Mullah Radio the new chief of TTP

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
81

Re: Mullah Radio the new chief of TTP

After what Pakistan did with them post 9/11 I won't be surprised that Taliban first take over Afghanistan then they fully support TTP.

82

Re: Mullah Radio the new chief of TTP

Is there any relation between Mullah Diesel and Mullah Radio? In future you will hear Mullah TV, Mullah Patrol, Mullah Drone, Mullah Dynamite, Mullah Kalashnikov, Mullah Terror, Mullah..... The list goes on. However in Past we had peaceful Mullah Do Pyaza. Time has changed.

83

Re: Mullah Radio the new chief of TTP

This will not happen Inshallah.

84

Re: Mullah Radio the new chief of TTP

That's the reason why I believe Pakistan should be prepared for any eventuality. The previous time when taleban seized power in Afghanistan, they didn't have allies in Pakistan. The situation is changed this time around.

85

Re: Mullah Radio the new chief of TTP

that's likely in the future but not in the next decade at least.

86

Re: Mullah Radio the new chief of TTP

The rise, fall and rise of Fazlullah - thenews.com.pk

ISLAMABAD: The rise of Fazle Hayat from a manual chairlift operator on the Swat River to a fiery Jihadi orator called Mullah Radio and his subsequent ascent to prominence as Pakistan’s most wanted and equally brutal terrorist has been like a roller-coaster ride.

Fazlullah became a household name in the Swat Valley due to the fierce resistance his privately-raised army gave to Pakistan Army when it had launched a military operation in the picturesque valley in October 2007 to eliminate the vast Jihadi infrastructure of Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (Movement for Enforcement of Islamic Laws) and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Before joining hands with Baitullah Mehsud following the July 2007 Lal Masjid operation in Islamabad to become the Taliban Ameer in Swat, Fazlullah had been the Ameer of the Swat chapter of TNSM. Fazlullah is the son-in-law of Maulana Sufi Mohammad, the founder of the TNSM, which is an al-Qaeda-linked militant Wahabi organisation.

A resident of Mamdheray area in Swat, he was born on March 1, 1975 in the house of Biladar Khan, a Pakhtun from the Babukarkhel clan of the Yusufzai tribe of the Swat district. He passed his secondary school certificate from the village school and then took admission at the Government Degree College Saidu Sharif, Swat, from where he passed his intermediate exam. Till then, he was known as Fazle Hayat who finally became a daily wage earner – an operator of a manual chairlift on the River Swat. Having worked there for a few years, Fazle Hyat left Swat and went to Maidan town in Lower Dir district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to join the Jamia Mazahir-ul-Uloom — a religious seminary run by Maulana Sufi Mohammad.

Sufi first renamed his student as Maulvi Fazlullah and then chose him to be his son-in-law. Fazlullah returned to the Mamdheray area after completing his religious education and began imparting religious education at a mosque-cum-Madrassa. However, the fact remains that he is not a Mufti (Islamic scholar), has no Madrassa certificate and has only received early religious education from his father-in-law with whom Fazlullah is not on good terms after having married the widow of his brother who was killed in a 2006 US drone attack. While tracking Fazlullah’s rise to prominence, one comes to know that like thousands of other TNSM activists, Fazlullah too travelled to Afghanistan in November 2001 [after the US invaded Afghanistan] along with his father-in-law, Sufi Mohammad, to fight alongside the Taliban there.

Upon their return home, Fazlullah was taken into custody by the Pakistani security forces along with Maulana Sufi Mohammad and his other comrades and sent to the central prison in Dera Ismail Khan. While Sufi was sentenced for 10 years, Fazlullah proved lucky – he was released after 17 months in prison despite charges of inciting youngsters to illegally cross the Pak-Afghan border to wage Jihad against the US-led Allied Forces. In the absence of Sufi Mohammad, Fazlullah came forward and emerged as a popular Wahabi militant leader through his activities in the Swat district, mainly using his clout as Sufi’s son-in-law.

While his father-in-law was behind bars, Fazlullah made his native village Mamdheray the TNSM headquarters and got it shifted from Kumbar, Dir to Mamdheray. The next step was the reorganisation of the TNSM. Fazlullah appointed two Shuras to assist him in decision making process. One was the Ulema Shura with several senior Swati clerics who used to advise him about religious policies of the group. The other Shura, called the executive body, was the highest policy making organ of the TNSM, having many ex-servicemen, including retired commissioned officers of the army, as its members. He further created his private army and named it as “Shaheen Commando Force” which was meant to establish his authority in Swat. His private army was quick to establish a parallel administration in the valley by dispensing summary justice besides regulating traffic and patrolling villages and towns.

Fazlullah then decided to enforce his own version of Islam in the valley by using his FM radio, becoming commonly known as ‘Mullah Radio’ in a big way. Being a fiery orator, Fazlullah attracted local people through his sermons and soon earned the support of women who urged their men folk to grow beards and donate money to his seminary. The essence of his sizzling speeches had been none other than the TNSM motto: “Shariah ya Shahadat (Islamic laws or martyrdom)”. He used to warn parents through his FM channel against sending their girls to schools unless they observe full Purdah (veil). Barbers in the area were under clear instructions not to shave beards, while shops were proscribed from selling CDs and music cassettes. He also ordered his followers not to administer polio drops to their children. Reason: the polio drop was part of a US-Zionist plot to render them sterile.

For Friday prayers, a vast strip of land had been levelled near the TNSM’s Mamdheray headquarters to accommodate a large number of people from almost all villages of Swat. After the Friday prayers, Fazlullah, who was fond of riding a black steed, used to make a riding show (with himself on a black horse) in the same ground, so that the people could have a glimpse of him. His rantings were typical of those subscribing to the intellectual tradition of the Taliban. Fazlullah had a fighting strength of 5,000, besides a 1,000-member Shaheen Commando Force that used to patrol the streets of Swat with guns placed on their vehicles. The situation took an ominous turn in July 2007 when Fazlullah joined hands with the TTP [led by Baitullah Mehsud at that time] and was made the Ameer of the Swat chapter.

Between 2007 and 2009, Fazlullah literally engineered the Taliban takeover of Swat and neighbouring districts and brutally ruled over a cowed civilian population. As his private army invaded the Buner district of the KP [despite having signed a peace agreement with the KP government] and advanced to just 60 miles from the federal capital, the Pakistan Army decided to intervene in October 2009 by launching “Operation Rah-e-Haq”. While Sufi was arrested and is being tried on sedition charges, Fazlullah fled to Afghanistan where he keeps shuttling between the Kunar and Nuristan provinces and occasionally carries out cross border ambushes against the Pakistani security forces.

In fact, the US Allied Forces withdrew from Kunar and neighbouring Nuristan provinces in 2009 after their outposts came under deadly attacks, therefore, giving a free hand to Fazlullah who enjoys the full backing of the Afghan intelligence. Therefore, his fall from grace in 2007 to his rise as the new Ameer of the country’s most fearful terrorist outfit must be quite disturbing for the Pakistan Army which had expelled his private army from Swat in 2009.

87

Re: Mullah Radio the new chief of TTP

Samson Sharaf is also raising similar points. Its a very complex mesh, it seems as if Pakistani intelligence is supporting Haqqani Network/Quetta shura, where as these guys have allowed TTP to live in their areas. US is fighting against Afghan taleban, and are facilitating TTP, again both groups are living together. Every group is trying to extract as much as they can before US withdrawal, after that we will have Afghan taleban, Afghan govt, TTP and Pakistani government.

Dust after the drone

Hakimullah Mehsud’s death, reiterates more US imperial outreach in Pakistan than imaginable. State Department finds it impractical to shift drone operations to Pentagon as an unattainable goal with remarks that ‘reality has set in’. This means more covert strikes that bypass Pentagon and Pakistan.

There is now a new chessboard of instability. The burning issue of the legality of drone strikes in Pakistan is eclipsed with the argument that it killed Pakistan’s most wanted enemy. Sovereignty aside, a large segment of the Pakistani sentiment terms it positive. Notwithstanding peace, instability in Pakistan remains a plank of pliability, a thesis I floated over a decade ago. The ‘so called war’ will eat into Pakistan like maggots.

**TTP a group of over 30 militant organisations is notorious for linkages with RAW, Afghan Intelligence and Middle Eastern sources of funding. They are Indian and CIA assets. Interdiction of some leaders of this group led to Salala. This group fraternises with the CIA controlled Afghan-US Counter Terrorism Pursuit Teams (CTPT). Latif Mehsud, a close aide of Hakimullah snatched by US forces from Afghan intelligence raises many questions.
**
This hardliner group and its sectarian killers bleed Pakistan. Destruction of Holy Shrines, beheadings of soldiers, display of human body parts in Kurram or repeated attacks on the Hazara community reflect their exclusive ideology. They destroyed four surveillance aircrafts, attacked GHQ and killed two general officers. The group has its sanctuaries in Kunar where they blend with skeleton Baloch liberation groups to destabilise Balochistan.
**
Given the nature of its alliance and lose command, factions double crossing US interests is possible. **In a post US withdrawal scenario each group is trying desperately to hedge its interest Afghan Intelligence, CIA, Afghan Taliban and Pakistani intelligence are the direction they look at. With PML-N in power, Punjabi Taliban assumes an important role in positioning TTP at an advantage and created acrimony within the Mehsud TTP ranks.

Intelligence assets are sensitive and bumped off at the slighted suspicion. **In the past, CIA had taken out leaders of TTP for double crossing or Pakistani pressure. Why was Hakimullah Mehsud suddenly in the cross hairs of CIA? Was it double crossing, Pakistani pressure or both?
**
The group pledges token allegiance to Mullah Umar of Afghanistan. The killing of Colonel Amir Sultan Tarar (Imam) in cold blood is an incident where good Taliban and familiar interlocutors failed to cajole the bad. Hakim was not in favour of executing Colonel Imam but was forced to comply with the orders of its Shura. His reconciliatory efforts met stiff resistance from hardliners. This put him at odds with Afghan Taliban. With 2014 approaching, Hakim wanted to keep his options open viz a viz Hamid Karzai, Afghan Taliban and the military establishment. He was creating a new strategic space.

Khan Said Sanjana and Wali Ur Rehman in mutual rivalry fought each other to a standstill in Karachi, till Wali, Hakim’s contender turned closest aide finally fell to a drone strike for double crossing. Early this year, a TTP leader critical of both Wali and Hakim was killed by a suicide bomber in Miran Shah. Talk was rife in Miran Shah that internal disagreements may escalate into violence.** Amidst these infightings, Hakim hedged his bets in favour of negotiations with Afghan Intelligence, Afghan Taliban and Pakistan. He was doomed.**

The government resigned the significance of John Kerry’s visit with demands of eliminating militant havens to distant memory. The Prime Minister and Interior Minister failed to convince USA. It appears that some verbal agreements were reached on high profile side-lines during the Prime Minister’s visit to USA. Figures on civilian casualties were deliberately fudged to provide grace to the detested symbol of imperial outreach. Why did the government give away valuable information and persist with a mission doomed to failure?

In a world wrapped in NSA’s surveillance, even a whisper with interlocutors is bugged. **The government and TTP set respective echelons in motion under watchful eyes. The processes warranted a fail-safe execution whose absence became the crucial missing link. CIA was watching every move.
Wading in alligator infested waters and ignorant of the world of intelligence intrigues, ‘this was a grievous fault’ that Chaudary Nisar played truly to a Shakespearean tragedy. The government rushed into negotiations neither comprehending the cobweb of widow spiders nor the pathology of conflict. Populism and simplifications impose limitations on statecraft. This euphoria coupled with lack of capacity led to foolhardy attitude.
**
Army’s plans to fight the militancy met political disapproval. Taliban surrogates were pushing the negotiations option. It provided Pakistani intelligence an opportunity to create splits within TTP. The government bypassed the system and ignored formulating a counter terrorism policy crucial to conflict management and calibrated peace. Select audience of All Parties Conference was never updated. The government restricted itself to 30 odd groups and not 69 as briefed by the intelligence. With a supposed trump card in their hands, Pakistan’s centrist and rightist political parties wanted to give peace a shot as a political stratagem. Like Brutus’ best intentions the government forayed into a hornet’s nest.

As engagements began, so did the intensity in violence. The idea that USA was disrupting peace talks had holes. The Federal and KP government should have factorised the reality that besides USA, segments within TTP were not interested in peace. These segments led by Fazal Ullah now control TTP. This means that Fazal Ullah with support of Gujjar elements in Afghanistan and Swat has become stronger in the new power game. Neither Afghan Taliban nor TTP can ignore him.

Were Hakimullah’s intentions g*****ose? Was he, like the legendary Mirza Ali Khan Faqir of Ipi choosing his moment in history? He was approachable and used the media to portray himself a normal individual at picnic, enjoying by a stream, talking to select journalists, showing inclinations of reverting to a settled life and dreaming. Whatever, events prove that he was hanging by a straw out of his reach.

Hakimullah Mehsud assured by the government (in turn assured by USA?) let down his guard. With the ugly having taken over from the good and bad Taliban, there is no room for negotiations now.

**TTP clouded in internal competition and external surveillance will become fiercer. Some will fall into Al Qaeda Influence. The ugly will raise the stakes becoming counterweights to the good Taliban. Pakistan will be hit hard from sanctuaries in Kunar. The government in guilt may continue to persist with peace efforts; but who will believe it? It is now time to get serious about counter terrorism policy and educate itself on the many faces of terrorism.
**
Dynamics make US retrograde from Afghanistan peripheral. Winds and cinder will ensure the pyre keeps burning. To quote from my OPED in 2007, ‘We neither know when the war began nor have control over when it will end’. The battle has yet to strike Gawadar and Punjab, a prelude to the fortress crumbling. Dust after the drone will take years to settle.

The writer is a retired officer of Pakistan Army and a political economist.

88

Re: Mullah Radio the new chief of TTP

Pakistan has continued to provide them with a sanctuary where they could regroup after getting routed, provided them with moral and logistical support, may have provided weapons, let them recruit among the masses and continue to support them even after all the backstabbing these ungrateful people have done ( Hakeemullah was operating from Miran Shah which is under control of Haqqanis). Mullah Omar and Afghan Taliban remain dependent on the support from Pakistan. Pakistan did go after AlQaeeda and its affiliated groups.

I do agree with your assessment that after US withdrawal, they could take over some part of Afghanistan and then use that territory against Pakistan, using and supporting TTP, in fact that is already happening. Don't forget Taliban also don't recognize the Durand line as a border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mullah Omar's end goal is to be the Ameer ul Momineen of both Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is on his way to that goal as a segment of Pakistani population already accept him as Ameer ul Momineen.

89

Re: Mullah Radio the new chief of TTP

interesting article, an year old.Can Malala Bring Peace to Pakistan and Afghanistan? : The New Yorker

The shooting of Malala Yousafzai, a fourteen-year-old student, along with her two friends by Pakistani Taliban has created intense anger in Pakistan. Pakistanis have spent days in prayer for her life as she lay comatose in an army hospital in Rawalpindi and, Monday, was put on a plane to London, under tight security, for a brain operation (the Pakistani government will pay her expenses), and have held vigils and marches in support of her vision of education for all girls. But they are now also calling on the army to carry out its much delayed offensive in the tribal territories of North and South Waziristan to wipe out the ever growing networks of extremists, including Mullah Fazlullah, who is believed to be the mastermind of the attempted murder of Malala.

I live in Lahore and, like my neighbors, have spent this time watching the news and hoping that Malala survives. This is a simple human reaction, but one affected, too, by a sense of what she means for Pakistan. Malala may become a role model not just for girls in the region but also for peace. Her story now has the potential, if fully utilized, to bring about a serious geo-political change in the region that could actually help stabilize both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

For several years, the United States and NATO forces based in Afghanistan have demanded that the army carry out just such operations, but Pakistan has declined. After the shooting of Malala, there is unprecedented domestic pressure to finally do so. Pakistanis want to make it clear that they, the majority, do not support this brand of Islamic fundamentalism. If the army refuses to act now it may find itself ostracized by the very public whose support it seeks. On Monday, Interior Minister Rehman Malik was still insisting that there would be no operation in Waziristan—but the civilian government does not have the last word on any military operation.

Fazlullah’s forces were defeated by the Pakistani Army in 2009 after the public was incensed by a video showing Fazlullah’s gunmen flogging naked women. The army, also under enormous American pressure, moved some 2.5 million people out of the Swat Valley and sent in eighty thousand troops to clear Swat of militants—except that Fazlullah and his commanders escaped across the border into Kunar province, in northeastern Afghanistan. From Kunar, which is under the control of like-minded Al Qaeda affiliates, the Afghan Taliban, and multiple other groups from Central Asia, the Caucasus, China, and Europe, Fazlullah has recently relaunched his movement, attacking army posts inside Pakistan’s tribal belt and then retreating back to Kunar, where Pakistan cannot touch him.

**Any military action in North Waziristan could only be taken, however, with corresponding anti-militant steps by United States and Afghan military across the border. So far, this has been a problem. Afghans officials have quietly admitted to me that Fazlullah’s actions are being backed by the Afghan intelligence services. (Officially, Afghanistan denies all such charges.)
**
**Afghan support for extremists like Fazlullah is, in a sense, return pay. Pakistan’s army has done exactly the same thing for the past twelve years—allowing Afghan Taliban to launch strikes into Afghanistan against United States and Afghan forces and then retreat back into Pakistan. Now both countries are more evenly balanced in this dangerous, brutal, bloody proxy war—one that is leading to open war, with Pakistan’s army shelling Fazlullah’s camps and Afghan villages in Kunar almost every day, angering the Afghan public who demand that Karzai take action against Pakistan.
**
There are no American forces in Kunar to keep the peace, and very few Afghan forces. The United States has been silent on a flareup that could lead to “hot pursuit” incursions across the border and then a full scale war between the two neighbors. This could have devastating effect on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014. To complete the circle, the American military’s silence is, in turn, due to its unanswered demands that Pakistan attack North and South Waziristan and rein in the Afghan Taliban, especially the Jalaluddin Haqqani network, and cease destabilizing Afghanistan.

The big change is that the public mood in Pakistan at present is playing directly to a moderate view of Islam, tolerance, democracy, and good neighborliness—or it would, if only there were a serious leader in the country who could take advantage of it. But the country lacks effective leadership.

The mullahs, who have refused to name the Taliban as the culprits in the shooting of Malala—even though the Taliban has claimed responsibility—speculating that the shooters were working for the Americans, the Indians, or even for the army, are becoming marginalized for the first time in more than a decade. Other right-wingers who have suggested that Malala deserved to be attacked for supporting Western democracy have been ridiculed.

Political leaders on the right, like Imran Khan—who has been sympathetic to the Taliban and has sought the advice of retired intelligence agents, reactionary mullahs, and others of the extreme right—have also been sidelined by Malala’s shooting. Khan has said that the Taliban are fighting a jihad in Afghanistan against an American occupation. His campaign to highlight the American policy of sending drones into Pakistan has fizzled at a time when more and more people regard the Taliban as the real threat. So, even as the army is under extreme public pressure to show its teeth and move into Waziristan, its core constituencies of right-wing politicians and mullahs have been weakened.

But the army will not and cannot attempt to clear out the Taliban as long as the Afghans continue giving sanctuary to Fazlullah. The fear is that any Pakistani offensive in the tribal badlands will lead to the bulk of the Pakistani extremists just fleeing across the border into Kunar and neighboring Nuristan. The Americans, busy with elections and withdrawal plans, are in winding-up mode, not in offensive mode. And so Afghans would have to be the ones to act.

If the Afghans would be willing to throw out Fazlullah and his men, then the Pakistan Army could embrace the previously unthinkable. Pakistan could prevent the Afghan Taliban from crossing the border, push them to negotiate a powersharing deal with Karzai—and then ask them to go back home. The next American President, whoever it is, should support such a settlement, rather than fighting to the last day of 2014.

Since 9/11 the Pakistani military has failed to adopt a comprehensive strategy toward terrorism and extremism. Is this the moment for one to develop? For years, critics like me have been voices in the wilderness trying to point out that the military needs to change its narrative and stop backing extremists in the name of countering India if it is to allow Pakistan to develop as a modern state. Now could be that moment—one provided, tragically, by the shooting of a fourteen-year-old girl who is now fighting for her life. It won’t last forever.

90

Re: Mullah Radio the new chief of TTP

IK was wanting to hand over Swat to Fazlullah in 2007. He will be happy to beg him and hand over Pakistan this time.