Map of the Miramshah area in North Waziristan. Click to view larger map.
Earlier today, the US launched another airstrike in Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan, killing five terrorists.
Unmanned Predators or the more heavily armed and deadly Reapers fired a pair of missiles at a vehicle and a motorcycle in the village of Khushali in the Miramshah area, The Associated Press reported. Five Taliban fighters were reported killed. No senior al Qaeda or Taliban fighters have been reported killed in strike.
The village of Khushali is administered by Hafiz Gul Bahadar, the Taliban commander for North Waziristan. Bahadar also provides shelter to top al Qaeda leaders as well as terrorists from numerous Pakistani and Central Asian terror groups.
Several of al Qaeda’s top commanders, including Mustafa Abu Yazid, the chief financial official and commander in Afghanistan, and Abdullah Said al Libi, the commander of al Qaeda’s military, have been killed in Predator strikes in areas administered by Bahadar in the last year. [See LWJ report, Latest US Predator strike kills 5 in al Qaeda hub in North Waziristan.]
Despite the known presence of al Qaeda and other foreign groups in North Waziristan, and requests by the US that action be taken against these groups, the Pakistani military has indicated that it has no plans to take on Bahadar or the Haqqani Network. Bahadar and Haqqanis are considered “good Taliban” by the Pakistani military establishment as they do not carry out attacks inside Pakistan.
The Predator strikes, by the numbers
Today’s strike is the 12th US attack in Pakistan this month. Four of those strikes have hit targets in the Miramshah area. Yesterday, US Predators killed a local Taliban commander named Mustafa and eight fighters in a strike in the village of Khaddi in the Miramshah area. Mustafa is said to have been allied with Sadiq Noor, a senior Taliban commander in North Waziristan who was targeted in a strike on Jan. 3, 2010. Both Noor and Bahadar were the principal signatories of the 2006 peace agreement between the North Waziristan Taliban and the Pakistani government. It is not known if Noor was killed in the January strike.
The pace of the strikes since the beginning of September is unprecedented since the US began the air campaign in Pakistan in 2004. September’s record number of 21 strikes was followed by 16 strikes in October. The previous monthly high was 11 strikes in January 2010, after the Taliban and al Qaeda executed a successful suicide attack at Combat Outpost Chapman that targeted CIA personnel who were active in gathering intelligence for the Predator campaign in Pakistan. In the bombing at COP Chapman, seven CIA officials and a Jordanian intelligence officer were killed.
The US has carried out 103 attacks inside Pakistan this year, which is more than double the number of strikes in Pakistan just two years earlier. A few months ago, the US exceeded last year’s strike total of 53 with a strike in Kurram in late August. In 2008, the US carried out a total of 36 strikes inside Pakistan. [For up-to-date charts on the US air campaign in Pakistan, see LWJ Special Report, Charting the data for US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 – 2010.]
All but nine of this year’s 103 strikes have taken place in North Waziristan. Of the nine strikes that have occurred outside of North Waziristan, seven took place in South Waziristan, one occurred in Khyber, and one took place in Kurram.
The US campaign in northwestern Pakistan has targeted top al Qaeda leaders, al Qaeda’s external operations network, and Taliban leaders and fighters who threaten both the Afghan and Pakistani states as well as support al Qaeda’s external operations. [For a list of al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in the US air campaign in Pakistan, see LWJ Special Report, Senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 – 2010.]
3 Comments
Wait, wait, wait. According to the New York Times the “key negotiator” in the “peace talks” between the ISAF, the Afghan government and the Taliban shura was just a crook lured in by a chance to win some easy cash, not in any way related to the Taliban Shura. And it took western intelligence agencies 3 meetings and god knows how much wasted money to even notice.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/world/asia/23kabul.html?_r=1&hp
How is this possible? How can the CIA be played so easily?
Are we really that dumb (or desperate) that we trust anyone proclaiming to be a Taliban leader?
While the United States gets distracted by ridiculous attempts to bring the Taliban to negotiate, Mullah Omar and his men continue to wait out until public opinion drags the Western armies out of Afghanistan, safely in their safehaven in Pakistan. This is an unacceptable embarrassment for NATO.
Bill, is there a good piece out there describing the Pakistani strategic reluctance to pursue the myriad of jihadist groups operating throughout the country? It is definitely clear from your solid reporting that the Pakistani military is playing both sides. I would love to learn more about the reasons (probably valid ones) why they are doing so. Keep up the great work.
The only good Taliban is a dead one! The NYT’s report that we has been talking, and paying a lot of money as well, to a fake Taliban “leader” in our desperation to find political cover for a withdrawal. We have been taken to the cleaners so many times by the Pakistanis that it isn’t funny anymore.