Hakimullah Mehsud, Pakistan Taliban chief, killed in US drone attack: Report

[Dreadnought]

That would indicate 3 drones. Probably one Sentinel tracker and two Predator's on location.

I read the article from the Philadelphia Inquirer. But for the online version its a pay site.

In either case, I'll take it.

[Oracle]

I try not to take pleasure in anyone's death, but sometimes it's hard to resist. This guy's people killed school kids. Good riddance.

Pak leaders have no choice but to condemn US for this, else they become the next targets of the Pak Taliban.

BTW. hit was confirmed.

I'm sorry JAD, but everytime a terrorist is killed, I do cheer about it. These fucks who kill innocents in the name of religion have none of my sympathies.

[JAD_333]

I think we suffer in our assessments by not being in country as a man on the street.

[JAD_333]

I'm sorry JAD, but everytime a terrorist is killed, I do cheer about it. These fucks who kill innocents in the name of religion have none of my sympathies.

I understand your feelings, and if you noticed I was was echoing your sentiments in this case because they shot a young school girl.

[Firestorm]

Khan Said ‘Sajna’ new TTP chief after Hakimullah

Sajna? Doesn't that mean "lover" in Urdu? :red:

Anyway, I hope a Predator shows him some good lovin' very soon.

[1980s]

Watch these

BBC News - Drone strike 'attack on peace', says Pakistani minister

Hakimullah Mehsud drone strike: Anger on Pakistan streets

[lemontree]

Tempting indeed, but the Pakistani's are already screaming and threatening to close the ISAF supply corridors.

Understandable, and I don't envy the Pakistani situation, as the Haqqanis are going to come at the Pakistanis like a ton of bricks. Especially, now that it is known that the drone attacks have Pakistani military approval.

[Minskaya]

Understandable, and I don't envy the Pakistani situation, as the Haqqanis are going to come at the Pakistanis like a ton of bricks. Especially, now that it is known that the drone attacks have Pakistani military approval.

Playing the double-speak game eventually pays lousy dividends.

[Minskaya]

Pakistani officials regularly criticize the attacks as a violation of the country's sovereignty, but the government is known to have supported some strikes in the past. "We have properly understood the duel policy of the Pakistani government and its hypocrisy," the Taliban spokesman said Saturday.

Popular Pakistani politician Imran Khan has been one of the most vocal critics of the strikes. His party runs the government in northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and has threatened to block trucks carrying supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan unless the attacks stop. Khan said Saturday that the U.S. had sabotaged the efforts to bring peace to Pakistan, and his party would push the provincial assembly to adopt a resolution to block the NATO supplies. "Dialogue has been broken with this drone attack," said Khan.

Source

Meshud was responsible for the deaths of 7 CIA agents in Afghanistan and a failed suicide bombing in New York's Times Square. He is also responsible for the deaths of thousands of Pakistani civilians and security personnel and funded his activities through extortion, kidnapping, and bank robbery.

Good for the US. Hope those 72 virgins piss on him before he tumbles into Hell.

[Oracle]

Pakistan to assess US ties after killing of Pak Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud
PESHAWAR: Pakistan will review its relationship with the United States in a high-level meeting on Sunday, the prime minister's office said, following the killing of the Pakistani Taliban leader in a US drone strike.

Mehsud, who had a $5 million US bounty on his head, was killed on Friday in the northwestern Pakistani militant stronghold of North Waziristan, near the Afghan border.

The Pakistani Taliban have killed thousands of Pakistani civilians and members of the security forces in their bid to impose Islamist rule but the new government has been calling for peace talks.

The government denounced Mehsud's killing as a US bid to derail the talks and summoned the US ambassador on Saturday to complain.

"The murder of Hakimullah is the murder of all efforts at peace," said Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar, adding that the government still wanted to pursue talks.

Some politicians have demanded that US military supply lines into Afghanistan be blocked in response to the US attack.

Pakistan is the main route for supplies for US troops in landlocked Afghanistan, for everything from food and drinking water to fuel, and the closure of the routes could be a serious disruption as US and other Western forces prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of next year.

Pakistani cooperation is also seen as vital in trying to bring peace to Afghanistan, in particular in nudging the Afghan Taliban, who are allied but separate from the Pakistani Taliban, into talks with the Kabul government.

Relations between the United States and Pakistan have been seriously strained several times over recent years, including in 2011, when US forces killed Osama bin Laden in a raid that Pakistan said violated its sovereignty.

Despite its anger, cash-strapped Pakistan depends to a great extent on US support and the United States, despite frustrations over the relationship, is unlikely to ever make a complete break with its nuclear-armed ally.

"REVENGE"

Three Pakistani Taliban commanders said they had been due meet a government delegation on Saturday and they had been meeting to discuss the talks. They said they felt betrayed by Mehsud's killing and were not interested in talks.

A Pakistani Taliban spokesman vowed a wave of revenge bombings.

Mehsud's followers have been debating who should replace him.

Several militant commanders said on Saturday that 38-year-old Khan Said, known as Sajna, had been chosen.

But other factions of the Pakistani Taliban alliance were unhappy with the choice and were supporting other candidates, including Mullah Fazlullah, the ruthless commander from the Swat Valley, northwest of the capital, Islamabad, whose men shot and wounded schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai last year.

Said was seen as a relative moderate and if he became leader, talks with the government might eventually get going, said Imtiaz Gul, head of Islamabad-based Centre for Research and Security Studies think-tank.

But if Fazlullah was chosen, there would be little hope of compromise, he said.

Even if talks started, it was unclear how successful they would be unless the government gave significant concessions to the militants, Gul said.

"You're compromising the rule of law, and ceding ground to non-state actors, giving in to a small band of criminals. It threatens everything on which Pakistan stands - the constitution, parliament," Gul said.

"They haven't thought through the consequences of these talks. They're just firefighting because they have no long-term remedy for Pakistan's problems."

While the government has been promoting talks, the powerful Pakistani military has voiced its opposition to negotiating with the al Qaeda-linked militants.

[cataphract]

The Hakimullah hit was a lot closer to the OBL operation than I imagined:

$120,000 farmhouse where Pakistan Taliban chief died | GulfNews.com

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan: With marble floors, lush green lawns and a towering minaret, the $120,000 (Dh440,640) farm where feared Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud died in a US drone strike was no grubby mountain cave.
Mehsud spent his days skipping around Pakistan’s rugged tribal areas to avoid the attentions of US drones. But his family, including two wives, had the use of an eight-roomed farmhouse set amid lawns and orchards growing apples, oranges, grapes and pomegranates.
As well as the single-storey house, the compound in Dandey Darpakhel village, five kilometres north of Miranshah, was adorned with a tall minaret — purely for decorative purposes.
Militant sources said the property in the North Waziristan tribal area was bought for Mehsud nearly a year ago for $120,000 — a huge sum by Pakistani standards — by close aide Latif Mehsud, who was captured by the US in Afghanistan last month.
An AFP journalist visited the property several times when the previous owner, a wealthy landlord, lived there.
With the Pakistan army headquarters for restive North Waziristan just a kilometre away, locals thought of Mehsud’s compound as the “safest” place in a dangerous area.
Its proximity to a major military base recalls the hideout of Osama Bin Laden in the town of Abbottabad, on the doorstep of Pakistan’s elite military academy.
“I saw a convoy of vehicles two or three times in this street but I never thought Hakimullah would have been living here. It was the safest place for us before this strike,” local shopkeeper Akhter Khan told AFP.
This illusion of safety was shattered on Friday when a US drone fired at least two missiles at Mehsud’s vehicle as it stood at the compound gate waiting to enter, killing the Pakistani Taliban chief and four cadres.
The area around Dandey Darpakhel is known as a hub for the Haqqani network, a militant faction blamed for some of the most high-profile attacks in Afghanistan in recent years.
Many left the area during the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan, coming back after the US-led invasion following the 9/11 attacks.
Samiullah Wazir, a shopkeeper in the area, told AFP he would regularly see a convoy of four or five SUVs with blacked-out windows leave the compound early in the morning and return after sunset.
“We thought that somebody very important must be living in this house,” Wazir said.
“One day, I saw a man wearing a white shawl entering the house and I thought he looked like Hakimullah, but I thought ‘How can he live here because he could be easily hit by a drone strike?’”
But Hakimullah it was and on Friday he returned to his compound for the final time.
“We were closing the shop when his vehicle came and was about to enter the house when a missile struck it,” Wazir said.
“Moments later, an army of Taliban came and they cordoned off the area.”

Now we know why the Pakistanis are so pissed off with the hit

[lemontree]

The Hakimullah hit was a lot closer to the OBL operation than I imagined:

Now we know why the Pakistanis are so pissed off with the hit

....If the news reports from Pakistan are to be believed, then "they (Pak) are rethinking their relationship with the US".
The question is, can they afford to be choosers?

My reading is that the ISI will carry out a major retaliation raid against the NATO forces in Afghanistan soon.

[cataphract]

....If the news reports from Pakistan are to be believed, then "they (Pak) are rethinking their relationship with the US".
The question is, can they afford to be choosers?

My reading is that the ISI will carry out a major retaliation raid against the NATO forces in Afghanistan soon.

Another border closure is on the cards. The PTI has threatened to close the Khyber pass themselves if the PA don't do it. Beyond that what can they really do?

[Dreadnought]

Then the US should see to it all funding is done and find another way to move equipment and be done with Pakistan except step up the drone raids.

Trying to make peace with those that kill Americans isint our problem. Erasing that individual for past acts is.

[antimony]

Question:

What would the US if Pakistan chooses to clamp down and refuse transit through their borders and land at this point? Is there a legal treaty that the US can fall back on or some other obligatory document that they can use?

I am asking this because this is what is being proposed in some of the more "patriotic" Pakistani think tank circles.