Arif Rafiq reports that Baitullah Mehsud is dead, apparently of natural causes (Bill Roggio says his sources disagree, claiming it’s misinformation). If true, this leaves the Pakistani Taliban umbrella organization with a big hole at its top, though its ranks remain fully staffed with Pakistanis angry at American attacks in their territory.
Luckily, those raids look set to stop, at least for now. Word on the street is that this is meant to give the Pakistani Army more space to do its own job its own way—something we’ve been advocating for some time now. Especially damning is the unexpected backlash—not on the street, where it matters, but diplomatically. The Army did not expect the civilian government to react as strongly as it did.
Ironically perhaps, conditions in the FATA seem to be marginally improving, in the sense of there being concrete action against the militants, and a new head of the ISI. While that of course doesn’t mean much (institutionally it still has a lot of challenges to work out), it does mean that Pakistan is showing a lot of promise—more so than it has shown for the past year. The U.S. would do well to stay out of it as best it can.
Update: It seems Baitullah Mehsud is very much alive, and Roggio’s contacts were right to voice skepticism of the claims of his death. Rafiq has yet to update his post. But the comments about his succession remain. Is there a clear leader to replace him, now that his mortality has been highlighted?
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I hate to interject politics here but the closing quote of the Army Times article struck me in relation to how this was discussed at the presidential debate.
From AT: ““Even a missile strike requires the highest level of authority,” a special operations officer with Afghanistan experience said.
Asked who would have to sign off on a mission into Pakistan, he replied: “The president, no doubt in my mind. The president.”
One of the two candidates at the debate the other night is going to have to decide our future Pakistan strategy and they both talked right past the point in my opinion. I thought the two candidates’ discussion of our raids/bombing of Pakistan during the debate was almost quizzical in their lack of understanding.
McCain was trying to lambaste Obama for daring to say out loud that we could dare attack Pakistan — completely ignoring the fact that we have been attacking Pakistani territory repeatedly for years with hellfire missiles and just days before sent in JSOC troops on a raid, as if none of this had ever made the news, was a top secret, and Obama was violating some kind of secrecy.
In response, Obama restated his position that if known Al Qaeda leaders are in Pakistan we should be able to attack them — completely ignoring that we have been recently attacking Taliban targets in Pakistan, not UBL or Zawahiri, and that our current policy it is dangerously destabilizing our relations with Pakistan because it directly violates their sovereignty as you rightly point out here.
I really don’t want to get into a discussion about who is right or wrong here but I think it is high time both of these candidates had a real discussion about the current Administration’s Pakistan policy with the facts that are already public and actually addressed the issue at hand instead of talking around it in circles. The situation is not that secret and we deserve better.
ken, you’ll get zero argument from me on this. I’ve been tempted to wade into the presidential race by comparing their plans for the region, but frankly both demonstrate a childish understanding of the situation there (though I’d wager Obama’s is a teeny tiny bit less childish if only because he’s not advocating “THE SURGE”).
But really, it’s a fool’s errand, to expect maturity in a presidential election. It’s why I’m tempted not to vote every four years.
An interesting discussion would also be to what extent the fiancial crisis and the money spent on the bailout will affect the efforts in Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iraq the next 4 years… But I guess that is too much to ask…
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