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Baitullah Mehsud's growing influence in South Waziristan led terrorism analysts to label him as South Waziristan's unofficial Amir. In December 2007, Mehsud was declared the first leader of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. The Pakistanis had come to describe the Pakistani Taliban chief as public security threat number one.Baitullah's 20 thousand strong lashkar (army) was very well organised. He had divided it into various units and assigned particular tasks to each unit. One of the units had been tasked to kill people who were pro-government and pro-US or who supported the US occupation of Afghanistan. The last person to be killed was Malik Arsallah Khan, chief of the Khuniakhel Wazir tribe, who was killed on 22 February in Wana (South Waziristan). In an interview, Baitullah extolled the virtues of jihad against foreigners and advocated taking the fight to the U.S. and Britain. After the siege of Lal Masjid, Baitullah turned his forces against the Pakistani state. He turned the battle inward, making it his mission to target the Pakistani establishment rather than Afghanistan. He mostly attacked Pakistani security personnel. He once kidnapped some 200 policemen and released them only after obtaining the freedom of his own men. While Al Qaeda and Taliban want to retake control of Afghanistan, the homegrown Pakistan-Taliban controlled by warlords like Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan and Fazlullah in the Swat Valley developed a parallel objective in the last two years to establish hegemony over Islamabad. No wonder, therefore, the removal of Beitullah was both in the interest of Pakistan and the US.
If Fazlullah of Swat, who was reportedly seriously injured in a military air attack, is also eliminated, the Pakistan Army will be able to turn the tables against the outfits having an eye on the seat of power in Islamabad and controlling the country's nuclear arsenal.
Mehsud was a talented and resourceful warlord, well-entrenched and well armed and hard to be pinned down militarily and politically. The gap created by his departure from the scene is bound to be badly felt by his followers. However, a new leadership may emerge on the scene to take up his jihadi mission.
As it is, as many as 22 Al-Qaeda and Taliban seniors on the list of high-value targets of the US have been killed in drone attacks since 2004. But this has not demoralised the insurgents. Baitullah's predecessors such as Nek Mohammed and Dadullah were successfully targeted, but their death has not changed the situation on the ground for the better. Mehsud leaves behind a strong network of deputies still committed to the fight and a force of between 10,000 and 20,000 fighters. Qari Hussain, one of Mehsud's lieutenants, is the main overseer of the suicide bomb campaign and other high-profile attacks inside Pakistan. The risk is that he could mastermind devastating revenge attacks for Mehsud's death.
There is, therefore, no reason to believe that Mehsud's death is going to be any different. US officials have admitted that Mehsud's death might not cripple the Taliban in Pakistan since this fundamentalist outfit is reported to have thousands of people on its rolls. It would, however, be a psychological setback, if not a decisive blow to the Pakistani Taliban in the near term.
Speculating about what impact the death of Baitullah might have on the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan, The Times of London said it would certainly have almost none on the battle next door for control of Afghanistan. The report said Baitullah had forged alliances of convenience with the Al Qaeda and the powerful Haqqani network fighting in eastern Afghanistan and his goal was the destabilisation and takeover of Pakistan. This brought him in direct confrontation with the Pakistan Army which now having cleared the Swat Valley of insurgents could contemplate taking the ground fight to South Waziristan, a lawless tribal area divided between Baitullah's forces, which hold the east, and a coalition of Taliban allies who operate in the west as a base for their operations fighting the US-led coalition and Afghan troops across the border.
This could bring the Pakistani Army perilously close to battle with the Afghan Taliban, something they are loathing to do. The terrain there is much more hostile than Swat, perfect for guerilla warfare and the Army would be up against far more battlehardened fighters, including Uzbeks and Chechens.
The Pakistan Government has received reports that shooting broke out between two rivals for the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban, and one of them may have been killed. Pakistani news channels carried unconfirmed reports on Aug 8 that Hakimullah Mehsud, one of the movement's most powerful commanders and likely to succeed him, had been killed at a Shura or Council meeting, held to decide who would succeed the slain leader. |
