Wolf Howling: Baitullah Mehsud

Thursday, January 31, 2008

The Next Generation of Taliban Warlords Arise In Pakistan

A new generation of Taliban fighters allied with al Qaeda has taken over in Pakistan's tribal regions near the Afghan border. Their new leaders are the incredibly ruthless Baitullah Mehsud and Siraj Haqqani. Mehsud was responsible for the assassination of Bhutto and is threatening Pakistan througout the NWFP.

This today from Der Spiegel:

[Baitullah Mehsud is]the Taliban's new strongman, all of 34 years old. . . And yet hardly anyone has ever seen the Islamist commander. There are no known photos of the Taliban leader from the village of Landidog, who has sealed himself off against unwanted visitors in a region that is largely cut off from civilization. The area is controlled by the Broomikhels, a subgroup of the Mehsud clan, feared and referred to as "wolves" during the British colonial era for their warlike habits.

And yet the mysterious Baitullah Mehsud is as famous as a cricket star in Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf has declared him the country's public enemy number one.

As a close ally of al-Qaida, Mehsud has spent the last few years developing the remote valleys of South Waziristan into a safe haven for the terrorists. His fighters are believed to be responsible for a large share of recent suicide bombings in Afghanistan. According to Musharraf, Mehsud's supporters were behind the kidnappings of hundreds of Pakistani soldiers and almost all attacks on the Pakistani security forces in the last three months.

. . . CIA Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden claims that Mehsud was also involved in the deadly attack on Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. "We have no reason to doubt this," says Hayden. . .

. . . Toward the end of last year, a council of high-ranking Taliban leaders appointed Baitullah Mehsud the leader of the newly formed "Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan" (Taliban Movement of Pakistan). At first glance, there are many similarities between Mehsud, a young leader of Koran students, and the founder of the Taliban movement, Mullah Omar, a former village cleric from southern Afghanistan. But the freshly anointed Taliban chief embodies a new, considerably more aggressive generation of religious fanatics. He knows nothing but war, is 14 years younger than Mullah Omar and has had no religious training.

The old mujaheddin who fought in the war against the Soviets and the Taliban who were driven from Afghanistan in 2001, however, still respected the tribal hierarchies and the Pashtuns' rudimentary code of honor. Although it includes blood feuds, it also stringently requires that the innocent -- especially women and children -- be protected. Nowadays, on the other hand, anything done in the name of jihad seems permissible. The cooperative arrangement between al-Qaida and the Taliban has broken ranks with the ultraconservative but ordered world of the tribes living in the regions along the Afghan border. This has led to new tensions, so much so that most traditional tribal leaders are now refusing to cooperate with bin Laden's terrorist network. But members of the young neo-Taliban have used every means available to protect their foreign "guests." In the ensuing power struggle, the new Taliban commanders have already killed more than 250 tribal leaders.

The rise of these ruthless sons of the Taliban began more than six years ago. When the Taliban regime was ousted in Afghanistan, the ensuing American bombing campaign drove thousands of fighters into the Pakistani tribal regions and to Baluchistan. The refugees also included al-Qaida fighters, including young Arabs, Uzbeks, Chechens and Uyghurs.

The first war minister of the second Taliban generation, Mullah Dadullah Akhund, was long considered the most savage of the new leaders. The one-legged military leader launched his regime of terror with suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings. Last May, Mullah Dadullah, 38 at the time, was shot and killed by Western troops in southern Afghanistan.

. . . Next to Baitullah Mehsud, however, the most influential rising young star in the terrorist network in the Hindu Kush region is Siraj Haqqani, the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a renowned Afghan mujahedeen leader. The father had occasionally fought on the side of the Taliban, primarily to safeguard the region he controlled in southeastern Afghanistan. When he died in the summer of 2007, his son Siraj assumed control.

Major Chris Belcher, the spokesman of the US armed forces in Afghanistan, accuses the new Taliban of unparalleled viciousness: "The younger generation is simply pushing aside the old leaders and dictating a new brutality, which includes arbitrary killing as much as it does the beheading of women." The Americans have set a bounty of $200,000 (€135,000) for the capture of Siraj Haqqani.

In the meantime, the upstart leader has even challenged the authority of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who has criticized the high civilian death toll during recent suicide bombings.

At first, President Musharraf still attempted to negotiate with the unscrupulous young fighters. Under a February 2005 peace treaty, Musharraf agreed to withdraw his troops from the tribal region in South Waziristan, provided the insurgents relinquished their support for al-Qaida fighters. Baitullah Mehsud, the presumed mastermind of the Bhutto murder, signed the treaty on behalf of the Taliban.

But the outcome was disastrous. It provided the extremists with the best possible safe haven in which they could rearm undisturbed.

Today, confrontation has returned to the region. Over the past two weeks, the Pakistani army has been waging an offensive against Mehsud in South Waziristan. Mehsud's troops have systematically attempted to bring guard posts and even military forts under control. Dozens are killed on both sides on an almost daily basis. Hoping to eliminate the extremists, Musharraf has ordered his forces to bomb Taliban positions -- but Mehsud has consistently managed to escape.

The Americans are now openly considering running their own covert operations in the tribal region, . . .

Read the article.

CIA Chief Hayden Discusses the Bhutto Assassination, Pakistan, & Interrogations

CIA Director General Hayden, has stated that the man responsible for Benazair Bhutto's assassination by Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, pictured right. Per the Long War Journal, Baitullah Mehsud is the leader of the newly created Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. Baitullah was appointed leader of the orgnaization after a gathering of local Taliban leaders throughout the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province in mid-December. Mehsud is also behind a spike in violence by the Taliban as they seek to destabilize the Pakistani government.

This today from a Washington Post interview with General Hayden:

. . . Offering the most definitive public assessment by a U.S. intelligence official, Hayden said Bhutto was killed by fighters allied with Mehsud, a tribal leader in northwestern Pakistan, with support from al-Qaeda's terrorist network. That view mirrors the Pakistani government's assertions.

The same alliance between local and international terrorists poses a grave risk to the government of President Pervez Musharraf, a close U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism, Hayden said in 45-minute interview with The Washington Post. "What you see is, I think, a change in the character of what's going on there," he said. "You've got this nexus now that probably was always there in latency but is now active: a nexus between al-Qaeda and various extremist and separatist groups."

Hayden added, "It is clear that their intention is to continue to try to do harm to the Pakistani state as it currently exists."

. . . "This was done by that network around Baitullah Mehsud. We have no reason to question that," Hayden said. He described the killing as "part of an organized campaign" that has included suicide bombings and other attacks on Pakistani leaders.

. . . Hayden made his statement shortly before a series of attacks occurred this week on Pakistani political figures and army units. Pakistani officials have blamed them on Mehsud's forces and other militants. On Wednesday, a group of several hundred insurgents overran a military outpost in the province of South Waziristan, killing 22 government paramilitary troops. The daring daylight raid was carried out by rebels loyal to Mehsud, Pakistani authorities said.

For more than a year, U.S. officials have been nervously watching as al-Qaeda rebuilt its infrastructure in the rugged tribal regions along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, often with the help of local sympathizers.

In recent months, U.S. intelligence officials have said, the relationship between al-Qaeda and local insurgents has been strengthened by a common antipathy toward the pro-Western Musharraf government. The groups now share resources and training facilities and sometimes even plan attacks together, they said.

"We've always viewed that to be an ultimate danger to the United States," Hayden said, "but now it appears that it is a serious base of danger to the current well-being of Pakistan."

Hayden's anxieties about Pakistan's stability are echoed by other U.S. officials who have visited Pakistan since Bhutto's assassination. White House, intelligence and Defense Department officials have held a series of meetings to discuss U.S. options in the event that the current crisis deepens, including the possibility of covert action involving Special Forces.

Hayden declined to comment on the policy meetings but said that the CIA already was heavily engaged in the region and has not shifted its officers or changed its operations significantly since the crisis began.

"The Afghan-Pakistan border region has been an area of focus for this agency since about 11 o'clock in the morning of September 11, [2001], and I really mean this," Hayden said. "We haven't done a whole lot of retooling there in the last one week, one month, three months, six months and so on. This has been up there among our very highest priorities."

Hayden said that the United States has "not had a better partner in the war on terrorism than the Pakistanis." The turmoil of the past few weeks has only deepened that cooperation, he said, by highlighting "what are now even more clearly mutual and common interests."

Hayden also acknowledged the difficulties -- diplomatic and practical -- involved in helping combat extremism in a country divided by ethnic, religious and cultural allegiances. "This looks simpler the further away you get from it," he said. "And the closer you get to it, geography, history, culture all begin to intertwine and make it more complex."

Regarding the public controversy over the CIA's harsh interrogation of detainees at secret prisons, Hayden reiterated previous agency statements that lives were saved and attacks were prevented as a result of those interrogations.

He said he does not support proposals, put forward by some lawmakers in recent weeks, to require the CIA to abide by the Army Field Manual in conducting interrogations. The manual, adopted by the Defense Department, prohibits the use of many aggressive methods, including a simulated-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

"I would offer my professional judgment that that will make us less capable in gaining the information we need," he said.