Security

Drone Strike (Apparently) Kills Pakistan Taliban Chief

BAGRAM, Afghanistan — U.S. and Pakistani officials are scrambling to confirm reports that a U.S. unmanned aircraft may have killed Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban. A missile or missiles supposedly fired by a U.S. drone hit the home of the Taliban chief’s father-in-law in South Waziristan. Mehsud was receiving a kidney treatment there, […]

predator-twuav_13_02BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- U.S. and Pakistani officials are scrambling to confirm reports that a U.S. unmanned aircraft may have killed Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban.

A missile or missiles supposedly fired by a U.S. drone hit the home of the Taliban chief's father-in-law in South Waziristan. Mehsud was receiving a kidney treatmentthere, militant reps tell the New York Times. Agence France-Presse, quoting local tribesmen, said the strike killed Mehsud and one of his wives; Xinhua, citing local news broadcasts, said funeral prayers had been held for the Taliban chief and Taliban leaders will meet today to elect a successor. Pakistan's interior minister, according to Reuters, says Mehsud is probably dead, but they don't have the evidence.

As Pakistan's Dawn newspaper observes, Pakistani officials are hesitant to declare the militant leader dead. "Their reluctance is understandable," the paper's Ismail Khan notes. "Past claims about the death of other TTP leaders, including its deputy, Maulvi Faqir Mohammad and Swat TTP [Tehrik-i-Taliban] leader, Mullah Fazlullah, have, embarrassingly, turned out to be untrue." One U.S. intelligence official tells the Long War Journal, "Baitullah is alive."

If reports prove true, it could be considered a victory in the controversial war-by-remote-control over Pakistan's tribal areas. Mehsud is Pakistan's most wanted man -- he has a $5 million bounty on his head -- and is blamed for a wave of suicide bombings, as well as orchestrating the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in late 2007.

Critics of the drone war, however, have urged policymakers to look at the larger strategic aims. As Counterinsurgency guru David Kilcullen told Danger Room earlier this year: "Sometimes we might have to [attack with drones] — but only where larger interests (say, stopping another 9/11) are directly affected ... We need to be extremely careful about undermining the longer-term objective — a stable Pakistan, where elected politicians control their own national-security establishment, and extremism is diminishing — for the sake of collecting scalps."

[PHOTO: Wikimedia]

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