The death of Osama bin Laden is unlikely to undermine the Pakistani Taliban, despite al Qaeda’s links with the militants, and it may even embolden the fighters battling to bring the nuclear-armed state down.
In the decade that the world’s most-wanted man was underground, al Qaeda established deep ties with militants in the Pashtun tribal belt, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), who claimed allegiance to bin Laden. TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said this week that the ties between the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan were unshaken and revenge would be exacted for bin Laden’s death at the hand of US commandos.
While Pakistan has at times supported militants fighting in Afghanistan and the Indian part of disputed Kashmir, the Taliban are the sworn enemies of the security forces. “The problem is not al Qaeda, the problem is the Taliban,” said a senior Arab diplomat in Islamabad. “The threat is that al Qaeda uses these local militants. They are the threat.” Al Qaeda’s influence on the Pakistani Taliban has been largely ideological, with little in the way of strategic support, and they have their own sources of funding enabling them to mount attacks independently.
“The over-arching ideology is provided by al Qaeda. That is the trans-national global jihadist agenda … under the umbrella of al Qaeda various militant outfits are operating,” said Abdul Basit, a researcher at the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies. “Bin Laden’s removal from the scene is not going to change the overall dynamics of the war on terror or Taliban militancy in a big way at all,” he said. US Navy SEALs shot dead bin Laden on May 2 in his hideout in the town of Abbottabad.
One of three wives detained by Pakistani authorities after the raid said bin Laden never left the high-walled compound. That isolation over the years means his elimination now is unlikely to have much impact. “He may have had contact with some of his people, but the fact that he was not interacting much I think means his capacity to organise attacks was not really great,” said veteran journalist Rahimullah Yosufzai.
While the Pakistani Taliban have largely been a domestic threat, there have been signs that they want to expand the scope of their attacks under the al Qaeda banner. A suicide bombing at a US base in Afghanistan’s Khost province in 2009, carried out by a Jordanian national, killed seven Central Intelligence Agency employees.
In video footage released after the attack, the bomber was shown sitting with Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud. The Pakistani-born American who tried to set off a car bomb in New York’s Times Square last year told a court he got bomb-making training and funding from the Pakistani Taliban. “The Pakistani Taliban have been acting as a surrogate for al Qaeda, and they’ve been carrying out a lot of the training of these foreigners – the Americans, British, Germans – on behalf of al Qaeda,” said Pakistani author and expert on militants Ahmed Rashid.
“There’s this very close cooperation between the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda because they are the main protectors for al Qaeda in the tribal areas,” he said. The Pakistani Taliban, bent on revenge for bin Laden’s killing, could see this as the perfect time to strike at a weak government already struggling with a chronic economic mess. “The TTP will probably go on the attack, a renewed attack against Pakistan,” said Hamid Gul, a former head of the ISI which helped organise the Afghan war in the 1980s and later nurtured the Afghan Taliban.
“We will pay the price for it, unfortunately,” Gul said, referring to bin Laden’s killing.
