Profile: Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar

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21 September 2013 Last updated at 11:41 GMT

Profile: Mullah Abdul  Ghani Baradar

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is one of the four men who founded the Taliban movement in Afghanistan in 1994.

He went on to become a linchpin of the insurgency after the Taliban were toppled by the US-led invasion in 2001.

He was eventually captured in a joint US-Pakistani raid in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi in February 2010.

Little was heard of Mullah Baradar’s fate until late in 2012 when his name repeatedly topped the list of Taliban prisoners the Afghans wanted released in order to encourage nascent peace talks.

Pakistani officials released Mullah Baradar on 21 September but it is not clear whether he will be allowed to stay in Pakistan or sent to a third country.

At the time of his arrest he was said to be second-in-command to the Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and one of his most trusted commanders.

Senior Afghan officials hope that a senior figure like him could persuade the Taliban to engage in talks with Kabul – a critical part of the government’s plan to ensure stability after Nato combat troops withdraw in 2014.

He is reputedly one of those leading militants who favour talks with the US and the Afghan government.

Controller of funds

After helping found the Taliban movement in 1994, Mullah Baradar developed a profile as a military strategist and commander.

A key Taliban operative, he was believed to be in day-to-day command of the insurgency and its funding.

He held important responsibilities in nearly all the major wars across Afghanistan, and remained top commander of Taliban’s formation in the western region (Herat) as well as Kabul. At the time the Taliban were toppled he was their deputy minister of defence.

“His wife is Mullah Omar’s sister. He controlled the money. He was launching some of the deadliest attacks against our security forces,” an Afghan official who did not want to be named told the BBC at the time of his arrest.

Mullah Baradar, like other Taliban leaders, was targeted by UN Security Council sanctions, which included the freezing of assets, a travel ban and an arms embargo.

Before his 2010 capture, he made few public statements.

But one of those statements was in July 2009, when he apparently engaged in an email exchange with Newsweek magazine.

Asked for a reaction to the US troop surge in Afghanistan, he said the Taliban wanted to inflict maximum losses on the Americans.

He also vowed to continue the “jihad” until “the expulsion of our enemy from our land”.

He said Mullah Omar was in good health and leading the fight against the coalition and denied Taliban leaders were based in Pakistan.

Asked what would be the conditions for peace talks, he replied: “The basic condition is the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.”

According to Interpol, Mullah Baradar was born in Weetmak village in Dehrawood district, in the Uruzgan province of Afghanistan, in 1968.

But he is also known to be part of the Popalzai branch of Durrani tribe, the same as Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

He is reported to have stayed in touch with Mr Karzai’s brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, who was head of the Kandahar provincial council from 2005 until his assassination in July 2011.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20582286

20 September 2013 Last updated at 21:46 GMT

Pakistan to free Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Baradar on Saturday

Former Afghan Taliban second-in-command Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is to be released from prison in Pakistan on Saturday, the foreign ministry says.

A spokesman said the release was to “further facilitate the Afghan reconciliation process”.

Mullah Baradar is one of the four men who founded the Taliban movement in Afghanistan in 1994.

He became a linchpin of the insurgency after the Taliban were toppled by the US-led invasion in 2001.

He was captured in the Pakistani city of Karachi in 2010.

Secret talks

Afghan officials said at the time that he had been holding secret peace talks with the Afghan government and accused Pakistan of trying to sabotage or gain control of the process.

Correspondents say he has since emerged as a figure who Afghanistan and Pakistan believe could help persuade Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons and join peace talks.

A mid-level Afghan Taliban official told the AFP news agency that Mullah Baradar’s release would not have any effect on events in Afghanistan.

“[It] won’t change anything: he will be just a simple guy with no position in the Taliban network,” he said.

It is not clear where Mullah Baradar will be sent after his release.

A Pakistani official and a Taliban source in north-west Pakistan told AFP that he is likely to stay at home in Karachi where his family lives.

“He will be kept as a simple guy in the network who can convey messages from time to time, but who will not be able to reintegrate the shura [Taliban council] and regain power,” the Taliban official said.

Afghanistan wants him repatriated but Pakistani sources said this month he was more likely to be sent straight to a third country such as Saudi Arabia or Turkey.

Friday’s announcement was welcomed by the Afghan government.

“We welcome that this step is being taken,” Aimal Faizi, spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai told AFP news agency.

“We believe this will help the Afghan peace process. This is something we have been calling for for a long time. It was on the agenda when the president visited Pakistan, so we are pleased.”

The Pakistani foreign ministry recently revealed that some 26 Taliban prisoners had been freed over the past year.

Correspondents say that there is little evidence that previous releases of Taliban detainees have had a positive effect on peace negotiations, and several prisoners are understood to have returned to the battlefield.

Analysts say that there is also evidence that Mullah Baradar is not as important for Taliban as he used to be.

In a visit to Islamabad last month, President Karzai urged Pakistan “to facilitate peace talks” between his country and the Taliban.

He said the Pakistani government could provide opportunities for talks between the Afghan High Peace Council and the militants.

In response, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said he wanted to help regional efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.

Most Nato combat troops are due to pull out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, leaving the country to handle its own security.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24180523

An Afghan Poet Shapes Metal and Hard Words

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An Afghan Poet Shapes Metal and Hard Words

Christoph Bangert for The New York Times

With his unflinching words, Mr. Turab captures the feelings of Afghans about the war and those who are responsible for it: the Americans, the Taliban, the Afghan government, Pakistan.

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KHOST, Afghanistan — The poet guided a strip of sheet metal into the ancient steel clippers, cutting shimmering triangles that fell with a dull clang on the shop floor.

 In the background, a workman’s chorus filled the yard: a handsaw planing a log beam; a generator humming and catching; the groan of a giant diesel truck idling.

The harsh music of the workday welled up around Matiullah Turab, one of Afghanistan’s most famous Pashtun poets, in the garage where he earns a living repairing the colorful Pakistani caravan trucks that transport goods around the countryside.

The cadence of his nights, though, is his own: shaping poetry as hard and piercing as the tools he uses by day. Nature and romance carry no interest for him.

“A poet’s job is not to write about love,” he growled, his booming voice blending with the ambient noise of the workshop. “A poet’s job is not to write about flowers. A poet must write about the plight and pain of the people.”

With his unflinching words, Mr. Turab, 44, offers a voice for Afghans grown cynical about the war and its perpetrators: the Americans, the Taliban, the Afghan government, Pakistan.

War has turned into a trade

Heads have been sold

as if they weigh like cotton,

and at the scale sit such judges

who taste the blood, then decide the price

Taped versions of Mr. Turab’s poems spread virally, especially among his fellow ethnic Pashtuns, whom he unabashedly champions — a tribal affinity that alienates some Tajik and Hazara listeners. His close affiliation with Hezb-i-Islami — part Islamist political party, part militant group — has put off others.

 But even as his social affiliations are narrow and divisive, his poetry has mass appeal. Mr. Turab reserves his charity for ordinary Afghans, weighed down by the grinding corruption and disappointment that have come to define the last decade of their lives.

Many see his poems, some of which were translated from Pashto for The New York Times by Mujib Mashal, as a counter to the daily spin showered on Afghans by the government, diplomats, religious leaders and the media.

O flag-bearers of the world,

you have pained us a lot in the name of security

You cry of peace and security,

and you dispatch guns and ammunition

Seated on a makeshift bench, his wool pakol hat tilted slightly and his clothing stained with grease, Mr. Turab surveyed the evening beyond his concrete workshop bay, a landscape of rags, wires and waste. The squalid heat was broken intermittently by a standing fan connected to a car battery. A neighboring vendor hammered a glacier of ice, cleaving chunks to sell to drivers passing by.

“There is no genuine politician in Afghanistan,” he said, briefly cracking a rare smile. “As far as I know, politicians need the support of the people, and none of these politicians have that. For me, they are like the shareholders of a business. They only think of themselves and their profit.”

He continued: “The Taliban are not the solution, either. Gone are those old days when the Taliban way of governing worked.”

He has no patience for preciousness in his own work or in others’, and he is particularly merciless with government officials. He ridicules them, saying they should stitch three pockets into their jackets: one to collect afghanis, one for dollars and a third for Pakistani rupees.

For all that disdain, however, Mr. Turab has remained popular in influential corners of the government. And President Hamid Karzai recently invited him to the presidential palace in Kabul.

“The president liked my poetry and told me I had an excellent voice, but I don’t know why,” he said. “I criticized him.”

In fact, he is quite widely in demand. Though he prefers to be home in Khost, Mr. Turab’s travel schedule still far outpaces the average metalsmith’s. People flock to his rare personal readings, and new poems posted on YouTube quickly become among the most-watched by Afghans. He is planning a trip to Moscow soon to receive an award from members of the Afghan diaspora there. And he visits the governor of Paktia, a friend, to perform on occasion.

Mr. Turab is the latest in a long roll call of poets cherished in Afghanistan, among the most famous of them Rumi, the Sufi mystic whose works of love and faith remain popular across the world. In this country, poetic aphorisms are woven into everyday talk, embraced by Afghans from all walks of life. In pockets of Kabul, it is not uncommon to see men bunched together as they transfer audio files of readings over Bluetooth from one cellphone to another.

 Though poetry is loved, it seldom pays. Some writers have taken government jobs, finding the steady paycheck and modest responsibilities conducive to their work. Mr. Turab, for his part, has stuck to his dingy garage on the outskirts of Khost City.

“This is my life, what you see here: banging iron, cutting it short, making it long,” he said. “I still don’t call myself a poet.”

There is something else, which even the plain-spoken Mr. Turab seemed reluctant to confess: He is nearly illiterate. Though he can, with difficulty, read printed copy, he can neither write nor read the handwriting of others, he said. He constructs his poetry in his head, relying on memory to retain it and others to record it.

Mr. Turab grew up in a small village of Nangarhar Province, poor even by Afghan standards. His father was a farmer, and grew just enough to feed the family. Though they had little, he fondly remembers his youth — particularly the days spent learning from the village poet, a man he grew to love for his sharp words and honesty.

 After the Soviet invasion in 1979, Mr. Turab, a teenager at the time, moved with his family to Pakistan. He came of age there, returning to Afghanistan only two decades later, with a trade, a wife and a modest following as a poet.

He kept refining his craft after his return, cultivating a broader audience. Under Taliban rule, he dared to publish a book of his work — a grave mistake.

“The Taliban beat me very badly,” he said, shaking his head, then proffering a smile. “After that, I decided publishing wasn’t such a good idea.”

Though he is an unabashed Pashtun loyalist, he has no love for the Taliban, who are closely identified with Pashtun tribes. He says he loathes the terror they cultivate and the way they have destabilized Afghanistan. And he excoriates them, for being as inept and out of touch as the Western-backed government.

O graveyard of skulls and oppression

Rip this earth open and come out

They taunt me with your blood,

and you lie intoxicated with thoughts of virgins

The dirt road outside his shop runs all the way to Pakistan, and its traffic is an economic lifeline. Vendors line the highway, selling everything from snow to keep the blistering heat at bay to seasonal fruit. Periodically a convoy of American vehicles passes, breaking the spell of an otherwise Afghan scene.

“Sometimes I’m amazed that things aren’t falling apart,” he said, clasping his hands together as he reflected on years of war and foreign presence here. “But then I realize there is a social law here that holds the country together, even if there is no governmental law.”

Though he has been critical of the American occupation, he does note the progress that has come with it: roads, electricity and schools. It is other parts of the Western legacy in Afghanistan that he worries about.

“Democracy will hurt and eliminate our tribal laws,” he said. “The medicine prescribed by democracy was not suitable for this society’s sickness.”