Two weeks ago, ABC News broadcast images of a bizarre so-called "graduation ceremony" taking place somewhere in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The host of the event was none other than Mansoor Dadullah: the newly appointed military chief of the Taliban. The "graduates" consisted of supposed candidates for suicide attacks who, having completed their "training," were allegedly being dispatched to the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Germany: all countries with troops in Afghanistan. Mansoor Dadullah is the younger brother of the late Mullah Dadullah: the former Taliban military chief who was killed by coalition forces in mid-May. Mansoor was himself held prisoner by the Afghan government until mid-March, when he was one of a group of Taliban released in exchange for the liberation of kidnapped Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo. The Taliban "graduation ceremony" documented in the ABC report was filmed on June 9 by a Pakistani journalist. Two days earlier, on June 7, the same journalist conducted an interview with Mansoor Dadullah on behalf of the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche. The questions were provided by Weltwoche correspondent Urs Gehriger and his Afghan colleague Sami Yousafzai. The interview was filmed and the footage is in the possession of Sami Yousafzai.
‘Ours is a Global Struggle’: An Interview With Taliban Military Chief Mansoor Dadullah
