Pakistan’s interior minister said senior Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader Qari Hussain Mehsud may have been killed. If confirmed, the death would represent a major setback for the TTP given Hussain’s importance in orchestrating suicide attacks and his links to Punjabi militants. The TTP already was facing internal fractures when reports of Hussain’s death surfaced — fractures Pakistan will try to widen in its bid to seek a negotiated settlement when the TTP has been sufficiently weakened.

Analysis

Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters Feb. 10 that senior Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan leader Qari Hussain Mehsud may have been killed along with TTP chief Hakeemullah Mehsud. Malik also dismissed claims from the country’s largest jihadist rebel group that Islamabad is engaged in talks with the TTP, though he said talks with those willing to end attacks could happen.

Neither Pakistani nor U.S. officials have said unequivocally that Hakeemullah Mehsud is dead. At their most definite, they have said the TTP leader’s death is very likely. It has been even more difficult to get confirmation of Hussain’s death. STRATFOR sources in the Pakistani security establishment maintain that Hussain was killed with Hakeemullah in the same Jan. 14 unmanned aerial vehicle strike, but other sources in the Pashtun northwest maintain that the two would not have traveled together for reasons of operational security. If reports of Hussain’s death are true, it represents a major setback for the TTP.

Assuming Hakeemullah also is dead, Hussain’s death would constitute the third elimination of a TTP leader since Aug. 5, something that naturally would undermine the militant organization. Hussain has been the architect of the TTP’s suicide bomber assembly line, playing a major role not only in the recruitment, training and deployment of suicide bombers but also in their ideological indoctrination. His tactical and strategic skills led him to be viewed as a possible successor to Hakeemullah.

Prior to joining the TTP, Hussain was a key player in Punjab-based anti-Shiite group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. This connection was key in giving the TTP, which is based in Pakistan’s tribal belt, the ability to attack several sensitive security installations and other related targets in the country’s core province of Punjab in the past three years. The TTP is largely a Pashtun organization, making it reliant on Punjab-based militant actors — aka the Punjabi Taliban, a militant network Hussain played a key role in overseeing — for attacks in the Punjabi heartland of Pakistan. The loss of Hussain also would be a major blow to al Qaeda, as he has been a key interlocutor between the transnational jihadist network and the TTP, its main Pakistani ally.

Regardless of Hussain’s fate, the TTP probably was suffering from internal disarray already. The lack of another wave of attacks like the one shortly after the death of TTP founder Baitullah Mehsud — which came when the Pakistani army was assaulting the TTP’s home turf in South Waziristan — highlighted this disarray.

For its part, the Pakistani government recognizes that neutralizing the TTP requires an intelligence operation aimed at undermining the group from within in addition to a military offensive. The best way to accomplish this is by widening the TTP’s various internal factional rivalries into chasms after the elimination of its core leaders.

If even the U.S. must seek to divide the Afghan Taliban as a means of forcing the insurgents in Afghanistan toward a negotiated settlement, Pakistan, which has far fewer resources, certainly can’t hope to impose a military solution on its own Taliban rebels. Thus, rumors of Pakistani talks with the TTP hardly are absurd, though they may be premature.

Ending the Pakistani Taliban insurgency will require a political settlement involving former insurgents at the very least willing to return to the old system of governance in the tribal belt, which involved a tribal hierarchy. But before that happens, the Pakistanis, in conjunction with the U.S., will continue working to strike at TTP leadership.

This article is published at Lebanonwire by agreement with www.stratfor.com, the world's leading private intelligence provider.

Copyright © 2005 Strategic Forecasting Inc. All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1999-2008 Lenanonwire^®.com. All rights reserved.