The Pakistani Taliban withdrew their offer of peace talks Thursday, following the death of the group’s deputy leader in an American drone attack, a spokesman for the group said, a blow to incoming prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who was elected partly on promises to restore security after years of deadly attacks.
The death of Waliur Rehman, wanted by the U.S. for a 2009 attack in Afghanistan that killed seven people working for the CIA, also focuses attention on the controversial U.S. drone program. Despite President Barack Obama’s sweeping promise last week of new transparency, Wednesday’s strike against a longtime American target shows that the CIA will still launch attacks on militants without having to explain them publicly.
The announcement by the Pakistani Taliban came amid conflicting reports about whether the Islamic militant movement had selected a replacement for Rehman, who was killed Wednesday in the attack that left at least four other militants dead.
Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan said the group is discussing whether Khan Sayed, Rehman’s deputy, will succeed him as head of the militant group’s most powerful branch in South Waziristan, which would effectively make him the second-in-command. He also formally confirmed that Rehman had been killed.
The drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal belt, along the Afghan border, was the first since Obama announced what his administration billed as sweeping changes to the drone program, with new limits on who would be targeted and more transparency in reporting such strikes.
But in the days since the president’s speech, U.S. officials have asserted behind the scenes that the new standards would not apply to the CIA drone program in Pakistan as long as U.S. troops remained next door in Afghanistan — a reference to Obama’s exception for an “Afghan war theater.” For months to come, any drone strikes in Pakistan — the country that has been hit by the vast majority of them, with more than 350 such attacks by some estimates — will be exempt from the new rules.
U.S. officials even refused Wednesday to publicly confirm the drone strike or the death of Rehman, even as Pakistani government and militant figures reported that he had been killed. Thus, the promise of new transparency, too, seemed to be put off.
Still, by one measure, Rehman would seem to fit the new road map for drone strikes: the threshold laid out by Obama that the target of the strike pose a “continuing and imminent threat” to U.S. citizens.
Earlier this year the Taliban had indicated it was open to the idea of peace talks to end years of fighting if certain individuals, including Sharif, were involved. The talks did not go anywhere at the time but the May 11 election victory of Sharif’s party once again brought the issue to the forefront.
Inside Pakistan, where Rehman’s death could deal a potentially serious blow to an insurgency that has killed thousands of people, the drone strike provoked a complex set of reactions. The Foreign Ministry quickly condemned the strike in a statement, while incoming prime minister Sharif, who takes office next week, has vowed to restrict drone activity as part of a broader tightening of relations with the United States.
Against that, however, many other Pakistanis are unlikely to regret Rehman’s death. As the Taliban’s deputy leader, he orchestrated suicide bombings that have killed thousands of civilians and Pakistani military personnel over the past six years.
Since the beginning of the CIA’s drone war in Pakistan in 2004, U.S. officials have at times tried to placate Pakistani officials by killing militants who pose a greater threat to Pakistan than they do the United States.
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