Posted: 17-08-2009 by: Thomas Ruttig

After the signing of the peace agreement, Bahadur became the overall head of the NWA Taliban. Unlike South Waziristan, where Taliban groups are divided on a tribal basis – Ahmadzai Wazir and Mahsuds – the NWA Taliban remain united. Taliban from both the Uthmanzai Wazir and Daur Tribes have strengthened Bahadur’s position by accepting him as their supreme commander. Bahadur has established a parallel Taliban government in the region since the peace agreement. In October 2006, the NWA took a major step towards Talibanization when the NWA shura headed by Bahadur issued a pamphlet in which they outlined the levy of new taxes and prescribed harsh penalties for various offenses (Dawn [Karachi], October 23, 2006).

The peace agreement broke down in July, 2007 amid accusations by both sides. Bahadur announced an end to the peace accord and ordered his fighters to start guerilla attacks against the security forces deployed in NWA. In August 2007, a new peace initiative was launched by both the sides to bring an end to the fighting. A breakthrough was achieved when a tribal jirga from Orakzai Agency was able to convince both sides to agree to a ceasefire (The News, July 17, 2007; August 17, 2007; October 17, 2007).

While the negotiations were going on between the government and Bahadur, the latter joined many other Taliban commanders from various parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) to form the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in December 2007. Baitullah Mahsud was chosen as the head of the TTP while Bahadur was appointed first deputy head of the organization. However, Bahadur quickly distanced himself from the terrorist entity after Mullah Omar opposed the formation of the TTP and asked the Pakistani Taliban to focus their attention and resources on Afghanistan (Asia Times Online, January 24, 2008).

As the peace negotiations between Bahadur and the government drew to a conclusive end, Pakistani security forces initiated a punitive military operation against Baitullah Mahsud in January 2008. To ward off the pincer movement of the security forces attempting to encircle the commander in the Ladah-Makeen area, Baitullah intended to use the Razmak area of NWA to attack Pakistani security forces. Bahadur, however, barred Mahsud from using NWA territory, saying his peace negotiations with the government were in the final stage and would be jeopardized by Mahsud attacks on security forces. On February 18, 2008, the government and tribes of North Waziristan revived the peace agreement, bringing an end to attacks on government installations and forces (Daily Times, February 19, 2008).

Meanwhile, Baitullah Mahsud started expanding his influence in the FATA region after the formation of the TTP and attempted to subdue rival and dissenting Taliban commanders. This alarmed the Ahmadzai Wazir and Uthmanzai Wazir Taliban, who agreed on June 30, 2008 to merge their ranks to form the Muqami Tehrik-e-Taliban (Local Taliban Movement), or the “Waziri alliance.” Hafiz Gul Bahadur assumed the role of the supreme leader, while Mullah Nazir of the Ahmadzai Wazir became his deputy (Dawn, July 1, 2008). This alliance proved to be a deterrent to Baitullah Mahsud, as he found his Mahsud tribe encircled from the north, west and south by the Waziri coalition.

Unlike Baitullah Mahsud, both Bahadur and Nazir remain pro-government in the sense that they do not conduct attacks on government property and personnel in FATA and elsewhere in Pakistan, nor do they undertake the Talibanization of the NWFP. Both, however, act free of government control while conducting cross-border attacks in Afghanistan and carrying out the Talibanization of their tribal lands. Both Bahadur and Nazir are very careful persons, and unlike Baitullah Mahsud, they follow the policy of lying low while advancing their agenda at the same time. Baitullah, on the other hand, is more inclined towards cheap publicity and intends to become the Mullah Omar of Pakistan. Hence, unlike Baitullah, both Bahadur and Nazir maintain a good reputation within their tribal territories, as well as among their respective tribesmen.

Notes

[1] The military operations in South Waziristan Agency resulted in the signing of the April 2004 Shakai peace agreement with the Taliban and the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe, and the February 2005 Sararogha peace agreement with the Taliban and the Mahsud tribe.

Pakistan’s Most Wanted: A Profile of Tehrik-e-Taliban Leader Baitullah Mahsud

Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 10

April 24, 2009 11:02 AM Age: 2 yrs

By: Mukhtar A. Khan

Baitullah Mahsud (Reuters)

By threatening to attack the White House and making a bizarre claim of responsibility for the shooting rampage at a U.S. immigration center in Binghamton, New York, the Tehrik-e-Taliban [TTP] chief in Pakistan’s restive tribal areas – Baitullah Mahsud – has been making big headlines in global media. Once regarded as a “soldier of peace” by Pakistani military officials and more recently as a “patriotic Pakistani,” the hardened militant commander is now considered to be Pakistan’s enemy number one (see Terrorism Focus, January 9, 2008; Daily Times [Lahore], April 6; Dawn [Karachi], March 26).

Baitullah is the second Pakistani to carry a U.S. government bounty of $5 million on his head. The first Pakistani on the U.S. wanted list was Mir Aimal Kasi, who was deported from Pakistan to the United States, where he was tried and executed in 2002 for the murder of two CIA agents outside the agency’s headquarters in 1993. Baitullah Mahsud, who is locally referred to as “Amir Sahib,” has been designated by the US State Department as a key al-Qaeda facilitator in the South Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan (BBC Urdu, April 8).

From Seminary to Top Taliban Commander

Only five years ago, Baitullah Mahsud was an unknown talib (student). His name first surfaced when he filled the vacuum after the Taliban commander in South Waziristan, Nek Muhammad Wazir, was killed in a 2004 U.S. drone attack. Baitullah shot to prominence as a charismatic Taliban leader when he signed a peace deal, known as the Sararogha agreement, with the Pakistani government in February 2005.

Now in his mid-30’s, Baitullah was born in Dawud Shah village of the Bannu district of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), bordering the restive North Waziristan tribal agency. As his name indicates, Baitullah Mahsud belongs to the Shubi Khel branch of the Mahsud tribe. Baitullah’s father Maulana Muhammad Haroon Shah was not a well-off man. He was the imam of a small mosque in Dawud Shah where the local people had collectively rented him a house. Baitullah had five brothers – the youngest, Yahya Mahsud, was killed last year by unknown assailants in Bannu. Among the others, Baitullah’s elder brother Zahir Shah and a younger brother, Muhammad Ishaq, are both associated with the banned TTP. Baitullah’s father died a few years ago and his mother now stays with Baitullah in South Waziristan (BBC Urdu, April 8).

Until recently, Baitullah lived in Bannu. He received his early religious education in a village madrassa (seminary). Baitullah also had some formal/secular education in a government school but dropped out, leaving his education incomplete. He then went to a religious seminary in Miranshah, North Waziristan, headquarters of the militant Haqqani Network. Even here, Baitullah did not complete his grades but nevertheless went back to Bannu and served there as an imam for a short period of time (BBC Urdu, April 8).

Baitullah was soon inspired by the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. He already had an acquaintance with some Taliban leaders from his stay in a seminary close to the Haqqani madrassa. He joined the movement and fought alongside the Taliban against the Northern Alliance in Bagram. Victory there encouraged him to fight on other fronts in Afghanistan as well.

Baitullah’s Links with the Media

Until recently, Baitullah was not as media-savvy as his predecessor Nek Muhammad or other local Taliban leaders like the late Abdullah Mahsud. Baitullah used to shun media appearances but has now realized the importance of both media and media-men. Local tribal journalists say that he is very friendly to them now. In January 2008, he made his first TV appearance on al-Jazeera. Four months later he invited a group of journalists from Islamabad and Peshawar for a feast and his first-ever public press conference in South Waziristan. When a journalist in Swat, Musa Khan Khel, was killed in February 2009, Baitullah issued special directives to his deputies to look into the matter. The journalists based in tribal areas and the frontier province claim to feel more threatened by Pakistani intelligence agencies than Baitullah and his commanders (Geo TV, April 11).

Baitullah has exploited this trust relationship with the journalists to get his message across. Despite his hatred for the West (and the United States especially), he has appeared in interviews on the BBC and even the U.S. Voice of America network (BBC, January 29, 2007; VOA, March 31). Baitullah has avoided having his picture taken by the media, a trait he shares with the Taliban Supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, to whom he has pledged his allegiance.

Baitullah’s Military and Political Acumen

Despite the fact he has very little education, Baitullah is known for his political acumen and tactical skills. He has the charisma to unite local fighters and keep his following intact. He has a private militia of more than 20,000 who are skilled in various guerilla tactics. Baitullah demonstrated his military might in late 2007 when his men arrested some 250 Pakistani soldiers and kept them hostage for more than two months in South Waziristan. They were released in exchange for 25 Taliban militants, among them several who had been trained to carry out suicide bombings (Dawn [Karachi], December 31, 2007). Baitullah is believed to have sharpened his guerilla skills under the leadership of veteran jihadi commander Jalaluddin Haqqani – who fought against the Soviet Union and then sided with the Taliban before providing a safe haven in the North Waziristan tribal agency to top al-Qaeda militants after the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan’s Tora Bora Mountains in early 2002.

Baitullah Mahsud has used the terms “shari’a” and “jihad” to consolidate his power-base in South Waziristan before extending it to the rest of the tribal areas and parts of the NWFP. He introduced the tactics of suicide bombing and beheading of anti-Taliban “spies.” More than 200 pro-government tribal elders have been killed on such charges in order to silence any voice of dissent or traditional authority. The phenomenon of suicide bombing was something new for Pakistani society when it was introduced in 2007. Commander Qari Hussain, a close aide to Baitullah, has trained numerous suicide bombers, most of them poor and uneducated boys, some as young as 7 years-old. Qari Hussain was a member of the banned anti-Shi’a outfit, Sipah-e-Sahaba, before joining Baitullah’s TTP. In the last year alone, some 725 people were killed in suicide bombings across Pakistan - mostly police and army officials, along with a significant number of bystanders (Daily Times [Lahore], December 31, 2008).

Baitullah has tactfully exploited almost all the “peace deals” and “cease-fire agreements” reached with the government and military officials in his own favor. He struck the first peace deal in February 2005 and the second in February 2008. Both raised his stature and allowed him time and space to raise his militia. These deals, however, were made to be broken, with a huge consequent loss to the government of Pakistan. The peace deals in nearby Swat and Bajaur were also inked after Baitullah gave a green light to his deputies.

After forming the TTP in December 2007, Baitullah Mahsud faced tough resistance from Commander Maulvi Nazir in Wana and Hafiz Gul Bahadur in Miranshah, which he overcame by bringing them under the umbrella of the Shura Ittihad al-Mujahideen (United Mujahideen Council – UMC) in February 2009 (Daily Khabrain [Islamabad], March 10). Baitullah still faces a challenge from the local Abdullah Mahsud group, consisting of followers of the late commander led by Qari Zainuddin Mahsud and Turkistan Bitani. On March 26 a TTP suicide bomber killed 11 people in an attack on a restaurant where fighters belonging to Turkistan Bitani’s command were eating. A TTP spokesman said the attack was revenge for the killing of 35 TTP fighters by Bitani’s men last year (Al-Sharq al-Awsat, March 26).

Baitullah Mahsud is still a suspect in the murder of Pakistan’s former premier, Benazir Bhutto, a case in which he denies any involvement. However, he has accepted responsibility for several suicide and guerilla attacks in various places, including the recent attacks on a police training academy in Lahore, a police station in Islamabad and a suicide attack on a military convoy in Bannu. He has threatened more serious attacks inside Pakistan unless the U.S. drone strikes are halted (Daily Times [Lahore], April 3). As a revenge for the drone attacks, he claimed to have engineered the Binghamton shooting on April 3, but such statements have only made him a laughing stock (The News [Islamabad], April 5).

Conclusion

Despite Baitullah’s recent boasts, he is still very cautious and calculated. He avoids being photographed and moves with heavy security and special guards. He may think he could still be a strategic asset for the Pakistani security establishment but he also fears the risk to his life from the targeted drone attacks and the U.S. bounty on his head. His claim that he is planning an attack on the White House actually indicates that he has no intention of doing so – if he was planning such an attack he wouldn’t specify the target in advance. Baitullah has the ability to conduct terrorist attacks inside Pakistan and Afghanistan but has not acquired the capacity to engineer transnational operations.

As well as being a regional force with the skills needed to unify the scattered local jihadis, Baitullah Mahsud acts as an al-Qaeda facilitator. He has sufficient acumen to be a player in local politics but plays only a small role in global politics. He can send a young suicide bomber to attack an easy target inside Pakistan or Afghanistan but cannot transport him to a European country or the United States. In his ideology, Baitullah is more impressed by Mullah Omar than Osama bin Laden. Like Mullah Omar he is waging jihad aimed at creating an Islamic government in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He still has a localized agenda but wants foreign troops to leave Afghanistan. Despite several peace deals with the Pakistani government, he has never stopped his men from attacking U.S. and NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan.

The Death of Baitullah Mahsud: A View from Afghanistan

Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 26

August 20, 2009 03:36 PM Age: 2 yrs

By: Wahidullah Mohammad

Officials in Afghanistan see the killing of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mahsud as a great victory for his opponents and say his death may result in the breakup of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) organization. The loss of the TTP leader comes as Pakistani jet fighters and helicopter gunships continue to pound Taliban positions in South Waziristan in preparation for an expected ground offensive.

Baitullah Mahsud was killed in a U.S. drone missile attack on his father-in-law’s house in South Waziristan. Although officials in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States have stood behind reports of the death of the insurgent leader, the Taliban in Pakistan still insist their leader is alive, an increasingly unsustainable position. The Taliban in Afghanistan have refused comment on this issue.

Hamed Elmi, deputy spokesperson to Afghan president Hamid Karzai, feels certain that Baitullah is dead, but the government is still waiting for more credible evidence of the insurgent leader’s death from the Pakistani government [1] Elmi says that Baitullah and his group are linked to al-Qaeda, but his death does not lead the government to expect a decrease in Taliban attacks within Afghanistan. “This is one hundred percent true that the Pakistani Taliban leader is killed… We can see that after he was killed there was a big clash between his two top commanders, Wali-ur-Rahman and Hakimullah Mahsud over who would replace him.” Elmi says that the Afghan government wants the Pakistani government to close all those religious madrassas (religious schools) where thousands of Taliban have been trained as terrorist insurgents. “There are hundreds of madrassas on the Pakistan side that are training young boys as terrorists. We want these madrassas to be closed and to be changed into modern schools. Their curriculums should be under government control. We have always insisted the Pakistani government should have control over the religious madrassas. The centers for terrorist training should be destroyed. We also have religious madrassas in different cities of Afghanistan but none of them [are] used for terrorist activities because we have full control over our madrassas.”

Elmi said the Defense Ministry was happy with the killing of the Taliban leader. “His death is a big success for the killers and can have a big positive impact not only on the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan. His death is good for the region and even for the world.”

Kabul-based political analyst Fazal Raman Orya says that killing the TTP leader will have a short term positive impact on the security situation in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the region. [2] According to Orya, Mahsud was a main player for Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and was killed at the ISI’s suggestion. “He was very powerful; he had more than 30,000 armed people but sometimes he was not listening to the ISI and was out of their control - that is why they decided to kill him.”

Orya says the ISI will now look for a good replacement and will reorganize the TTP structure. “The truth is that ISI wants to replace him with a new person. The new person will be more powerful than Mahsud but he will always be listening to ISI. Once Baitullah is replaced by the new person I think the situation will become much worse in Afghanistan.”

Afghan Taliban spokesperson Qari Yusuf Ahmadi refused to speak on the repercussions of the TTP leader’s fate, saying that the movement will have comments once Baitullah Mahsud’s death is confirmed by the Pakistani Taliban. “We do not want to give any comments on the death of Baitullah Mahsud. His friends have not confirmed his death yet.” [3]

General Mohammad Zaher Azimi, spokesperson for Afghanistan’s defense ministry, said the ministry is still collecting information regarding Baitullah’s death, but says if his elimination is confirmed, it will have a direct positive impact on the security situation in the region and in Afghanistan in particular. General Azimi maintains there was a very close connection between the Taliban, al-Qaeda and Baitullah Mahsud, especially his connection with the Haqqani network in Miramshah. “They were working together to plan suicide attacks in Afghanistan, training and sending suicide bombers into Afghanistan.” [4]

General Azimi is confident that the death of Baitullah Mahsud will gradually improve the security situation in Afghanistan. “It won’t have a high-speed, positive impact on [the] security situation in Afghanistan and the region very soon, but in the coming few months its positive impact will be seen.”

Notes:

1. Hamed Elmi deputy spokesperson to the President Hamed karzai was interviewed on August 12, 2009.

3. Taliban Spokesperson Qari Yusuf Ahmadi was contacted on August 12, 2009.

4. General Zahir Azimi spokesperson for the Afghanistan defense ministry was interviewed on August 13 2009. For the Haqqani network, see Terrorism Monitor, March 24, 2008; Terrorism Focus, July 1, 2008.

Bekkay Harrach: The Face of German Terror

Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 30

October 1, 2009 04:12 PM Age: 2 yrs

By: Raffaello Pantucci

Germany’s federal elections passed without incident on September 27, though they took place against a backdrop of intense concern in the German security services about a growing number of increasingly pointed al-Qaeda videos threatening Germany over its military deployment in Afghanistan. These messages included a videotape from Osama bin Laden on September 25, entitled “To the Peoples of Europe.” The video had English and German subtitles along with footage of German cities and monuments (Al-Fajr Media Center, September 25). The message appeared only two days before the German elections. Germany has 4,200 troops in northern Afghanistan, where they have come under more frequent attack in the last year as the Taliban insurgency spreads.

While the message from bin Laden is alarming, it appeared to only incidentally target Germany, without the terrorist leader naming it specifically. A more direct threat came from a series of videos released by Bekkay Harrach (a.k.a. Abu Talha al-Alamani), a Moroccan-born German citizen who has joined al-Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier region.

Harrach specifically threatened Germany, telling Muslims to avoid places that are not “essential to daily life” in the post-election period, though he stated that the city of Kiel would remain safe (Der Spiegel, September 18). In the first video of this series, entitled “Security - A Shared Destiny,” Harrach appears clean shaven in front of a red curtain wearing a suit and blue tie – a marked contrast to previous videos in which he appeared as a veiled and turbaned fighter. Two days after this threat, a second video surfaced online, entitled “O Allah, I Love You (1),” this time showing Harrach turbaned once again. Instead of threatening Germany in this second message, Harrach extols the joys of jihad to his fellow countrymen while engaging in highly personal reflections on his relationship to Allah and jihad: