ISLAMABAD – The killing of one of Pakistan’s most wanted militants in a US drone strike has exposed centuries-old rivalries within the group he led, the Pakistani Taliban, making the insurgency ever more unpredictable and probably more violent.
Hakimullah Mehsud’s death this month has set off a power struggle within the outfit’s ranks, which could further unnerve a region already on tenterhooks with most US-led troops pulling out of neighbouring Afghanistan in 2014.
When a tribal council declared Mullah Fazlullah as the new leader of the TTP last week, several furious commanders from a rival clan stood up and left.
“When Fazlullah’s name was announced, they … walked out saying, ‘The Taliban’s command is doomed’,” said one commander who attended the November 7 ‘shura’ meeting in South Waziristan.
Others at the shura declared loyalty to the hardline new leader and stayed on to map out a plan to avenge Hakimullah’s death through a new campaign of bombings and shootings. “This is the start of our fight with the government, an American puppet,” the Taliban official said.
“Those who forced the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan are capable of breaking up Pakistan,” he added, alluding to senior commanders whose rite of passage into war started with the rebellion against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The Pakistani Taliban have always been divided, a loose alliance of militant bands united only by jihadist beliefs and their hatred of the government and all things Western. The group operates independently of its Taliban allies in Afghanistan, who are fighting US-backed forces there.
But the death of Hakimullah, a member of the dominant Mehsud tribe, and the rise of Fazlullah, a Swat Valley native and hence an outsider in the eyes of tribesmen, changes the picture in the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.
Under Hakimullah, the TTP had been open to the idea of peace talks with the government, even though no meaningful negotiations had taken place.
Fazlullah ruled out any talks and declared the start of a new campaign to attack government and security installations in Punjab, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s political base.
“Mehsuds are not only not happy with this appointment but there are reports of serious infighting among them that might come to the fore in the near future,” said Saifullah Mahsud, director of the Pakistani think tank FATA Research Center.
“I think for now the anti-peace talks group among the TTP has prevailed and hence the appointment of Fazlullah,” said Mahsud, who compiles data based on information provided by his sources on the ground in the tribal Pashtun areas.
Fazlullah’s threat against Punjab has unnerved Pakistan’s most prosperous and populous province, where attacks have so far been rare. Various militant groups, including the Sipah-e-Sahaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Mohammad, are based around Punjab and have been long tolerated or even sponsored by the military.
Some of them were set up to fight Indian forces in disputed Kashmir, but they have turned on Pakistan in recent years thanks to the growing influence of the TTP and Al-Qaeda, and have become increasingly involved in Taliban affairs.
“The situation is getting out of control and the ISI knows that,” said one Western diplomat in Islamabad.
As the dynamic within the militancy evolves, powerful Punjabi groups are also beginning to turn their heads westwards, with many seeing the pullout of US troops from Afghanistan as a chance to expand their reach to tribal areas.
During a recent meeting with Reuters in Mardan, a group of militants – who sat cross-legged on the floor of a mud-brick safe house sipping tea and eating biscuits – said the Afghan cause was close to their hearts.
“We want peace in Afghanistan under Mullah Omar’s leadership,” said Abdurakhman, a militant with Jaish-e-Mohammad, a group usually focused on Kashmir, others nodding in agreement. Mullah Omar is the chief of the Afghan Taliban.
“When the Americans leave, elders will sit down with Mullah Omar and decide. If there is a need to fight, we will recruit and send people there.”
Sitting next to him, Farhatullah, a middle-aged man with the Hizbul Mujahideen group, said he used to fight against Indian forces in Kashmir but was now ready to go to Afghanistan. “We are the reserve force,” he said. “If needed I will … take my gun, go there and fight.”
The TTP publicly rubbishes any talk of a major rift among its ranks.
A Taliban spokesman has confirmed Fazlullah’s appointment and said there would be no more peace talks with the government.
Operatives from Al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network, a powerful militant group based in the mountains of North Waziristan, are also working hard to smooth over any disputes, sources say.
Mullah Omar, the reclusive, one-eyed leader of the Afghan Taliban, is said to have stepped into the debate and backed Fazlullah’s candidacy. Fazlullah knows Omar personally, having fought alongside his men in Afghanistan in 2001.
Fazlullah is still holed up in his base in Nuristan, a thickly forested Afghan region favoured by many Pakistani militants hiding from US drones. To reassert control over feuding groups he would have to come back and establish a foothold in Pakistan.
“He is a non-resident commander, he is not present physically,” said a Pakistani intelligence source. “But he has two advantages: He’s got a lot of money and he has Afghan support.”
After Naila ul-Hadi begged for her son to be spared, one gunman threw him out of the vehicle in an apparent act of mercy – she was killed
For the teachers and health workers serving the village of Sher Afzal Banda, there were few things more mundane than their daily return journey to work.
Every morning a cramped Suzuki minibus owned by the charity Support With Working Solutions (SWWS) would collect them from the junction on a main road and drive them down the rough country track, just wide enough for a single vehicle. In the late afternoon it would bring them back.
“She never thought she was running a risk,” said Zain ul-Hadi, the husband of Naila, a 28-year-old who led a team providing basic healthcare to some of the 2,000 people who live in traditional mud houses in the village in Pakistan‘s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. “She had no reason to be scared of anyone.”
He last spoke to her on Tuesday afternoon, when she called to confirm she would meet him as normal. “She said she was on her way and I said I would be waiting to pick her up.” Thirty minutes later she and six out of the nine people, mostly fully veiled women, riding in the Suzuki would be dead, murdered by as yet unidentified militants while they sat inside the vehicle.
The appalling incident has raised fresh alarm about the growing willingness of Pakistan’s increasingly brutal militants to attack civilians. Like many other parts of the country where ethnic Pashtuns live, the district of Swabi has had its share of trouble with militancy. But while some schools have been blown up, no one can recall anything like last week’s attack.
One victim, a male nurse called Umjad Ali, had even moved home from his employment in Karachi after his family feared for his safety in the strife-torn coastal megalopolis.
The two gunmen, faces covered with cloth, had picked their site carefully. Their motorbikes were parked at a narrow point where the road dips, forcing traffic to slow down. There were no people or houses for miles around, only fields sown with a young wheat crop.
The driver, who survived a bullet in his chest, asked whether he should try to smash past the two sinister, pistol-brandishing men. But Umjad Ali thought it better to stop and talk.
In one apparent act of mercy, one of the men pulled Naila’s four-year-old son, Ehsan Shehzad, out of the vehicle and threw him into a field after she begged that he be spared. The gunmen asked for everyone’s mobile phones, but then began shooting through the windows of the vehicle before the devices were handed over.
In a part of the world where people hate to break the worst possible news over the phone, relatives of the six women and one man eventually received calls saying their wives and daughters were “seriously hurt” and they should come immediately. Days on, they are all still in deep shock.
“When the Taliban killed the polio vaccination team it occurred to me she could be targeted as well,” said Umara Khan, father of Shourat, a 28-year-old who taught in Sher Afzal Banda’s small primary school. “But I did not ask her to leave, she loved to teach.”
Like many of the other families affected, Shourat, with her well-paid NGO job, was the main breadwinner for her household.
“What are they trying to achieve? I don’t know,” said Hussain Wali, the father of Rahilla, a 25-year-old teacher who was also in the Suzuki. “We did not have a sense that women, teachers and health workers would be targeted.”
On Friday police claimed that one of the culprits blew himself up after the police attempted to arrest him.
The incident in Swabi comes after the killing of nine people working on UN-backed anti-polio vaccination teams during a string of attacks last month.
In October, Malala Yousafzai, a schoolgirl from the nearby district of Swat, survived being shot in the head by a Taliban gunman, who objected to her fight for girls to be educated. Last week she was discharged from hospital in Birmingham after weeks of treatment. In December, militants kidnapped 23 tribal police. Observers say that in the past the militants would probably have tried to trade them for a ransom, but 21 of them were killed with no demands made.
“Things are changing, things have been happening that never happened in the past,” said Rahimullah Yousafzai, a journalist based in Peshawar who has been covering the tribal area for decades. “Attacking mosques, funerals, graves and, of course, these teachers and health workers.”
Yousafzai says Pakistan’s militants have come to see anyone involved in charitable or development organisations as fair game: “They take it for granted that if you work for an NGO you are funded by the west, that you are trying to change local traditions and customs, you are doing something that is secular. They no longer expect to get any public support, so no effort is being made to win hearts and minds. That is beyond them. Now all they want is to intimidate and pre-empt an uprising against them.”
For the time being, the people of Sher Afzal Banda are defiant. Local residents say they want the school to be reopened as soon as possible.
Javed Akhtar, executive director of SWWS, is considering hiring armed guards for his staff. Like most humanitarian workers, he hates the idea of using guns but sees no alternative. But he fears more trouble. As in nearby Swat, the people of Swabi have a strong commitment to educating their daughters and the district boasts a high female literacy rate. “Malala survived, she was discharged from hospital – that is a big defeat for them,” he said. “They now want revenge, they want to kill many Malalas.”
India hosts training for 30,000 Afghan army troops (to be infiltrated into Pakistan as Taliban)
By GHANIZADA
- The government of India is intending to arrange military training for more than 20000 Afghan security forces inside the Indian soil in a bid to pave the way for expanding its political presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014, when all the NATO-led combat forces will leave the country.
The United States of America is going to sponsor the training expenses of the Afghan national security forces and has vowed a $12 billion budget to train Afghan security.
In the meantime, the United States of America urged the other nations having common interests to take part in the Afghan national army trainings.
On the other hand, lack of tendency by the Afghan government to train its national security forces by Pakistan has doubled the responsibilities of the Afghan counterpart India, to burden shoulder for more training responsibilities of the Afghan security forces.
According to reports, India is going to host around 30,000 Afghan national army soldiers to train in Indian military facilities in northern and western parts of India.
Meanwhile, training Afghan national security forces also makes a section of the strategic cooperation agreement between India and Afghanistan, which was signed on October 2011 between the two nations.
