Word: baitullah
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...been a successful few days in the war on terror. On Aug. 5 Baitullah Mehsud, leader of Pakistan's Taliban, was apparently killed in a strike by a U.S. drone. And on Saturday Aug. 8, Indonesian authorities reported that Noordin M. Top, the country's most wanted terrorist, was probably killed during a police raid, ending a years-long manhunt for the Malaysian believed responsible for a string of bomb attacks in Jakarta and Bali in recent years. In a dramatic shootout broadcast on national TV, police surrounded and fired shots at a small house in Temanggung in central Java...
...take place through proxies and go-betweens, substantially delaying the process. Even in the best of times, succession in tribal leadership is rarely smooth. There are invariably multiple contenders, and it is common for outside moderators to be brought in to judge rival claims. (Read a brief biography of Baitullah Mehsud...
Still, experts believe that Baitullah's successor will likely be one of three top TTP figures: Hakimullah, Azmatullah and Wali-ur-Rehman. Of the three, Hakimullah Mehsud has the largest number of men at arms under his direct command: up to 8,000 fighters. He is thought to be in charge of recruiting and training suicide bombers. Azmatullah's claim may rest on his being the most closely related to Baitullah: they both come from the same branch of the Mehsud tribe. As a maulana, or Islamic scholar, he may have the best religious credentials of the three. Wali...
...Baitullah himself rose to the top of the Pakistani Taliban after a long internecine battle with other commanders, like Abdullah Mehsud, a onetime detainee at Guanténamo Bay. Once he had reached the summit, Baitullah was able to keep fractious tribal commanders in line by sheer force of will. It helped that, after a 2005 truce with Pakistani authorities, he had the time and freedom to consolidate his leadership. Many counterterrorism analysts believe he also had the covert help of Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI. It helped, too, that the CIA's drone campaign was aimed primarily...
...Baitullah's successor won't have any of those advantages. The next leader of the TTP will face threats from three quarters: challengers from within the group, a land assault by the Pakistani military and the CIA's deadly drones. Baitullah's death, says the counterterrorism official, proves the the TTP's "most senior leaders can be taken off the battlefield with great precision ... that places they thought were secure are anything...