Word: baitullah
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...Baitullah Mehsud is a natural leader: cagey, dogged and charismatic, with an apparent knack for uniting disparate factions around a common cause. But instead of channeling those talents toward building an empire, Mehsud is trying to bring one to its knees. The shadowy Pakistani Taliban commander, whose vertiginous rise to infamy landed him on 2008's TIME 100 List, has transformed the badlands of South Waziristan into al-Qaeda's most important redoubt. Among the atrocities attributed to Mehsud is the brazen assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in Dec. 2007. Mehsud has denied involvement, but even...
...obviously sees little merit in that distinction, and neither do some members of the younger generation of Pakistani Taliban leaders, such as Baitullah Mehsud, a target of U.S. drone strikes who claimed responsibility for Monday's deadly attack on a Lahore police academy, saying it was an act of revenge for Pakistan's complicity in the U.S. campaign. But even the uptick of Taliban violence inside Pakistan won't necessarily spur the country's military establishment to act against Taliban forces that are using Pakistani territory as a base from which to fight NATO in Afghanistan...
...State Department did not respond to requests for comment. But it announced a $5 million reward for information leading to the location or capture of Haqqani's son Sirajuddin. A similar amount is being offered for information on Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, and a $1 million bounty for information on al-Qaeda propagandist Abu Yahya al-Libi. (Rank Baitullah Mehsud and others in this year's TIME 100 poll...
...both be observing a four-day truce in Bajaur, the tribal area along the Afghan border that has seen the fiercest fighting in Pakistan's domestic campaign against extremists. And on a more ominous note, last weekend at an undisclosed location deep in Waziristan's mountains, Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud forged a new alliance with two rival commanders who had been fighting him with backing by the government...
...example, two key Taliban commanders in South Waziristan, Maulvi Muhammad Nazir - who helped the Pakistani army mount an attack on his tribal rival, Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud - and Hafiz Gul Bahadur have nonaggression pacts with the Pakistani army. The military defends these arrangements on the grounds that it is unable to operate in areas where there are "hostile tribes" like Mehsud's and that it is prioritizing offensives in other parts of the border region. Some are unconvinced. "It appears that unless the militants are attacking Pakistani forces, the army doesn't consider them a problem," says one senior...