2007.05.14: May 14, 2007: Headlines: Figures: COS - Afghanistan: COS - Morocco: Journalism: Iraq: Newsday: James Rupert writes: U.S.-led forces kill Taliban field commander Mullah Dadullah
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2007.05.14: May 14, 2007: Headlines: Figures: COS - Afghanistan: COS - Morocco: Journalism: Iraq: Newsday: James Rupert writes: U.S.-led forces kill Taliban field commander Mullah Dadullah
James Rupert writes: U.S.-led forces kill Taliban field commander Mullah Dadullah
He was an inspirational and daring commander," said Rahi- mullah Yusufzai, a Pakistani journalist who specializes on the politics of the ethnic Pashtun regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan where the Taliban are based. "I don't see any person of his standing in the Taliban hierarchy," he told Reuters news agency. "It is clear that for now, at least, that there is no one who can replace him," Yusufzai said. Dadullah was attacked by troops of a relatively small, U.S.-commanded force in Afghanistan, supported by Afghan government troops and by the International Security Assistance Force, which is commanded by NATO, an ISAF statement said. The U.S.-commanded troops include special operations forces, and have been in Helmand in recent weeks but neither the ISAF nor the U.S. command released details about the raid during the weekend. Journalist James Rupert, head of Newsday's international bureau in Islamabad, Pakistan began his career abroad as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching mechanics and welding in Morocco.
James Rupert writes: U.S.-led forces kill Taliban field commander Mullah Dadullah
U.S.-led forces kill Taliban field commander
BY JAMES RUPERT
james.rupert@newsday.com
Caption: The Afghan government said top Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah was killed in southern Afghanistan in its most significant success against the insurgent movement.(AFP/Hamed Zalmy)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The death in Afghanistan of the Taliban's most infamous and brutal field commander will be an emotional and organizational blow to the militants, analysts say, but it's not clear that it will weaken them significantly in the long term.
U.S.-led forces surrounded Mullah Dadullah while he was hiding in a village home Saturday in the southern province of Helmand, a tribal leader there told The Associated Press. Another report said he was killed in a vehicle.
"He was an inspirational and daring commander," said Rahi- mullah Yusufzai, a Pakistani journalist who specializes on the politics of the ethnic Pashtun regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan where the Taliban are based. "I don't see any person of his standing in the Taliban hierarchy," he told Reuters news agency. "It is clear that for now, at least, that there is no one who can replace him," Yusufzai said.
Dadullah was attacked by troops of a relatively small, U.S.-commanded force in Afghanistan, supported by Afghan government troops and by the International Security Assistance Force, which is commanded by NATO, an ISAF statement said. The U.S.-commanded troops include special operations forces, and have been in Helmand in recent weeks but neither the ISAF nor the U.S. command released details about the raid during the weekend.
Dadullah, aged about 41, for years was one of the Taliban's most effective and vicious commanders. The movement often sent him to deal with its toughest military challenges, and Dadullah was seen as central in the Taliban's shift of tactics toward suicide bombings last year.
In 2001, he led a massacre of an estimated 300 unarmed ethnic Hazaras in punishment for an anti-Taliban uprising. Just last month, he made global headlines by holding an Italian journalist hostage and killing the reporter's two Afghan assistants.
When U.S. forces helped overthrow the Taliban in 2001, Dadullah was surrounded but escaped. That, and several false reports since then of his capture or death, helped him build an aura of invincibility.
To prove he really was killed this time, Afghan officials hauled his body to the veranda of the provincial governor's office in the city of Kandahar, and invited journalists to photograph it on a wheeled gurney between pink, blood-spotted sheets. With his face well-known through frequent appearances in Taliban videos, and his left leg missing after he reportedly stepped on a land mine years ago, the body was readily identified as his.
Dadullah used his reputation, and media savvy, to become arguably the Taliban's most powerful recruiter among young, ethnic Pashtun men who form the movement's fighting base. Since last year, Taliban DVDs on sale in ethnic Pashtun regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan have shown him firing rockets or machine guns in combat, giving orders and speeches to guerrilla fighters and registering candidate suicide-bombers.
In battle, too, Dadullah eclipsed other Taliban leaders in the past two years. In 2003, he was named to a 10-man leadership council for the Taliban, and conflicting reports made it unclear whether he or a rival from southeast Afghanistan, Jalaluddin Haqqani, would wield more power over military operations.
But last year, the Taliban's main battlefield advances came on Dadullah's turf, the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand. And Taliban sources in their Pakistani sanctuary of Waziristan said Dadullah had become a power there, in Haqqani's backyard.
In the past three months, Dadullah called foreign reporters, telling them he had 6,000 fighters armed and hundreds of suicide bombers ready to attack in a spring offensive that, so far, has failed to bring the Taliban new gains.
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Story Source: Newsday
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Figures; COS - Afghanistan; COS - Morocco; Journalism; Iraq
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