As some posters are carried away by suggesting measures from carpet bombing to burning them alive it’s important to understand why this guy is successful in organising terror in Pakistan. Shamraz you have struck bulls eye on the issue..
Mehsud is a result of former dictator’s policy when he tried to separate local jihadis with Al quaida and Afghanistan talibans. While former dictator used these guys when he did Kargil misadventure and later to keep pressure on India, former dictator played a big role in uniting all sorts of local jihadi organistaions and formed Tehrik e taliban Pakistan. He protected people like Maulana Masood Azhar and tried to persuade them not to operate in Afghanistan against US forces and unified local jihadi outfits with TTP. It is a known fact that Baitullah Mehsud was paid an amount of US$ 20 million in 2005 by the former dictator and their training camps were operating under the supervision of ISI. It was not until end 2007 when these local jihadi outfits grew more than the dictator had anticipated and some half hearted operation was started against them under US pressure…
Dictator managed to convince somehow the Bush administration at that time that he successfully managed to engage local jihadis and have convinced them to concentrate on local agenda specially with regard to India. It’s true that these talibans have abandoned jihad in Afghanistan against American forces which is a matter of dispute between Mullah Omar and TTP…
Baitullah Mehsud News - The New York Times
Baitullah Mehsud is the commander of Taliban forces in Waziristan, the lawless tribal area of northwest Pakistan, and one of Al Qaeda’s most powerful commanders in Pakistan.
Two years ago, Mr. Mehsud, reported to be in his 30’s, was a Pashtun tribesman who did not register on the radar screen of intelligence services or the Pakistani government. He fought for the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990s, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.
He became a follower of Abdullah Mehsud, a one-legged Pakistani militant who was captured in 2001 in Afghanistan and detained by the United States at its base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Abdullah Mehsud was later released and resumed his fight against U.S. forces in Afghanistan, this time from his base in South Waziristan.
(The Mehsuds are a large warrior Pashtun tribe renowned for never being pacified by the British forces.)
Pakistani forces killed Abdullah Mehsud in July 2007. But Baitullah Mehsud had already been promoted over him by Taliban leaders.
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Wearing black cloth to cover his face, he scrawled his signature on a peace deal with the government in 2005, amid speculation that officials had offered him money for his cooperation. Mr. Mehsud used the short-lived cease-fire to help consolidate his power, allowing Al Qaeda to become even more deeply entrenched in the region.
In April 2008, Mr. Mehsud ordered another cease-fire, putting the word out to his followers to halt attacks in Pakistan, after the new government started peace talks with militants.
Mr. Mehsud, with foreign backing, has claimed to have hundreds of suicide bombers at the ready, and officials of both Pakistan and Afghanistan say he is responsible for many attacks on government and military targets. The Pakistani government blames him for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.** Mr. Mehsud has called for global jihad: In Spain, attacks on public transportation have been carried out in his name, government officials there say. **
In summer 2007, his fighters captured nearly 300 troops escorting a convoy through Waziristan. He beheaded three soldiers and demanded that the army withdraw from the area. In another brazen attack, his forces overran a military fort in South Waziristan in mid-January 2008.
Though he is said to be uneducated and have no religious training, Baitullah Mehsud was thought to have modeled himself after Mullah Muhammad Omar, the elusive one-eyed leader of the Afghan Taliban. But Mr. Mehsud has become far less reclusive than he was in the past and has begun to flaunt his power. He now openly operates terror training camps near the Afghan border. He is ruthless in assassinating rivals: at least 100 Waziri tribal leaders have been purged on his orders, intelligence sources say. In late 2007, a Taliban shura, a 40-member consultative council, chose him to unify its operations in Pakistan.
Various reports in late January 2008 said that Mullah Omar and the Afghan Taliban had broken with Mr. Mehsud because he was focusing on attacks in Pakistan, rather than in Afghanistan.** Yet the Pakistani government has not acted forcefully against him. “If the army took firm action they could crush him in two months,” said one frustrated tribal leader. Experts say that the Pakistani government thinks Mr. Mehsud’s border presence might be useful if Pakistan ever went to war with India. **