Stratfor: Mehsud's Death Confirmed

From Strat­for:
Pak­istani Intel­li­gence sources have con­firmed Bait­ul­lah Mehsud’s death, Pak­istani For­eign Min­is­ter Shah Mehmood Qureshi said Aug. 7, Dawn News reported. Bait­ul­lah Mehsud, the leader of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pak­istan (TTP) insur­gent group, along with one of his wives and six body­guards were killed in a mis­sile attack Aug. 5. Reuters reported that the TTP lead­er­ship called […]

Baitullah Mehsud May Be Dead

ISLAM­ABAD — If con­firmed, this would be a huge vic­tory in the fight against tak­firi mil­i­tants in Pak­istan:
U.S. and Pak­istani author­i­ties were inves­ti­gat­ing whether Pak­istani Tal­iban chief Bait­ul­lah Mehsud, who has led a vio­lent cam­paign of sui­cide attacks and assas­si­na­tions against Pakistan’s gov­ern­ment, was killed in a CIA mis­sile strike.
A Pak­istani offi­cial said Fri­day that reports of the militant […]

Pakistan's Civil War

It is now clear the ISI build­ing in Lahore was the tar­get of Tuesday’s deadly blast. Tehrik-i-Taliban Pak­istan (TTP) has claimed respon­si­bil­ity for the blast yes­ter­day that killed at least 30 peo­ple and wounded more than 200.
“We have achieved our tar­get. We were look­ing for this tar­get for a long time. It was a reac­tion to the Swat […]

Operation Rahi-i-Rast: One Month On

Yes­ter­day marked the one-month mark for the Pak­istani military’s offen­sive against the Tal­iban in the Swat region. How are things going? Let’s assess:
This week­end saw the begin­ning of the bat­tle for Min­gora, the valley’s admin­is­tra­tive seat. The mil­i­tary is reported to be in con­trol of about half of the city, but some Tal­iban fight­ers are […]

Pakistani Army to Taliban: Game on

Wel­come news if it’s fol­lowed up on:
ISLAM­ABAD, Pak­istan, May 7 (UPI) — Pak­istani gov­ern­ment offi­cials Thurs­day said they would scrap a peace deal with the Tal­iban and under­take a more aggres­sive oper­a­tion against the mil­i­tants.
The mil­i­tary announced it would begin a major offen­sive in the Swat Val­ley, site of the fal­ter­ing deal between the Pak­istani mil­i­tary and Taliban […]

Interview with the Taliban

The New York Times has a fas­ci­nat­ing story today. It’s an inter­view with a Tal­iban logis­tics tac­ti­cian the Times has been work­ing on for six months. He finally spills the beans on the Tal­iban plans for Pak­istan and Afghanistan, the strate­gies they will use and what they fear.
He was clued into the Petraeus doc­trine, used to good effect […]

'Are We Winning?' Um, Not Really.

Sheesh. The State Depart­ment released a report today (big PDF) today that shows that ter­ror attacks in Pak­istan alone quadru­pled between 2006 and 2008. Inter­est­ingly, the growth in Islamist ter­ror attacks — 10 times more than there were in the 1990s — is in part a prod­uct of the suc­cess in Iraq. Would-be jihadists are stay­ing at home […]

A Downbeat Assessment on FATA and Pakistan

Yes­ter­day was an exer­cise in frus­tra­tion as far as con­nec­tiv­ity and the future of Pak­istan were con­cerned. I was at the Jamestown Foundation’s con­fer­ence, “Pakistan’s Trou­bled Fron­tier: The Future of FATA and the NWFP” with­out wire­less or cell phone cov­er­age. So my plans for live-blogging were foiled. But I wanted to post some notes and impres­sions nonethe­less.
As […]

Traveling this week, and the First Podcast

As you read this, I’m prob­a­bly on a plane to DC to attend the Jamestown Foundation’s con­fer­ence, “Pakistan’s Trou­bled Fron­tier: The Future of FATA and the NWFP.” The break­out speak­ers include Ahmed Rashid, Imtiaz Ali (a for­mer Knight Fel­low like myself) and David Kil­cullen, author of “The Acci­den­tal Guer­rilla: Fight­ing Small Wars in the Midst of […]

Slouching Towards Oblivion

There can be no ques­tion the Pak­istani state is com­ing under increas­ing strain from mil­i­tants, its polit­i­cal sys­tem and its inter­na­tional rela­tions. The ques­tion is, Where is its break­ing point and what can be done to pre­vent it? And if it comes, then what?
Mil­i­tant pres­sures
A largely tak­firi and Pash­tun insur­gency has been spread­ing out of the tribal […]

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