Pakistan Taliban Leader Killed in U.S. Drone Attack

Pakistani security forces were on high alert over the weekend amid concerns of revenge attacks after the killing of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud in a U.S. drone missile strike.

Mehsud has been reported killed in the past by U.S. and Pakistani security forces, only to reappear alive. But on Saturday, the Taliban confirmed his killing Friday in the Miranshah area of lawless North Waziristan near the Afghan border.

“We believe that hundreds of thousands more mujahedeen will rise from the drops of Hakimullah’s blood,” Maulana Azam Tariq, a Pakistani Taliban spokesman from South Waziristan, said by phone from an undisclosed location. “The enemy should not be happy with Hakimullah’s martyrdom. We will take revenge with America and its associates.”

Pakistan security forces have been reinforced and placed on high alert across the country, especially in the volatile northwest. Blockades were set up at major access roads into Peshawar and additional security forces deployed around the city’s U.S. consulate.

Friday’s killing was a victory, at least in the short term, for Washington at a time when its drone program is under growing criticism for mistakenly killing civilians, fueling public anger in Pakistan and helping Taliban recruiting efforts.

Mehsud, on whom the FBI placed a $5-million bounty, has been deemed responsible for planning the failed Times Square bombing in May 2010 and an attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan in 2009 in which seven of the agency’s operatives were killed.

His Pakistani Taliban group, related to but distinct from its Afghan counterpart, has killed thousands of people in suicide attacks in Pakistan in its bid to replace the nation’s government with an Islamist state.

Despite losing its leader, the decentralized group is viewed as resilient and is expected to regroup relatively quickly.

This article appeared in print on page 2 of the November 4th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.