Feuding Kills a Top Militant, Pakistan Says
By ISMAIL KHAN and SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: August 8, 2009
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — 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.
Reports of Hakimullah Mehsud’s death could not be independently verified Saturday. If true, it would be the second serious loss for the Pakistani Taliban in just a week, after reports that Baitullah Mehsud had been killed in an American airstrike on Wednesday.
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.
Such a conflict could strengthen the role that Al Qaeda, which is also based in northwestern Pakistan, has in shaping the Taliban. Terrorism experts say the two groups have become deeply enmeshed in recent years, and it is expected that Al Qaeda, with its international reach and stream of Persian Gulf money, will have a prominent say over who will emerge as leader.
One Pakistani official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the fighting could create an opening for the Haqqanis, another group that has close ties to Al Qaeda, to intervene in resolving the leadership issue. Sirajuddin Haqqani is the Pakistani point man for the leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Muhammad Omar.
Officials in Washington on Saturday could not confirm the reports of Hakimullah Mehsud’s death, which were also carried by the Pakistani news network Dawn TV. But an American counterterrorism official said Saturday that the infighting could provide an opportunity for the United States and Pakistan to exploit the rivalries that are likely to emerge.
One of those opportunities, from the American point of view, would be the ability to focus its drone fleet on attacking militant leaders who were involved in the Afghan war or on Qaeda leaders planning attacks against the West. That has been a source of tension between the Americans and Pakistani officials, who had viewed the Mehsuds as the most urgent threat.
Details of the fighting were spotty on Saturday. The Pakistani interior minister, Rehman Malik, confirmed reports of a shootout at a meeting in South Waziristan and said that one of the commanders had been killed but did not name who it was.
“The infighting was between Waliur Rehman and Hakimullah Mehsud,” Mr. Malik told Reuters. “We have information that one of them has been killed. Who was killed we will be able to say later after confirming.”
Reports received by government officials on Saturday indicated that Mr. Mehsud and Mr. Rehman argued over succession at a tribal meeting at Sara Rogha in South Waziristan. A shootout ensued, killing Mr. Mehsud and wounding Mr. Rehman.
The alliance between Al Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban leaders goes back years in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, where local Pakistani militants helped ferry Arab operatives back and forth across the border from Afghanistan. More recently it has surfaced in the attacks on Pakistan’s major cities, far from the war-torn western tribal areas.
“They are interconnected,” said a Karachi counterterrorism official, referring to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. “They depend on each other.”
Clear evidence of that alliance, counterterrorism officials say, was the 2008 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. The bomber was an Afghan, trained by Taliban fighters in Mohmand Agency, part of the tribal area where the Mehsuds operate. But it was a Qaeda operative of Kenyan origin, Usama al-Kinni, who planned and financed the attack.
In an added complication with serious implications for security in Pakistan, the handlers and facilitators in that attack were from Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous and strategic province, which itself has been the target of a series of suicide bombings and commando-style attacks since March.
Police officials investigating those attacks said that a poisonous mix of Al Qaeda and local Punjabi groups were responsible, and that they were operating out of a sanctuary provided to them by Baitullah Mehsud. Specifically, investigators said they have unearthed a series of small cells, whose leaders report to a Qaeda operative of Egyptian origin, Sheik Issa.
One of the suspects Lahore investigators arrested, a would-be suicide bomber in his 20s, who claimed to have worked as a cook in Makeen, Baitullah Mehsud’s mountain base in South Waziristan, said the Arabs were clearly above the local Taliban fighters in hierarchy, and commanded gestures of respect from the most senior Taliban leaders wherever they went.
A Taliban fighter interviewed by telephone on Saturday from Waziristan said that Qaeda Arabs remained separate, with their own facilities, meetings and leaders, but that they shared resources — human and financial — when the need arose.
“When we need something, they take care of us, and when they need something, we help them,” explained the fighter.
Arabs, culturally and linguistically distinct in Pakistan, cannot travel freely and move only with the help of locals. The Taliban fighter said they preferred to be assisted by militants from Punjab, who, unlike Pashtuns, the ethnic group that makes up the Taliban, can move unnoticed in central Pakistan.
Pakistani security forces captured several militants of Saudi origin in May in Mohmand Agency, and the diary of one contained a warning: “Don’t speak in Arabic unless absolutely necessary. Speak Pashto whenever possible.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/world/asia/09pstan.html
