The Pakistani Taliban: Falling out

At odds with each other as well as civilisation

IT TOOK 20 days for Pakistan’s Taliban movement even to admit the death of its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, who, through force of personality and ideological conviction had turned his outfit into what American officials repeatedly called an “existential” threat to Pakistan. A power struggle gripped the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) after Mehsud was killed in his native South Waziristan by a missile fired by an American drone on August 5th. Competing factions emerged in what seemed to become a bloody succession battle, even as the group suffered from a wave of arrests, defections and surrenders.

The group, an umbrella for 13 constituent Taliban factions that came together under Mehsud in December 2007, was already under pressure. The Pakistan army, urged on by America, had launched an offensive in late April against the TTP’s Swat chapter. Then in June the army moved on to the TTP’s heartland in South Waziristan. It has since pounded them from the air, with help from American drones.

Three different senior Taliban militants have claimed to be the outfit’s new boss, exposing the disarray the new leadership inherits. Then this week the leadership was formally won by Hakimullah Mehsud. Both he and his main rival, Waliur Rehman, come from Baitullah’s Mehsud tribe of South Waziristan, which dominates the ttp. The picture is muddied by Pakistani intelligence officials, who claim that Hakimullah Mehsud, too, is dead, after a shoot-out with Mr Rehman, and is being impersonated by a relation.

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Pakistani Taliban Confirm Leader Died In U.S. Strike

The Pakistani Taliban acknowledged that the militants' top leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was dead, ending weeks of claims and counterclaims over his fate following a U.S. missile strike on his father-in-law's home this month.

The Taliban had insisted for weeks that Baitullah Mehsud was still alive following the missile strike, while U.S. and Pakistani officials said he was almost certainly dead and a leadership struggle had ensued.

Two of Mehsud's top aides, Hakimullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman, called The Associated Press to say that he had died last Sunday of wounds from the Aug. 5 strike near the Afghan border. "He was wounded. He got the wounds in a drone strike and he was martyred two days ago," Hakimullah Mehsud said. Rehman later repeated the same statement.

Both also confirmed an earlier Taliban announcement that Hakimullah Mehsud (pictured) now leads the Pakistani Taliban, while Rehman would lead the movement's wing in South Waziristan.

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Pakistan Taliban Allegedly Takes Double Body Blow: Updated

Taliban Leaders Clash Over Succession

Pakistani officials said they had received information on Saturday that a ranking militant commander had been killed in a power struggle over who would succeed Baitullah Mehsud the leader of the Pakistani Taliban.

A Pakistani government official and an intelligence official said that Hakimullah Mehsud, a young and aggressive aide to the former leader, had been shot dead in a fight with another commander who was seeking leadership, Waliur Rehman, during a meeting in a remote mountain region near the Afghan border.

The killing would also solidify the belief among American and Pakistani intelligence officials that there has been a power struggle brewing within the Pakistani Taliban, which is made up of many different tribes and factions that had been brought together under Baitullah Mehsud’s leadership.

• "Pakistani Claims of Taliban Militant's Death Are Contested, NY Times, 8/9/09.
  
• "Feuding Kills a Top Militant, Pakistan Says", NY Times, 8/8/09

Taliban's Mehsud Confirmed Killed

The American missile strike that killed Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan's most wanted militant and a staunch Al Qaeda ally, dealt a devastating broadside to extremists and handed the United States a major victory in its bid to help stabilize the volatile nuclear state.

Mehsud's death, confirmed Friday by top Pakistani officials as well as the Taliban, creates a vacuum within the command structure of the militant organization and gives the Pakistani military a rare opportunity to weaken the group, former top Pakistani security and intelligence officials said.

"The loss for the Taliban is tremendous. He was their center of gravity," said former Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao. "His loss means there will be confusion and total demoralization within their ranks. This is a window of opportunity that Pakistan has to take advantage of."

Mehsud, believed to be 35, was killed in a missile strike by an unmanned U.S. aircraft early Wednesday, Pakistani officials said. One of Mehsud's two wives was also killed in the attack, which struck the home of Mehsud's father-in-law in South Waziristan, a volatile tribal area of Pakistan along the Afghan border that the Taliban has used as a base for years.

• "A Taliban Takedown", Wall Street Journal, 8/9/09.
• "Death of Pakistani Taliban leader Mahsud a major victory for U.S., Pakistan", LA Times, 8/8/09.

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Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud Suspected Killed

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - There is a strong likelihood that Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud was killed along with his wife and bodyguards in a missile attack two days ago, Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik told Reuters. "We suspect he was killed in the missile strike," Malik said on Friday. "We have some information, but we don't have material evidence to confirm it."

The United States has placed a $5 million reward on the head of Mehsud, an ally of al Qaeda widely regarded in Pakistan as Public Enemy No. 1. However, a U.S. defense official, speaking anonymously in Washington, said he had seen no indications that Mehsud had been killed in the strike.

The attack in a tribal region of northwest Pakistan was believed to have been carried out by a pilotless U.S. drone aircraft at around 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday. Neither the Pakistan nor U.S. governments confirm such attacks because of sensitivities over violation of Pakistan's territorial sovereignty.

Intelligence officials and relatives had confirmed earlier that Mehsud's second wife had been killed in the missile strike that targeted her father's home in an outlying settlement close to Makeen village in the South Waziristan tribal region. A relative of Mehsud's dead wife had initially said the Taliban leader wasn't present when the missiles struck, but rumors that he had either been wounded or killed refused to die down.

"Pakistani Taliban chief likely killed: minister", Reuters, 8/6/09.

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Commander of the Faithful

Meet the man who is Islamabad and Washington's new Public Enemy No. 1


Meet Baitullah Mehsud -- Pakistan's (the country considered the most dangerous in the world) biggest problem, and the man who has taken his country of 176 million to the center of the West's war on terror. Once described by a Pakistani general as a "soldier of peace," he now carries a 50 million rupee (about $615,300) bounty on his head from Pakistan and a $5 million one from the United States. Mehsud is earning the ire of the Pakistani military and Western policymakers alike as his movement destabilizes Pakistan, and the United States has destroyed several of his hide-outs with drone strikes in recent months. His now-famous 2008 press conference -- which came almost exactly a decade after Osama bin Laden called for the killing of Americans in a similar announcement just across the border in Khost, Afghanistan -- was an extraordinary piece of stagecraft even for a commander with a certain penchant for public flare.

To read the complete Foreign Affairs article, click here.

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