FOR the second time in under a year, senior men from the Afghan Taliban have descended on Quetta, capital of Balochistan, the largest but least populated of Pakistan’s four provinces, to elect a new supreme leader. The first time was hurriedly to choose a successor to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founding leader, after attempts to hide his death in a Karachi hospital two years earlier were exposed. But now that successor, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was involved in the cover-up of Omar’s death and in a ruthless purge of rivals afterwards, is himself dead. He was killed on May 21st, on a lonely road in Balochistan, by an American drone (pictured).
For his Pakistani hosts, Mullah Mansour’s death has embarrassing echoes of Osama bin Laden, who was killed by American special forces five years ago in his secret home near a Pakistani military academy. Unlike bin Laden, Mullah Mansour was no fearful recluse. He had the a Pakistani state that gives sanctuary to Taliban leaders as a means of maintaining influence in Afghanistan. And whereas American drone strikes against militants in the tribal area of North Waziristan are long-established and...Continue reading
from Asia http://ift.tt/25lXoRd
EmoticonEmoticon