KABUL, 2 April 2005 — A former Taleban commander has surrendered to the Afghan government, one of the most high-profile figures to do so since the regime was toppled more than three years ago, officials said yesterday. Three mid-level Taleban commanders have also been arrested without a fight in an operation by US and Afghan troops in central Afghanistan, officials said.
Ex-commander Abdul Waheed handed himself over to the authorities in southeastern Helmand province to take advantage of a planned amnesty announced by Kabul early this year, provincial intelligence chief Dad Mohammad Khan said.
US-backed President Hamid Karzai’s administration has been in talks with a number of former Taleban leaders in recent months but has not announced the final details of the amnesty scheme. Waheed has now moved to the Afghan capital Kabul where he is expected to meet Karzai. “He was a key Taleban commander. His surrender will help bring other Taleban in,” Khan told AFP by telephone.
It was unclear if the surrendered commander had been involved in any anti-government attacks since the fundamentalist Taleban were ousted by a US-led military offensive in late 2001. The Taleban sheltered Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden before and after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, in which around 3,000 people died. An 18,000-strong US-led coalition force remains in Afghanistan where they are hunting down Bin Laden as well as militants from the Taleban and Al-Qaeda.
An Afghan intelligence official in Kabul said Waheed had close ties with Mulla Omar, the spiritual leader of the ousted militia during their 1996-2001 rule of the war-shattered country.
The three mid-level commanders were arrested Thursday in the Charchino district of Uruzgan province, Lt. Gen. Muslim Ahmed, a commander of the Afghan National Army in Kandahar told AFP. “They were hiding in a house. We had intelligence about their presence. The house was surrounded, and there was no exchange of fire during the operation,” he said. The detainees were handed over to coalition forces, he added.
