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Hakimullah's death plunges Taliban into dangerous disarray
[Pak Daily Times] The killing of one of Pakistain's most wanted faceless myrmidons in a US drone strike has exposed centuries-old rivalries within the group he led, the Pak Taliban, making the insurgency ever more unpredictable and probably more violent.

Hakimullah Mehsud's death this month has set off a power struggle within the outfit's ranks, which could further unnerve a region already on tenterhooks with most US-led troops pulling out of neighbouring Afghanistan in 2014. When a tribal council declared Mullah Fazlullah
...son-in-law of holy man Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM, Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much less bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullah's Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan...
 as the new leader of the Pak Taliban last week, several furious commanders from a rival clan stood up and left.

"When Fazlullah's name was announced, they ... walked out saying, 'The Taliban's command is doomed'," said one commander who attended the November 7 'shura' meeting in South Wazoo. Others at the shura declared loyalty to the hardline new leader and stayed on to map out a plan to avenge Hakimullah's death through a new campaign of bombings and shootings. "This is the start of our fight with the Pakistain government, an American puppet," the Taliban official said.

"Those who forced the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan are capable of breaking up Pakistain," he added, alluding to senior commanders whose rite of passage into war started with the rebellion against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The Pak Taliban have always been divided, a loose alliance of bully boy bands united only by jihadist beliefs and their hatred of the government and all things Western. The group operates independently of its Taliban allies in Afghanistan, who are fighting US-backed forces there.

But the death of Hakimullah, a member of the dominant Mehsud tribe, and the rise of Fazlullah, a Swat
...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...
Valley native and hence an outsider in the eyes of rustics, changes the picture in the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP), or Pak Taliban. Under Hakimullah, the TTP had been open to the idea of peace talks with the Pak government, even though no meaningful negotiations had taken place. Fazlullah ruled out any talks and declared the start of a new campaign to attack government and security installations in Punjab, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf...
's political base.

"Mehsuds are not only not happy with this appointment but there are reports of serious infighting among them that might come to the fore in the near future," said Saifullah Mahsud, director of the Pak think tank FATA Research Centre. "I think for now the anti-peace talks group among the TTP has prevailed and hence the appointment of Fazlullah," said Mahsud, who compiles data based on information provided by his sources on the ground in the tribal Pashtun areas.

Fazlullah's threat against Punjab has unnerved Pakistain's most prosperous and populous province, where attacks have so far been rare. Various Pak bully boy groups, including the Sipah-e-Sahaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ...
 and Jaish-e-Mohammad
...literally Army of Mohammad, a Pak-based Deobandi terror group founded by Maulana Masood Azhar in 2000, after he split with the Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin. In 2002 the government of Pervez Musharraf banned the group, which changed its name to Khaddam ul-Islam and continued doing what it had been doing before without missing a beat...
, are based around Punjab and have been long tolerated or even sponsored by Pakistain's powerful military and intelligence establishment. Some of them were set up to fight Indian forces in disputed Kashmire, but they have turned on Pakistain in recent years thanks to the growing influence of the TTP and al Qaeda, and have become increasingly involved in Taliban affairs.

"The situation is getting out of control and the ISI knows that," said one Western diplomat in Islamabad.
Posted by: Fred 2013-11-15
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=379693