Sunday, September 08, 2013 2:01:26 AM
US drone 'kills Haqqani commander Sangeen Zadran'
6 September 2013 Last updated at 11:25 ET
A senior commander of the powerful Haqqani militant network has been killed in a US drone strike in north-west Pakistan, officials say.
Sangeen Zadran, named on US and UN blacklists, was among five killed when missiles were fired at a house in North Waziristan, near the Afghan border.
The Haqqani group are known for carrying out attacks in Afghanistan.
The Taliban told the AP news agency he was still alive. But other reports said his funeral had taken place.
Officials told the BBC that the militant's funeral had been held in the regional capital of Miranshah and was attended by many.
He also held the position of "shadow governor " of the Afghan province of Paktika, and reports say the Taliban nominated his brother, Bilal Zadran, to replace him in that post.
Experts say the 45-year-old was viewed as a senior militant leader in both countries and that he is a big loss to the Haqqani group although not irreplaceable.
In 2011, the US state department added him to its list of specially designated global terrorists, claiming he orchestrated the kidnappings of Afghans and foreigners in the rugged and violent border area.
He has also been identified as the man who kidnapped a US soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, four years ago - the only known American soldier currently held by Afghan insurgents.
The US has blamed the Haqqani network for a series of high-profile attacks in the border regions in recent years.
'Extrajudicial killings'
Pakistan's foreign ministry condemned Friday's drone strike as a violation of its sovereignty.
This was the second strike in a week, and the attacks caused the loss of innocent civilian lives and continued to affect US-Pakistan relations, the ministry added.
There have been fewer strikes in recent years, but Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has demanded an end to all attacks.
The Haqqani network has been described by US military commanders as one of the most resilient militant groups operating in Afghanistan.
Cricketer turned politician Imran Khan has led the anti-drone protests in Pakistan
It is believed to be based in Pakistan along the volatile and porous border and regularly attacks US forces in Afghanistan from its mountain bases in Pakistan.
Mr Sharif has called for a joint strategy to stop US drone strikes.
The issue is hugely controversial in Pakistan, where parts of the government and military have often been accused of criticising the use of drones in public, but co-operating in private.
It is estimated that between 2004 and 2013, CIA drone attacks in Pakistan killed up to 3,460 people - although this figure will not include the very latest strikes.
About 890 of them were civilians and the vast majority of strikes were carried out by the Obama administration, research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism said.
Earlier this year, Mr Obama called the strikes part of a legitimate campaign against terrorism, but he also pledged more programme transparency and stricter targeting rules.
*
Profile: Sangeen Zadran
Sangeen Zadran came from the same sub-clan as the Haqqani network's leader Jalaluddin Haqqani.
With the trust of the Haqqanis and very high-level military training, he was soon elevated to a top leadership position in the organisation.
He was operational leader in South and North Waziristan and a top military commander in Afghanistan.
Instrumental in managing disputes in Pakistan's tribal region, Zadran mediated between warring factions in the Taliban movement too.
His death will be considered a big blow but experts say nobody in the network is irreplaceable.
Source: FATA Research Centre
*
BBC © 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23983388
--
Pakistan militants prepare for war in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw
Sep 7, 2013, 12.50 AM IST
ISLAMABAD: Militants in Pakistan's most populous province are said to be training for what they expect will be an ethnic-based civil war in neighbouring Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw in 16 months.
In the past two years, the number of Punjab-based militants deploying to regions bordering on Afghanistan has tripled and is now believed to be in the thousands, says analyst Mansur Mehsud.
He runs the FATA Institute, an Islamabad-based think tank studying the mix of militant groups that operate in Pakistan's tribal belt running along much of the 2,600-kilometre Afghan-Pakistan border.
Mehsud, himself from South Waziristan where militants also hide out, says more than 150 militant groups operate in the tribal regions, mostly in mountainous, heavily forested North Waziristan. Pocked with hideouts, it is there that al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri is believed to be hiding and where Afghanistan says many of its enemies have found sanctuary.
While militants from Punjab province have long sought refuge and training in the tribal regions, they were fewer in number and confined their hostility to Pakistan's neighbour and foe, India.
All that is changing, say analysts. "Before, they were keeping a low profile. But just in the last two or three years hundreds have been coming from Punjab," said Mehsud. "Everyone knows that when Nato and the American troops leave Afghanistan there will be fighting between Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns."
And the Punjabis in all likelihood will side with their fellow Pashtuns, who make up the backbone of the Afghan Taliban.
"We will go to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban as we have done in the past," said a senior member of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), a militant Sunni Muslim group, who goes by a nom du guerre, Ahmed Zia Siddiqui.
In an interview with Associated Press in Pakistan, he said the Taliban haven't yet requested help, but when asked whether Punjab-based militants were preparing for war in Afghanistan after the foreign withdrawal, he replied: "Absolutely."
© 2013 Associated Press
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/Pakistan-militants-prepare-for-war-in-Afghanistan-after-foreign-forces-withdraw/articleshow/22379812.cms [with comments]
--
U.S. Drone Strike Kills 6 in Pakistan, Fueling Anger
By DECLAN WALSH and ISMAIL KHAN
Published: September 6, 2013
LONDON — An American drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal belt late Thursday killed a senior militant commander wanted by the United States who was implicated in a long-running kidnapping drama involving an American soldier, Pakistani officials and militant commanders said on Friday.
The commander, Sangeen Zadran, was a leading figure in the Haqqani network, a pro-Taliban group that uses Pakistan to mount high-profile attacks against Western and Afghan targets inside Afghanistan. In August 2011, the United States placed Mr. Zadran [ http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2011/08/170582.htm ] on its list of global terrorists.
But Mr. Zadran also played a prominent role in the capture of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, an American soldier who disappeared from his post in eastern Afghanistan in 2009 and has been held by the Haqqani network [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/14/us/bowe-bergdahls-unlikely-journey-to-life-as-a-taliban-prisoner.html?pagewanted=all ] ever since.
Mr. Zadran appeared in a video [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8188324/Taliban-release-new-video-of-captured-US-soldier.html ] alongside Sergeant Bergdahl in 2010 and was thought to have been his captor for some time. It is unclear, however, whether the American soldier was under Mr. Zadran’s control at the time of the commander’s death, or what impact the killing would have on the years of efforts to secure Sergeant Bergdahl’s release.
The drone attack occurred late Thursday night in Ghulam Khan, an area bordering Afghanistan in North Waziristan, the main hub of Qaeda and Taliban militancy in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Mr. Zadran was the Taliban’s shadow governor for Paktika, the neighboring Afghan province and the location of Sergeant Bergdahl’s disappearance.
According to local residents reached by telephone, militants announced Mr. Zadran’s death via loudspeaker across Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan — the first such mark of public recognition for a drone victim since the C.I.A.-led campaign started in 2004, and a mark of the seniority of the slain commander.
“He was the most influential commander in the area,” said a senior Pakistani official who agreed to discuss Mr. Zadran on the condition of anonymity. “The Americans had been after him for a long time.”
Mr. Zadran’s funeral, which took place several hours later, was attended by about 2,000 people, local residents said. Before his death, accounts of Mr. Zadran’s recent marriage had coursed through militant circles in North Waziristan.
A senior Taliban commander said Mr. Zadran’s death was a major blow. He had been a close friend of Hakimullah Mehsud, the fugitive Pakistani Taliban leader, and sat on militant councils that coordinated between the Taliban and the Haqqani network.
“He also used to advise us on operational and organizational matters,” said the commander, speaking by phone on the condition of anonymity.
Also killed in the strike, Pakistani officials said, were two Jordanian militants they identified as Mohammad Abu Bilal al-Khorasani and Abu Dogan al-Khorasani, and three other people. Seven other people, all locals, were wounded in the strike.
The death of a senior Haqqani commander in the tribal belt is an embarrassment to the Pakistani military, which has for years fended off American accusations that it has tacitly permitted the militant group to use Pakistan’s tribal regions as a base for attacks inside Afghanistan.
In Pakistan, the drone strikes draw little public sympathy, and opposition to them has become a staple of local politics and grievances against the United States.
Within hours of Thursday’s attack, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement of condemnation. The strike “set dangerous precedents” in relations between the United States and Pakistan, it warned.
In a Twitter posting, Imran Khan, a leading opposition politician, said he would take up the drone strike with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday during a long-awaited multiparty conference to devise a national strategy against Islamist militancy.
But the persistent ambiguity toward Islamist militancy in Pakistan came into sharp focus on the streets of Islamabad on Friday, where hundreds of jihadi sympathizers rallied outside the Parliament building.
The rally was led by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the leader of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks [ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/world/asia/27mumbai.html?pagewanted=all ]. Although the United States has offered a $10 million reward for help in bringing Mr. Saeed to justice, he moves freely through Pakistan, usually with the goal of drumming up sentiment against archrival India.
Recent clashes between Indian and Pakistani troops along their border in the disputed territory of Kashmir have been the most serious in over a decade. On Friday, Mr. Saeed publicly warned Mr. Sharif against adopting a conciliatory posture toward Pakistan’s old enemy.
“Kashmir is our jugular vein,” he said. “India is strangling us. It is now a matter of life and death.”
The rate of American drone strikes in Pakistan has dropped in recent months, and in a visit to Pakistan in August, Secretary of State John Kerry hinted that the campaign could end entirely.
“The program will end as we have eliminated most of the threat and continue to eliminate it,” Mr. Kerry said at the time. “I think the president has a very real time line, and we hope it’s going to be very, very soon.”
Since Sergeant Bergdahl disappeared from his post, his captors have released at least five hostage videos, and his fate has become entangled in negotiations [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/world/asia/pow-is-focus-of-talks-on-taliban-prisoner-swap.html?pagewanted=all ] among the United States, the Taliban and the Afghan government.
His captors have variously demanded large sums of money and the release of Aafia Siddiqui [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/nyregion/04siddiqui.html ], a Pakistani neuroscientist imprisoned in New York for the attempted killing of American officials in Afghanistan. More recently, Sergeant Bergdahl’s case has become caught up in efforts to kick-start peace talks between the Afghan Taliban and the Kabul government.
Declan Walsh reported from London, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan. Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud and Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/world/asia/us-drone-strike-kills-6-in-pakistan-fueling-anger.html
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6 September 2013 Last updated at 11:25 ET
A senior commander of the powerful Haqqani militant network has been killed in a US drone strike in north-west Pakistan, officials say.
Sangeen Zadran, named on US and UN blacklists, was among five killed when missiles were fired at a house in North Waziristan, near the Afghan border.
The Haqqani group are known for carrying out attacks in Afghanistan.
The Taliban told the AP news agency he was still alive. But other reports said his funeral had taken place.
Officials told the BBC that the militant's funeral had been held in the regional capital of Miranshah and was attended by many.
He also held the position of "shadow governor " of the Afghan province of Paktika, and reports say the Taliban nominated his brother, Bilal Zadran, to replace him in that post.
Experts say the 45-year-old was viewed as a senior militant leader in both countries and that he is a big loss to the Haqqani group although not irreplaceable.
In 2011, the US state department added him to its list of specially designated global terrorists, claiming he orchestrated the kidnappings of Afghans and foreigners in the rugged and violent border area.
He has also been identified as the man who kidnapped a US soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, four years ago - the only known American soldier currently held by Afghan insurgents.
The US has blamed the Haqqani network for a series of high-profile attacks in the border regions in recent years.
'Extrajudicial killings'
Pakistan's foreign ministry condemned Friday's drone strike as a violation of its sovereignty.
This was the second strike in a week, and the attacks caused the loss of innocent civilian lives and continued to affect US-Pakistan relations, the ministry added.
There have been fewer strikes in recent years, but Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has demanded an end to all attacks.
The Haqqani network has been described by US military commanders as one of the most resilient militant groups operating in Afghanistan.
Cricketer turned politician Imran Khan has led the anti-drone protests in Pakistan
It is believed to be based in Pakistan along the volatile and porous border and regularly attacks US forces in Afghanistan from its mountain bases in Pakistan.
Mr Sharif has called for a joint strategy to stop US drone strikes.
The issue is hugely controversial in Pakistan, where parts of the government and military have often been accused of criticising the use of drones in public, but co-operating in private.
It is estimated that between 2004 and 2013, CIA drone attacks in Pakistan killed up to 3,460 people - although this figure will not include the very latest strikes.
About 890 of them were civilians and the vast majority of strikes were carried out by the Obama administration, research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism said.
Earlier this year, Mr Obama called the strikes part of a legitimate campaign against terrorism, but he also pledged more programme transparency and stricter targeting rules.
*
Profile: Sangeen Zadran
Sangeen Zadran came from the same sub-clan as the Haqqani network's leader Jalaluddin Haqqani.
With the trust of the Haqqanis and very high-level military training, he was soon elevated to a top leadership position in the organisation.
He was operational leader in South and North Waziristan and a top military commander in Afghanistan.
Instrumental in managing disputes in Pakistan's tribal region, Zadran mediated between warring factions in the Taliban movement too.
His death will be considered a big blow but experts say nobody in the network is irreplaceable.
Source: FATA Research Centre
*
BBC © 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23983388
--
Pakistan militants prepare for war in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw
Sep 7, 2013, 12.50 AM IST
ISLAMABAD: Militants in Pakistan's most populous province are said to be training for what they expect will be an ethnic-based civil war in neighbouring Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw in 16 months.
In the past two years, the number of Punjab-based militants deploying to regions bordering on Afghanistan has tripled and is now believed to be in the thousands, says analyst Mansur Mehsud.
He runs the FATA Institute, an Islamabad-based think tank studying the mix of militant groups that operate in Pakistan's tribal belt running along much of the 2,600-kilometre Afghan-Pakistan border.
Mehsud, himself from South Waziristan where militants also hide out, says more than 150 militant groups operate in the tribal regions, mostly in mountainous, heavily forested North Waziristan. Pocked with hideouts, it is there that al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri is believed to be hiding and where Afghanistan says many of its enemies have found sanctuary.
While militants from Punjab province have long sought refuge and training in the tribal regions, they were fewer in number and confined their hostility to Pakistan's neighbour and foe, India.
All that is changing, say analysts. "Before, they were keeping a low profile. But just in the last two or three years hundreds have been coming from Punjab," said Mehsud. "Everyone knows that when Nato and the American troops leave Afghanistan there will be fighting between Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns."
And the Punjabis in all likelihood will side with their fellow Pashtuns, who make up the backbone of the Afghan Taliban.
"We will go to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban as we have done in the past," said a senior member of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), a militant Sunni Muslim group, who goes by a nom du guerre, Ahmed Zia Siddiqui.
In an interview with Associated Press in Pakistan, he said the Taliban haven't yet requested help, but when asked whether Punjab-based militants were preparing for war in Afghanistan after the foreign withdrawal, he replied: "Absolutely."
© 2013 Associated Press
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/Pakistan-militants-prepare-for-war-in-Afghanistan-after-foreign-forces-withdraw/articleshow/22379812.cms [with comments]
--
U.S. Drone Strike Kills 6 in Pakistan, Fueling Anger
By DECLAN WALSH and ISMAIL KHAN
Published: September 6, 2013
LONDON — An American drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal belt late Thursday killed a senior militant commander wanted by the United States who was implicated in a long-running kidnapping drama involving an American soldier, Pakistani officials and militant commanders said on Friday.
The commander, Sangeen Zadran, was a leading figure in the Haqqani network, a pro-Taliban group that uses Pakistan to mount high-profile attacks against Western and Afghan targets inside Afghanistan. In August 2011, the United States placed Mr. Zadran [ http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2011/08/170582.htm ] on its list of global terrorists.
But Mr. Zadran also played a prominent role in the capture of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, an American soldier who disappeared from his post in eastern Afghanistan in 2009 and has been held by the Haqqani network [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/14/us/bowe-bergdahls-unlikely-journey-to-life-as-a-taliban-prisoner.html?pagewanted=all ] ever since.
Mr. Zadran appeared in a video [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8188324/Taliban-release-new-video-of-captured-US-soldier.html ] alongside Sergeant Bergdahl in 2010 and was thought to have been his captor for some time. It is unclear, however, whether the American soldier was under Mr. Zadran’s control at the time of the commander’s death, or what impact the killing would have on the years of efforts to secure Sergeant Bergdahl’s release.
The drone attack occurred late Thursday night in Ghulam Khan, an area bordering Afghanistan in North Waziristan, the main hub of Qaeda and Taliban militancy in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Mr. Zadran was the Taliban’s shadow governor for Paktika, the neighboring Afghan province and the location of Sergeant Bergdahl’s disappearance.
According to local residents reached by telephone, militants announced Mr. Zadran’s death via loudspeaker across Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan — the first such mark of public recognition for a drone victim since the C.I.A.-led campaign started in 2004, and a mark of the seniority of the slain commander.
“He was the most influential commander in the area,” said a senior Pakistani official who agreed to discuss Mr. Zadran on the condition of anonymity. “The Americans had been after him for a long time.”
Mr. Zadran’s funeral, which took place several hours later, was attended by about 2,000 people, local residents said. Before his death, accounts of Mr. Zadran’s recent marriage had coursed through militant circles in North Waziristan.
A senior Taliban commander said Mr. Zadran’s death was a major blow. He had been a close friend of Hakimullah Mehsud, the fugitive Pakistani Taliban leader, and sat on militant councils that coordinated between the Taliban and the Haqqani network.
“He also used to advise us on operational and organizational matters,” said the commander, speaking by phone on the condition of anonymity.
Also killed in the strike, Pakistani officials said, were two Jordanian militants they identified as Mohammad Abu Bilal al-Khorasani and Abu Dogan al-Khorasani, and three other people. Seven other people, all locals, were wounded in the strike.
The death of a senior Haqqani commander in the tribal belt is an embarrassment to the Pakistani military, which has for years fended off American accusations that it has tacitly permitted the militant group to use Pakistan’s tribal regions as a base for attacks inside Afghanistan.
In Pakistan, the drone strikes draw little public sympathy, and opposition to them has become a staple of local politics and grievances against the United States.
Within hours of Thursday’s attack, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement of condemnation. The strike “set dangerous precedents” in relations between the United States and Pakistan, it warned.
In a Twitter posting, Imran Khan, a leading opposition politician, said he would take up the drone strike with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday during a long-awaited multiparty conference to devise a national strategy against Islamist militancy.
But the persistent ambiguity toward Islamist militancy in Pakistan came into sharp focus on the streets of Islamabad on Friday, where hundreds of jihadi sympathizers rallied outside the Parliament building.
The rally was led by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the leader of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks [ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/world/asia/27mumbai.html?pagewanted=all ]. Although the United States has offered a $10 million reward for help in bringing Mr. Saeed to justice, he moves freely through Pakistan, usually with the goal of drumming up sentiment against archrival India.
Recent clashes between Indian and Pakistani troops along their border in the disputed territory of Kashmir have been the most serious in over a decade. On Friday, Mr. Saeed publicly warned Mr. Sharif against adopting a conciliatory posture toward Pakistan’s old enemy.
“Kashmir is our jugular vein,” he said. “India is strangling us. It is now a matter of life and death.”
The rate of American drone strikes in Pakistan has dropped in recent months, and in a visit to Pakistan in August, Secretary of State John Kerry hinted that the campaign could end entirely.
“The program will end as we have eliminated most of the threat and continue to eliminate it,” Mr. Kerry said at the time. “I think the president has a very real time line, and we hope it’s going to be very, very soon.”
Since Sergeant Bergdahl disappeared from his post, his captors have released at least five hostage videos, and his fate has become entangled in negotiations [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/world/asia/pow-is-focus-of-talks-on-taliban-prisoner-swap.html?pagewanted=all ] among the United States, the Taliban and the Afghan government.
His captors have variously demanded large sums of money and the release of Aafia Siddiqui [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/nyregion/04siddiqui.html ], a Pakistani neuroscientist imprisoned in New York for the attempted killing of American officials in Afghanistan. More recently, Sergeant Bergdahl’s case has become caught up in efforts to kick-start peace talks between the Afghan Taliban and the Kabul government.
Declan Walsh reported from London, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan. Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud and Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/world/asia/us-drone-strike-kills-6-in-pakistan-fueling-anger.html
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