The killing of Hakimullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader, through a US drone attack on November 01 has led to complications in United States-Pakistan relations. Mehsud, who had a $ 5-million bounty on his head, died in the northwestern Pakistani militant stronghold of North Waziristan, near the Afghan border.
This assassination has been interpreted by a section of the Pakistani authorities and some of their leading politicians as a retrogressive step. Reacting angrily, they have also accused the US of not only violating Pakistani sovereignty but also sabotaging rudimentary peace efforts (initiated by the Pakistani intelligence authorities with the active support of the new Nawaz Sharif government) with the militant Taliban. Pakistan’s Interior Minister Chaudhury Nisar Ali Khan was most vocal. He stated that the strike on Mehsud was ‘not just the killing of one person, it is the death of all peace efforts’.
In this context it may be recalled that this measure for peace had been started in the recent past to create common ground with the extremist Pakistan Taliban groups and contain their growing influence in different parts of Pakistan – in North and South Waziristan, in the Swat valley and the important port city of Karachi. This was apparently undertaken because the militants have, according to conservative estimates, killed thousands of Pakistani civilians and members of the security forces in their bid to impose Shariah rule.
Some Pakistani politicians have already emotionally demanded that US military supply lines into Afghanistan be blocked as a response to the latest US action. Asad Qaiser, the Speaker of the Provincial Assembly of the North-Western region of Pakistan, has stated: ‘It is clear that the US is against peace and does not want terrorism to subside. Now we have only one agenda: to stop NATO supplies going through the northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’. He was referring to the passage of supplies for US troops in landlocked Afghanistan. This would include everything from food and drinking water to fuel. Such a closure of the route would create serious disruption as US and other Western forces prepare to withdraw 87,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Such a possible measure has received tacit support of several Pakistani opposition parties, including Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party. It may be recalled that Pakistan blocked NATO convoys for seven months in 2012 after a botched US air raid killed 24 Pakistani troops.
Such an action, it is being suggested, would also impact on areas of Pakistani cooperation, so vital in ushering in peace into Afghanistan and nudging the Afghan Taliban, allied but separate from the Pakistani Taliban, into talks with Karzai’s Kabul government.
The apprehension that this latest drone killing might affect the Afghan peace process has also been highlighted by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to a visiting US Congress delegation. He has pointed out that the killing was carried out at an ‘unsuitable’ time and he could now only hope that ‘the peace process would not be harmed’.
Interior Minister Nisar Ali’s anger appears to have been evoked because Pakistani government officials have since revealed that the drone attack came only a day before the government was to send a three-member delegation of clerics to the North Waziristan region with a formal invitation to start peace talks.
The Pakistani Talibans, while denouncing the attack, has also accused the Pakistani government of kowtowing to Washington and cutting a ‘deal to sell’ the militants during Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s recent visit to Washington. Shahidullah Shahid, the main spokesperson for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has bitterly commented: ‘We were waiting for a meeting while the Pakistan army and government were sitting with the US finalising deals to sell us’. ‘Time will tell whether we take revenge of Mehsud’s martyrdom or not,’ he added.
It would be pertinent to note here that since 2004, four senior Pakistan Taliban commanders have been killed by US drones inside Pakistan. They include: Nek Mohammad in South Waziristan in 2004, Baitullah Mehsud, in South Waziristan in 2009, Mullah Nazir in South Waziristan in January 2013 and Waliur Rahman in North Waziristan in May 2013.
Some strategic analysts interestingly noted that with Hakimullah Mehsud now removed from the scene, the most influential groups left behind in the TTP include one or two sub-groups that have earlier favoured peace talks with Islamabad. They in this regard referred to loyalists from Waliur Rahman’s group, now headed by Commander Khan Said Sajna. These analysts advised that the Pakistani intelligence authorities could try to arrange for Sajna to succeed in the Taliban leadership race. They also recommended that the government should discreetly establish contact with Asmatullah Muawiya, the leader of the Punjabi Taliban Group (who had welcomed the Nawaz Sharif’s offer of peace talks with the Taliban in August), and urge him to take further necessary action.
All such speculations came to rest on November 07 when Pakistan Taliban elected Maulana Fazlullah, a longtime militia commander,m as their new leader.
It is interesting that this latest drone strike came just a week after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met President Obama for wide-ranging talks in which they pledged to strengthen ties between the two nations.
As expected, Pakistan summoned the US Ambassador to protest over this latest drone attack and drew the ambassador’s attention to the fact that it would affect peace talks with the extremist Taliban groups. The US State Department has in response referred to Mehsud’s alleged role in attacks on US citizens and stated that any effect on proposed peace talks with the Pakistan Taliban was an ‘internal’ matter’ for Pakistan. They have also pointed out that the Pakistani Taliban has a ‘symbiotic’ relationship with al-Qaeda.
Nawaz Sharif and his government need to weigh their response to the Mehsud drone strike very carefully, given that relations with Washington have been on the mend in recent months. Last month Obama welcomed Sharif to the White House and the State Department announced the release of US$ 1.6 billion for Pakistan’s powerful armed forces. This amount had been frozen as relations plummeted amidst a series of crisis in 2011 and 2012 including the US raid to kill Osama bin-Laden at his hideout in Pakistan and carting his corpse away without Pakistan’s knowledge.
The first response of Sharif has been measured and correct. He has warned that peace with extremist elements cannot be achieved ‘by unleashing senseless force’. He has also reiterated that his government is firmly resolved to bringing the cycle of bloodshed and violence to an end.
One anticipates that the Pakistani authorities will, under the present circumstance, take special precaution ahead of the month of Muharram when Shia Muslims stage large gatherings and street processions. The idea of negotiations with the Taliban has taken a hit, but that should not discourage Sharif from adopting confidence building measures and improving the security paradigm in urban areas where people normally congregate, particularly in places of worship.
Unfortunately, the biggest problem that Sharif will have to solve is trying to bring under effective control the federally administered tribal regions of Pakistan, bordering Pakistan. That has not happened in the last sixty years.
It is a difficult road ahead of the Pakistani administration. The United States needs to help them by not resorting to more violent drone attacks which have already taken a big toll on the civilian population in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. That will only create further instability. The United States needs to remember that if Sharif is seen as weak and a failure by the militants and extremists that will eventually have a destabilising osmotic influence in Afghanistan.
Muhammad Zamir, a former Ambassador, is specialised in foreign affairs, right to information and good governance. mzamir@dhaka.net
Source: Financial Express
