For starters, the Taliban jungle telegraph seems to confirm that the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, has gone down in a UAV strike (if one more commentator calls a strike by a UAV a Predator strike, I will go postal), and news have even reached the Associated Press. In comes dashing new Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, a Johnny Depp lookalike with a pancake hat. And a lot of bloody murder on his mind.
Johnny Depp’s evil Taliban lookalike. Image courtesy AP.
Turns out that after Baitullah died, there was a major power struggle in the Taliban between young gun Hakimullah and heaven only knows what Wali-ur-Rehman. It was reported that the power struggle ended up with Wali-ur-Rehman shooting Hakimullah, who was or was not dead, but at the latest by Tuesday, the two were friendly enough to call the BBC to inform them that they were united as all hell and the best mates the world has ever seen. Oh, and that Baitullah has died and Johnny Depp would take over, concluding almost a month’s prevarication by the Taliban about the fate of Baitullah.
The Talib Johnny Depp comes from a rather illustrious Talib family, by the way. He was Baitullah’s cousin, and some sort of relative of Qari Hussain Ahmad, who runs a jolly bad suicide bomber training camp in Waziristan, the Long War Journal reports. He’s also young, and from that you’d suggest he’d be more agile than the chronically ill (diabetic), frail and older Baitullah was. He also proved some fingerspitzengefühl in late 2008, when he randomly raided the NATO supply lines around the Khyber Pass, leading Pakistan to close it temporarily.
The Pakistani Taliban are fighting a rather desperate fight, but my hunch is that they opted with Hamidullah to upscale to an unproven, but more maneuver-y and ‘lightweight’ sort of combat. In light of US UAV strikes and Pakistani attempts to eradicate them, that seems like prudent tactical planning.
What a week! I’ll be back later today (Zulu time) on McChrystal’s guide to winning friends, influencing people and not getting shot.
Oh, and I support the cats. So should you - they’re the mascots of maneuver warfare!
