Yeah that's why TTP was revived and let back in multiple times since.
Of all the drone attack killings in Pakitsan which numbered in the thousands, only a handful were ever traced back to terror activities, the rest were all innocent civilians killed with such brutality as "double taps" i.e. the brave drone operator with full approval and gratitude of GHQ sepoys will light up a wedding procession, and when nearby people came to rescue, he would light up the vicinity to maximize the killing of innocent civilians. Hence the massive backlash against the sepoys in FATA, where the sepoys are being killed off to this day.
Drone strikes occurred on the basis of INTEL received from informants on the ground in areas where militants had taken refuge. Some of the strikes occurred on wrong gatherings due to faulty INTEL received from informants on the ground (absolutely regrettable). But many of the strikes were on the mark and numerous terrorists were taken out including
Baitullah Mehsud,
Hakimullah Mehsud, and
Khalid Mehsud.
War On Terror was not an easy fight to begin with (
even George W. Bush was not under this illusion). Taliban groups and their allies including
Al-Qaeda Network were established by the so-called Mujahideen who learned how to fight a guerrilla war in Afghanistan. These militants do not wear a uniform, and many of them chose to flee and hide in tribal settlements inside Pakistan when NATO came after them in Afghanistan. Bush also pointed out that this will happen.
Safe-Haven Viability
This section traces the extent to which the drone campaign led al-Qaeda to reduce its reliance on its safe haven in the FATA. The analysis centers on any changes in al-Qaeda’s willingness to absorb or train personnel, as well as to house senior leaders and their families in the region. This includes authorizations for and steps toward the diversion of incoming personnel, relocation of select operational components, and complete evacuation from the area. It also includes any assessments by al-Qaeda leaders of an increase or decrease in local support or sympathy after U.S. drone strikes.
There are numerous assessments from senior leaders that suggest al-Qaeda was comfortable in the tribal regions from 2007 through 2009.174 In October 2007, al Zawahiri wrote to the emir of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb that “the circumstances of your brothers in Afghanistan and neighboring countries is steadily improving.”175 In December 2007, bin Laden also attempted to enlist help to convince Iran to release his family members, asking a relative, “[P]lease try to facilitate their release in the Waziristan region where we can be sure of their safety among the tribes there … . [W]e want them to be released to Waziristan only.” This request reflects the senior leader’s confidence in the group’s safe haven.176
This trend continued throughout 2008 and 2009. According to one journalistic account, by 2008, “all seven of Pakistan’s tribal agencies were seen to be under the influence of Al-Qaeda-inspired militants.”177 In a March 2008 letter, Attiya reported to bin Laden, “The field here in Waziristan and Afghanistan is generally OK, Allah willing, it has positive and negative factors, but the good factors predominate and are apparent, praise be to Allah.”178 Sheikh Saeed concurred: “Regarding the security where we are, praise be to Allah, the circumstances are good,” he wrote to bin Laden in April 2008.179 In March 2009, a letter from a senior al-Qaeda leader also reflected that the “circumstances” in Pakistan’s tribal areas had gone from “good to better.”180 Accordingly, in June 2009 Attiya reported that several “mid-level” members had arrived from Iran, also noting that al-Qaeda operatives were “ready to receive” bin Laden’s family members.181 And, in September 2009, another senior al-Qaeda operative concluded that both the “field” in Waziristan and the overall “security situation” were favorable.182
In early 2010, al-Qaeda began to shift in its assessment of the FATA’s suitability to absorb incoming personnel. After a group of al-Qaeda prisoners had reached Attiya’s location, in June 2010, he expressed concerns over the safety of future released operatives “due to our security circumstances (the bombings that have exhausted us)!!”183 Bin Laden still refused to redirect all incoming personnel from the FATA, referring to new cadres as a “lifeline and replacement for those we have lost” and recommending simply shortening the orientation period for new personnel in Waziristan.184 Bin Laden seemed to apply different standards for the group’s experienced operatives arriving from Iran, though, instructing Attiya in August 2010 to keep them “in a safe place outside the bombing areas.”185
Around the same time in early to mid-2010, al-Qaeda also considered relocating operational components from the FATA.186 In January 2010, Sheikh Saeed unsuccessfully recommended that the group organize an external operations branch in Yemen, as the “field where we are [in Pakistan] is not appropriate for broad external work.”187 Similarly, in the spring of 2010 Younis wrote to bin Laden in his operational plan that “the field here [in Waziristan] has become like a trap, the killing has tormented the cadres and leaders … . [N]o step will be fruitful so long as this work is here.”188 Al-Qaeda’s leadership would later authorize the travel of Younis and his cadres to train in Iran rather than Pakistan, with Sheikh Saeed sending money with a facilitator to arrange for a suitable location and Attiya expediting Younis’ travel in the spring and fall of 2010, respectively.189
The relocation was not limited to Younis and his acolytes. In June 2010, Attiya cited the “bombing” specifically and proposed
leaving Waziristan, at least partially but still substantially. For example, we can send some of the brothers with their families inside Pakistan like Sind, its suburbs and villages, as well as Baluchistan, and so forth … and perhaps we can send a number of the brothers from the military battalions if they arrive after the [fighting] season to their brothers in Nuristan.”
190
In July 2010, a frustrated bin Laden directed Attiya “to arrange safe places far from the reach of the airplanes’ photography and bombing” for leaders and specialized cadres.191
These discussions and authorizations led to more concrete action by the fall of 2010. In response to the “bombings,” in October 2010 Attiya described how he had begun relocating operatives to Kunar and Nuristan in Afghanistan, recommending to bin Laden that al-Qaeda operatives could also be sent to “liberated” areas in Ghazni and Zabul provinces.192 Later that month bin Laden gave his subordinates some instruction on their movement: “With respect to the brothers generally in Waziristan, those who are able to hide and take the required security precautions in the region should stay in it, and with respect to those for whom hiding and taking the required precautions is difficult, the other option is for them to go to Nuristan in Kunar, Ghazni, or Zabul.”193 In November, Attiya wrote that he was complying with these orders.194 Bin Laden conveyed a similar sentiment in a December message to al Zawahiri, telling his second in command to impress upon Attiya “the necessity of expediting the evacuation of the brothers whose capabilities do not allow them to hide in the region.”195
It was not until January 2011 that bin Laden authorized the complete evacuation from the FATA. After receiving continued reports about the extent of the drone campaign, as well as annotated excerpts from Bob Woodward’s book Obama’s Wars, which described U.S. surveillance and drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal regions, bin Laden wrote to Attiya:
It appears to me that the region has been very heavily revealed and that leaving the region completely is the best solution … [O]nce we disperse in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the enemy will lose the ability to focus the surveillance on our movements and place us under the photography and monitoring.
196
Bin Laden gave similar guidance to his two sons Uthman and Muhammad, informing them that “the reason for your leaving to Peshawar is that there are general instructions for the brothers to leave Waziristan, as it is clear that the region has very much been discovered.”197
Attiya did his best to honor bin Laden’s orders and instructions. “With respect to exiting from the region, it is still delayed in terms of the men, but a number of the families have been evacuated, and other families are being evacuated now,” Attiya told bin Laden in January 2011.198 Attiya reported that some men were resisting orders to relocate, asserting that they “preferred death to being arrested.”199 Bin Laden would take issue with this sentiment, writing to Attiya less than a week before the raid on his compound, “American technology and its advanced devices cannot arrest a mujahid if he does not commit a security error.”200 Bin Laden went on to instruct Attiya to move some cadres to suburbs of Pakistani cities, provided that the security situation in Waziristan had not changed.201
As far as how drone strikes may have affected local sympathy and support for al-Qaeda, the group never concluded that there had been an increase in support as drone strikes became more frequent. This is not to say that U.S. drone strikes did not generate resentment and outrage in Pakistan. As early as 2006, for example, an estimated 10,000 Pakistanis demonstrated in Karachi to protest U.S. strikes, just as nearly 8,000 protested in the FATA.202 In early 2011, a senior tribesman in North Waziristan similarly declared, “[W]e will show to the world how to take revenge for the atrocities on our tribesmen,” after a U.S. drone strike.203
Al-Qaeda either did not observe this local outrage or was otherwise unable to channel it into material support and refuge for its cadres. Instead, both primary and secondary accounts reflect the loss of the group’s popular support in the Pakistani tribal areas as the result of U.S. drone strikes. In guidance written for affiliates, bin Laden warned against “giving the tribes more than they can handle,” telling them that “our Waziri brothers are exhausted and have said explicitly that ‘the aerial bombing has exhausted us.’”204 As one secondary account describes, “Pashtun codes of honor and protection had been eroded by aerial intimidation,” just as another mentioned that al-Qaeda militants would “bemoan the local Pashtun unwillingness to associate with militants who have become lightning rods for drone strikes.”205
The evidence presented in this section has demonstrated that drone strikes led al-Qaeda to reduce its reliance on, and eventually begin evacuating, its safe haven in the FATA. Although al-Qaeda was comfortable in the FATA through much of 2009, by 2010 it began to divert incoming personnel from the area, relocating operational components to other regions, and, eventually, dispersing. Rather than making al-Qaeda feel safer in the FATA by increasing local sympathy and assistance, drone strikes caused al-Qaeda to view locals as increasingly suspect and more hesitant to harbor the group’s operatives.
At a time when the United States seems likely to rely heavily on targeted killing as an instrument of counter-terrorism, scholars, policymakers, and other analysts remain divided over its utility. These disagreements have been especially pronounced in scholarship and commentary regarding the...
tnsr.org
Khan is mistaken to assume that every issue has humanitarian solution. You cannot reason with brainwashed terrorists
as time has shown before and continues to show in the present.
I showed it in another thread.
Hahahahahahaha
NATO? You mean this help?
An ape with a computer could show you the massive civilian casualties of drones. But you're a faujeet so....guess you can't.
View attachment 928758
Posting American sources when it suits you? Got it.
Many of terrorists were also married and had families in case you are wondering.
Many of those who sheltered terrorists were also married and had families in case you are wondering.
An ape does not understand how to fact-check or compare information.
Data from another source for reference:
Tracking the United States's drone strikes and other operations in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya.
www.newamerica.org
This is latest and most up-to-date compilation.
And see my response above your statement for more information. Al-Qaeda militants had taken refuge in FATA but drone strikes compelled survivors to move to other locations.
Drone strikes made it possible to kill militants swiftly and easily when discovered in a location.
The CIA was arming the TTP you are talking about. You really think a bunch of cavemen had access knowledge such as the precise info on our AWAC location or carry equipment that jams our gunship's targeting systems? Lol...
Bro, which world do you live in? A bunch of cavemen? Do you think that the so-called Mujahideen who learned to fight a guerilla war in Afghanistan simply disappeared from the region? No. Leaders involved in this movement had created different groups which fought each other for spoils and land grabs in Afghanistan after defeating Soviet Union and its allies in the country. From among these groups, Tehreek-e-Taliban Afghanistan (TTA) was most successful and Pakistan supported this group. However, TTA also established relations with the
Al-Qaeda Network. These groups had many supporters in Pakistan as well who banded together to create TTP in 2007.
A Tale of Two Alliances
The Pakistani Taliban are an amalgam of tribal Islamist outfits that merged in 2007. These groups rose up against the Pakistani state after the military moved to corral transnational jihadist groups, including some aligned with al-Qaeda, that had been sheltering in Pakistan’s tribal belt since 2002, when the U.S.-led intervention drove them from Afghanistan. Until then, the tribal belt had been outside the state’s writ, controlled by local tribal leaders. Like the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban are mainly of Pashtun ethnicity and adhere to the Deobandi school of Islam. Their links with their Afghan counterparts date back to the Deobandi movement’s emergence in the 1990s. At that time, the Afghans were refugees in Pakistan, having fled the Soviet invasion, and they studied with Pakistanis in Deobandi madrasas. The Pakistani Taliban then fought alongside the Afghans to help them seize power in Kabul for the first time in 1996. The ties would grow closer after the Afghan Taliban, having been ousted by the U.S., again escaped across the border. The Pakistani state gave the Afghan Taliban safe passage, but it was Islamist tribal factions in the frontier provinces that gave them sanctuary.
The inter-Taliban nexus became even more evident after 2016, when the Pakistani army intensified counter-insurgency efforts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Those operations largely dislodged the TTP from the Pakistani tribal belt, forcing many militants across the border into Afghanistan, where some fought alongside the Afghan Taliban to expel Western forces and topple former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s U.S.-backed government. As the Afghan Taliban began gaining ground in early 2021, they sprung hundreds of Pakistani Taliban, including key leaders, from the former government’s prisons. That August, after Kabul fell, Pakistani Taliban chief Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud renewed the group’s oath of allegiance to Afghan Taliban emir Hibatullah Akhundzada (successive TTP leaders had previously sworn fealty to Afghan Taliban leaders). Mehsud also reunited several TTP splinter groups and strengthened operational structures, including the central command in Afghanistan and shadow governments in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan’s Pashtun belt, headed by tribal factions such as the Mohmand group. Relations between the two Taliban groups have remained close despite the fact that the Pakistani state – the TTP’s sworn enemy – has historically been the Afghan Taliban’s biggest foreign supporter.
Authorities in Islamabad long failed to see the connections – what a Pakistani analyst called “the ideological bond” – between their TTP foes and their Afghan Taliban allies. The TTP began mounting cross-border attacks on Pakistani security forces before the Afghan Taliban came back to power. At that time, Pakistani officials blamed Ghani’s government, saying it was tolerating the insurgents’ presence (accusations Kabul denied). Islamabad also accused anti-Pakistani forces, notably Indian intelligence agencies, of backing the TTP.
Top Pakistani leaders, including then-Prime Minister Imran Khan, welcomed the Afghan Taliban takeover in 2021, apparently believing that a friendly regime in Kabul would promote Pakistan’s security interests. Khan said the Taliban’s return had broken “the chains of slavery”. High-ranking military officers, including Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, then head of the formidable Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), hastened to Kabul to meet the new authorities, calling on them to either rein in the Pakistani Taliban or kick them out. Instead, the Afghan Taliban told Pakistan they would mediate in negotiations with the TTP’s leadership. In October, Khan confirmed that the military was holding talks with the TTP in Kabul “so that its members may surrender and reconcile in return for amnesty”.
Two large attacks on police installations have rocked Pakistan, compelling the authorities to rethink their approach to countering militancy. Their dilemma is that the insurgents’ main supporters – the new authorities in Afghanistan – are also their long-time allies.
www.crisisgroup.org
1. See my responses above your statement.
2. Focus on information in following post:
Unconfirmed Source Update; Turkmen or Uzbek ethnicity terrorists attacked Pakistan’s Embassy in Kabul fired over 100 rounds of ammunition and 7 sniper shots into the embassy. Another (3rd) accomplice of the attacker was arrested today. Suspect is currently believed to be a hired...
defence.pk
3. Understand this much: Obama administration had declared TTP a terrorist organization and CIA had killed many TTP militants including
Baitullah Mehsud,
Hakimullah Mehsud, and
Khalid Mehsud.
4. Read this book:
Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11 [Shahzad, Syed Saleem] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11
www.amazon.com
The author of this book
was assassinated because he knew too much.
No wonder Pakistan is in such a mess in current times. Too much propaganda sold to the Public and now all are at each other's throats in the country.
