Word: mehsuds
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Four of the drone-fired missiles landed Friday in the Zarniri area of North Waziristan, killing three people. The area is near where a strike Thursday killed 12 people but is thought to have missed its apparent target, Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud. (See TIME's covers about Pakistan...
...purported audiotape of Mehsud denying his death emerged Friday but contained no specific reference to the missile strike...
...lack of a reference to Thursday's strike means the tape could have been recorded prior, possibly to keep the Pakistani Taliban united in case Mehsud was incapacitated. Militants have in the past given misleading information about who lived and who died...
...security may be neither of those where American boots are on the ground. Beset by feckless leadership, preoccupied with its rivalry with India and infested with militant groups, Pakistan in 2009 became a viper pit of terrorist plots and political malaise. The death of Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in an August drone strike ratcheted up the stakes. After months of planning, Pakistan's Operation Path to Deliverance sent 28,000 troops to root out insurgents in South Waziristan in October. As threatened, extremists responded by unleashing attacks throughout the country...
...strikes on Pakistani soil. In recent years, Pakistani officials have publicly protested but privately acquiesced when CIA-operated drone strikes have targeted al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in the mountainous tribal areas - a program that has eliminated more than a dozen senior al-Qaeda operatives and even Baitullah Mehsud, the founding leader of the Pakistani Taliban. But the perceived violation of sovereignty has also enraged the Pakistani public. If the U.S. decides to expand the target range of such strikes beyond the tribal areas to go after the Afghan Taliban leadership in Quetta, that shift would be intolerable...