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US drone strike kills Pakistan Taliban commander US drone strike kills Pakistan Taliban commander
(about 2 hours later)
A US drone strike has killed a Taliban commander, his deputy and eight others in northern Pakistan, intelligence sources and tribal leaders have said. A top Taliban leader who quarrelled with other militant factions over his refusal to attack the Pakistani government was killed by a US unmanned drone in the early hours of Thursday, security officials have claimed.
Maulvi Nazir Wazir, also known as Mullah Nazir, an important commander from the Wazir tribe, was killed on Wednesday night when missiles struck a house in Angoor Adda, near the capital of Wana, south Waziristan. Mullah Nazir was reportedly holding a meeting at the time of the missile strike with other senior leaders of his group in a building in Birmil in South Waziristan, one of the troubled tribal regions where the Taliban, al-Qaida and other militant groups have based themselves.
His death was confirmed by seven intelligence sources and two residents from his tribe. The first reported drone strike of 2013 was followed by another attack in North Waziristan at around 9am on Thursday morning. That strike reportedly involved four separate missile strikes on a vehicle in Mubarakshahi, a village near Miran Shah.
His deputy, Ratta Khan, was also killed, three sources said. Because journalists are usually prevented by militants from visiting places hit by drones the exact details of what happened and who was killed in such attacks are often extremely hard to verify.
Nazir favoured attacking American forces in Afghanistan rather than Pakistani soldiers in Pakistan, a position that put him at odds with some other Pakistan Taliban commanders. Residents and an intelligence official in South Waziristan who spoke to a local journalist said the total number of people killed in the first attack was either six or ten. The intelligence source said all the men killed were "top leaders" of the Mullah Nazir group, the leading militant group in South Waziristan.
Nazir was wounded in a bombing in November, widely believed to be as a result of his rivalries with other Taliban commanders. Reuters, citing a number of different security sources, reported Nazir's deputy commander, Ratta Khan, was also killed, along with eight others.
Shortly after the bombing, his Wazir tribe told the Mehsud tribe, related to Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, to leave the area. Neither the Pakistani government nor the Taliban had made an official statement by lunchtime on Thursday.
The Pakistani army has clawed back territory from the Taliban since launching a military offensive in 2009. Intensified drone strikes have also killed many senior Taliban leaders, including Mehsud's predecessor, Baitullah Mehsud, in 2009. Critics of Pakistan's policies in Waziristan say Nazir had long enjoyed some degree of official protection because he promised not to attack soldiers or government facilities.
The number of drone strikes have increased since Barack Obama took office. There were only five in 2007, peaking at 117 in 2010, then down to 46 last year. Under an agreement with other leading militant groups struck in early 2012, Nazir instead focused his efforts on attacks inside Afghanistan against Nato and Afghan government forces. Some locals have credited the agreement with an upsurge in business and development activity in his area of control in South Waziristan.
Most of the strikes hit militants although civilians have also been killed. Rights groups say that some residents are so afraid of the strikes they don't want to leave their homes. But the deal angered other factions, not least the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan – the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) – which continues to mount bloody attacks against the government.
Data collected from news reports by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism shows that between 2,600 and 3,404 Pakistanis have been killed by drones, of which 473 to 889 were reported to be civilians. In November he was wounded in a suicide attack on his vehicle as he travelled through the bazaar in the town of Wana. No group claimed responsibility although some have accused TTP members of the Mehsud tribe who had been displaced from their own areas by attacks from the Pakistani military.
It is difficult to verify civilian casualties because Taliban fighters often seal off the sites of drone strikes immediately. Nazir had tried to order the Mehsud people out of his area shortly before the attack by a teenage bomber on a motorbike.
Imtiaz Gul, a leading security analyst, said that despite the non-aggression deal the Pakistani state was likely to privately welcome his demise because he had long sheltered government enemies.
"Both the US and Pakistan will be happy because they now have one less enemy," he said. "Although he was in an undeclared peace deal with the government, he was also subverting the stated goals of that agreement by providing support and shelter to al-Qaida people whose leaders have pleaded with the rank and file of the Pakistani army to rebel against the state."
In the summer he became the second leading militant in the tribal areas to ban the work of polio vaccinators in his area of control until strikes by US drones came to an end.
He claimed the health workers were using their work as cover to collect intelligence used by the CIA to target militants with drones.
Drone strikes are enormously unpopular in Pakistan as many people believe they not only violate Pakistani sovereignty but also kill large numbers of civilians.
The US, however, believes it operates its drone campaign with some degree of official consent from the Pakistani government, even though the country's foreign ministry often lodges a diplomatic complaint after each strike.
US officials also believe the attacks are extremely accurate and rarely kill civilians, although it never provides detailed evidence to back up those claims as officials are legally barred from talking publicly about a CIA programme that although conducted in the open is still technically clandestine.