Commander of the Faithful

Meet the man who is Islamabad and Washington's new Public Enemy No. 1.

BY IMTIAZ ALI | JULY 9, 2009

One pressure point might be Mehsud's funding stream, but no one is certain exactly where his money is coming from. According to local sources, he taxes trucks passing through the region and might be drawing ransom payments from the kidnappings of Western journalists and officials, both of which have become increasingly common along the Af-Pak border. It's also known that for a time, he received funds from al Qaeda through Sirajuddin Haqqani -- son of legendary Afghan mujahideen commander and insurgent Jalaluddin Haqqani. But no one has yet put forth a practical plan for how to disrupt Mehsud's income stream.

Implausible conspiracy theories about Mehsud also abound, and his carefully maintained mystique does nothing to quell them. Lately, conjectures about who Mehsud's benefactors might be have been running in the Pakistani press and circulating among officials. Many claim he is an "Indian agent" who receives support from the Indian consulates in border cities of Afghanistan. The theory is that India supports Mehsud as retribution for Pakistan's government-backed militant groups meddling in Kashmir. Another emerging candidate is even more absurd: America. The United States wants Pakistan to become so unstable, the reasoning goes, that it is obligated to come in and secure the nukes. How else can one explain why U.S. troops haven't killed him yet? Pakistani intelligence officials were recently quoted in the press saying that they had twice tipped off U.S. forces about Mehsud's whereabouts so that he could be targeted. According to them, the tips were ignored.

Yet if ever there were a time to go after Mehsud, it is now. With Pakistani forces claiming success in their recent operation against the Taliban in the picturesque Swat Valley, which displaced some 2.5 million people, the Tehrik-e-Taliban leader is the next assumed target. Official statements indicate that Pakistan's beleaguered military is finally flexing its muscles for what has been described by the local media as a "decisive showdown" with Mehsud and his fighters. But Pakistanis and Western experts are still skeptical about how firm the military's commitment is. Local tribesmen have accused the Pakistan Army of adopting a policy of appeasement, for example by signing a "peace deal" with Mehsud in February 2005 rather than taking any serious action against him and his fighters. Mehsud certainly never honored any accord with the government, for which he was supposed to disarm his militia and stop cross-border terrorism. Quite the opposite; such agreements have made Mehsud bolder and stronger and have provided him the chance to grow his forces and strengthen his position -- now spanning the whole FATA region and parts of the North-West Frontier Province.

Until he is finally taken down, Mehsud will continue bullying Pakistan's military, challenging the state, uprooting centuries-old tribal structures, and sowing the seeds of chaos across the country. Mehsud recently announced that his next target would be the heart of U.S. power -- the White House in Washington. He hasn't failed to come through on such a promise like that yet.

ASIF HASSAN/AFP/Getty Images

 

Imtiaz Ali is Jennings Randolph senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP). The views expressed are the author's own and not necessarily those of the USIP, which does not take policy positions.

VIJAY D

11:37 AM ET

July 13, 2009

More conspiracy theories

Imtiaz Ali's article sheds neither light nor conspiracy theories much less offer solutions to thwart the existential menace Pakistan has become. Merely prefacing the utterly outlandish conspiracy theories as "implausible" while at the same time describing them arguably detracts from any intellectual rigor that may have gone into the writing of the article.

Secondly, as someone (presumably) from Pakistan, Mr. Ali should know better to even offer the notion that the Pakistani army has the ability much less the intent to launch an offensive into territory controlled by Mehsud. Since "plausible" conspiracies seem to form a basis for his policy options perhaps the author should have also suggested that Mehsud's army is really the Pakistani army.

Lastly, if is unclear what Imtiaz Ali means by his preposterous closing paragraph where he writes about Mehsud's threat about targeting the White House by saying that "he hasn't failed to come through on such a promise like that yet".

 

HHEMKEN

8:07 PM ET

July 16, 2009

Funding?

Interesting that the author doesn't mention the original funding sources of both the Taliban and Al Qaeda: Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates. Iran's funding of terrorism is a historical footnote by comparison.