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U.S. Drone Strike Kills 6 in Pakistan, Fueling Anger U.S. Drone Strike Kills 6 in Pakistan, Fueling Anger
(about 14 hours later)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — At least six people were killed in an American drone strike in Pakistan’s restive northwestern tribal areas early Friday, according to government officials and local news reports. LONDON — An American drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal belt late Thursday killed a senior militant commander wanted by the United States who was implicated in a long-running kidnapping drama involving an American soldier, Pakistani officials and militant commanders said on Friday.
The strike was directed at a house in the Ghulam Khan area of the North Waziristan tribal region, close to the border with Afghanistan. The commander, Sangeen Zadran, was a leading figure in the Haqqani network, a pro-Taliban group that uses Pakistan to mount high-profile attacks against Western and Afghan targets inside Afghanistan. In August 2011, the United States placed Mr. Zadran on its list of global terrorists.
A senior Haqqani network commander was killed, a security official said. The official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said that the ranking Haqqani official in the region, Sangin Zadran, had been killed. “He was the most influential commander in the area,” the official said. “The Americans had been after him for a long time.” But Mr. Zadran also played a prominent role in the capture of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, an American soldier who disappeared from his post in eastern Afghanistan in 2009 and has been held by the Haqqani network ever since.
North Waziristan has long been a haven for Taliban and Qaeda militants. Mr. Zadran appeared in a video alongside Sergeant Bergdahl in 2010 and was thought to have been his captor for some time. It is unclear, however, whether the American soldier was under Mr. Zadran’s control at the time of the commander’s death, or what impact the killing would have on the years of efforts to secure Sergeant Bergdahl’s release.
American drone strikes are deeply unpopular in Pakistan, and opposition to them has become an essential staple of local politics and grievances against the United States. Pakistani politicians and government officials condemn the missile strikes, which are directed by the Central Intelligence Agency, as a violation of the country’s sovereignty. The drone attack occurred late Thursday night in Ghulam Khan, an area bordering Afghanistan in North Waziristan, the main hub of Qaeda and Taliban militancy in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Mr. Zadran was the Taliban’s shadow governor for Paktika, the neighboring Afghan province and the location of Sergeant Bergdahl’s disappearance.
Opposition politicians like Imran Khan, leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf political party, have campaigned against the strikes, saying that they result more in civilian casualties than militant killings. In October 2012, Mr. Khan led a big protest rally to the edges of the tribal regions against the use of drones on Pakistani soil. According to local residents reached by telephone, militants announced Mr. Zadran’s death via loudspeaker across Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan — the first such mark of public recognition for a drone victim since the C.I.A.-led campaign started in 2004, and a mark of the seniority of the slain commander.
The number of drone strikes has, however, dropped sharply in recent months. The last strike occurred on Aug. 31, when at least four suspected militants were killed in an attack in North Waziristan. “He was the most influential commander in the area,” said a senior Pakistani official who agreed to discuss Mr. Zadran on the condition of anonymity. “The Americans had been after him for a long time.”
Secretary of State John Kerry hinted in a visit to Pakistan earlier in August that the drone strikes could end soon. Mr. Zadran’s funeral, which took place several hours later, was attended by about 2,000 people, local residents said. Before his death, accounts of Mr. Zadran’s recent marriage had coursed through militant circles in North Waziristan.
“The program will end as we have eliminated most of the threat and continue to eliminate it,” Mr. Kerry said at the time in an interview broadcast on state-run television. “I think the president has a very real time line, and we hope it’s going to be very, very soon.” A senior Taliban commander said Mr. Zadran’s death was a major blow. He had been a close friend of Hakimullah Mehsud, the fugitive Pakistani Taliban leader, and sat on militant councils that coordinated between the Taliban and the Haqqani network.
The Friday strike came as Pakistan celebrated Defense Day, a day of remembrance for those killed in the 1965 war with neighboring India. “He also used to advise us on operational and organizational matters,” said the commander, speaking by phone on the condition of anonymity.
As news of the strike spread, there was a flurry of critical reactions, especially on Twitter. Also killed in the strike, Pakistani officials said, were two Jordanian militants they identified as Mohammad Abu Bilal al-Khorasani and Abu Dogan al-Khorasani, and three other people. Seven other people, all locals, were wounded in the strike.
Shireen Mazari, a lawmaker and information secretary of Mr. Khan’s political party, remarked that the strike “reminds us of the changing nature of multiple threats” the country is facing. The death of a senior Haqqani commander in the tribal belt is an embarrassment to the Pakistani military, which has for years fended off American accusations that it has tacitly permitted the militant group to use Pakistan’s tribal regions as a base for attacks inside Afghanistan.
In a Twitter posting, Mr. Khan condemned the strike and said he planned to take it up with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during a meeting of all political parties on Monday. In Pakistan, the drone strikes draw little public sympathy, and opposition to them has become a staple of local politics and grievances against the United States.
Mr. Sharif has convened the much-awaited meeting in Islamabad of political leaders to devise a national strategy to deal with militancy and terrorism. Within hours of Thursday’s attack, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement of condemnation. The strike “set dangerous precedents” in relations between the United States and Pakistan, it warned.
In a Twitter posting, Imran Khan, a leading opposition politician, said he would take up the drone strike with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday during a long-awaited multiparty conference to devise a national strategy against Islamist militancy.
But the persistent ambiguity toward Islamist militancy in Pakistan came into sharp focus on the streets of Islamabad on Friday, where hundreds of jihadi sympathizers rallied outside the Parliament building.
The rally was led by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the leader of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Although the United States has offered a $10 million reward for help in bringing Mr. Saeed to justice, he moves freely through Pakistan, usually with the goal of drumming up sentiment against archrival India.
Recent clashes between Indian and Pakistani troops along their border in the disputed territory of Kashmir have been the most serious in over a decade. On Friday, Mr. Saeed publicly warned Mr. Sharif against adopting a conciliatory posture toward Pakistan’s old enemy.
“Kashmir is our jugular vein,” he said. “India is strangling us. It is now a matter of life and death.”
The rate of American drone strikes in Pakistan has dropped in recent months, and in a visit to Pakistan in August, Secretary of State John Kerry hinted that the campaign could end entirely.
“The program will end as we have eliminated most of the threat and continue to eliminate it,” Mr. Kerry said at the time. “I think the president has a very real time line, and we hope it’s going to be very, very soon.”
Since Sergeant Bergdahl disappeared from his post, his captors have released at least five hostage videos, and his fate has become entangled in negotiations among the United States, the Taliban and the Afghan government.
His captors have variously demanded large sums of money and the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist imprisoned in New York for the attempted killing of American officials in Afghanistan. More recently, Sergeant Bergdahl’s case has become caught up in efforts to kick-start peace talks between the Afghan Taliban and the Kabul government.

Declan Walsh reported from London, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan. Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud and Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.