Taliban Leader in Pakistan Was Killed, His Aides Say
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH, ISMAIL KHAN and SABRINA TAVERNISE
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/world/asia/08pstan.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rssBaitullah Mehsud, the leader of Pakistan’s fearsome Taliban militia, was killed Wednesday in a C.I.A. missile strike, two Taliban fighters said Friday, adding that a meeting was taking place to determine which of his top deputies would replace him. But American officials have not yet confirmed his death, and Pakistani leaders emphasized they did not have irrefutable evidence of the killing.
“A lot of evidence is pouring in from the area that he’s dead,” said Rehman Malik, the Pakistani interior minister, “But I’m unable to confirm until there is solid evidence.”
The Taliban fighters in northwest Pakistan, a senior leader reached by telephone in Orakzai Agency and a local Taliban fighter in Waziristan, said that Mr. Mehsud had been receiving kidney treatment from a relative in his father-in-law’s house in the remote village of Zanghara when the building was struck by missiles fired from a remotely-piloted drone.
The attack took place at 1 a.m. Wednesday. Zanghara, in South Waziristan, has been hit repeatedly by American drone attacks, the fighters said.
American officials said on Thursday that because that area was so remote, and the military has no access there, confirming the death could take weeks. It may never be possible to perform DNA tests, the officials said.
The American government made killing or capturing Mr. Mehsud one of its top priorities this year, and Pakistan considered him its No. 1 enemy because of the widespread violence he unleashed across the country. His death would provide a boost for forces battling a resurgent Taliban at a time when President Obama is trying to marshal support for a coordinated antiterrorism strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“Taking Mehsud off the battlefield would be a major victory,” an American counterterrorism official said Thursday. “The world, and certainly Pakistan, would be a safer place without him.”
Mr. Mehsud, a diabetic, had been sick for some time and had come to his father-in-law’s house for a drip treatment by the relative, who was a medical practitioner, the Taliban fighters said.
The fighters refused to disclose the location of the meeting called to replace him, saying they feared another drone strike. A Pakistani television channel, Express News 24/7, reported that Mr. Mehsud’s top deputies were meeting in the Makeen area of South Waziristan in the mountains of western Pakistan. The broadcaster said Mr. Mehsud’s father-in-law attended the meeting in his place.
Three names have been put forward for Mr. Mehsud’s successor, Pakistani security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. They include his deputy, Hakimullah Mehsud, a young, brash and aggressive commander who was until recently the Taliban’s commander for the Khyber tribal region and credited with the disruption of NATO supplies to Afghanistan.
Another, Waliur Rehman, is Mr. Mehsud’s relative. He is the most likely to succeed him, according to one Pakistani security official.
The third is a man identified by the officials as Azmatullah Mehsud. The decision, the official said, will be influenced by another militant group in Waziristan with close ties to the Afghan militant leader, Mullah Omar. “His death leaves behind a huge vacuum,” one of the officials said.
In the immediate aftermath of the drone strike on Wednesday, residents of the village where the attack took place said that one of Mr. Mehsud’s wives had been killed and that several children had been wounded. Reports that Mr. Mehsud himself had died began to circulate on Thursday. Throughout Friday morning, Pakistani security officials said they had become increasingly certain that the reports of Mr. Mehsud’s death were accurate.
Pakistani officials said Mr. Mehsud was with his wife in the upper portion of a house when it was hit, though his supporters did not confirm that version of events.
The Taliban, consistent with its standard procedure, threw an immediate cordon around the site of the missile strike, but the cordon was about three miles, wider than usual. No one was allowed either to enter or leave the area, Pakistani officials said. One security official cited conversations with unidentified sources in the area of the strike who said that Mr. Mehsud had been buried secretly and that associates of Mr. Mehsud had confirmed his death. The security official said he believed the funeral had been held in Nargosai, a village in the Zanghara area.
Mr. Mehsud and his military network have been blamed for a wave of violence across Pakistan, including the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister.
In March, he took responsibility in phone calls to news agencies for a brazen armed attack on a police academy in Punjab that killed at least eight police officers and wounded more than 100 others. He is also suspected of sending fighters across the border into Afghanistan.
The militant leader seemed to take pleasure in taunting Pakistani officials and holding news conferences to demonstrate the inability of officials in Islamabad to rein in his network.
Mr. Mehsud had pledged to attack Washington, but American officials did not take the threat seriously. Still, his network is believed to have close ties to leaders of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
The C.I.A. had sought Mr. Mehsud this year partly at the urging of Pakistan’s civilian government. Pakistani officials, including President Asif Ali Zardari, had complained that the campaign of missile strikes by American drones was killing only militants responsible for killing American troops in Afghanistan.
Since then, the State Department has offered a reward of as much as $5 million for Mr. Mehsud. The C.I.A. also began trying to track his daily movements, and American intelligence officials believed on several occasions that they almost killed him.
Reports of Mr. Mehsud’s death have surfaced before, with varying degrees of certainty. In September 2008, a newspaper reported that Mr. Mehsud had died of kidney failure. Some government officials endorsed these reports, but weeks later, Mr. Mehsud resurfaced, hosting a feast to celebrate his second marriage.
Although President Obama has distanced himself from many of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies, he has embraced and even expanded the C.I.A.’s covert campaign in Pakistan using Predator and Reaper drones.
Pakistani officials publicly condemn these attacks, but they have privately given their blessing to the strikes in the country’s tribal areas, in part because the missile attacks increasingly have focused on Mr. Mehsud’s network.
Unlike other militant factions in Western Pakistan, which focus their fight on American forces in neighboring Afghanistan, Mr. Mehsud turned that war inward on the Pakistani state. Since late 2007, his suicide bombers have hit in Pakistan’s largest cities, terrifying Pakistani society in places far from where the war is being fought.
He is believed to have as many as 20,000 fighters spread throughout war-torn western Pakistan, with his center of operations located in South Waziristan, the area where the Mehsud tribe lives. In an interview in 2008 to local Pakistani journalists, Mr. Mehsud said his main fight was against the United States in Afghanistan, and he justified the use of suicide bombers in that fight.
Suicide bombers, he said in the televised interview, “are our atomic weapons. The U.S. has its own, that do not distinguish between civilians and enemy when they use them. Our suicide bombers penetrate to the intended targets and explode themselves.”
Mr. Mehsud boasted of attacks against Pakistani targets, including the one on the police training academy in Lahore, in central Pakistan, this spring. The Pakistani government accused him of assassinating Ms. Bhutto, but he denied responsibility.
He has concluded several peace agreements with the Pakistani government over the past five years, but used the lull in fighting to expand his area of control instead of laying down weapons under the terms of the agreements.
He is known to have had differences with other militants in the area. For example, he advocated the use of Uzbek fighters from Central Asia, known for their brutality and largely loathed by local residents, while other militant groups sought to ban them.
The news that Mr. Mehsud might have been killed was first reported on the Web site of ABC News.
One immediate effect of Mr. Mehsud’s death, if confirmed, could be a reduction of lingering mistrust between the intelligence services of the United States and Pakistan. The two sides have long harbored suspicions about each other’s motives, and some officials in Islamabad once suspected that the C.I.A. might not be trying to kill Mr. Mehsud because he was a C.I.A. asset.
According to other conspiracy theories in Pakistan, Mr. Mehsud was an agent of India’s intelligence service — another reason the United States might not be targeting his network.
The situation also raises questions about whether Pakistan will follow through on its stated intention to carry out a ground offensive in South Waziristan to defeat the militant leader’s potent militia there.
Some Pakistani military and intelligence officials have said in recent interviews that if Mr. Mehsud were to be killed by a missile or a bomb, the government should consider simply declaring victory over the nation’s public enemy No. 1 and negotiate a truce with the remaining fighters.
American officials fear such a choice, given the results of other failed negotiated settlements with militants in the lawless tribal areas, as well as in Swat. In these cases, militants regrouped as emerged even stronger than before, often expanding their areas of control.
U.S. Official: 'Strong Indications' Pakistani Taliban Leader Baitullah Mehsud Is Dead
U.S., Pakistani Officials Await DNA Tests for '100 Percent' Confirmation
By MARTHA RADDATZ, GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS and NICK SCHIFRIN
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/International/story?id=8270116&page=1"There is strong indication" that Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a CIA drone strike that targeted a house Wednesday, a senior administration official told ABC News.
U.S. and Pakistani officials believe that a strike in South Waziristan yesterday "very likely" killed Mehsud. U.S. officials said they had visual and other "indicators" that it was Mehsud, and that there is a 95 percent chance that he is among the dead. Pakistani officials are trying to collect physical evidence to be certain.
Baitullah Mehsud is enemy number one in Pakistan. He is believed to be behind some of the most spectacular attacks in that country, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007 and suicide bombings in Lahore. U.S. officials consider him a grave threat and the nexus of all terror groups in Pakistan. In fact, the U.S. had a $5 million reward on his head.
If Mehsud's death is confirmed, the Obama administration would have hit one of the most significant terrorist targets in years. Obama's head of counterterrorism, John Brennan, said the President has made the pursuit of terrorists a priority.
"Over the past six months, we have presented President Obama with a number of actions and initiatives against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups," said John Brennan, Obama's head of counterterrorism.
"Not only has he approved these operations, he has encouraged us to be even more aggressive, even more proactive, and even more innovative, to seek out new ways and new opportunities for taking down these terrorists before they can kill more innocent men, women and children," said Brennan.
The missile attack is also said to have killed at least three people, and Mehsud's second wife is thought by U.S. and Pakistani officials to be among them.
Mehsud's network is based in the remote region of South Waziristan, in northwest Pakistan, where the Pakistani army has little control and which the Taliban and senior members of al Qaeda consider a stronghold. The U.S. and Pakistan have been trying to track Mehsud for months.
Makeen, where Wednesday's strike took place, is Mehsud's birthplace and a town he is said to occasionally visit.
Increased Attacks Have Targeted Taliban Leader
The latest U.S. attack is part of the intensified efforts in the region to target and kill top Taliban leaders. The strike was at least the 29th by an unmanned American drone this year, according to an ABC News tally. Nine of the last 10 drone strikes, since June 23, have targeted Mehsud and his network.
Last month, a CIA drone strike nearly killed Mehsud when it hit a funeral he was attending. Instead, it killed 65 other people.
The Pakistani government has publicly criticized the U.S. attacks, but privately officials acknowledge that if the attacks do not kill civilians, they are helpful in defeating an insurgency embedded in some of the world's least hospitable terrain.
Pakistan has also increased its attacks by fighter jets in the region but has steered clear of sending ground troops.
In an interview with al Jazeera in January 2008, Mehsud said he was fighting a "defensive" jihad against the West.
"Our main aim is to finish Britain, the United States and to crush the pride of the non-Muslims," he told al Jazeera at the time. "We pray to God to give us the ability to destroy the White House, New York and London. And we have trust in God. Very soon, we will be witnessing jihad's miracles."
For Pakistan, the hit could have a profound effect. New commanders would undoubtedly take Mehsud's place, if he is confirmed dead. However, his death would give Pakistan's leaders confidence that the Taliban are not all-powerful and that the leadership can be decapitated.
The blow could also help push Pakistan's people to confront the Taliban in their country -- which the U.S. has said is crucial in defeating the terrorist network in the nuclear-armed nation.
Sal: This guy was in the terror top six - the other five being Al Qaeda's Usama Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, the Afghan Taliban's Mullah Omar, Hezbollah's Nasrallah, and Hamas' Syrian-based leader Khaled Meshaal. Here's hoping the other five follow him into Paradise soon.