The US launched its first drone airstrike inside Pakistan in more than two weeks, killing four "militants" today in an area of Pakistan that has been under Taliban control for eight years.
The CIA-operated, unmanned Predators or the more heavily operated Reapers fired a pair of missiles at a compound in Tabai outside of Miramshah, a stronghold of the Haqqani Network. Pakistani intelligence officials told AFP that four "militants" were killed. The compound was "suspected of being a militants' hideout," according to Xinhua.
The exact target of the strike has not been disclosed. No senior Taliban or al Qaeda operatives have been reported killed in the strike.
Miramshah serves as the headquarters of the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network, a powerful Taliban subgroup that operates in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and is supported by Pakistan's military and its Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. The Haqqani Network is one of four major Taliban groups that joined the Shura-e-Murakeba, an alliance brokered by al Qaeda late last year. The Shura-e-Murakeba also includes Hafiz Gul Bahadar's group; Mullah Nazir's group; and the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, which is led by Hakeemullah Mehsud and his deputy, Waliur Rehman Mehsud. The members of the Shura-e-Murakeba agreed to cease attacks against Pakistani security forces, refocus efforts against the US, and end kidnappings and other criminal activities in the tribal areas.
Today's strike took place just one day after the completion of a NATO conference on Afghanistan. The US had hoped that the Pakistani government would reopen NATO's supply lines that have run through Pakistan in the past but have been shut down for six months. The Pakistani government has not made a decision on reopening the supply lines. Pakistan's parliament has demanded that the US end the drone strikes in the tribal areas as a condition for the reopening of the NATO supply lines that run through Pakistan into Afghanistan.
Background on US strikes in Pakistan in 2012
Today's strike in Miramshah is the first since May 5, and just the second this month. The May 5 strike targeted a training camp in the Shawal Valley in North Waziristan and reportedly killed 10 "militants." Al Qaeda, the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, and Taliban fighters under the command of Hafiz Gul Bahadar, the leader of the Taliban in North Waziristan, are all known to operate in the Shawal Valley, which is near the border with Afghanistan.
The US has carried out just 14 strikes so far this year. Three took place in South Waziristan, and 11 in North Waziristan; eight of those strikes have been executed in or around Miramshah.
The program has been scaled down from its peak in 2010, when the US conducted 117 strikes, according to data collected by The Long War Journal. In 2011, the US carried out just 64 strikes in Pakistan's border regions. With only 13 strikes in the first five months of 2012, the US is on a pace to carry out just 36 strikes in Pakistan this year.
The first strike this year took place on Jan. 11; it was the first by the US in Pakistan in 55 days. The previous strike took place on Nov. 16, 2011. The pause was the longest since the program was ramped up at the end of July 2008 [see LWJ report, US drone strikes in Pakistan on longest pause since 2008, from Dec. 19, 2011].
The program was put on hold from the end of November to the second week in January, following a clash between US forces and Pakistani Frontier Corps troops on the border of the Afghan province of Kunar and the Pakistani tribal area of Mohmand on Nov. 25-26. The US troops struck in Pakistan after taking mortar and machine gun fire on the Afghan side of the border from Pakistani troops. Twenty-four Pakistani Frontier Corps troops were killed.
The clash led to Pakistan's closure of the border crossings in Chaman and Khyber to NATO supply columns destined for Afghanistan; the supply lines remain closed to this day. In the aftermath of the Mohmand incident, Pakistan also threatened to shoot down US drones flying in Pakistani airspace, and ejected US drones and personnel from the Shamsi Airbase in Baluchistan.
US officials told The Long War Journal on Dec. 12, 2011 that the program had been put "on hold" due to tensions over the Mohmand incident, but that the drones would strike again if a high value terrorist target that could not be ignored was spotted.
The Jan. 11 strike killed Aslam Awan, a deputy to the leader of al Qaeda's external operations network. Awan was a Pakistani citizen from Abbottabad, the same town where Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces in a cross-border raid in May 2011. Awan is the most senior al Qaeda leader killed in a drone strike since mid-October, when Abu Miqdad al Masri, a member of al Qaeda's Shura Majlis who also was involved in al Qaeda's external operations, was killed. [For a list of senior terrorist leaders and operatives killed in drone strikes, see LWJ report, Senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2012.]
The US also killed Badr Mansoor, a senior Taliban and al Qaeda leader, in a Feb. 8 strike in Miramshah's bazaar. Mansoor ran training camps in the area and sent fighters to battle NATO and Afghan forces across the border, and linked up members of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen with al Qaeda to fight in Afghanistan
Additionally, the US killed a German jihadist known as Samir H. in the March 9 airstrike in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of South Waziristan. Samir was a member of the al Qaeda-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Hakeemullah Mehsud, the leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, was also rumored to have been killed in the Jan. 11 strike. He has since appeared on a Taliban propaganda video that celebrated an assault on a jail in Bannu that took place in April
Despite the US airstrikes, al Qaeda operatives claim they are still capable of conducting training and operations in the area. Abu Zubaydah al Lubnani, a Lebanese member of al Qaeda who operates along the Afghan-Pakistani border, has said that while the drones have "delayed some operations or even stopped them," the terror group is still functioning in the region.
"I want here to confirm that Qaedat al-Jihad is still standing in Khorasan, solid and strong, despite what hit it, and it is still producing operations and it doesn't know the path of despair...," Lubnani said in statement that was recently released on jihadist forums and translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.
A document seized during the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden showed that the terror chief was concerned about the drone program and had ordered those leaders and fighters who could leave the kill box in North and South Waziristan to move to the Afghan provinces of Kunar, Nuristan, Zabul, and Ghazni.