Score: Taliban goon Mansoor Dadullah reportedly killed in Pakistan, Update: Dead or alive?

posted at 7:01 am on February 11, 2008 by Bryan
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He joins his brother Mullah Dadullah, who was taken out in May in Afghanistan.

Pakistani security forces killed a top figure in the Taliban militia fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan and captured four other militants Monday, a military official said.

Mansoor Dadullah, brother of slain Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah, was among five militants caught after a shootout near a seminary in southwestern Baluchistan province around 10 a.m., a local intelligence official told The Associated Press.

A senior military official said Dadullah died of his wounds while being flown to a hospital with the other four injured men.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists. Pakistani army and government spokesmen could not immediately be reached for comment.

If he’s meeting his virgins, we’ll probably hear from the Taliban about how they’re overjoyed that Mansoor has become a shahid. But the fact is, when these guys lose a commander it erodes their combat effectiveness. We’ve seen that in Iraq with the death of Zarqawi and the decline of al Qaeda in Iraq that followed (the surge and the Awakening had quite a bit to do with that too, of course). These jihadist groups depend on authoritarian and ideological leadership. When a big guy goes belly up, someone else always steps in but that someone else doesn’t always have the fire for the fight. How big this particular Dadullah was is open for debate. There were reports that he’d been sacked, but as recently as last month he said he was pretty big.

Dadullah told the AP in a phone interview in January that he remained a Taliban commander and had asked the militia’s supreme leader Mullah Omar to dispel “rumors” of his dismissal.

He also claimed that he had met with al-Qaeda’s No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri a few months ago but had never met with Osama bin Laden. He said Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in Helmand were fighting alongside each other and sharing tactics.

The operation was carried out in the Gwal Ismailzai village, 150 miles northeast of the Baluchistan capital, Quetta, by a joint force of police, anti-terrorism forces and army commandos.

Update (AP): The NYT and AP both say he’s captured, wounded, but alive.

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