KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, May 13 — The man who probably was the Taliban’s foremost operational commander, Mullah Dadullah, was killed in a joint operation by Afghan security forces, American forces and NATO troops in Helmand Province, Governor Asadullah Khaled of the neighboring Kandahar Province said Sunday.
Mullah Dadullah’s body was displayed for journalists on Sunday morning in this southern Afghan city. The NATO force in Afghanistan confirmed his death in a statement issued in Kabul, saying that American troops had led the operation. There were various reports of the actual circumstances and day of the death.
Mullah Dadullah was one of the most wanted Taliban leaders, close to the leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, and with links to Al Qaeda, and was probably the most important operational commander.
While the exact number of Taliban fighters or the command structure are not known, military officials say he organized fighters, weapons, supplies and finances across much of southern and southeastern Afghanistan, the centers of the Taliban insurgency. He had been sighted in various places in the last nine months to a year, apparently moving into and out of southern Afghanistan from Pakistan border regions.
His death would cause a “significant blow to the Taliban’s command and control,” said Maj. Chris Belcher, an American military spokesman at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, the capital. He added that Mullah Dadullah “was a military leader, primarily in charge of the effort to recapture the city of Kandahar,” once the Taliban’s stronghold.
The Taliban insurgency swelled in 2006 in an effort to deter NATO troops as they arrived to take over command of southern Afghanistan. Last year the Taliban made a strong effort to gain control of the city of Kandahar, or at least the surrounding area. This year fighting has centered on Helmand Province.
In the last year Mullah Dadullah was known to be traveling in Pakistan’s tribal areas on the Afghan border, and in particular North and South Waziristan, a Pakistan intelligence official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of intelligence work. Taliban militants and foreign Qaeda allies have created a virtual Taliban ministate in that area.
Mullah Dadullah is also thought to be responsible for ordering numerous assassinations of clerics, government officials and health and education workers, as well as kidnappings and beheadings, including of foreigners. The intelligence officials said he was responsible for training and sending scores of suicide bombers to Afghanistan. The bombs have killed or wounded hundreds of Afghans and dozens of foreigners in the last year and a half.
Military and intelligence officials said his death would be a serious blow to the Taliban, since he had orchestrated many of the insurgents’ operations. Mullah Dadullah is the third member of the 10-member leadership council of the Taliban to be killed in the last six months.
Mullah Dadullah “will most certainly be replaced in time, but the insurgency has received a serious blow,” NATO said in a news release.
Governor Khaled said, “This is a huge loss for the Taliban; it will certainly weaken their activities.” He led journalists to see the body, on the veranda of the governor’s palace. Mullah Dadullah, an amputee, was recognizable in part from his missing left leg and thick black beard. He was wounded in the head and left eye and his face and chest were bloodied.
Military officials said they were keeping information about the circumstances of his death to a minimum so as not to jeopardize continuing intelligence operations.
Mullah Dadullah was tracked by a “robust” intelligence operation and had left the sanctuary of a neighboring country just days before and entered Afghanistan, said Maj. John Thomas, a NATO spokesman.
Major Belcher said Mullah Dadullah was killed in the Garmser district of Helmand, on the route in from Pakistan, south of the town of Lashkar Gah. Taliban fighters have moved frequently across the border, and the southern part of Helmand is a vital supply route for Taliban militants fighting in Helmand.
One official in the region, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, said the operation in which Mullah Dadullah was killed was a helicopter-borne assault by American troops who were dropped in and engaged him and his men in a firefight. The bodies were later given to the Afghans, he said.
The operation began Friday night, based on intelligence, and the American forces knew Mullah Dadullah was at the location. “It was swift and short commando operation,” the official said. Either Mullah Dadullah had been lured to a meeting or someone had betrayed him, he said.
Major Belcher said he was killed by small-arms fire.
The Afghan military spokesman, Gen. Zaher Azimi, said at a news conference that the Taliban commander was found among 11 bodies of Taliban fighters at the end of heavy fighting in Sarwan Qala in northeastern Helmand, an area where fighting this week killed at least 21 civilians. Residents reported a far higher death toll at the time.
Mullah Dadullah was a member of the nomadic Kuchi tribe, who move across Afghanistan with the seasons with their camels, sheep and goats. Villagers in one of the most remote areas of Afghanistan, Char Chine in Oruzgan Province, said he used to pitch his tent on a hill there. A longtime fighter and senior commander of the Taliban, he fought on the front lines as the Taliban seized control of much of the country in the 1990s.
Human rights groups have said he was responsible for killing numerous civilians during a campaign in the mid-90s in the central Afghanistan province of Bamian, peopled mostly by Shiite Muslims who were resisting the Taliban advance.
In 2001, he was fighting in northern Afghanistan and became trapped with thousands of Taliban fighters in the city of Kunduz when the United States began its campaign against the Taliban government. He agreed to surrender, along with the senior Taliban military commander in the north, Mullah Fazel, and drove out to meet with the Northern Alliance commander, Abdul Rashid Dostum in December 2001 in Mazar-i-Sharif.
But while Mullah Fazel arranged the surrender of thousands of other foreign and Afghan fighters, Mullah Dadullah escaped. He later told the BBC that he had paid a large amount of money to a Northern Alliance commander and escaped into the mountains, crossing the length of Afghanistan to reach the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan.
He is thought to have taken refuge in Pakistan for the next few years, and as the Taliban re-emerged as a fighting force in 2005 he began to give interviews to selected journalists, including television interviews, and released propaganda videos vowing to send waves of suicide bombers and fighters into Afghanistan to overthrow the government.
There had been reports over the years that he had been captured, but they turned out to be unfounded.
The Kandahar governor said people could now live more peacefully with Mullah Dadullah gone. “The people have now been rescued from the cruelty of this wild butcher,” he told the journalists.
Bin Laden Alive, Afghan Rebel Says
DUBAI, May 13 (Reuters) — An anti-American Afghan rebel leader said in a video broadcast Sunday that he had information that Osama bin Laden was alive but keeping a low profile by not issuing statements.
“Based on information I have, I believe Osama is alive,” said Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose forces operate in southeastern Afghanistan near Pakistan, in the undated video broadcast on Al Arabiya television. His remarks were dubbed into Arabic.
Mr. Hekmatyar said he believed “that it is wise that no statements or tapes are issued even after a long while.”
Mr. Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister, is on an American wanted list and leads an insurgency separate from the Taliban movement. He said in January that fighters loyal to his group had helped Mr. bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, escape an American effort to capture them in eastern Afghanistan in late 2001.
Taimoor Shah reported from Kandahar, and Carlotta Gall from Kabul, Afghanistan.
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