The Washington Times’ Eli Lake reports:
U.S. intelligence officials are expressing growing concerns that Pakistan is holding back valuable intelligence data obtained from captured No. 2 Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.
Mullah Baradar, who was captured in January, is the military deputy to Taliban leader Mullah Omar and he is considered the most important terrorist to be detained since Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was caught in 2003.
Senior U.S. intelligence officials in the last week told The Washington Times that recent interrogation sessions with Mullah Baradar yielded very little actionable intelligence. Instead the sessions provided “atmospheric intelligence” that is of limited value, such as the history of the Pashtun tribal regions in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Note that previously, observers had been trumpeting the administrations’ success in Pakistan. In fact, here’s a Fareed Zakaria column in the Post from March entitled “Obama’s foreign-policy success in Pakistan“:
President Obama gets much credit for changing America’s image in the world — he was probably awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for doing so. But even devoted fans would probably say it is too soon to cite a specific foreign policy achievement. In fact, there is a place — crucial to U.S. national security — where Obama’s foreign policy is working: Pakistan.
A spate of good news has been coming out of that complicated country, which has long promised to move against Islamic militants but has rarely done so.
Looks like Pakistan is still dragging their feet on going after Islamic militants.
