Map of the Miramshah-Mir Ali area in North Waziristan. Click to view larger map.
Today the US launched yet another airstrike in the Mir Ali area of Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan, killing four terrorists in a strike on a vehicle as it traveled in an area known to host al Qaeda operatives plotting and training to carry out attacks against the West.
Unmanned Predators or the more heavily armed and deadly Reapers fired a pair of missiles at a vehicle as it traveled in the village of Hasan Khel in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan, AFP reported.
Four Taliban fighters were reported killed, but no senior al Qaeda or Taliban fighters have been reported killed in the strike.
The Mir Ali area is in the sphere of influence of Abu Kasha al Iraqi, an al Qaeda leader who serves as a key link to the Taliban and supports al Qaeda’s external operations network. Taliban leader Hafiz Gul Bahadar and the Haqqani Network also operate in the Mir Ali area. Mir Ali is a known hub for al Qaeda’s military and external operations councils.
Since Sept. 8, a total of 16 Germans and two Britons have been reported killed in Predator strikes in the Mir Ali area. The Europeans were members of the Islamic Jihad Group, an al Qaeda affiliate based in the Mir Ali area. The IJU members are believed to be involved in a recently discovered al Qaeda plot that targeted several major European cities and was modeled after the terror assault on the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008.
This year, the US has been pounding targets in the Datta Khel, Miramshah, and Mir Ali areas of North Waziristan in an effort to kill members involved in the European plot. Al Qaeda and allied terror groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic Jihad Group, the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and a number of Pakistani and Central and South Asian terror groups host or share camps in the region.
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 the 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 14th US attack in Pakistan this month. Six of those strikes have hit targets in the Mir Ali area.
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 105 attacks inside Pakistan this year, and in December is set to double last year’s number of strikes. In late August, the US exceeded last year’s strike total of 53 with a strike in Kurram. 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.]
This year the strikes have overwhelmingly been confined to North Waziristan. All but nine of this year’s 105 strikes have taken place in that tribal agency. 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.
Since Sept. 1, the US has ramped up airstrikes against the terror groups in North Waziristan, with 51 strikes Predator strikes in the tribal agency. Many of the strikes targeted cells run by the Islamic Jihad Group, which have been plotting to conduct the Mumbai-styled terror assaults in Europe. A Sept. 8 strike killed an IJU commander known as Qureshi, who specialized in training Germans to conduct attacks in their home country.
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
I predict that in ages afterwards, the Predator will have the same aura of defending civilization as the Spitfire did in WWII.
Good idea to target vehicles. Forces them to further slow communications or resort to electronic means.
You can bet your bottom dollar that at this stage of the game not a single HVT from Taliban or AQ goes anywhere near a vehicle. We’re spending a fortune on killing cannon fodder. We’re only going to get some progress in the WoT when we move into the Waziristans in force and, perhaps, pull off an amazing Israeli-style commando mission against Pakistani ISI to “kidnap” its computers, books, & records that surely will reveal to us where OBL and all the rest of the HVTs are being hid.