NEW YORK TIMES
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Amid contested claims over a reported falling out among factions struggling for control of the Pakistani Taliban, two bomb explosions Monday in the restive northwest of the country suggested that militants were still active in the region, according to news reports.
The Associated Press quoted intelligence officials as saying Pakistani troops struck back after a remote-controlled bomb exploded near a security checkpoint in the lawless North Waziristan tribal region.
The events came days after the Pakistan Taliban supreme leader, Baitullah Mehsud was said by aides last Friday to have been killed in an American drone strike in South Waziristan two days earlier.
Mr. Mehsud’s death has not yet been officially confirmed, but American and Pakistani officials have grown increasingly sure that he was killed.
After the latest bombings, the intelligence officials, who spoke in return for anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters, said troops killed three militants after the bombing. Police said that a second bomb exploded near a local government official’s vehicle in the city of Peshawar, but there were no immediate details on casualties, The A.P. said.
Pakistani officials said Saturday that Hakimullah Mehsud, a young and aggressive commander, had been shot dead in a fight with another leader, Waliur Rehman, during a meeting in a remote area of South Waziristan. The officials said the men were fighting over who would take over the Pakistani Taliban after the apparent death of Baitullah Mehsud.
But on Sunday, Reuters reported that in a phone call, Mr. Rehman denied that any special meeting or fight had occurred, and insisted that Hakimullah Mehsud was still alive.
“He definitely will call you and tell you everything,” Reuters quoted him as saying.
The Reuters reporter, Alamgir Bhitani, said that he was certain that the caller was Mr. Rehman, with whom he had spoken before, but that he waited hours for a call from Mr. Mehsud that never came.
With Baitullah Mehsud’s death also unconfirmed, the United States national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, said on Fox News on Sunday that even without conclusive proof of his death, the evidence all pointed to it.
“I think that if there’s dissention in the ranks and if, in fact, he is, as we think, dead, this is a positive indication that in Pakistan, things are turning for the better,” he said.
But an American adviser in Pakistan, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his relationship with the government, cautioned Sunday that even if the Mehsuds are proved to be dead, that would be no guarantee that the Pakistani Taliban would fall apart.
“There is broad recognition that this is no longer an old-fashioned test of wills with troublesome Pashtun warlords and that eliminating Baitullah Mehsud would not end the insurgency in South Waziristan nor its influence on the insurgencies in North-West Frontier Province,” the official wrote in an e-mail message.
The adviser also cast doubt on the idea that the Pakistani military would move quickly to exploit any weaknesses, suggesting instead that the government was more in a mood to come to some negotiated settlement with the Mehsud faction — something that American officials have opposed.
“I think there will be, and probably are right now, furtive negotiations going on, but the military option remains,” the American adviser wrote.
A nearly total information blackout has settled over the remote area in northwestern Pakistan since the airstrike on Wednesday.
The Mehsud tribe, officials say, has gone underground, trying to choose a successor.
The blackout is so complete that even longtime Taliban sources became difficult to reach, indicating some sort of turmoil. Many phone lines in the area have been down altogether.
Those who were reached said they knew little. Speaking by phone on Sunday, a resident in the area said he had been listening to hand-held radio communications among fighters, and that there had been no reports of a struggle.
He also said few people in the area believed that Baitullah Mehsud had been killed.
Early on Saturday, before reports of a gunfight had surfaced, Hakimullah Mehsud talked to the BBC by telephone to claim that Baitullah Mehsud was still alive.
Meanwhile, Pakistani government officials stood by their information that a fight had occurred and that both Baitullah and Hakimullah Mehsud had been killed in the past few days. And both Pakistani and American officials said Sunday that they had news of a power struggle in the wake of Baitullah Mehsud’s reported death.
No comments:
Post a Comment