Drones ever-closer to Pakistan's militants

[unhappycamper]

Drones ever-closer to Pakistan's militants
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Oct 27, 2010

ISLAMABAD - Qari Hussain Mehsud, whose specialty was training suicide bombers, is the latest in a string of high-level militants to be killed in Pakistan's tribal areas in attacks by unmanned United States drones.

These mounting casualties show that the net is tightening on the militants and their al-Qaeda colleagues now concentrated in North Waziristan on the border with Afghanistan. There is also much debate as to where the US is getting its information to carry out an increasing number of successful strikes - from intelligence networks integrated into the local population or from high-tech surveillance, or a combination of both.

The latest reports indicate that 1,863 people, including civilians, have been killed in 184 US drone attacks targeting militants in Pakistan since June 2004. Significantly, though, 749 people have been killed in 89 drone attacks in 2010 and September witnessed 16 operations, the maximum in a month, followed by 11 attacks in January.

Mehsud is reported to have been killed in Mir Ali in North Waziristan on October 4. Initially, a spokesman for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani Taliban - TTP) - to which Mehsud was associated - denied the report.

However, a high-level leader of the TTP as well as a senior counter-terrorism official confirmed to Asia Times Online that Mehsud had died in the attack.