Baitullah Mehsud is the top man in his own tribe...he must have around 15,000 to 20,000 hardcore elements or armed men under him.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud has a five-million-dollar bounty on his head, but despite the rich reward for his capture, the fear he commands among his tribesmen makes him an elusive foe.
Pakistan’s military is steeling for an assault into the wild mountain belt along the Afghan border to hunt down the burly Al-Qaeda-linked warlord blamed for the deaths of hundreds of people in terror attacks over two years.
Analysts and security sources say in-fighting among his Mehsud tribe and Taliban factions may bring him down before the army manages to unseat him from his fiefdom in the treacherous peaks of South Waziristan.
But on Tuesday, one of his vocal critics – 26-year-old rival Qari Zainuddin – was found shot dead in his office, and the blame will likely fall on Mehsud’s faction trying to cement its position.
‘Baitullah Mehsud is the top man in his own tribe…he must have around 15,000 to 20,000 hardcore elements or armed men under him,’ said Brigadier Mehmud Shah, political analyst and former security chief of the tribal belt. ‘People are scared of him, they are afraid of him, they are terrified, they don’t like him,’ he added.
The man the US State Department has called ‘a key Al-Qaeda facilitator in the tribal areas’ was born to a Sunni Muslim prayer leader in northwestern Bannu district into the Mehsud tribe from which he takes his name.
After an early education from a religious school in Miramshah in North Waziristan, Mehsud travelled to Afghanistan in the mid 1990s to fight alongside the Taliban movement as they battled for control of the war-torn country.
Upon his return, the Taliban in Pakistan were commanded by one-legged former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Abdullah Mehsud, who was killed when troops raided his hideout in southwestern Baluchistan province in July 2007. Although relatively unknown at the time, Baitullah Mehsud – now in his late 30s – swiftly took his place and that same year he formed an umbrella organisation of tribal militants named Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan.
Despite a string of peace deals with the government, Mehsud set up training camps for recruits, and extended his influence into the districts of North Waziristan and Bajaur and nearby cities of Tank and Dera Ismail Khan.
Taliban influence also spread from the long-troubled tribal belt stringing Afghanistan to the picturesque Swat valley to the northwest, which had been a peaceful holiday spot popular with foreigners and Pakistanis.
A wave of attacks linked to the militants has killed 1,995 people around Pakistan since government forces fought gunmen holed up in Islamabad’s Red Mosque in July 2007, sparking militant retaliation. The government has blamed nearly 80 per cent of the attacks on the Pakistan Taliban, including the December 2007 killing of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
In March, the US placed Mehsud in its list of most-wanted militants, posting a five-million-dollar reward for information leading to his capture.
Infuriated after the Swat Taliban advanced to within 100 kilometres of Islamabad in early April, the Pakistani military launched an offensive to dislodge militants from three northwest districts.
Now, it has vowed to go after Mehsud, but analysts say troops will face a tougher challenge than in Swat, with Mehsud’s network entrenched and influential in the mountains after the years of failed peace deals.
But splits are emerging among the once-cohesive tribal Taliban, with Mehsud’s rivals accusing the commander of covertly working with India and the United States.
Zainuddin was one of a handful of tribal leaders who deserted Mehsud, blaming him for killing civilians during the insurgency, and told local television that he would support an army offensive against his foe.
‘Most people in the tribal belt consider Mehsud an enemy of Pakistan and an enemy of Islam,’ said Shah. ‘They believe they have lost a lot of tribal elders and innocent people because of him.’
(Source: Dawn)
