US targets Taliban leader in latest missile strike

By Kay Johnson, Associated Press Writer –

Fri Aug 21, 2009, 1:59 pm ET

ISLAMABAD —

A U.S. missile strike Friday targeted a Taliban commander blamed for masterminding ambushes on American troops in Afghanistan, the latest assault by unmanned aircraft in northwestern Pakistan, intelligence officials said.

It was unclear if Siraj Haqqani was among the 12 people killed in the house in North Waziristan near the Afghan border, the officials said, adding that three women were among the dead. Haqqani is known to have sometimes visited the house.

Friday's early morning missile strike was the third in three weeks in Pakistan, which officially protests the drone assaults as a violation of its sovereignty. The United States is believed to have launched more than 40 such attacks in the northwest since last year.

The missile hit a housing compound in Dande Darpa Khel, a village in North Waziristan, four intelligence officers said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. None of the dead has been identified, but local informants told the officers that all those in the house were Afghans.

The U.S. launched the strike based on information that Haqqani was in the compound, according to two of the local intelligence officials based in North Waziristan. However, Pakistani authorities have not been able to confirm that he was there at the time, they said.

Dande Darpa Khel is the Pakistani stronghold of Haqqani, who operates on both sides of the border and has a powerful network in eastern Afghanistan. He has a large Islamic school in the village that was hit by a suspected U.S. missile in October 2008, killing about 20 people.

Siraj is the son of senior Taliban leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, who was supported by U.S. and Pakistani aid when he fought in the 1980s against Soviet troops occupying Afghanistan. Now, American commanders count him as a dangerous foe. Both father and son are alleged to have close connections to al-Qaida and to have helped funnel foreign Islamist fighters into Afghanistan to fight NATO troops.

The Haqqanis have been linked to an attempt to kill Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a suicide attack on a hotel in Kabul, both last year. Haqqani network operatives also plague U.S. forces in Afghanistan's eastern Khost province with ambushes and roadside bombs.

Pakistan's border region is remote, mountainous and there is little government or military control there. Al-Qaida's top leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are believed to be hiding in the area and militants move freely across the border.

The U.S. occasionally fired missiles into the region beginning in 2006, but dramatically stepped up the attacks last year. The missiles are fired from CIA-operated drones believed to be launched from across the border in Afghanistan or from secret bases inside Pakistan. They are reported to be piloted by operatives inside the United States. U.S. officials rarely — if ever — acknowledge the airstrikes.

Pakistan has always publicly denounced the American missiles, and many in the Muslim country of 170 million people see the United States and its allies as conducting an unjust war against fellow Muslims in Afghanistan. However, analysts have long speculated there must be some tacit agreement between the governments.

American and Pakistani commanders have been working more closely together in recent months, sharing intelligence and coordinating attacks, officials from both countries have said.

The drones had for years focused on (the only two al-Qaida leaders) Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. But last year, American and Pakistan military officials met in a secret session in which Pakistani leaders agreed to target al-Qaida operatives in return for greater U.S. action against tribal leaders such as Mehsud who were a more significant threat to Pakistan, U.S. officials told the AP shortly after Mehsud's reported death.

Mahmood Shah, an analyst and former security chief for Pakistan's northwestern tribal regions, said Friday that cooperation between Pakistan and the U.S. has increased dramatically since February, when Washington agreed to begin hitting Mehsud's network in South Waziristan. Before that, the two sides had "separate lists" of potential targets, and the U.S. refused to listen, he said, to the Pakistani view.

"It was only six months ago that the Americans agreed to what Pakistan was saying," Shah told The Associated Press. "And then Pakistan also included Siraj Haqqani as a huge target."

Shah would not speculate if Friday's strike was coordinated or assisted by Pakistani intelligence, but he expressed enthusiasm for the attack on Haqqani. "I think it is a good thing they are targeting him, and when they get him, that will be good."

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Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed in Islamabad and Hussain Afzal in Parachinar contributed to this report.