generalspeaking

Pakistan Taliban Emir

Religious Islamist extremists in Pakistan during the years 2006-07 were creating havoc and anger in the capital when they emerged from the Red Mosque in downtown Islamabad, to hound citizens who were not sufficiently garbed in modest Islamist dress, and to make their raids on sellers of CDs for hawking unIslamic cultural objects whose presence they objected to. They assaulted people whom they scorned for their unIslamic presence, and complaints were raised to a crescendo.

Then-president Pervez Musharraf gave orders for the Red Mosque to be surrounded and its occupants arrested. What resulted was a stand-off, the mosque's occupants refusing to emerge, and violence ensued on both sides. Some one hundred extremists were said to have been killed in the week-long stand-off and the evacuation of the mosque. Tribal Islamists with whom Musharraf had arranged one agreement after another of non-aggression, tore up those agreements in rage.

The Islamist extremists living in mountainous areas of North Waziristan began once again raiding army and police posts, killing personnel in their resistance against government where in any event neither police nor the military much ventured into the lawless areas loyal to and governed by tribal leaders. Eventually the government had little option but to order its troops to enter the northwest federally administered tribal areas to claw back villages from the militants.

War against Islamists in the border tribal areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan seemed never far from reality as attack and counter-attack took place. There has been well over a decade of non-stop violence, with government troops entering areas of their country's self-administered tribal areas to which government had never extended its administration. It provided an excellent breeding ground for extremism, and for shelter toward al-Qaeda militias, flooded with foreign jihadists.

In 2009 then-leader of the Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a drone attack, and he was replaced by Hakimullah Mehsud, a man acknowledged for conducting attacks brazenly inside Pakistan in areas thought to be secure from attack, a man also recognized for his ruthless reputation. He too has now been killed by a U.S. drone strike.

There is always the impression that by removing a leader of a virulently violent militia, a war has been won. When nothing could be further from the truth; just as Baitullah Mehsud was speedily replaced by someone whose military ingenuity and ruthlessness matched his own, so too has Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud now been speedily replaced.
And once again the government of Pakistan denounces the United States for interference in its affairs. The drone strike that killed Hakimullah Mehsud occurred the very day that the Government of Pakistan was preparing to meet with representative of the Pakistan Taliban, for putative peace talks. Now that such ill faith was once again demonstrated by an ally of Pakistan, prospects for anything remotely resembling 'peace' have dissolved in the acid of bitterness between the adversaries.

Hakimullah Mehsud had a $5-million reward on his head, on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list. A 2009 bombing that took place at a base in Khost, Afghanistan, was planned by him. A video with Hakimullah Mehsud standing beside the suicide bomber announced the attack was retribution for the death of Baitullah Mehsud, his predecessor whom an earlier drone strike had killed in August 2009. An endless re-run of violent events.

Labels: Al-Qaeda, Conflict, Islamism, Munitions, Pakistan, Taliban, United States

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, November 03, 2013