Is Pakistan’s Taliban chief dead or alive?
Posted: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 12:15 PM
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Islamabad, Pakistan
By Carol Grisanti, NBC News Producer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – The guessing games over the fate of Pakistan’s Taliban chief, Baitullah Mehsud, continue as government officials and Taliban militants exchange verbal duels – challenging each other on national TV to prove that Mehsud is alive or dead.
Accusations on both sides swirl: Top Taliban militant commanders, loyal to Mehsud, allege that Pakistani government officials have known for weeks that Mehsud is seriously ill and under a doctor's care in North Waziristan. So they say that now is a convenient time for the Pakistani government to declare him dead and remove U.S. pressure to go after him.
The government counters that the Taliban are just buying time. They have, they argue, irrefutable intelligence that Mehsud was killed in a U.S drone attack on Aug. 5 in South Waziristan, along with his wife, a brother and some aides at the home of his father-in-law while receiving medical treatment.
Mehsud, 35, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was Pakistan’s enemy Number One. Charismatic and ruthless, he was practically unknown until 2007, when he teamed up with al-Qaida, and banded together at least 13 separate militant groups operating in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas.
Mehsud declared himself the leader of an estimated 20,000 fighters and hundreds of suicide bombers, and ruled unopposed until last week, when the drone fired two hellfire missiles and allegedly took him out – or maybe not.
Mehsud had a long history of poor health. Plagued by kidney problems and diabetes, he was reported to have died last year from illness, only to surface again and marry for a second time. Mehsud kept a low profile and rarely spoke to the media. Last week, the news of his death unleashed a flood of rumors, conspiracy theories and media mania.
‘Dead or alive’
First came the claims and counterclaims by Pakistani government officials, intelligence sources and sources within the Taliban – all of whom claimed to know the fate of Mehsud.
These pronouncements were quickly followed up by threats and accusations on all sides, which finally led Pakistan’s interior minister, Rehman Malik, to dare the Taliban, on national television, to prove their leader was still alive.
The "dead or alive" dilemma gripped the nation. Malik’s challenge was played over and over again on all of Pakistan’s TV channels and led to contradicting banner headlines in the nation’s newspapers. On Saturday, most of the nation’s dailies proclaimed Mehsud dead; on Sunday, the same dailies revised reports of his death with a question mark. The controversy has riveted the nation.
Early Saturday morning, Mehsud’s close confidant, Hakimullah, called NBC News’ Mushtaq Yusufzai to say Mehsud was alive, but seriously ill once again. Hakimullah said the Taliban were preparing to take revenge for the killing of Mehsud’s wife.
A duel?
But it was on Saturday evening that the tale took a different turn – more like a spaghetti Western, but without the sheriff.
The cell phones of local journalists started ringing with breaking news of a gun battle between Hakimullah and Mulana Waliur Rehman – Mehsud’s 40-something-year-old handpicked successor, should Mehsud be dead, that is.
A shura, or tribal council, had been called in Sara Rogha, a remote hamlet of South Waziristan, to anoint a new Taliban chief. All of the important Taliban commanders were apparently present, or at least that’s how the story whipped around the media.
And then, allegedly, a heated argument broke out, Kalashnikovs were drawn and in the end both Hakimullah and Mulana Rehman, the two main contenders for Mehsud’s crown, were dead.
Pakistani TV whipped up a frenzy. The shootout was proof, they reported, that Mehsud was dead and his top aides were embroiled in a power struggle. Malik, the interior minister, quickly called the press to announce the gun battle and that at least one of the rival commanders was dead; the other, he said, was wounded.
Turkistan Bhittani, a mid-level commander from an anti-Mehsud Taliban faction, was quick to give interviews and also announce that yes, Baitullah Mehsud was dead, and so were Hakimullah and Mulana Rehman. "Baitullah’s Taliban were in disarray and disintegrated," he boasted.
Then one of the presumed dead, or perhaps just critically injured men, Mulana Rehman, called local journalists in Peshawar and declared that the entire ballyhoo was a propaganda ploy, by the government and the intelligence agencies, to destabilize the Taliban.
He was, he said, very much alive and in good health, as was his rival, Hakimullah. Rehman said there had been no gun battle; in fact, there had not even been a meeting.
Keep ‘em guessing
Meanwhile, the suspense continues. Pakistani government officials insist they are more and more convinced that Mehsud is indeed dead. Interior Minister Malik said that in the absence of any concrete proof, the government will now try to match Mehsud's DNA with that of his brother. But, Malik added, somewhat unconvincingly: "That is if security forces could reach the site and possibly get hold of some of the dead militant's body."
Neither the government nor the army has had any physical presence in the remote Mehsud tribal lands for months.
As for the Taliban, their new strategy, they say, is to keep everyone guessing – just like Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar do.
