Daily Times

Islamabad: The death of Mullah Fazlulah in a US drone strike will further weaken the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) since the new amir from the Mehsud tribe will take on the reins of an organisation whose leadership stayed with the Malakand faction for several years, analysts believe.

Rahimullah Yousafzai, a veteran journalist based in Peshawar, says that Fazlullah’s death will create rifts in the TTP, adding that it will be a challenge for Noor Wali Mehsud to gain influence in the TTP.

Yousafzai says the outlawed organisation has already lost its strength and territory because of military operations in tribal districts and Malakand division. Most of its leadership has fled to Afghanistan. That is where they plan most of their attacks from,” he says, adding, “Any militant organisation that losses its leader in the way Fazlullah was killed is likely to get further weakened since the morale of its fighters may get affected.”

Yousafzai reminds us that the TTP has lost all three of its main leader in drone strikes. The TTP’s founding members were from the Mehsud tribe but the organisation expanded in violent ways from then tribal areas to the rest of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from 2007 to 2013. As Fazlullah got the charge of TTP, the leadership shifted from Mehsud to Swat cadre and crisis started emerging in the organisation.

Riffatullah Aurakzai, a Peshawar-based journalist, predicts that the recent shift in leadership from Swat to Mehsud areas could have led to emergence of splinter groups. He says the TTP council’s decision to appoint Mufti Hifzullah of the Malakand division as the deputy amir should be seen as their strategy to prevent defections. “The TTP will definitely try to restore its influence in tribal districts but the government’s improved writ will make that very difficult.”

Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud is widely considered to be a religious scholar. He is the author of a recently published books Inqilabe Mehsud, and Firange Raaj se Amrece Raaj tak . In one of his books, he has shared details of the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. The book, that has circulated widely in PDF format on the Internet, is on 700 pages. The slain leader, Mullah Fazlullah, was appointed the head of the TTP after the death of Hakeemullah Mehsud in a US drone strike in 2013.

Published in Daily Times, July 2^nd 2018.