The Pakistani army said it dealt a new blow to the Taliban insurgency, capturing a top commander who once worked in Boston as a housepainter.
The white-bearded militant, Muslim Khan, had helped spearhead the group's two-year uprising in the Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan. With his choppy English, Mr. Khan also served as the Swat Taliban's chief spokesman for local and foreign journalists. He was arrested earlier this week with four other commanders in their Swat hideout, according to Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, Pakistan's military spokesman.
Gen. Abbas described the arrests as "a major breakthrough for the security forces." Mr. Khan was considered to be one of the top three Taliban leaders in Swat.
The arrests are unlikely to significantly alter the course of the fighting. Pakistan's army, despite a major offensive to rout the Swat Taliban, has failed to capture their leader, Mullah Fazalullah. The army has showed few signs of preparing for a full-scale ground offensive to uproot the militancy village by village in South Waziristan. Pakistani forces have instead relied on air strikes and artillery barrages on Taliban positions in South Waziristan.
Even in areas where the Taliban is on the run, such as Swat, security remains unsettled.
There have been a number of Taliban attacks in recent weeks, including an Aug. 30 suicide bombing that killed 15 police recruits in Mingora, the valley's main town.
Still, the U.S. and Pakistan have registered some notable successes in recent weeks. Pakistan Taliban have struggled to reorganize following the death of their chief commander, Baitullah Mehsud, after a U.S. missile strike last month in the South Waziristan tribal region. U.S. officials say they believe the area is a center of operations for the al Qaeda terrorist group. Mr. Mehsud's death triggered an internal battle for leadership, and Hakimullah Mehsud, another senior commander, was later named to succeed him.
Gen. Abbas declined to disclose the date or other details related to Mr. Khan's capture. The announcement coincided with the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S., and could be seen as a response to criticism from Washington over the past eight years that Pakistan hasn't done enough to destroy potential sanctuaries for terrorists.
Islamabad has often rebutted such charges by pointing to the number of Pakistani soldiers who have died fighting insurgents: about 1800 in the past eight years, according to the military. About 300 soldiers have been killed in the three-month-old Swat offensive.
On Friday, the Pakistani government released photos of two captured commanders, Mr. Khan and Mahmood Khan, stripped of their turbans, as part of efforts to publicize the army's most recent success. The military says it has killed more than 2,000 insurgents in recent operations against the Taliban.
The government had offered a reward of $120,000 for the capture of Mr. Khan. The other men captured this week were lower on the hierarchy.
Mr. Khan, who is in his 50s, spent the late 1990s in the U.S., where he lived in Boston and painted houses for a living. He had worked in the early 1980s as a student activist for the Pakistan Peoples Party, which now rules the country, and later briefly joined one of the country's Islamist religious parties.
By the time he reached Boston, his views on the West were uncompromising. In an interview this spring with The Wall Street Journal, he recalled telling a friend who was attending a college in New York at the time to abandon his studies because he would learn nothing. He said the U.S. education system did nothing but spread obscenity and immorality.
In the interview, Mr. Khan called the U.S. "the source of all the trouble for Muslims."
He said he had a list of Pakistanis in Swat whom the Taliban planned to execute, including a woman who he said would be killed because her husband worked for the American army. It couldn't be determined if the executions were carried out.
Speaking with British Channel 4 News in April, he complained about the presence of white Western women among forces for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. "As long as these infidels are present in our land, it is our duty to fight them," he said.
In recent months he called Pakistani journalists to warn them their reporting was biased against the Taliban, and they would punished.
After Mr. Khan returned to Pakistan in 2002, he claimed responsibility for several Taliban terrorist attacks. The militants eventually moved into the alpine getaway of Swat, and began enforcing a harsh interpretation of Islamic law.
Once a peaceful and relatively liberal region dotted with ski resorts and fruit orchards, the Swat Valley became a magnet for pro-al Qaeda militants. A large number of foreign fighters, including Uzbeks, Chechens and Arabs, joined the militancy there, increasing the threat to Pakistan's security.
Many in the U.S. government and the Pakistan government came to view the situation in the Swat Valley as a test case of Pakistan's resolve. The Pakistani government initially struck a peace deal with the militants, but the Taliban soon began moving out of the valley and claiming new territory in the direction of Islamabad, the capital,
Mr. Khan, who had attended college in Swat, said at the time that the Taliban's first responsibility was to establish Islamic law, or Shariah, in the Swat Valley to set an example.
After that, he said, "It is our responsibility to go and establish Shariah anywhere in the country."
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