A high ranking aide to Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commander Baitullah Mehsud has confirmed today that the militant leader was slain in a Wednesday air strike, which US officials say was conducted by the CIA.
“I confirm that Baitullah Mehsud and his wife died in the American missile attack in South Waziristan,” Kafayat Ullah was quoted as telling the Associated Press. US and Pakistani officials had speculated Mehsud may have died in the attack on his father in law’s compound, though a spokesmen for Pakistan’s ISI agency denied it.
Mehsud had long been a target of the US drone attacks, and the US had offered $5 million for his capture or death. The attempts to kill Mehsud went so far that in June a drone attacked a funeral procession, killing dozens of civilians, in an attempt to assassinate the reclusive leader.
The TTP had been launching ever more bold attacks this year, which Mehsud had said were retaliation for the US drone strikes in Waziristan. He had also threatened to take revenge directly against the US with attacks in Washington. It remains unclear who will replace him as leader of the TTP.
Whether he was an US agent or not, his death will not solve anything. Our government is apt at inventing new bugaboos. A new name will replace this name and will be used as an excuse to justify drone attacks and the war in Afghanistan. Why are we still there?
For the 99% of Antiwar.com readers and 100% of the staff who are unaware: Baitullah Mehsud was an American agent A tribal leader who earlier defected from Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud and revealed the militants group's ties with the US and Israel has been shot dead.
The assassination of Qari Zainuddin comes days after he revealed that their comrade was pursuing a US-Israeli agenda across the violence-wracked country.
Zainuddin, a 26-year-old rising tribesman who had called Mehsud "an American agent" was killed by a gunman in northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan on Tuesday.
Zainuddin, who broke away from Mehsud, was also increasingly critical of Mehsud's use of suicide bombings targeting civilians. &
Insurgents have stepped up their attacks on civilian and religious centers in major cities across Pakistan, which has fueled anti-Taliban sentiments among the Pakistani people.
Zarqawi was also an American creation who died shortly after being outed. The occupation creates these miscreants because they hope the endless civilian attacks will stop the locals from supporting the guerrillas.
It is difficult to determine how much has been spent on the Zarqawi campaign, which began two years ago and is believed to be ongoing. U.S. propaganda efforts in Iraq in 2004 cost $24 million, but that included extensive building of offices and residences for troops involved, as well as radio broadcasts and distribution of thousands of leaflets with Zarqawi's face on them, said the officer speaking on background.
The Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several of the internal military documents. "Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response," one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: "Media operations," "Special Ops (626)" (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite U.S. military unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior officials in Hussein's government) and "PSYOP," the U.S. military term for propaganda work.
One internal briefing, produced by the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, said that Kimmitt had concluded that, "The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date."