3. Biodata:
Mullah Ghulam Hassan is a high-ranking commander in southern Ghazni province, who served as deputy intelligence minister when Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was in power. Last week (20120312) the military committee of the Taliban’s ruling body, the Quetta Shura, ordered his arrest. His purported crime: unauthorized contacts with representatives of the High Peace Council.

Earlier March 2012 three senior religious clerics from the High Peace Council’s Kandahar provincial branch arranged to meet  Hassan, and several other commanders in the southwestern Pakistani border city of Quetta to explore the possibilities of more formal talks. Soon after their discussions, Hassan was arrested by Taliban enforcers.

Hassan seems to be in serious trouble. Taliban sources say the two are being charged not only with talking to the enemy but with accepting payoffs to do so, either from NATO or from Karzai himself. According to a well-placed Taliban source in Quetta, Hassan is telling his interrogators that he had permission to talk to the Kandahar elders from no less than the notorious commander Mullah Ismael, a member and former head of the military council. Ismael made millions for the insurgency through ransom kidnappings and payoffs from Afghan security contractors who purchased safe passage for coalition supply convoys through Taliban-controlled territory. He emphatically denies the accusation that he approved the Quetta meeting.(20120322)