Map of the Miramshah area in North Waziristan. Click to view larger map.
US Predator strike aircraft struck yet again in Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan today, killing nine terrorists.
Unmanned Predators or the more heavily armed and deadly Reapers fired a pair of missiles at a compound and a vehicle in the village of Khaddi in the Miramshah area, Geo News reported.
Pakistani intelligence officials initially told Geo News that six “militants” were killed in the attack. Other officials told The Associated Press that “three of those killed were militants while the rest were locals harboring them.” A later report by The Associated Press indicated that nine Taliban fighters, including a local commander named Mustafa who is associated with Sadiq Noor, were killed.
No senior al Qaeda or Taliban fighters have been reported killed in strike.
The Miramshah area is in the sphere of influence of the Haqqani Network, a Taliban group led by mujahedeen commander Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj. The Haqqanis are closely allied to al Qaeda and to the Taliban, led by Mullah Omar. Siraj Haqqani is the leader of the Miramshah Regional Military Shura, one of the Afghan Taliban’s top four commands; he sits on the Taliban’s Quetta Shura; and he is also is a member of al Qaeda’s Shura Majlis. The Haqqanis are based on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border.
The US has targeted Siraj and other top-level Haqqani Network commanders in Predator strikes since 2008. On June 23, 2009, US Predators struck at a funeral for a local Taliban commander in South Waziristan; Siraj Haqqani and his top lieutenant Mullah Sangeen Zadran were thought to be attending. On Feb. 18 of this year, the US killed Mohammed Haqqani, another of the 12 sons of Jalaluddin Haqqani, in an airstrike in Danda Darpa Khel just outside Miramshah. Mohammed served as a military commander for the Haqqani Network. Siraj is believed to be sheltering in the neighboring tribal agency of Kurram to avoid the Predators.
The Haqqani Network operates on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. The US military has heavily targeted the Haqqani Network’s leadership in raids and airstrikes in the Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktia, and Paktika.
On Nov. 5, US and Afghan forces captured the Haqqani Network’s shadow governor for the Spera district in Khost province. The Spera district directly borders Pakistan, and the shadow governor, who was not named, coordinated “the facilitation of foreign fighters from Pakistan” and also directed and executed ambushes against combined forces.
On Oct. 31, five Haqqani Network leaders, including Zubair, a weapons facilitator for foreign fighters in the area, were killed during a raid in Paktia’s Zadran district.
On Nov. 9, US and Afghan forces captured a Haqqani Network weapons dealer in Kabul as he was en route to Saudi Arabia. Also, on Nov. 16, US and Afghan forces captured a senior facilitator in the Kabul Attack Network during a raid in Khost.
And on Nov. 18, US and Afghan special operations forces captured two senior Haqqani Network facilitators in northern and eastern Afghanistan. A combined force captured a suicide facilitator who was working for al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Haqqani Network, and directed suicide attacks in all of Nangarhar province. Another special operations team captured the Haqqani Network’s top facilitator in Baghlan province.
The Predator strikes, by the numbers
Today’s strike is the 11th US attack in Pakistan this month. Three of those strikes have hit targets in the Miramshah 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 102 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 102 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.]
1 Comment
Just how reliable are the reports of casualties, it seems they could be any number considering these are high explosive missles being fired into compounds or vehicles.