What national security implications arise as Pakistan orders a manhunt for Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud?”
I don’t foresee something terrible for us in the realm of national security. Mehsud is now an enemy to his own people, and they will hunt him down. The question that has been the most predominant on people’s minds is whether the other Taliban leaders, Qari Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazeer are going to join him or cut him adrift. They do have a current alliance, but have been known to be adversaries in the past. For us, this is actually a good thing, as it will put the attention on someone in the Taliban who has been responsible for many, many deaths of his own people. If nothing else, it might get critics to see the Taliban-US relationship in a new light. If this man is killing his own, then perhaps it isn’t the US that was the problem, but the man himself.
The Pakistan government has ordered the army to hunt down the Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in his mountain hideout in South Waziristan. “Baitullah Mehsud is the root cause of all evils,” said the governor of North-West Frontier province, Owais Ghani, announcing the operation in Islamabad. The precise details of the manhunt remain unclear and the military said it was “evaluating the orders”. But the operation promises to be a tough campaign against a determined enemy in some of the world’s most difficult fighting terrain. South Waziristan is a rugged mountainous area that was the scene of fierce battles between British colonial forces and tribal rebels during the 1930s and 40s. It is considered a possible hiding place of Osama bin Laden.
