Pakistan: Another Haqqani rubbed out

The assassination of the eldest son, Nasiruddin Haqqani, of the Haqqani Network (HN) leader Jalaluddin Haqqani in Bhara Kahu on the outskirts of Islamabad on Sunday night comes barely a week after Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader Hakeemullah Mehsud’s death in a drone strike in North Waziristan. He is reported to be the fourth Haqqani brother to have been rubbed out by one means or the other. Two armed men opened fire on Nasiruddin, the chief financier and spokesman of the HN, as he was buying bread in the bazaar, stopped to make sure he was dead and then fled. Nasiruddin’s driver picked up the body and transported it to the Haqqani home near Miranshah, North Waziristan, where he is reported to have been buried. No claim of responsibility has surfaced so far, feeding the rumour mills fulltime. The TTP was quick to react, blaming the ISI for the assassination because they said, of Nasiruddin’s close support to Hakeemullah Mehsud. They also vowed to avenge his death. Other speculation centres on the usual cast of suspects, headed first and foremost by the US, which had declared the HN a terrorist group in 2012, in an ironic twist on the HN’s once blue-eyed boys status in the eyes of Washington during the anti-Soviet struggle in Afghanistan. Former US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen had categorised the HN in 2011 in testimony before Congress as a “veritable arm” of the Pakistani ISI. HN is considered one of the most deadly groups fighting the US, NATO and the Karzai Afghan government, with links to al Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and a string of militant groups in Pakistan, including the TTP. The Pakistan army’s ISPR refused to comment on the assassination. The local police appeared clueless about whether the murder had actually occurred, and if it had, who was the victim, since the body was whisked away long before the police lumbered onto the scene. The local SHO has been suspended, but what good does that do when the incident is clearly a ‘black ops’ targeting by whoever was responsible. Some intriguing questions have arisen as a result of this incident. Some are describing it as a replay of the Osama bin Laden raid. It is being reported that Nasiruddin Haqqani had been living in the area for the last 3-4 years. Surely the intelligence agencies, if not the authorities, would have been aware of his presence. That will be the question that will once again be asked by the world. It will strengthen the conviction amongst wide swathes of international and domestic opinion about the establishment’s support for the HN. It will also once again resurrect the questions about the policy of the security establishment when this incident has once again highlighted the links of HN with a conglomeration of the Pakistani state’s enemies, including the homegrown TTP against whom the military is fighting. Nor should it be forgotten that all the reports speak of Maulana Fazlullah, the recently crowned successor of Hakeemullah Mehsud as the chief of the TTP, having found safe haven in eastern Afghanistan just across the border under the aegis of the HN. Internationally, it may ratchet up the pressure on Pakistan regarding its links with the HN. The complex play of forces in the Afghanistan (and now increasingly Pakistan) theatre shows the manner in which alignments have changed and shifted since the end of the Cold War. Yesterday’s allies (the US and the Afghan Mujahideen, including the HN) are today’s sworn enemies. Pakistan’s long standing policy of so-called ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan to be gained through armed proxies has badly backfired in the shape of domestic terrorists (like the TTP) linked inextricably with the global (al Qaeda) and regional (the Afghan Taliban, etc) terrorist groups that have laid siege to Pakistan and Afghanistan, not to mention the broader region, and created the gravest threat to Pakistan’s security in living memory. The military needs now (if it has not so far) to review its policies and options in the matter of Afghanistan before the 2014 drawdown of US and NATO troops and, as a corollary, how to tackle the homegrown terrorist threat, and advise the government accordingly.