KABUL — Two senior Taliban leaders have been arrested in recent days inside Pakistan, Afghan officials said Thursday.
Afghan officials said the Taliban’s “shadow governors” for two provinces in northern Afghanistan had been detained in Pakistan by officials there. Mullah Abdul Salam, the Taliban’s leader in Kunduz, and Mullah Mir Mohammed of Baghlan province were captured about two weeks ago in a raid in Akora Khattack, according to a leader at the Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqaniya madrasa there.
The arrests come on the heels of the capture of Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s military commander.
Muhammad Omar, the governor of Kunduz province, said in an interview that the two maintained a close working relationship with Baradar.
“Mullah Salam and Mullah Mohammed were the most merciless individuals,” said Gen. Razaq Yaqoobi, police chief of Kunduz province. “Most of the terror, executions and other crimes committed in northern Afghanistan were on their orders.”
The arrests could be expected to hurt Taliban operations, but the Taliban has proved capable in the past of quickly replacing their killed or captured leaders. The New York Times
