The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) announced it had appointed a new leader on Saturday after the militant group confirmed for the first time its former chief Mullah Fazalullah was killed in a US drone strike last week.
US forces targeted Fazlullah in a counterterrorism strike on June 14 in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province, close to the border with Pakistan.
US officials had not confirmed whether the strike was successful but Afghan President Ashraf Ghani later confirmed the killing to Pakistan Caretaker Prime Minister Nasirul Mulk and Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa in phone calls.
In a statement, TTP spokesman Mohammad Khurasani confirmed Fazlullah was killed in the US drone strike. “It is a matter of pride that all TTP leaders have been martyred by infidels,” Khurasani said while referring to Fazlullah’s two predecessors who were also killed in drone strikes. The group’s shura council elected Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud to replace him, he added. The Pakistan Army has called Fazlullah’s apparent death a “positive development”.
He is believed to have ordered the failed 2012 assassination of Malala Yousafzai, who became a global symbol of the fight for girls’ rights to schooling, and who later won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mehsud, 40, had served as a deputy to Baitullah Mehsud, who was blamed for the 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
The new leader Mehsud earlier this year authored a book in which he narrated the planning of Bhutto’s assassination.
Mehsud had also fought against the US-backed Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and took part in TTP attacks against Pakistani security forces.
He had also remained a judge (qazi) of Sharia court established by Baitullah Mehsud.
The TTP was behind the massacre of more than 150 people, including more than 100 schoolchildren, at Peshawar’s Army Public School in December 2014.
The death of Mullah Fazlullah lends credence to Islamabad’s claim that Afghan soil is being used by the TTP as a springboard for launching attacks inside Pakistan. Islamabad has long demanded that Afghan and US forces take action against the TTP terrorists in Afghanistan.
Published in Daily Times, June 24th 2018.
