Islamabad, July 29: Though the three-month Swat offensive has failed to kill or capture the local Taliban leader, the government has given the army until September to kill or capture Baitullah Mehsud, the top Taliban leader and the country’s most-wanted man.
“The army has been assigned with the task to either kill or arrest Baitullah Mehsud by September 1 in order to break the backbone of militancy,” a senior official told Islamonline.net on Monday, July 27, requesting anonymity.
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Mehsud, 40, is the elected leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the umbrella grouping of different Taliban groups in Pakistan.
According to intelligence sources, Mehsud commands an armed and high-trained militia of 20,000 to 25,000 soldiers, including scores of Tajiks and Uzbeks.
However, local tribesmen estimate the real number between 7,000 and 8,000.
Mehsud is the most influential militant commander in the tribal belt, and particularly South Waziristan, and his Mehsud tribe is the biggest in the region.
“As long as he is alive, the morale of militants will remain intact,” the senior official said.
He added that killing or arresting Mehsud would persuade many of the anti-government Taliban groups operating in the tribal belt to surrender.
Mehsud is Pakistan’s most wanted man and is blamed for the 2007 assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto.
He is blamed for recent waves of suicide and armed attacks on security forces in different parts of the country.
Once described by Newsweek as more dangerous than Osama Bin Laden, Mehsud was listed by Time magazine in 2008 as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.
Difficult
“I don’t consider this deadline achievable,” Masood told IOL.
But defense and security analysts believe that the task to kill or arrest Mehsud within a month is unrealistic.
“There are certain things, which one has to keep in mind while setting a deadline,” Major General rtd Shafiq Ahmed, a veteran security expert, told IOL.
“First of all, if you don’t know the whereabouts of your target, then it is not considered a wise strategy to set a deadline.”
Ahmed contends that killing or arresting someone as powerful as Mehsud could be achieved only in two cases.
“First, if the US and Pakistani security forces are lucky, and within the next month, they come to know his whereabouts, and their missiles hit the target.”
But he does not think that the US and Pakistani forces are aware of his whereabouts.
“They would have killed him straightaway as such kind of high value targets can be traced very rarely.”
The second scenario, Ahmed explains, is that Mehsud is already under arrest and the government plans to kill him or show his arrest within the next 30 days.
The veteran security expert sees the deadline as only a tactic to appease America and show that Pakistan is very serious about the so-called war on terror.
Lt General Talat Masood, another renowned security expert, agrees.
“I am not sure about the authenticity of such orders. But if this deadline is set, this is not feasible because in this type of war, you cannot set such deadline,” he told IOL.
“This is a guerilla war and as long as you do not know the whereabouts of your target, how will you hit him. I don’t consider this deadline achievable.”
–Agencies