Baitullah Mehsud - Tag Search

A tribal militia, or lashkar, has battled Taliban fighters in Pakistan's northwest Kurram Agency this week, killing 37, ahead of a massive tribal gathering on Saturday in Peshawar to decide how best to deal with the Taliban.

The Pakisani army says about 60 militants have been killed, along with five soldiers. A number of sources say the Taliban is mounting heavy resistance: Dawn reports that fighters armed with rockets and heavy weapons are firing on troops from Sharwangi, a wooded area high in the mountains.

Still, the army appears to be taking territory from Hakimullah Mehsud's Taliban fighters. Al-Jazeera reports that the army captured a "stronghold" in the Raghzai region, south of Makeen, where Mehsud's fighters are believed to be headquartered. And The News reports that troops have seized the high ground near Razmak, a village just north of Makeen.

After months of buildup, the Pakistani army finally launched its South Waziristan offensive today. Details on the ground are still a little sketchy, since no journalists are traveling with the troops, so we're cobbling together a picture of the offensive from a number of sources.

The Pakistani army has fielded about 30,000 troops, backed up by air support and artillery, plus another 10,000 paramilitary troops, according to reports. It's much harder to guess the size of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan; various estimates put the TTP's strength anywhere between 10,000 and 25,000 men. There are already reports of the TTP using artillery against advancing Pakistani troops.

Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a spokesman for the Pakistani army, says there are also about 1,500 foreign fighters working with the TTP. Most of them are from Central Asia, Abbas says, with a handful of Arabs in leadership roles.

Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud may be dead, according to reports citing anonymous American officials that have emerged over the weekend.

Reuters broke the news Friday, with reporter Adam Entous citing a "defense official" and a "counterterrorism" official saying Mehsud's death is a "distinct possibility." Both officials said that Mehsud "was believed to have been shot weeks ago during a clash with a rival group in South Waziristan." A follow-up story by AFP says that officials believe Mehsud's death may be the result of factional infighting among the Tehriq-i-Taliban, the organization Mehsud was running. But Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal finds reasons to doubt the reports.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, is testifying on Capitol Hill this morning; we'll be live-blogging the hearing.

According to prepared testimony released before the hearing, the U.S. plans to withdraw about 4,000 troops from Iraq next month. That's a small fraction of the 124,000 troops currently in Iraq, of course.

Odierno will also talk about the reduced number of contractors working in Iraq: There are 115,000 contractors working there now, down from 149,000 in January. Al-Arabiya has more on what to expect from his testimony.

Also today, a sad and bizarre story out of Afghanistan: A girl was killed by a box of leaflets dropped by a British plane. The box should have broken up in mid-air, according to British officials.

I'm curious: Why is anyone dropping leaflets on a country that is largely illiterate? What's the point?

The Pakistani Taliban tried again this week, holding another shoora to elect a successor to Baitullah Mehsud (the first one ended in gunfire). Apparently Hakimullah Mehsud, a distant relative of Baitullah's and his former second-in-command, is taking over the Tehrik-e-Taliban.

(Hakimullah was allegedly killed by the gunfire at the first shoora, so obviously those reports were false.)

This comes 72 hours after Maulvi Faqir Mohammad said he was taking over the group on a temporary basis. Mohammad himself confirmed Hakimullah's appointment.

The death toll from yesterday's drone strike in North Waziristan is up to 21, including at least six children, according to a tribal elder in the region.

Al-Jazeera reports that yesterday's bombing was the third in three weeks. That's an accelerated pace: The CIA has conducted roughly two attacks every three weeks for the last 18 months. It could just be a coincidence. Or it could mean the CIA, encouraged by Baitullah Mehsud's assassination, is doubling down on its drone tactics.

Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, the Pakistani Taliban's deputy leader, says he will take over the group temporarily.

"I was the deputy leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban, and now, since Baitullah Mehsud is unable to perform as head of the organization due to health reasons and unable to come on the foreground, I am assuming the role of acting chief," Mr. Mohammad told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.

The "health reason," of course, is death, though Mohammad insists Mehsud is simply "ill."

Mohammad said this is only a temporary gig for him; the shoora council still hasn't made a final decision about who will permanently succeed Mehsud. Not surprising, considering reports that the council ended in gunfire earlier this month.

Maulvi Umar, the Taliban spokesman who was captured this morning, told his interrogators that Baitullah Mehsud is in fact dead.

I think that's been obvious for at least a week now -- if Mehsud was still alive, he would have made a public statement -- but Umar's confirmation should put to rest the rumors that he survived the CIA attack.

The Pakistani military captured Maulvi Umar, a spokesman for Baitullah Mehsud, in an operation near the Afghan border. As the AP notes, Umar's capture suggests there is still a lot of disarray in the Pakistani Taliban after Mehsud's assassination earlier this month.

This story also leaves me with a question: How does one get to be a Taliban spokesman? Are there qualifications for this job? Is it a disappointment, after pledging yourself to a life of jihad, to spend your days calling Reuters reporters to insist that your boss has not, in fact, been killed?

Dawn has a report this morning about fighting between two groups of Taliban fighters, one allied with Baitullah Mehsud, the other with Turkistan Bhittani, a rival of Mehsud's who now runs a "pro-government" Taliban faction. Juan Cole compares Bhittani to the Sunni Awakening militias in Iraq.

According to sources, militants loyal to Baitullah attacked Bhittani's men in Soor Gher area and torched 33 houses. They said seven supporters of Bhittani were killed and 15 were captured.

Meanwhile, Bhittani's men claimed to have killed over 50 attackers. According to AP, at least 70 fighters were killed in the clash.

This battle apparently happened shortly before the Pakistani army's helicopter attack on a Mehsud camp that we mentioned in our morning roundup.

Iran wants the IAEA to approve a ban on military strikes against nuclear facilities, according to The Associated Press. The IAEA already has a resolution about attacks on "nuclear installations devoted to peaceful purposes." But Iran is pushing for a more general-purpose resolution that deletes the "peaceful purposes" language.

The proposal would be considered by the IAEA's 150 member nations during an annual conference next month.

Iran says the proposal is based on "principles" -- though it is obviously linked to a threatened Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

11:59 a.m.: Just wanted to quickly post Holbrooke's comments about the assassination of Baitullah Mehsud.

The end of Baitullah Mehsud is a very big deal. We don't know how it's going to play out, but the reports you've been reading in the press about disarray among his people, other factions maneuvering... Al-Qaeda has to decide what to do. Mehsud was sort of like an independent subsidiary of Al-Qaeda focused on Pakistan... everyone is thrashing around, there are unconfirmed reports of a shootout during a leadership meeting. This is very good news for all of us.

11:49 a.m.: Holbrooke's done talking, taking some questions from a scrum of reporters. Never really got an answer to the question about how the war is in U.S. national interests -- hoping to ask.

11:35 a.m.: Holbrooke on the U.S. political context:

We all feel the impatience and the pressure of the American public. We have spent a great deal of time talking to members of Congress and reaching out to groups... to talk about this... and so far, it seems to me that people understand how critically important this is.

11:24 a.m.: Rubin, the NYU professor, talking about differences between the U.S. occupation and the Soviet occupation:

The situation is quite different... the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was condemned by virtually the entire world community. It was one of the major factors isolating the Soviet Union. The operation in Afghanistan... is perhaps the most fully multilateral operation in history.

11:18 a.m.: We made it over an hour without a 9/11 reference, but Holbrooke just brought it up talking about the U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

I think the troops really do... they don't love it out there... they know why they're there. They know exactly... they understand the causal connection between their presence and 9/11.

11:13 a.m.: Holbrooke says the U.S. has relaxed its rules for curfews and travel in Afghanistan to encourage employees at the embassy to travel and "get outside the wire."

11:06 a.m.: Holbrooke acknowledges that Afghanistan's security forces are a vexing problem.

Biggest single problem is going to be strengthening the police... the police, in any analysis of guerrilla wars, counterinsurgencies... you can't do it unless the police take over a key role in security after the military forces do the clearing.

10:55 a.m.: This remark from Holbrooke seems aimed at the increasingly-vocal critics of the Obama administration's strategy:

We know the difference between input and output. What you're seeing here is input: agriculture, rule of law, counter-narcotics... the payoff is still to come. And we understand that... we're not here today to tell you we're winning or losing.

10:51 a.m.: Holbrooke on Karzai's decision to delay Afghan elections, originally scheduled for April:

The decision to ignore the constitution and delay the election has caused a re-orientation of priorities for the first six months of this administration.

10:48 a.m.: Jane Marriott, a British diplomat working with Holbrooke, on what the "international community" wants to see in the Aug. 20 Afghan elections:

We in the U.S. and the international community want to see two things... capitalize on the policy debate... we want to see that momentum capitalized on, built on, the successful incumbent setting out his or her vision for Afghanistan. The second thing we want to see is that these elections continue to build up the electoral institutions and civil society mechanisms within Afghanistan.

The British security contractor accused of killing two colleagues made a brief appearance in an Iraqi court yesterday. Danny Fitzsimons could be the first Westerner to face murder charges in Iraq since the status-of-forces agreement removed immunity for foreign contractors. The judge requested autopsy photos of the victims during today's hearing.

The two victims -- one British, one Australian -- both worked with Fitzsimons at the ArmorGroup Iraq firm.

Following up on Gregg's post, the New York Times confirmed late on Saturday that a distant relative of the late Baitullah Mehsud who was angling to replace him was shot dead in a spat with a rival Taliban leader.

This doesn't really help the Taliban sell itself as a credible alternative to the Pakistani government.

Rivals for the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban are thought to have been involved in a gun battle at a meeting in South Waziristan over succession claims.

Reports on Saturday said that both Hakimullah Meshud and Wali ur Rehman, two high-level Taliban commanders, had been killed in the shooting, but there was no independent confirmation of their deaths.

The Taliban insists that no gun battle took place. Dawn is reporting that only one of the commanders -- Hakimullah -- was killed in the shooting. You'll remember that he's the commander who claimed this morning that Baitullah Mehsud is still alive.

Kafayatullah, an aide to Baitullah Mehsud, confirmed to Dawn yesterday that the Taliban commander was dead. But now another Mehsud aide claims he's still alive.

A senior commander in the Pakistani Taliban has dismissed as "ridiculous" reports that the group's leader was killed in a US missile attack in South Waziristan.

Hakimullah told reporters by telephone on Saturday that Baitullah Mehsud, who has a $5m bounty on his head, was in good health and would soon appear in the media to prove that he was alive.

Hakimullah has no evidence that Mehsud is still alive -- though there's also no hard evidence that he's dead. Dawn doesn't seem to believe Hakimullah's claim: The top story on the newspaper's Web site is headlined, simply, Baitullah Mehsud is dead.

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat speculates that Hakimullah's claim could be a "tactical maneuver" to delay the selection of a new Taliban leader. Hakimullah is believed to be one of the contenders for that job.

Most of you by now have heard the outlines of Brennan's speech, which you can read in its entirety here on The Majlis. Brennan put a nail in the coffin of the "global war on terror," or at least that particular terminology, and gave probably the most thorough outline of President Obama's holistic counterterrorism views, which we got a taste of throughout the 2008 presidential campaign and in Obama's much-ballyhooed Cairo speech.

So knowing the gist of Brennan's comments, let's start with some caveats:

Pakistani Taliban leaders are holding a shoora (meeting) to select the new leader of Tariq-i-Taliban. Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai said earlier today that they're probably meeting via satellite phone because it's too dangerous to meet in one location (h/t Saba Imtiaz). Ancient tradition, modern technology...

By the way, following up on my "counterproductive" post from earlier, this quote from the New York Times is exactly the kind of thinking that worries me (emphasis mine).

"This is a major setback for the Taliban in Pakistan," said Mahmood Shah, a former security chief in the tribal region. "He was the leader. The successors are all nonentities."

This is from a former official, of course, and not the official position of the Pakistani government, but I wonder how widespread this view is in Pakistan.

I'm worried that Foreign Policy's Annie Lowrey is right -- that Mehsud's assassination is going to boost support in Washington for further drone strikes.

One initial thought: If Mehsud is dead (and keep in mind, it's been falsely reported before), it counts most as a major victory for U.S. proponents of drone strikes. The argument against drone strikes is that they are too bloody, too ineffective, and too divisive among local populations and governments.

But if the U.S. military can kill such looming figures in the radical world without sacrificing a single troop, or ground efforts, or too many civilians? We're looking at a very different vision of counter-terrorism and war.

Her language -- "too many civilians" -- is horribly callous and detached. None of "our" people are in danger, so we should continue the drone strikes.

The danger is very real for Pakistani civilians, of course: U.S. drone strikes have killed more than 600 civilians, according to statistics from both Pakistani intelligence and the Brookings Institution. The civilian-to-militant death ratio is at least 10:1, possibly much higher.

Is that an acceptable number of civilian deaths for Foreign Policy? How many is too many?