There is a lot of buzz in Washington today about a report in the Christian Science Monitor quoting unnamed Pakistani intelligence sources and a UN official as saying that seven members of the Quetta Shura, the leadership council of the mainstream Afghan Taliban, have been picked up in Pakistan.
That number includes Abdul Ghani Baradar, an arrest already announced, but also other top commanders like Abdul Qayoum Zakir, a former Guantánamo inmate also known as Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul currently thought to be the insurgents' head of military operations.
The Monitor suggests that the motive for the long-demanded Pakistani crackdown on the Quetta Shura is to block any direct talks between the Taliban and Nato that do not go through Islamabad.
"Pakistan wants a seat at the table," said the UN official, who is familiar with Taliban efforts to initiate talks. "They don't want the Taliban to act independently."
The people I've talked to here in Washington so far, including US counterinsurgency specialists, dismiss that view as too cynical. The belief in the White House and in Central Command is that there has been a genuine change of heart in the Pakistani military establishment and that it has recognised the Taliban (Pakistani and Afghan) as an existential threat.
My own thought is that the premise behind the Monitor's take is surprisingly optimistic. It suggests that nearly half the Quetta Shura could be ready for talks.
This is what Londonstani has to say on the US counterinsurgency blog, Abu Muqawama.
UPDATE: I just went to a presentation at the New America Foundation and Foreign Policy magazine called Al-Qaeda Central: The Definitive Guide, and this is what it says on the can - an empirical and dispassionate view of the drone war in FATA and the role played by training camps there in attacks on western targets. Here are the documents.
