Sometime in mid-December, as winter winds howled across the snow-dusted hills of the countryÂ’s inhospitable border regions, 40 men representing Taliban groups all across the countryÂ’s northwest frontier came together to unify under a single banner and to choose a leader. The banner was Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or the Taliban Movement of Pakistan, with a fighting force estimated at around 40,000. The leader was Baitullah Mehsud, the man the government accuses of murdering former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.The move is an attempt to present a united front against the army, which has been fighting insurgents along the border with Afghanistan. It is also the latest sign of the rise of Mehsud, considered the deadliest of the Taliban mullahs in the countryÂ’s northwest. Mehsud is based South Waziristan, where Western intelligence says Al Qaeda is regrouping.
Building a base: “Al Qaeda has succeeded in building a base in the last two or three years mostly with help from Mehsud,” said Ahmed Zaidan, a reporter for Al-Jazeera Television in Qatar who interviewed Mehsud three weeks ago. “They are moving freely in the Tribal Areas where it is difficult for the Pakistan Army to move.” During the interview, Mehsud said in halting Arabic that he had never met Osama Bin Laden but knew Abu Musab Al Zarqawi well. Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in a US air raid two years ago.
Logistical advice: Al Qaeda gives Mehsud money and logistical advice, according to one of his Taliban allies, Maulvi Muslim, who spoke to AP. The Al Qaeda funds don’t always come in cash. Rather, Afghan and Pakistani businessmen - usually in the UAE – are given money to buy high-priced goods like cars. The goods are shipped to Pakistan and sold, often tripling Al Qaeda’s investment. The businessmen, with sympathies to Al Qaeda, take a small cut while Al Qaeda spreads the wealth among its allies.
The Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan share ideological goals but have separate structures, Muslim said. The spiritual head of both is Mullah Muhammed Omar, the leader of AfghanistanÂ’s Taliban before being ousted by the US-led coalition in November 2001 and to whom Mehsud swore allegiance in 2001, according to Muslim.
Free of all vices: Mehsud, thought to be in his 40s, is secretive and, like Mullah Omar, hates to be photographed. He is described as devoted to the Taliban and not well educated. “They say he is free from all vices, walks around covering almost half his face all the time,” said Brigadier (r) Mehmood Shah, who was the government’s former point man for the Tribal Regions. “He is very modest in his manners and polite.”
President Pervez Musharraf has also accused MehsudÂ’s men of carrying out most of 19 suicide bombings in Pakistan over just three months. Newspapers quoted him as threatening BenazirÂ’s life, but he denied it, and also denied accusations that he was behind her assassination. Mehsud is also quoted as saying jihad is the only way to peace, a belief reflected in his history.
Muslim says MehsudÂ’s first battlefield experience was in Afghanistan in the late 1980s against Soviet invaders. His mentor at the time was Jalaluddin Haqqani, a powerful commander in eastern Afghanistan backed by the United States against the Soviets. Now Haqqani is wanted as a terrorist by the US and NATO.
According to both Muslim and another Taliban source, when the US invaded in 2001, Mehsud fought with the Taliban in Shah-e-Kot in eastern Afghanistan. Mehsud’s ascent reflects the failure of Pakistan’s army with its US funding to win control of its tribal areas. When the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Mehsud was not prominent among the Pakistani militants who supported Afghanistan’s Taliban, according to Shah, the former army officer. “Mehsud was a small fry, but I could see in time he could be of some problem,” Shah said. “I was trying to get big tribal people onto the government side and religious people onto the government side to isolate these hardcore types like him.” But by the end of 2004, the army had started negotiations with the militants, Shah said. The pressure to negotiate came from the provincial government of the frontier, a coalition of right-wing religious parties sympathetic to the Taliban and opposed to the Western troop presence in Afghanistan.
100 to 20,000: Musharraf, whose rule as both president and army chief was being challenged in 2004, agreed to talks in exchange for the support of the provincial government. As a result, the government on February 7, 2005 signed a peace agreement with Mehsud.
According to Shah, Mehsud’s troop strength then went from less than 100 to about 20,000, or roughly half the total thought to be under Taliban command in the northwest region that straddles the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The agreement gave Mehsud the time to consolidate his forces and kill pro-government tribal leaders. “The government policy of appeasement gave Mehsud a free hand to recruit and motivate,” said Shah, who described Mehsud as “very cool and calculating”. Within a year of the agreement, Shah said, around 123 pro-government tribal leaders were gunned down on Mehsud’s orders, accused of spying. Other suspected spies were publicly hanged or beheaded. In the Bajaur region of the tribal belt, many residents say they buy Taliban protection by letting one son join its ranks. Mehsud also negotiated a prisoner exchange with Musharraf in November. Mehsud handed over a couple of hundred soldiers who had surrendered to the Taliban without firing a shot. In exchange, Musharraf gave up 19 men who were in custody on terrorism charges, including a son of Mehsud’s mentor, Jalaluddin Haqqani.