Leader of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan killed along with four other senior terrorists
ISLAMABAD—Mullah Fazlullah, leader of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), was killed in a United States drone strike in Afghanistan’s northeastern Kunar Province last Friday. Fazlullah was designated a global terrorist by the U.S. with a bounty on his head of $5 million.
A Pakistani intelligence official said that Fazlullah was killed along with four other senior TTP commanders. Pakistan’s Ministry of Defense confirmed the deaths.
Fazlullah had been a fugitive since his followers were routed in a major military operation in the Swat district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in 2009, when the Pakistani army launched the world’s largest heli-borne commando mission to eliminate terrorists.
According to sources, this was a joint U.S.-Pakistan operation. A senior intelligence official privately told The Media Line that Islamabad may have been involved in the targeting of Fazlullah, who was at the top of Pakistan’s most wanted list.
The drone strike took place just hours after Pakistani Chief of Army Staff Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Bajwa also met with the commander of the U.S.-led Resolute Support Mission (RSM) in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson.
Former Pakistani prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf told The Media Line that Islamabad is a front-line ally of Washington in the War on Terror. Pakistan has claimed for years that Fazlullah was living in Afghanistan, but Kabul had consistently refused to accept the claim.
Ashraf predicted that relations between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the U.S. would improve following Fazlullah’s death, and especially ease strained ties between Islamabad and Washington.
Ashraf added that the Pakistani nation had over the years suffered a huge number of casualties caused by terrorism, including the killing of former prime minister and visionary leader Benazir Bhutto.
In a Voice of America interview last month, Pakistan’s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf suggested that Pakistani authorities negotiate with the U.S. for the release of Shakeel Afridi, the jailed Pakistani physician who helped the CIA track down Al Qa’ida founder Osama bin Laden, in exchange for the capture or elimination of Fazlullah.
Ameer ul Azeem, the spokesperson for Jamaat e Islami, a Pakistani conservative Islamist political party, told The Media Line that no massive retaliation from TTP was expected inside the country as the army had “broken its backbone.”
Fazlullah is believed to be the mastermind of the suicide culture in Pakistan, which has claimed more than 60,000 lives. He was involved in hundreds of attacks against Pakistani armed forces, law enforcement agencies, and civilians. He was behind the 2014 Taliban attack on an army public school in Peshawar city that killed 150 people, including 140 youths.
In 2012, the Fazlullah-led Pakistani Taliban shot 14-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yousaf Zai in her hometown of Swat. She survived the attack and won a Nobel Peace Prize two years later for he advocacy on behalf of girls’ education.
Married to the daughter of Sufi Muhammad, the founder of TTP, Fazlullah in 2006 established an illegal FM radio station in Swat valley, regularly broadcasting hate speeches and sermons calling for Sharia law to be implemented and for those who did not follow it to be punished brutally. He regarded television, computers, and DVDs as the major source of sin. His followers burnt shops which sold these items.
Fazlullah also preached anti-Americanism, focusing on U.S. forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. In 2009, he announced that educating girls was un-Islamic. He claimed, further, that Pakistan’s educational institutions provided the future workforce for the military and government, all of which worked against the will of God.
Officials estimate that TTP militants destroyed 184 schools and colleges, more than 110 of which were institutions for girls.
Fazlullah also supported attacks on teams of paramedics running polio vaccination programs, claiming that aid workers were trying to convert locals and spy for foreign countries. During his sermons, Fazlullah called the initiatives a conspiracy of the Jews and Christians aimed at stunting the population growth of Muslims.
Taliban officials established their own courts, implementing punishment in public places. Enemies were beheaded and accused adulterers were stoned to death.
In May 2009, the Pakistan army was ordered to launch a massive operation, Rah-e-Raast (Right Path), to remove Fazlullah and his followers from the Swat Valley region.
Following a massive military operation in Peochar, believed to be Fazlullah’s hideout and a strategic location with training camps, centers for suicide bombers, arms depots, torture cells, and private jails holding kidnapped people and prisoners, Fazlullah and his associates took refuge across the border in Afghanistan.
Several of Fazlullah’s close advisers were killed during the operation, while several others were captured.
Since 2009, Fazlullah had been hiding in the Afghan province of Kunar, planning attacks against Pakistan. In 2013, after the death of TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud in a U.S. drone attack, Fazlullah was appointed the new chief of the Pakistani Taliban.