Pakistan has officially protested some US drone strikes in the past, typically when a so-called “good Taliban” leader is targeted. However Pakistan has occasional protested strikes that have targeted al Qaeda and the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan.
The White House confirmed the death of Taliban emir Mullah Mansour today, two days after the group’s top leader was targeted in an unmanned airstrike in Baluchistan province.
The National Directorate of Security claimed that Taliban Mullah Mansour died in yesterday’s airstrike but the US has yet to confirm his death.
The US military said it carried out a “counterterror mission” to rescue Ali Haider Gilani. Afghan officials said that al Qaeda was holding him hostage. Al Qaeda operated a training camp in Paktika as recently as the summer of 2015. Paktika is also a stronghold for the al Qaeda-allied Haqqani Network.
“This attack is part of ongoing attacks against security forces and police,” the spokesman for Jamaat-ul-Ahrar said. “We believe the fighting will continue until we achieve the goal of implementing the Islamic system in Pakistan.”
Since 2010, the US military and intelligence services have maintained that al Qaeda had a minimal presence of 50 to 100 operatives in Afghanistan. Now a senior general in Afghanistan admits the estimate needs to be revised. The Long War Journal has warned from the beginning that the conventional estimate was wrong.
Several members of the Islamic State Khorasan Provinces’ “central council” as well as other senior and mid-level leaders based in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar have broken their oath to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi and have rejoined the Taliban.
The Treasury Department has added the Scottish-born James Alexander McLintock to the US government’s list of specially designated global terrorists. McLintock’s charity, Al Rahmah Welfare Organization (RWO), is allegedly a “front organization for al Qaeda” that has been used to fund al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Lashkar-e-Taiba. Social media sites associated with McLintock and RWO have documented their operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and elsewhere.
“The target was Christians,” the official spokesman of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan Jamaat-ul-Ahrar said after a suicide bomber killed more than 70 people, mostly women and children, at a park in Lahore.
Al Qaeda leaders Abu Yahya al Libi and Atiyah Abd al Rahman provided detailed feedback on the Movement of the Taliban’s proposed charter.
A letter to Atiyah by “Ahmad,” who likely is Ustad Ahmad Farooq, shows how al Qaeda attempts to manipulate the media. Also, al Qaeda in Pakistan based its media operations from Wana, South Waziristan, which is home to a Taliban group supported by the Pakistani state.
According to a letter in Osama bin Laden’s files, a US drone strike that killed Abu Laith in 2008 also killed a Libyan and 10 other “Arabs, Tajiks, and Turkistanis.”
Just months prior to his death, Osama bin Laden ordered his right hand man to relocate the al Qaeda “brothers” out of North and South Waziristan. The al Qaeda men were to be moved to Afghanistan and other areas in Pakistan.
“The government itself, the military has been very cooperative and very engaged in the fight against terrorism,” Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, despite Pakistan’s continuing support of the Taliban and other jihadist groups.
The Islamic State promotes it capabilities as it continues to fight an uphill battle to gain supporters in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the main Taliban factions and al Qaeda still have the upper hand.
The attack took place in the tribal agency of Kurram, where the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network is known to have moved its base of operations.
The US is reported to have killed 18 Taliban fighters from Sajna Mehsud’s Taliban faction in an airstrike in an area in Paktika province known to serve as a safe haven for several terrorist groups, including al Qaeda.
Abu Dujana al Basha is a son-in-law and trusted aide to Ayman al Zawahiri and is known as the “hidden commander” for his organization behind the scenes, including the establishment of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent. Al Qaeda has not officially confirmed Basha’s death.
Masood Azhar, the Jaish-e-Mohammed emir, has been placed under house arrest and in protective custody at least three other times in the past.
The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan said that a “Special Unit” from the Mujahideen Special Group “successfully targeted” and killed Pakistani security forces guarding the vaccination center. The Taliban has targeted the anti-polio drive in the past, accusing it of being a vehicle of Western intelligence services.
Muhanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, a member of al Qaeda’s paramilitary force in Afghanistan and Pakistan, was involved in a double suicide attack in Khost, Afghanistan in 2009.
The assault on the airbase is thought to have been executed by Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based jihadist group with close ties to al Qaeda. Jihadists reportedly said they were going to avenge a Jaish-e-Mohammed operative who was executed for his role in the 2001 assault on India’s Parliament.
The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan again rejected the Islamic State and said its emir, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, is illegitimate and his followers kill “innocent mujahideen.”
A US military spokesman touted the strikes that killed the three Islamic State leaders as “an example of how we’re able to decimate networks.”
The Muaskar ul Fida is likely loyal to the Haqqani Network, an al Qaeda-linked Taliban group that is backed by Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment.
The “Sheikh Jalaluddin training camp” is named after the Khorasan Province’s former mufti, or senior religious and legal scholar, who was killed by the US in an airstrike in Nangarhar in October. The Islamic State has advertised three training facilities in Afghanistan in the past two months.
“People such as these you do not hear a sound from them, they work in silence and leave in silence,” a prominent jihadist said of Sufyan al Maghribi, al Qaeda’s former military emir for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Maghribi was also a frequent contributor to Vanguards of Khorasan, al Qaeda’s magazine, under the nom de guerre Abu Isam al Andalusi.
The US is thought to have killed Bilal al Tayibin, an Arab al Qaeda “key leader,” in an airstrike on the evening of Oct. 29 in Darin in Kunar’s Ghaziabad district. Two of Tayibin’s Afghan bodyguards are also said to have been killed in the attack.
According to multiple reports, al Qaeda and its newest regional branch, al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, are operating in the southern Afghan province of Helmand. Terrorists are being trained in Helmand to carry out operations throughout Southeast Asia. And As Sahab, al Qaeda’s propaganda arm, has operatives in the province as well.
While the locations of the Shaykh Abu Omar al Baghdadi and Shaykh Abu Musab al Zarqawi camps are unknown, they are likely situated in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, where the jihadist group has established a presence.