There’s good news and bad news in reports of the death of Pakistani Taliban majordomo Baitullah Mehsud. And not all of it is obvious at first blush.

The most obvious good news is that a major terrorist leader has gone to claim his 72 virgins. It is also good news that his lieutenants appear to be fighting over who will succeed him. Another bit of good news, which is less obvious, is that the government of Pakistan allowed the strike by what appears to be a CIA-operated Predator unmanned aerial vehicle. This is something hard to imagine Pervez Musharraf, the previous president of Pakistan, doing. He, too, allowed American drones to operate over Pakistan but severely limited the number of targets they could hit. They were pretty much only allowed to go after al-Qaeda—not after the Taliban and other groups that are destabilizing both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Musharraf’s successor, Asif Ali Zardari, has taken off the limitations, allowing a ramped-up campaign of drone strikes, including the one that appears to have finished off Baitullah Mehsud. Along with the ongoing offensive against militants in Swat and nearby areas, this is a sign that Zardari is more serious than Musharraf ever was about combating fundamentalist zealots like Mehsud. That should be no surprise, given that Mehsud was suspected of murdering Zardari’s wife, Benazir Bhutto.

So what’s the bad news? That the only way the government of Pakistan can eliminate dangerous enemies like Baitullah Mehsud is by calling for American help. Pakistan has a huge army, but whether owing to a lack of capability or will—more likely the latter—it has not been able to root out militant leaders who operate in plain sight on its soil. Even with Mehsud gone, numerous other extremists are running around Pakistan. The city of Quetta, for instance, is host to a shura (”council”) headed by Mullah Omar, which is running a good part of the Taliban offensive in Afghanistan. If the Pakistani army wanted to eliminate the shura, it could. But it doesn’t want to.

I am prepared to believe that Zardari is sincere in his desire to root out the terrorists, but can he mobilize the sluggish and apathetic Pakistani army bureaucracy? The offensive in Swat is a good sign but only the first step of many that will be required to walk Pakistan—and Afghanistan—back from the brink.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 3:08 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.