Death of Taliban chief leaves void

The killing of charismatic Taliban leader Mullah Dadullah on Sunday in a US-led operation may cripple the insurgent group.

By Rachel Morarjee | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
and Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the May 14, 2007 edition

Page 1 of 2

KABUL and NEW DELHI - Nearly one year ago, American forces killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the mastermind of Al Qaeda in Iraq in a strike that President Bush hailed as a "severe blow" to the insurgency. In the intervening year, the chaos in Iraq has only risen.

Yesterday, NATO and Afghan officials announced that they had killed Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's top commander and a man sometimes called Afghanistan's al-Zarqawi. The coming months will reveal whether his death proves to be more significant than that of Mr. Zarqawi.

It could be, experts say. Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Mr. Dadullah has become the unquestioned leader of the Taliban resistance, blending his charisma as a one-legged "holy warrior" with equal measures of brutality. He is believed to have presided over more than a dozen beheadings and several kidnappings and acted as the primary proponent for bringing more suicide bombers to Afghanistan.

It is an important moment for the Taliban, who relied on Dadullah to provide some sense of unity to its eclectic mix of Islamist ideologues, village malcontents, and petty criminals.

"It's almost a test of competing hypotheses about the Taliban," says Barnett Rubin of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "Is it a group driven by radical extremist leadership," or is it a loosely-connected band of village rebels?

The strike is sure to be a boost for the Afghan government in its efforts to project a sense of progress in a controversial war. In recent weeks, the public's attention has turned to a series of NATO and US attacks that have killed dozens of civilians, Afghans say. Now, it can show results.

"He was responsible for all the fighting in the south and also for the media operations," says Ahmad Shakhi Achikzai, a minister of parliament from Kandahar. "For the Taliban, it is very dangerous to lose him, because it will undermine them."

As of press time, the details of his death were also unclear. NATO said he was killed in a US-led operation when he "left his sanctuary into southern Afghanistan."

Page 1 | 2 | Next Page