KABUL:  The Taliban’s supreme leader has replaced his top deputy with a young but hardened fighter, an indication of the Taliban’s determination to push ahead with its insurgency, despite the recent arrests of a handful of high-level commanders in Pakistan, as reported by the New York Times.

The new deputy, Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, a former detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, believed to be in his mid-30s, has a reputation as a tough fighter with few political skills. He was most recently the Taliban’s commander in southern Afghanistan, but he was pulled back into Pakistan, based on a fear for his life or detainment.

He replaces Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was arrested in Karachi, in a joint operation by American and Pakistani intelligence agents. Baradar is one of a number of Taliban leaders captured recently in Pakistan, where the government has historically granted the group sanctuary. He had been the leader of the Taliban leadership council, the Quetta Shura.

American officials believe that the Taliban’s leadership is still brimming with confidence about their position inside Afghanistan, making it unlikely that the movement’s chieftains would be inclined to enter substantive negotiations in the near term.

Still, the arrests in Pakistan have sown nervousness among Taliban leaders. The Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, appointed Zakir as his deputy himself, without convening the leadership council, according to sources.

In addition to Baradar, Pakistani authorities recently detained Mullah Kabir, another member of the Quetta Shura, and two more members in Afghanistan.  Mullah Kabir was later released, however, for reasons that are unclear, according to a Western diplomat and a Pakistani with close ties to the group.

Pakistan also detained another member of the Taliban’s inner circle, Agha Jan Motasim, a former finance minister of the Taliban government before it was driven from power in 2001, according to a Pakistani with close ties to the Taliban. Motasim, a son-in-law of Mullah Omar, was captured in Karachi late last month, the Pakistani said.

There were conflicting reports, meanwhile, about senior Taliban leader, Mullah Mansour, the brother of one of the most brutal of the Taliban commanders, Mullah Dadullah, who was killed by American and British troops in 2007. A Pakistani with close ties to the Taliban said that Mansour had also been promoted to serve as a deputy alongside Zakir, though some Afghans disputed that.

American officials say they are encouraged by some of the recent Pakistani actions — but not all of them. The exact motives of the Pakistani government are murky.

Many people here, in Pakistan and in the United States speculate that Pakistani officials have been detaining the Taliban’s senior leaders to gain influence over any peace negotiations that may begin between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

There were signs that those Taliban leaders still at large were taking extreme precautions.

Muzhda, the Afghan analyst who follows the Taliban, said that some Taliban leaders hiding in Pakistan had vanished.  It was unclear, he said, whether the Taliban leaders have been arrested or whether they have gone into hiding.  Among those Taliban leaders whose whereabouts are unknown, he said, were Mullah Hassan Rahmani, the former Taliban governor of Kandahar and a member of the Quetta Shura, and Mullah Afghan Tayyib, a longtime spokesman for the group.

In 2001, the new Taliban deputy, Zakir, then known as Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, was captured on the battlefield and sent to the American detention camp at Guantánamo Bay until 2007, when he was turn over to the Afghan government and later released.

According to transcripts of a hearing in 2007, Zakir told American officials that he had no intention of returning to the battlefield. “I want to go back home and join my family and work in my land and help my family,” he said, according to a transcript reviewed by The Associated Press.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/world/asia/25afghan.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y