The Pakistani military killed a dangerous Taliban commander who was responsible for the murders of scores of Pakistani soldiers, policemen, and civilians.
Qari Kamran, a senior Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan commander in the northwestern district of Nowshera, was killed along with 11 fighters yesterday during a military operation in the tribal agency of Khyber. The Taliban have been fighting the Pakistani military as well as the rival Islamist terror group Lashkar-e-Islam in Khyber.
Kamran was involved in some of the most deadly suicide attacks and ambushes in northwestern Pakistan over the past several years. The most devastating attack took place on May 13, 2011, when a suicide bomber detonated among a crowd of newly trained troops of Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps at a training center in Shabqadar in the neighboring district of Charsadda. The suicide attack was followed by a car bomb. More than 80 Pakistani troops and civilians were killed in the twin blasts.
The Taliban claimed credit for the horrific attack and said it was carried out to avenge the death of al Qaeda emir Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US special operations forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011.
The Shabqadar attack was followed by the June 5, 2011 suicide attack at the Nowshera Cantonment that killed 18 Pakistani soldiers.
In addition to attacking Pakistani security forces, Kamran was also involved in targeting anti-Taliban militias in Nowshera. Three such attacks in the past year have taken place in mosques. In the last attack, on Nov. 19, Kamran’s fighters gunned down an outspoken mosque imam who was vocal in opposition to the Taliban. Another attack, on June 12, killed six people and leveled the mosque.
Sources: Allvoices, Pakistan Today
7 Comments
Geez if this guy was sowing this much chaos in Pakistan the US should have put more effort into helping this guy out.
What’s going on in Pakistan? The Pak army seems to be picking up the pace in terms of engaging the “enemy” every since its defeat at Mohmand. (Quotation marks because it’s hard to tell whom the enemy is in Pakistan.) What could be the motivation for this seemingly increased activity?
Sounds like Qari Kamran was a good faith offering by the Taliban to the ISI.
I loathe saying this but, good job Pakistan…now let US do our job and kill the rest of the Taliban, Al Qaida and Haqqanni scum with our Spec Ops and drones!
In order to make sense of these actions you must bear in mind that PAK has a TB problem of their own. I suspect if you added up all the PAK casualties at the hands of the TTP, and all ISAF casualties at hands of AFG TB/AQ/HQN, the numbers would be fairly close. Although the TTP has only been actively engaged against PAKMIL for a relatively short period of time, the per event casualties are much higher than ISAF’s in AFG (not to mention a former PM). The support PAK provides AFG TB, HQN, AQ and other INS elements fighting US and coalition forces in AFG is PAK’s way of maintaining some semblance of control over, what for them, is a strategically important piece of real estate. Remember, PAKMIL sees AFG as a fallback position in the event of an IND invasion and, at least in PAKMIL minds, if that fallback position is occupied by hostile elements, they are, in effect, already surrounded/cut off before an IND attack crosses the LD. There is a completely separate game afoot in the Indian subcontinent and surrounding AO in which the US is a bit player, if a player at all. AS far as PAKMIL is concerned, the IND threat is existential, whatever is going on in tribal areas and across the border in AFG is a side show. We simply have chosen (with good reason) to initiate combat operations in that very complex AO. However, to think for a moment that the “other” game in town will not spill over onto our playing field is both naive and short sighted.
The way to defeat the Taliban is great job done by Pakistan Army. Pakistan Army is going their way to success. TTP has disintegrate into various factions. The fact is that TTP has now become very weak roots in Pakistan and it seems extremely difficult for them to stay and fight against Pakistan Army. Pakistan Army is fighting against the fundamentalist ideology behind Taliban.
Its easy to concieve that LEI may have tipped off the Pak Army, to alleviate the pressure they are facing in Bajuar.
The in-fighting is very transparent in Bajuar. There’s rumors that Faqir Mohamed and Qari Zia Rehman are not getting as well.
The Pak Amry has ramped-up Op’s in Bajuar, and I think it’s becoming a successful campaign.