. LAHORE: The June 23 murder of Qari Zainuddin Mehsud, a Pakistani Taliban commander and the arch rival of the FBI’s Most Wanted Commander Baitullah Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan, has come as a major blow to the Pakistan Army’s Operation Rah-e-Nijat in the South Waziristan agency on the Pak-Afghan border, which was launched only last week in a bid to expand the ongoing military offensive against the TTP (Tehrik Taliban Pakistan) from Swat Valley to Mehsud’s mountainous Waziristan stronghold.

Zainuddin, the leader of a rival faction of Mehsud’s tribe inhabiting the troubled South Waziristan region, was shot dead early Tuesday morning while he was asleep in his Dera Ismail Khan home by a lone gunman, who escaped after firing. Baz Mohammad, an aide of the militant commander who was also wounded in the attack, said that one of his personal bodyguards had barged into Zainuddin’s bed room after morning prayers and opened fire. “Zainuddin was martyred on the spot. I think those companions of Baitullah who had joined us recently after getting amnesty from us, were behind the assassination”, he said. Although Qari Zainuddin too had a ruthless past, he had recently parted ways with Baitullah and accused him for a string of suicide bomb attacks that killed thousands of innocent Pakistanis. Zainuddin had further accused Baitullah of masterminding the December 2007 assassination of the former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Well placed interior ministry sources in Islamabad conceded that Zainuddin was being seen by the Pakistani authorities as a key to a successful army offensive in South Waziristan given the fact that like Baitullah, he too was a native Mehsud and had been challenging Baitullah’s leadership in a bid to stage a coup against him. The murder has shattered the Pakistan army’s hopes of exploiting internal divisions in South Waziristan against Baitullah and the recently launched battle against him is now going to be harder. The sources claimed that Baitullah was genuinely shaken by the challenge being posed by none other than one of his former associates.

Before being killed, the sources said, Qari Zainuddin had almost succeeded in his efforts to arrange a jirga meeting of the Mehsud tribal chiefs in a bid to secure their support for staging a coup against Baitullah, the chieftain of the Mehsud tribe. It was also for the first time in recent years that the Pakistani military authorities had succeeded in their efforts to create divisions within the Mehsud tribe, after which Operation Rah-e-Nijat (the way of salvation) was launched in South Waziristan, primarily to target Baitullah Mehsud. However, Zainuddin was assassinated hardly a week after NWFP Governor Owais Ghani announced [on June 15 at a press conference in Islamabad] the federal government’s decision to launch a decisive military operation against Baitullah to eliminate him and dismantle his network, saying he was the root cause of all evils. The same day, Zainuddin had announced his support to the anti-Baitullah military operation, saying that whatever he and his associates were doing in the name of Islam was not a jehad, and in fact it was terrorism.

“Islam stands for peace, not for terrorism. Baitullah had betrayed both his religion and his tribesmen. To fight our own country is wrong. Islam doesn’t give permission to fight against a Muslim country. This is where we differ. What we are seeing these days – suicide bombings in mosques, in markets, in hospitals; these are not allowed in Islam. We don’t agree with them”, said Zainuddin in an interview to Britain’s McClatchy newspaper on June 15, barely a week before his murder in Dera Islam Khan by his own guard. Qari Zainuddin’s strong statements against Baitullah had led to speculation that the military authorities were encouraging him to stand up to his rival.

Circles close to Qari Zainuddin claimed that after his revolt against the TTP chief, Baitullah had taken several steps to mend fences with his former associate and had even offered to carve out a separate territory for Qari Zainuddin in South Waziristan if he dropped the fight. However, Zain had rejected the offer since he had a personal score to settle with Baitullah - his uncle and an ex Guantanamo Bay inmate Commander Abdullah Mehsud was allegedly killed by the Pakistani security forces in Zhob Balochistan on a tip off from Baitullah Mehsud, making him to turn against his former chief.

However, Qari Zainuddin was not the only one to have turned against Baitullah. He was being backed by Turkistan Khan Bhittani, another tribal leader, who had since long parted ways with Baitullah. If Zainuddin was a former Khasadar, Turkistan had been a former member of the South Waziristan Scouts, a paramilitary wing of the Frontier Constabulary. Both the pro-government commanders were poised to play a vital role in the success of the military operation in South Waziristan against their common foe. But the fugitive TTP chief seems to have struck first as usual, although Interior Minister Rehman Malik has stated that Qari Zainuddin seems to have been assassinated by one of his own comrades, Gulbadin Mehsud from Makeen, who made good his escape.

In fact, the military action against Baitullah Mehsud was launched even before a formal announcement was made about it on June 15. The Pakistan Air Force used jet-fighters to bomb his positions in Makeen, Ladha and Kotki area in South Waziristan on June 13 while the long-range artillery guns of the Pakistan Army deployed in Razmak in North Waziristan shelled his strongholds the same day. However, as the Governor NWFP made an official announcement to launch the anti-Baitullah operation in South Waziristan, Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani said on June 16 that the head of the Taliban in Pakistan must be eliminated.

“Baitullah has a hand in virtually every major terrorist attack in Pakistan and he is not fighting for Islam”, he said. It was, perhaps, the first significant indication from the military leadership that the establishment - long derided for avoiding taking the chief of Pakistani Taliban head-on - had had enough. As things stand, the battle lines seem to have been drawn once again in South Waziristan between the military and the militants led by Baitullah. The fugitive ameer of the Pakistani Taliban, a foe-turned-friend-turned-foe of the Pakistani establishment, is today a marked man by the American and the Pakistan security forces and his mountainous demesne in South Waziristan is under frequent aerial attacks by the Pakistani fighter jets and the Afghanistan-based US drones, in a desperate a bid to hunt him down..

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