since the Taliban's ouster in late 2001, Dadullah emerged as the group's
most prominent and feared commander. He often appeared in videos and
media interviews, and earlier this year predicted a militant spring
offensive that has failed to materialize.
In March, London television Channel 4 aired an interview in which
Dadullah said al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was alive and well and in
contact with Taliban officers.
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