Suicide bomber kills tribal leader, Pakistani troops in northwest

A suicide bomber killed five people, including an anti-Taliban tribal leader and security personnel, in an attack today in the northwestern tribal agency of Bajaur.

The suicide bomber struck a convoy transporting the head of an anti-Taliban lashkar, or militia, in the Salarzai area of Bajaur. The tribal leader and four security personnel who were escorting him were killed in the attack.

Since 2008, the Pakistani military has twice claimed victory over the Taliban in Bajaur. During the same time period, the military has launched several major operations in an effort to clear the Taliban from the tribal agency. The campaign have been described as brutal, as the military used scorched earth tactics in an effort to eject the terrorist group.

But the military has failed to kill or capture the top Taliban leaders in Bajaur. The leadership cadre and most of the fighters escaped to neighboring tribal agencies or slipped across the border into the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan.

Two major Taliban groups operate in the region, one commanded by Qari Zai Rahman, and another by Mullah Fazlullah.

Qari Zai Rahman is the dual-hatted Taliban and al Qaeda leader who operates in Pakistan’s tribal agencies of Bajaur and Mohmand, as well as in Kunar and neighboring Nuristan province in Afghanistan. ISAF and Afghan forces have been hunting Rahman for more than a year.

Mullah Fazlullah commands the Taliban forces in the district of Swat, which borders Dir to the east. Fazlullah’s forces openly ruled Swat and neighboring districts from 2007 until April 2009, when the Pakistani military launched an operation to eject the Taliban. Fazlullah and most of his top leaders fighters evaded the operation and have sheltered along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Today’s attack took place the same day that Pakistan’s top military commander said the Taliban have been defeated.

“In the war against terrorism, our officers and soldiers have made great sacrifices and have achieved tremendous success,” Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani told army cadets, according to Dawn. “The terrorists’ backbone has been broken and Inshallah [god willing] we will soon prevail.”

Kayani’s statement took place just one day after a large Taliban force, estimated at over 300 fighters, overran a security outpost in the northwestern district of Lower Dir, killing 16 paramilitary soldiers and police. Five of the security personnel were said to have been beheaded.

Background on Taliban attacks against lashkars in Pakistan’s northwest

Throughout the northwest, local Pakistani tribal leaders have raised lashkars to oppose the spread of the Taliban. But the terror groups have countered by ruthlessly attacking tribal meetings and killing senior leaders. The largest such attack attack against tribal leaders took place in December 2010, when a suicide bomber killed 50 people and wounded more than 100 in an attack on a government official’s office in Ghalalnai, the administrative seat of the tribal agency of Mohmand, which borders Bajaur to the south. In January 2011, a suicide bomber killed 37 people attending the funeral of a relative of Hakeem Khan, a Pashtun tribal leader who has raised a local militia against the Taliban in the Matni area in Peshawar.

Over the past several years, the Taliban have mounted a savage campaign against tribal leaders in the greater northwest who oppose them. Tribal opposition has been violently attacked and defeated in Peshawar, Dir, Arakzai, Khyber, and Swat. Suicide bombers have struck at tribal meetings held at mosques, schools, hotels, and homes. [See LWJ report, Anti-Taliban tribal militia leader assassinated in Pakistan’s northwest, for more information on the difficulties of raising tribal lashkars in Pakistan’s northwest.]

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

Tags: Pakistan, Taliban