Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security
After the successful drone strike of Pakistan Taliban’s number one leader Hakimullah Mehsud on November first, the US has accelerated high profile strikes with greater efficiency. Maulvi Ahmad Jan and four others were killed today. Jan was an adviser to the head of the Taliban affiliated Haqqani Network, Sirajuddin Haqqani and his veteran Mujahedin father, Mawlawi Jalaluddin Haqqani.
The attack in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was extremely precise. According to military and police sources, dozens of students asleep in another section of the Islamic seminary unharmed, hitting only two of nine rooms.
Pakistan continues to publicly complain about US drone strikes both in terms of Pakistani sovereignty and public outcry. Moreover, there is also a fragile attempt at a peace process between Islamabad and the Pakistani Taliban that is intermixed with paramilitary versus terrorist insurgents.
All of this these US strikes take place this month as the US and the Afghanistan government reached a security pact known as the Bilateral Security Agreement for post-NATO mission environment. Us counterterrorism operations there pledge the full respect of Afghanistan soverignty. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Northern Tribal region and particularly in North Waziristan is where most attacks on Taliban warlords occur. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan is cited as a settled-region with a greater population density than the tribal region. The so called “settled” regions are not part of any arrangement between the US and Pakistan that is suspected behind the scenes, reports Bloomberg. This could further a problem for the Pakistani government of a widening targeting base as Haqqani jihadists proliferate the state.
US military-CIA drone strikes in the immediate region of Pakistan have an operational efficiency of further dividing the leadership of various factions of the Pakistani Taliban. They have been mainly concerned with the tribal region and the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. At the same time there is still tremendous public backlash from the natives from the US drone strikes.