A Taliban suicide bomber killed a pro-government tribal leader in the northwestern district of Bannu.
The suicide bomber drove his van packed with explosives into a car transporting Maulana Abdul Hakim, a local tribal chief, and detonated the bomb. The blast killed Hakim and three of his bodyguards.
The attack took place at a police checkpoint in Baka Khel on the Miramshah-Bannu road, the main artery that connects the settled district with the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan.
The Taliban targeted Hakim for speaking out against the radical movement. Hakim had “issued a decree against suicide bombing and the Taliban were not happy with him,” Mohammad Iqbal Marwat, the district police chief told AFP.
Hakim is the second prominent anti-Taliban tribal leader to be killed in Bannu in five days. On Sept. 24, the Taliban killed Malik Sultan and seven other tribal elders from the Jani Khel region in an ambush on Malik’s convoy. Malik had been the organizer of an anti-Taliban lashkar, or tribal militia.
Some tribal leaders have accused Pakistan’s military and Inter-Service Intelligence agency of aiding the Taliban in their fight against the tribes. In the northern tribal agency of Bajaur, Salarzai tribal leaders claimed the Army shelled their villages for raising a lashkar to combat the Taliban.
Today’s suicide bombing in Bannu is the second in the district in three days. On Sept. 26, a suicide bomber killed 13 people. The suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a police station. A separate attack outside a bank and a military complex in Peshawar killed 14 more Pakistanis.
The Taliban took credit for the suicide attack in Bannu. Qari Hussain Mehsud, the notorious Taliban leader who is best known for operating camps that churn out child suicide bombers, said the attack was to avenge the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the former leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan who was killed in a US airstrike in early August.
The Jani Khel region in Bannu has long been a strategic meeting place and safe haven for al Qaeda and the Taliban. Jani Khel was identified as the headquarters for al Qaeda’s Shura Majlis, or executive council, back in 2007, and al Qaeda is known to maintain a bank in the region. Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s second in command, has operated in the Jani Khel region. The US has struck al Qaeda safe houses in Jani Khel twice since last year. These strikes are the only two Predator attacks that have occurred outside of Pakistan’s tribal areas.
3 Comments
It’s starting to feel a little like the War of the Roses, here! So in the end, people will be loyal to the surviving authority in preference to chaos.
It just seems odd that all these suicide attacks aren’t driving thousands of Pakistanis into the arms of either the pro-government or anti-Taliban factions of that embattled country. Pakistanis are not dumb people. No matter how much indoctrination young Pakistanis get in their local madrassas, they have seem what life was like under the Taliban in next-door Afghanistan and they are now seeing how the Taliban behaves in their own country. A lot has been made of this “silent majority” in Pakistan that seems to be secretly supporting their Western form of government. Well, if these same Pakistanis want to hold on to what’s left of their country, they had better not remain silent for much longer. This civil war (and believe me, that’s what it’s turning into) in Pakistan is going to require all of the people in that country to start choosing sides, and soon. If the pro-Western Pakistanis intend to hold on to power, they need to devote their full efforts at eliminating the Taliban and al-Qaeda on their soil. If not, they will certainly lose and the radical religious elements in that country will end up with their ultimate prize, which is control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. I’m not sure the Pakistanis are really up for this fight and I do think the government will lose in the end, since the Taliban and al-Qaeda are both long-term strategists. They don’t care if they fight for 20 years, as long as they know that they’ll eventually win. Hope I’m wrong, but I just don’t see the massive commitment on the side of the pro-government Pakistanis in wanting to destroy both the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Time is running out and no matter how many Predator drone attacks we make, the only way of really dealing with these killers is by having the Pakistani Army totally crush them on the battlefield. Like I said, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
Peace is just a and dream. Periods of non-belligerence are reality. India and Pakistan are still in a state of civil war. They really are one people. All foreigners should leave let them to settle the long standing dispute. Maybe the west should stay in the west. Brits and yanks have mucked things up so much in Asia.