Infighting risks Pakistani peace

Taliban turf wars expose rifts

LONDON - When the Pakistani Taliban said they were willing to make peace, many Pakistanis were skeptical that the militants had truly abandoned their dream of transforming the country into an Islamic caliphate.

But since talks with government negotiators officially started last month, the question is not just whether the militants wish to deliver a deal, but whether they even can.

An outbreak of infighting between rival Taliban commanders in the hills of Waziristan left at least 40 militants dead and exposed a violent factional rift in the movement’s operational heartland, according to Taliban members and local residents.

A leadership crisis that began after a U.S. drone strike killed the group’s commander in November inflamed internal arguments. And a series of bomb attacks during a supposed six-week cease-fire has raised the possibility that the very idea of making peace has divided the Taliban, with militant cells splintering off rather than speaking with the government.

“We will know where the Taliban stand when they put their demands on the table, but I’m not hopeful,” said Asad Munir, a retired army brigadier and former head of the Peshawar office of Pakistan’s spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. “There are so many complications.Ultimately, I don’t think these talks can succeed.”

Despite their ferocity, the Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, have never been a very united fighting force.

Since its formal emergence in 2007, it has been an umbrella organization for Islamist militants - estimates run from 15-30 organizations - scattered across the tribal belt along the Afghan border. The unruly coalition was held together by the steely grip of leaders from the Mehsud tribe.

But the U.S. drone campaign loosened the Mehsud dominance, with missile strikes that killed Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban founder, in 2009; his deputy, Wali ur-Rehman, in May of last year; and the second leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, in November. Now the Taliban is led by a lame-duck figure, Maulana Fazlullah, who hasstruggled to keep his commanders in line.

“Fazlullah is not a strong leader because he was defeated, he left Pakistan and he remains across the border,” said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a veteran journalist who helped the government make initial peace overtures to the Taliban.

Many believe the Taliban chose Fazlullah to quell feuding between rival factions of the Mehsud tribe. But the violence hardly abated after Fazlullah’s nomination, and it began looking like an all-out turf war in Waziristan this month.

Taliban fighters ambushed each other’s camps, bombed convoys and took prisoners during six days of bloodletting in the same remote valleys where CIA drones have attacked militant compounds. By the time tribal elders brokered a hasty truce at the weekend, 40-60 people had been killed, according to most estimates.

Ostensibly the fighting stemmed from a simmering rivalry between two hotheaded commanders - Khan Sayed Sajna, a onetime contender for the Taliban leadership, and Shehryar Mehsud - who are battling for dominance of the Mehsud wing of the Taliban. Sajna, considered the stronger of the two, sent a message to his rival that “there cannot be two swords in a single sheath,” according to a senior Taliban commander.

But the fight was about more than clashing egos. According to militant and western officials, the Sajna group is partly funded by the Haqqani network, a notorious militant group that uses its base in the Pakistani tribal areas to mount audacious attacks on civilian and military targets in Afghanistan. The funding is part of a drive by the network’s leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, to draw more Mehsud fighters into his fight against the Afghan government across the border.

The Afghan spy agency, the National Directorate of Security, has penetrated the Taliban most successfully at the eastern end of the border with Pakistan, where Fazlullah and his supporters are hiding. Afghan officials said Fazlullah has received sanctuary and some money; one of his spokesmen is frequently found outside nearby Jalalabad.

Another Pakistan Taliban operative lives under the spy agency’s protection in Asadabad, the capital of Kunar province, where he produces militant propaganda videos.

The Afghan attempt to cultivate proxies within the Pakistani Taliban is a response to a widespread perception that the Pakistani ISI intelligence agency is trying to push the war from Waziristan into southern Afghanistan as U.S. troops withdraw.

“They want to move all the vipers and snakes on to the Afghan side and let them fight it out here,” said a former Afghan official.

Equally, though, Afghan officials recognize that Taliban factions are highly unreliable allies. And a Western analyst cautioned that it would be a mistake to see the Taliban purely as puppets of the various spy agencies in the region.

“They’ll take money from whoever is handing it out, as long as it suits them, ” the analyst said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “But they’ve very much got their own mind.” Information for this article was contributed by Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, Matthew Rosenberg and Ismail Khan of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 04/21/2014

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