AFGHANISTAN:Taliban insurgents suffered a grave loss when their top military commander, Mullah Dadullah - notorious for orchestrating massacres, beheadings and suicide bombings - was killed in fighting in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, it was claimed yesterday.
The Afghan interior ministry said Dadullah died fighting Afghan and Nato forces in Girishk district on Saturday. The one-legged strategist had been reported captured or killed previously, but this time the authorities appeared certain. Nato also confirmed his death, saying it had dealt the insurgency "a serious blow".
Reporters from Reuters and other news agencies were shown his corpse in the governor's compound in Kandahar. His bearded face was splattered with blood and he appeared to have suffered a head wound. His left leg was missing.
Dadullah, known as Afghanistan's al-Zarqawi - after the feared al-Qaeda chief in Iraq - was a member of the Taliban's 10-member leadership council and close to the movement's fugitive leader, the one-eyed Mullah Muhammad Omar.
He was also the Taliban's leading public figure. In regular interviews with Pakistani, Afghan and Arab newspapers and TV stations, he boasted of training suicide bombers, executing suspected collaborators and beheading hostages.
"It's the biggest setback to the Taliban since they started resistance in 2001," said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Peshawar-based journalist and expert on the Pashtun areas straddling the Pakistan-Afghan border where the Taliban operate. "They can take revenge for the killing. There may be more reprisal attacks. But it is clear that for now, at least, that there is no one who can replace him," Yusufzai said. "He was an inspirational and daring commander."
But Mustafa Alani, of the Dubai-based Gulf Research Centre, said the death would have little impact. "In this sort of organisation, people are replaceable, and always there is a second layer, third layer. They will graduate to the leadership. Yes, it is a moral victory, but he's replaceable."
Dadullah lost a leg fighting the Red Army in the 1980s. In the 1990s he orchestrated ethnic massacres during the Taliban's sweep to power. In recent years he had emerged as the top battlefield commander fighting western and Afghan government forces in the south.
Analysts speculated that his media appearances - most recently in a boastful interview with al-Jazeera last month - may have compromised his security: some Taliban commanders had urged him to maintain a lower profile.
He is the third top commander to have been captured or killed in the last six months. Mullah Akhtar Osmani was killed by a US airstrike in December while the former defence minister Mullah Obaidullah Akhund was captured by Pakistani security forces in March. Mullah Omar remains at large and Afghan officials have alleged he is hiding in the Pakistani city of Quetta. Pakistan's president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, says Omar is in Kandahar.
The short-term gain of Dadullah's death may be offset by swelling anti-foreign sentiment in the south generated by a spate of civilian deaths caused by Nato forces. Nato and US military aircraft targeting Taliban bases have also killed several hundred civilians, including at least 21 people during an operation in Helmand last week. President Hamid Karzai has become sharply critical of the airstrikes and publicly pleaded with his allies to take greater care. - (Guardian service)