SALON

Tuesday, Mar 6, 2012 4:45 PM UTC

Pakistan Welcomes Ouster Of Taliban Deputy

By

Topics: From the Wires,

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — The Pakistani Taliban’s firing of its deputy chief is a sign of disarray within the militant movement brought about by army operations in its heartland along the Afghan border, a top government official said Tuesday.

The Taliban, a local ally of al-Qaida, has been behind many of the bloodiest attacks in Pakistan over the last five years. But its leadership, living along the border with Afghanistan in northwest Pakistan, has been relentlessly targeted by U.S. drones and Pakistani army operations.

The Taliban announced over the weekend that it had fired deputy Maulvi Faqir Mohammad for allegedly holding peace talks with the government. Mohammad has long been said to have had tense relations with Taliban chief Hakimullah Mahsud, who has shown no public indication of compromise with the Pakistani state.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister for the government in northwest Pakistan, denied any talks had been held with Mohammad, but said the Taliban announcement “clearly shows the differences among Taliban ranks.”

He told The Associated Press that Mohammad’s ouster was a result of the pressure on the Taliban from army operations.

“The Taliban have lost their control of the tribal areas and are now on the run,” he said.

Most analysts agree that the movement, formed in 2008 as umbrella group of militants in the northwest, has lost much of its command and control structure over the last three years. But while extremist violence is down in Pakistan from the highs of 2009, the Taliban and their offshoots are still highly dangerous and claimed responsibility for a series of bloody attacks over the last month.

In December, Mohammed announced the group was in peace talks with the government. But that was denied by other Taliban commanders, who are demanding their hardline version of Islamic law be installed in the country and have embraced an al-Qaida-inspired version of international jihad.

The group trained the Pakistani-American who tried to detonate a car bomb in New York City’s Times Square in 2010 and is also tied to a suicide bombing that killed seven CIA agents at an Afghan base in 2009.

In January, Pakistani intelligence officials claimed that Mahsud had been killed in a drone strike,

The group denied that at the time, and there has been no evidence or further suggestion that the claim was true.

More Riaz Khan.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
221 points222 points | 13 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
194 points195 points | 29 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
185 points186 points | 111 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
79 points80 points | 16 comments
vote
Doug Henwood: Capitalism Thrives on Class Exploitation
42 points43 points | 5 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations