Islamabad: Senior Pakistani Taliban commander Maulvi Faqir Mohammad has been captured by Afghan intelligence agencies in an area along the border with Pakistan, according to media reports on Thursday.
Pakistani security officials were quoted by the Dawn newspaper as saying that reports about Mohammad’s arrest in Afghanistan appeared to be correct.
Reports from Afghanistan said Afghan intelligence agencies had captured Mohammad, who was the deputy to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan chief Hakimullah Mehsud till 2011, and four aides when they were trying to cross into Pakistan from Nangrahar province.
An unnamed Pakistani security official said: “This is big news. We are reasonably sure that reports of his arrest are correct but unless the Afghans officially confirm it, we would not like to say anything publicly on this.”
The official claimed the reports had confirmed Pakistan’s contention that “Maulvi Faqir and others have fled and taken shelter in Afghanistan”.
He expressed the hope that other Pakistani militant commanders hiding in Afghanistan would also be captured. An official in Mohammad’s native Bajaur tribal region said the fugitive militant had been captured at Basawal in eastern Afghanistan while trying to cross over Pakistan’s Khyber Agency.
Local militants too said the commander had been captured with his aides Maulana Hakim, Shahid Khan, Maulvi Turrabi and Fathi Khan.
The commander had taken refuge in Afghanistan’s Kunar province with other Pakistani militants after security forces launched a military campaign against him in August 2008. The Pakistani Taliban have neither rejected nor confirmed the development.
The Afghan government is yet to officially confirm Mohammad’s arrest though officials of the Afghan interior ministry and members of the National Directorate of Security informed journalists in Kabul and Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar, that they had arrested him on Monday.
The News quoted Afghan Taliban sources as saying that the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban were not sure about the arrest but “were happy about the development”.
“He was irrelevant for some time and was no more enjoying his previous status, especially after he told the media that he was holding peace talks with the Pakistan government.
The Taliban had not even allowed him to participate in the war against Pakistani forces in Batwar area of Bajaur last year,” a senior Pakistani Taliban commander based in Kunar said. Mohammad had developed serious differences with the Pakistani Taliban leadership and they replaced him with commander Dadullah, who died in a US drone attack in August 2012 in Kunar province. The Taliban later appointed Said Muhammad as the commander of Bajaur agency. (PTI)