The Pakistani Taliban faced the prospect of a damaging leadership rift on Monday when the abrupt dismissal of a senior commander provoked an angry reaction in the militants’ ranks, offering the Islamabad government a fresh opportunity to weaken a foe that in recent years has killed thousands of Pakistanis and tried to detonate a crude car bomb in Times Square in 2010, according to a report by New York Times.
Militant commanders in Bajaur, a small but strategically important tribal district on the Afghan border, spoke out strongly against the news that their leader, the Taliban deputy commander Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, had been fired at a shura, or leadership council, meeting over the weekend.
In a telephone interview with journalists based in Peshawar, the commanders, Maulana Abdul Mutalib, Fazal Khan, Maulvi Abdullah and Liaqat Khan, threatened to set up a rival group. “The decision of the shura has disappointed the Bajaur Taliban,” one of the men said. “This is untimely and can create a rift amongst the mujahedeen,” he added.
Simmering tensions between Faqir and the head of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, spilled into the open in January when it emerged that Faqir had unilaterally entered into peace talks with the Pakistan government. A few weeks ago, Faqir said the government had released 145 Taliban prisoners as a goodwill gesture, an assertion not confirmed by the government.
“He was removed due to his involvement in talks with the government without the consent of our leadership,” said Ehsanullah Ehsan, the main Taliban spokesman. “His successor will be decided over the coming days.” Ehsan added that Muhammad had also been demoted to the rank of fighter.
The rift highlights strains within the ranks of the Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), whose ability to carry out attacks has been hurt by a combination of American drone strikes in its Waziristan stronghold in the mountainous region of northwest Pakistan, and Pakistani military operations elsewhere in the tribal belt. “The TTP’s peak has passed, it’s on the downslide,” said Khalid Aziz, a former provincial chief secretary. “Its people are coming under pressure; they are starting to go back to their tribes.”
Much of the tumult within the group centres on its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, who helped build a fearsome militant network that stretches across north-western Pakistan and into the country’s most populated cities. But in recent years Mehsud, who is in his early 30s and has a $5 million American bounty on his head, has been most concerned with staying ahead of his Central Intelligence Agency pursuers.
Since claiming responsibility for a suicide attack on a C.I.A. base in southern Afghanistan in 2009 that killed seven Americans, Mehsud has been firmly in the sights of armed American drones that roam the skies over Waziristan. In September 2010, the United States government declared the Pakistani Taliban a terrorist entity after evidence emerged that Mehsud had trained Faisal Shahzad, a naturalised American citizen from Pakistan who attempted to set off a car bomb in Times Square in May 2010.
Mehsud is considered an impulsive figure prone to extreme action, even by the standards of Pakistani militants. He has been the subject of several death reports, most recently in January when Western and Pakistani media outlets said he had died in an American missile strike; his subordinates deny those reports.
“That was just propaganda. He is alive and well,” said Wali-ur-Rehman, a senior Taliban commander who also has a $5 million bounty on his head, in an interview at a house in North Waziristan in mid-February, the report said. Two political leaders from different parties in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, who would not be identified publicly because of the delicacy of the subject, agreed that Mehsud was still thought to be alive. Mehsud faces a test from within his group, too. In recent months, some commanders have taken tentative steps to make peace with the government, either as a means of appeasing war-weary followers, or of concentrating their firepower against NATO and Afghan soldiers across the border.
A series of Pakistani army operations in Bajaur that drew heavy criticism from human rights groups, pushed Faqir Muhammad’s forces into Afghanistan. Over the past year those fighters regrouped in the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan, and from there they attacked Pakistani border posts, the report said. Analysts say that the loss of territory set off Muhammad’s interest in peace talks in January.
“He had lost much of his influence in Bajaur,” said Mehmood Shah, a retired Pakistani brigadier and former chief of security for the tribal belt. “He was a lame duck, stuck between the TTP and the government.”
At the other end of the tribal belt in Waziristan, the Afghan militant Sirajuddin Haqqani has been leading efforts to persuade Pakistan’s myriad Taliban factions to stop fighting their own government and to concentrate on Afghanistan. Haqqani is leading a new war council, known as the Muraqaba shura, to effect this change, and his supporters include Waliur Rehman, the Taliban commander. “We are hopeful the coming spring will bring good news regarding peace talks,” Rehman said in the recent interview.
