Taliban claims US drones killed commander from North Waziristan

The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan (TTP) claimed that the US killed a senior commander from Pakistan’s tribal agency of North Waziristan in a drone strike near the “Pak-Afghan border” on March 18. Commander Yusuf Wazir, the slain Taliban leader, also lost a father and a brother in previous US drone strikes, according to the jihadist group.

The TTP announced Wazir’s death in a statement, along with a graphic depicting Wazir’s so-called family of martyrs (shown above).

The US military has not confirmed that it carried out a drone strike that killed Wazir. Additionally, it is unclear if Wazir was killed in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

According to the Taliban, Wazir was a “very close and confidant companion of North Waziristan faction’s leader, Commander Akhtar Muhammad Khalil.” Khalil, who has been featured in Taliban propaganda in the past, was named the Taliban’s emir for North Waziristan in May 2016. He was responsible reconciling the North Waziristan faction with the TTP.

Wazir “strived towards serving local and foreign Mujahideen,” a clear reference to al Qaeda, which is known to operate in North Waziristan, “and also to fulfill their household and other needs. He used to stay ahead in every battlefield. He had great ethics and modesty and he was very courageous in nature.”

His ‘martyrdom’ statement was entitled “Family of Shuhada” because three of his immediate family members were killed while waging jihad. According to the TTP, his father, Taj Ali Khan, was killed in a US drone strike in 2008, and his brother, Abdul Haq, “embraced martyrdom in a drone strike four months ago.” Another brother, Fazl e Haq, was killed while battling the Pakistani military in the Jani Khel area of North Waziristan.

Uptick in activity along the Afghan-Pakistan border

The deaths of Wazir and Qari Yasin, an al Qaeda leader who was a member of the Punjabi Taliban, over the weekend, as well as Qari Abdullah Mairaj on March 2, may indicate that the US has increased the targeting of Pakistani and Afghan jihadists.

The TTP announced today that Yasin and three followers were killed in a US drone strike in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan. Yasin was an experienced jihadist who trained others in explosives and electronics, and was behind multiple major terrorist attacks in Pakistan.

Unnamed Taliban officials claimed that Mairaj, a senior leader in the Haqqani Network, was killed in a US drone strike in the eastern Afghan province of Khost. Mairaj is said to have accompanied Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured by the Taliban in 2009, when he was exchanged for five dangerous Taliban leaders who were held by the US at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

The US military has not commented on the strike that killed Yasin, but it did deny that its aircraft conducted operations in Khost the day that Mairaj was killed, according to UPI.

While the US military is able to strike at will against jihadists operating in Afghanistan, as the country is considered to be in “areas of active hostility,” the Obama administration put restrictions on the targeting of terrorist leaders and operatives across the border in Pakistan in an effort to reduce civilian casualties as well as tensions with the Pakistani government. The last confirmed US drone strike that took place in Pakistan successfully targeted Mullah Mansour, emir of the Afghan Taliban, in May 2016.

Last week, The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration planned to roll back Obama’s restrictions that limited the CIA’s role in the targeting of terrorists and sought to “scrap the ‘near-certainty’ standard of no civilian deaths for strikes outside war zones.”

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

Tags: Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Pakistan, Taliban