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Pakistani Taliban’s New Leader Planned Attack on Teenage Activist
LONDON — In a surprise choice, the Pakistani Taliban said Thursday that it had appointed as its new leader the commander responsible for last year’sattack on Malala Yousafzai, the teenage Pakistani education activist.
The acting head of the Taliban, Asmatullah Shaheen, told journalists in North Waziristan, a tribal area that is a haven for Taliban militants, that the governing council had chosen Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of a Taliban faction in the northwestern Swat Valley, to succeed Hakimullah Mehsud, who was killed in an American drone strike last Friday.
Pakistani intelligence officials confirmed that Mr. Fazlullah had been chosen following almost a week of deliberations by the Taliban shura, or governing council, in North Waziristan.
Mr. Fazlullah was a surprise choice because the two previous leaders of the Pakistani Taliban belonged to the Mehsud tribe of South Waziristan, another militant hub in the tribal belt.
Mr. Fazlullah, by contrast, has been widely reported in recent years to be hiding in the mountains of Kunar and Nuristan Provinces in eastern Afghanistan, from where he has orchestrated attacks inside Pakistan.
Mr. Fazlullah is a militant leader of considerable notoriety with long experience in both battling the Pakistani government and occasionally negotiating with it. Having started his career as the operator of a chair lift that spanned a river, he rose to prominence in 2007 through a pirate radio station that broadcast jihadist propaganda across Swat, a picturesque valley in northwestern Pakistan.
Soon afterward, his armed fighters displaced the civil government. They instituted an authoritarian and often cruel rule that mandated public floggings, executions and the closure of girls’ schools in the valley, which was once a favorite of honeymooning couples. Mr. Fazlullah also captured public attention by riding through the valley on a white horse, and by allying with militant clerics who ran the Red Mosque in the center of the capital, Islamabad.
In response to public disquiet about the situation in Swat, the Pakistani military launched a sweeping operation through the valley in 2009 that drove Mr. Fazlullah’s men from their hide-outs.
Since then, the Swat Taliban have been reduced to hit-and-run attacks. Their most infamous operation of recent years was the attempted assassination of Ms. Yousafzai, then 15, who was shot in the head by a Taliban fighter as she returned from school in October 2012.
Mr. Fazlullah’s spokesman said that she had been shot for her outspoken advocacy, and vowed to shoot her again if she returned to Swat. Ms. Yousafzai was flown to Britain for emergency treatment, where she fully recovered from her injuries, and has gone on to be become a global icon.
Last month she published her memoir, met with President Obama in the White House and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Running the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella grouping of perhaps 30 militant factions along Pakistan’s lawless border with Afghanistan, is no easy task. The group is related to, but distinct from, the Afghan Taliban. Until now, the leadership has been exclusively in the hands of the Mehsud tribe. It has largely attacked targets inside Pakistan but has also sent fighters into Afghanistan and claimed responsibility for an attempted bombing of Times Square in May 2010.
As a result, its leadership has been targeted by C.I.A.-operated drones. Both Hakimullah Mehsud and his predecessor, Baitullah Mehsud, who died in August 2009, were killed by the United States.
The previous leading militant commander in South Waziristan, Nek Muhammad, was also killed by a drone strike in 2004, although he hailed from the Wazir tribe and the Pakistani Taliban had not been formed at that point.
Mr. Fazlullah’s accession to the Taliban leadership coincides with efforts by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government to start peace talks. Mr. Fazlullah’s group has previously negotiated with the government.
In 2009 his father-in-law, a veteran jihadi named Sufi Muhammad, negotiated a peace deal with the provincial government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, then known as the North-West Frontier Province.
But the deal did not last long, as Taliban abuses continued and Mr. Muhammad declared that he would not recognize the Pakistani judicial system. A video of Taliban fighters flogging a teenage girl was shown on Pakistani television in the spring of 2009, angering the public and setting the stage for the military operation that began in May of that year.
Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
Source of this news
LONDON — In a surprise choice, the Pakistani Taliban said Thursday that it had appointed as its new leader the commander responsible for last year’sattack on Malala Yousafzai, the teenage Pakistani education activist.
The acting head of the Taliban, Asmatullah Shaheen, told journalists in North Waziristan, a tribal area that is a haven for Taliban militants, that the governing council had chosen Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of a Taliban faction in the northwestern Swat Valley, to succeed Hakimullah Mehsud, who was killed in an American drone strike last Friday.
Pakistani intelligence officials confirmed that Mr. Fazlullah had been chosen following almost a week of deliberations by the Taliban shura, or governing council, in North Waziristan.
Mr. Fazlullah was a surprise choice because the two previous leaders of the Pakistani Taliban belonged to the Mehsud tribe of South Waziristan, another militant hub in the tribal belt.
Mr. Fazlullah, by contrast, has been widely reported in recent years to be hiding in the mountains of Kunar and Nuristan Provinces in eastern Afghanistan, from where he has orchestrated attacks inside Pakistan.
Mr. Fazlullah is a militant leader of considerable notoriety with long experience in both battling the Pakistani government and occasionally negotiating with it. Having started his career as the operator of a chair lift that spanned a river, he rose to prominence in 2007 through a pirate radio station that broadcast jihadist propaganda across Swat, a picturesque valley in northwestern Pakistan.
Soon afterward, his armed fighters displaced the civil government. They instituted an authoritarian and often cruel rule that mandated public floggings, executions and the closure of girls’ schools in the valley, which was once a favorite of honeymooning couples. Mr. Fazlullah also captured public attention by riding through the valley on a white horse, and by allying with militant clerics who ran the Red Mosque in the center of the capital, Islamabad.
In response to public disquiet about the situation in Swat, the Pakistani military launched a sweeping operation through the valley in 2009 that drove Mr. Fazlullah’s men from their hide-outs.
Since then, the Swat Taliban have been reduced to hit-and-run attacks. Their most infamous operation of recent years was the attempted assassination of Ms. Yousafzai, then 15, who was shot in the head by a Taliban fighter as she returned from school in October 2012.
Mr. Fazlullah’s spokesman said that she had been shot for her outspoken advocacy, and vowed to shoot her again if she returned to Swat. Ms. Yousafzai was flown to Britain for emergency treatment, where she fully recovered from her injuries, and has gone on to be become a global icon.
Last month she published her memoir, met with President Obama in the White House and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Running the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella grouping of perhaps 30 militant factions along Pakistan’s lawless border with Afghanistan, is no easy task. The group is related to, but distinct from, the Afghan Taliban. Until now, the leadership has been exclusively in the hands of the Mehsud tribe. It has largely attacked targets inside Pakistan but has also sent fighters into Afghanistan and claimed responsibility for an attempted bombing of Times Square in May 2010.
As a result, its leadership has been targeted by C.I.A.-operated drones. Both Hakimullah Mehsud and his predecessor, Baitullah Mehsud, who died in August 2009, were killed by the United States.
The previous leading militant commander in South Waziristan, Nek Muhammad, was also killed by a drone strike in 2004, although he hailed from the Wazir tribe and the Pakistani Taliban had not been formed at that point.
Mr. Fazlullah’s accession to the Taliban leadership coincides with efforts by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government to start peace talks. Mr. Fazlullah’s group has previously negotiated with the government.
In 2009 his father-in-law, a veteran jihadi named Sufi Muhammad, negotiated a peace deal with the provincial government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, then known as the North-West Frontier Province.
But the deal did not last long, as Taliban abuses continued and Mr. Muhammad declared that he would not recognize the Pakistani judicial system. A video of Taliban fighters flogging a teenage girl was shown on Pakistani television in the spring of 2009, angering the public and setting the stage for the military operation that began in May of that year.
Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
Source of this news
