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How the U.S. Tracked and Killed the Leader of the Taliban
Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed while driving through an area of Pakistan that is normally off limits to U.S. drones
ENLARGE
A U.S. drone strike killed the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, in Pakistan over the weekend. PHOTO: ABDUL SALAM KHAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
By
ADAM ENTOUS and
JESSICA DONATI
Updated May 24, 2016 2:25 p.m. ET
49 COMMENTS
U.S. spy agencies zeroed in on Mullah Akhtar Mansour while he was visiting his family in Iran, then waited for the Taliban leader to move back across the border into Pakistan. That is where the Americans planned to ambush him.
Intercepted communications and other types of intelligence—amounting to Mullah Mansour’s electronic signature—allowed the spy agencies to track their target as he crossed the frontier on Saturday, got into a Toyota Corolla and made his way by road through Pakistan’s Balochistan province on his way to the Pakistani city of Quetta.
The intelligence operation then shifted over to the U.S. military, which waited for the right moment to send armed drones across the Afghan border to “fix” on the car, make sure no other vehicles were in the way and “finish” the target, in the argot of drone killing, all before Mullah Mansour could reach crowded Quetta, where a strike would have been far more complicated.
The killing of Mullah Mansour marked a critical moment in Obama administration policy on Afghanistan, as it weighed a push for peace talks and a potential need for a military escalation. It also represented a message to Pakistan that the U.S. would take action on Pakistani soil if necessary without advance consultations.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, warned on Tuesday that the strike would have “serious implications” for relations with the U.S. and described it as “completely against the U.N. Charter and international law.”
For such a consequential operation, the U.S. normally would want to have multiple drones overhead to keep eyes on the target at all times. But none of the Central Intelligence Agency’s drones in Pakistan were monitoring Mullah Mansour. The route he took happened to be outside the area where CIA drones operate.
It was just one of the unusual circumstances that accompanied the killing of Mullah Mansour, whose frequent travels made it easier for the Americans to find him. In contrast, the CIA spent years looking in vain for an opportunity to kill Mullah Mansour’s more reclusive predecessor, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
President Barack Obama secretly ordered the strike on Mullah Mansour after first trying to bring him to the negotiating table.
Initially, there was hope in Washington that Mullah Mansour would be more open to negotiations than Mullah Omar.
But many influential commanders refused to back Mullah Mansour as the group’s leader and the Taliban began to splinter.
Pakistan, with influence over elements of the Taliban, was seen as crucial. Obama administration officials were divided over whether the Pakistanis were capable or willing to deliver Mullah Mansour for the negotiations.
U.S. intelligence agencies spied on Pakistani leaders to see whether they were making a serious effort. U.S. officials briefed on the intelligence said the Pakistanis tried to deliver the Taliban and grew frustrated in February by Mullah Mansour’s refusal to send representatives to meet with the Afghan government.
Then, around the same time, people who maintain contacts with the Taliban began to report that Mullah Mansour had left Pakistan and was spending time in Iran with his family.
U.S. intelligence agencies received information that allowed them to track Mullah Mansour’s movements, including details about the devices he used for communications, U.S. officials said.
That allowed the spy agencies to present policy makers with a choice: If and when Mullah Mansour is located, should the U.S. strike?
An April 19 Taliban attack in Kabul targeted the country’s secret service, killing more than 60 people and wounded hundreds more.
The attack underlined for the Americans the extent to which Mullah Mansour had chosen a military course. A decision was made that he should “face the consequences” of his refusal to negotiate, a senior administration official said earlier this month.
The U.S. knew the route Mullah Mansour took between his family in Iran and Quetta because he had taken it several times before. U.S. intelligence agencies detected his preparations to cross the border back into Pakistan last week.
“Such actionable intelligence is rare,” another senior administration official said. “Given the preponderance of what was happened over the last few months, most principals around the table were going to be hard pressed to say: ‘Don’t take the shot.’ ”
Publicly, Pakistan opposes the CIA’s drone campaign in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Privately, Pakistan clears the airspace where the CIA aircraft fly.
U.S. and Pakistani officials say Balochistan is different, off limits to the CIA’s drones. The CIA has long abided by that secret understanding, not wanting to put its drone operations in agreed areas in jeopardy.
The CIA role was also proscribed because Mr. Obama made the decision to give the Pentagon the lead in the Mansour operation.
Route N-40, which Mullah Mansour and his driver used, cuts between Taftan on the Iranian border and Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, according to U.S. officials briefed on the operation.
The Taliban knew that the airspace over Balochistan was normally off limits to U.S. drones, so U.S. officials believe that Mullah Mansour and other Taliban leaders felt more comfortable there.
Because CIA drones couldn’t be used, U.S. spy agencies relied on signals intelligence and other location information to track the journey of the Toyota Corolla toward its destination, according to officials briefed on the operation.
Across the border in Afghanistan, armed drones piloted by the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command were preparing to move in for the kill, the U.S. officials said.
The U.S. knew Pakistani radar could detect the intrusion. Pakistan might then scramble jet fighters to intercept the drones, so timing was critical.
As the white Toyota Corolla approached an unpopulated area, JSOC’s Reaper drones crossed the border into Pakistani airspace, flying low over the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to exploit gaps in radar coverage, the officials said.
In the minutes before the strike, officials in the U.S. military command center overseeing the operation held off because the vehicle pulled over near some buildings for a short while, the officials said.
They waited until the vehicle got back on the road and was away from other vehicles and buildings. Then they launched the strike, and two Hellfire missiles took out Mullah Mansour in the car, the officials said.
The drones hovered overhead to ensure there were no survivors. The drones then turned around and headed back to their bases in Afghanistan, the officials said. The Pakistanis were told after the fact.
The U.S. used intelligence to verify the death of the Taliban leader, rather than DNA evidence that would have required a risky mission on the ground in Pakistan.
The U.S. government agencies which were involved in the operation agreed in advance that the strike would be disclosed publicly by the Pentagon once it was completed.
The interagency agreement also called for officials to be vague about identifying the location of the strike. Because of diplomatic sensitivities, the Pentagon was instructed to announce that the strike took place along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, rather than inside Pakistan itself.
But the location of the strike inside Pakistan was disclosed almost immediately, in what the Pakistanis saw as a clear rebuke.
—Margherita Stancati, Saeed Shah, Gordon Lubold and Qasim Nauman contributed to this article.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tracked-taliban-leader-before-drone-strike-1464109562
Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed while driving through an area of Pakistan that is normally off limits to U.S. drones
A U.S. drone strike killed the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, in Pakistan over the weekend. PHOTO: ABDUL SALAM KHAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
By
ADAM ENTOUS and
JESSICA DONATI
Updated May 24, 2016 2:25 p.m. ET
49 COMMENTS
U.S. spy agencies zeroed in on Mullah Akhtar Mansour while he was visiting his family in Iran, then waited for the Taliban leader to move back across the border into Pakistan. That is where the Americans planned to ambush him.
Intercepted communications and other types of intelligence—amounting to Mullah Mansour’s electronic signature—allowed the spy agencies to track their target as he crossed the frontier on Saturday, got into a Toyota Corolla and made his way by road through Pakistan’s Balochistan province on his way to the Pakistani city of Quetta.
The intelligence operation then shifted over to the U.S. military, which waited for the right moment to send armed drones across the Afghan border to “fix” on the car, make sure no other vehicles were in the way and “finish” the target, in the argot of drone killing, all before Mullah Mansour could reach crowded Quetta, where a strike would have been far more complicated.
The killing of Mullah Mansour marked a critical moment in Obama administration policy on Afghanistan, as it weighed a push for peace talks and a potential need for a military escalation. It also represented a message to Pakistan that the U.S. would take action on Pakistani soil if necessary without advance consultations.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, warned on Tuesday that the strike would have “serious implications” for relations with the U.S. and described it as “completely against the U.N. Charter and international law.”
For such a consequential operation, the U.S. normally would want to have multiple drones overhead to keep eyes on the target at all times. But none of the Central Intelligence Agency’s drones in Pakistan were monitoring Mullah Mansour. The route he took happened to be outside the area where CIA drones operate.
It was just one of the unusual circumstances that accompanied the killing of Mullah Mansour, whose frequent travels made it easier for the Americans to find him. In contrast, the CIA spent years looking in vain for an opportunity to kill Mullah Mansour’s more reclusive predecessor, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
President Barack Obama secretly ordered the strike on Mullah Mansour after first trying to bring him to the negotiating table.
Initially, there was hope in Washington that Mullah Mansour would be more open to negotiations than Mullah Omar.
But many influential commanders refused to back Mullah Mansour as the group’s leader and the Taliban began to splinter.
Pakistan, with influence over elements of the Taliban, was seen as crucial. Obama administration officials were divided over whether the Pakistanis were capable or willing to deliver Mullah Mansour for the negotiations.
U.S. intelligence agencies spied on Pakistani leaders to see whether they were making a serious effort. U.S. officials briefed on the intelligence said the Pakistanis tried to deliver the Taliban and grew frustrated in February by Mullah Mansour’s refusal to send representatives to meet with the Afghan government.
Then, around the same time, people who maintain contacts with the Taliban began to report that Mullah Mansour had left Pakistan and was spending time in Iran with his family.
U.S. intelligence agencies received information that allowed them to track Mullah Mansour’s movements, including details about the devices he used for communications, U.S. officials said.
That allowed the spy agencies to present policy makers with a choice: If and when Mullah Mansour is located, should the U.S. strike?
An April 19 Taliban attack in Kabul targeted the country’s secret service, killing more than 60 people and wounded hundreds more.
The attack underlined for the Americans the extent to which Mullah Mansour had chosen a military course. A decision was made that he should “face the consequences” of his refusal to negotiate, a senior administration official said earlier this month.
The U.S. knew the route Mullah Mansour took between his family in Iran and Quetta because he had taken it several times before. U.S. intelligence agencies detected his preparations to cross the border back into Pakistan last week.
“Such actionable intelligence is rare,” another senior administration official said. “Given the preponderance of what was happened over the last few months, most principals around the table were going to be hard pressed to say: ‘Don’t take the shot.’ ”
Publicly, Pakistan opposes the CIA’s drone campaign in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Privately, Pakistan clears the airspace where the CIA aircraft fly.
U.S. and Pakistani officials say Balochistan is different, off limits to the CIA’s drones. The CIA has long abided by that secret understanding, not wanting to put its drone operations in agreed areas in jeopardy.
The CIA role was also proscribed because Mr. Obama made the decision to give the Pentagon the lead in the Mansour operation.
Route N-40, which Mullah Mansour and his driver used, cuts between Taftan on the Iranian border and Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, according to U.S. officials briefed on the operation.
The Taliban knew that the airspace over Balochistan was normally off limits to U.S. drones, so U.S. officials believe that Mullah Mansour and other Taliban leaders felt more comfortable there.
Because CIA drones couldn’t be used, U.S. spy agencies relied on signals intelligence and other location information to track the journey of the Toyota Corolla toward its destination, according to officials briefed on the operation.
Across the border in Afghanistan, armed drones piloted by the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command were preparing to move in for the kill, the U.S. officials said.
The U.S. knew Pakistani radar could detect the intrusion. Pakistan might then scramble jet fighters to intercept the drones, so timing was critical.
As the white Toyota Corolla approached an unpopulated area, JSOC’s Reaper drones crossed the border into Pakistani airspace, flying low over the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to exploit gaps in radar coverage, the officials said.
In the minutes before the strike, officials in the U.S. military command center overseeing the operation held off because the vehicle pulled over near some buildings for a short while, the officials said.
They waited until the vehicle got back on the road and was away from other vehicles and buildings. Then they launched the strike, and two Hellfire missiles took out Mullah Mansour in the car, the officials said.
The drones hovered overhead to ensure there were no survivors. The drones then turned around and headed back to their bases in Afghanistan, the officials said. The Pakistanis were told after the fact.
The U.S. used intelligence to verify the death of the Taliban leader, rather than DNA evidence that would have required a risky mission on the ground in Pakistan.
The U.S. government agencies which were involved in the operation agreed in advance that the strike would be disclosed publicly by the Pentagon once it was completed.
The interagency agreement also called for officials to be vague about identifying the location of the strike. Because of diplomatic sensitivities, the Pentagon was instructed to announce that the strike took place along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, rather than inside Pakistan itself.
But the location of the strike inside Pakistan was disclosed almost immediately, in what the Pakistanis saw as a clear rebuke.
—Margherita Stancati, Saeed Shah, Gordon Lubold and Qasim Nauman contributed to this article.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tracked-taliban-leader-before-drone-strike-1464109562
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