Earlier today, a veteran White House correspondent laid out his version of how Obama “gets away with it” in a news cycle when everyone’s attention should be glued to the economic failures of the lame duck president. One thing he forgot to mention, however, was the use of such conventional “rally around the flag” tactics as taking out a key symbolic nemesis of the US to drum up patriotic fervor.
Just over five years ago this function was served by Osama bin Laden, who then died anywhere between the 3rd and 5th time (depending on who was counting). Then, earlier today, it was Mullah Akhtar Mansour, the leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan, who was killed by a US drone strike around 6 a.m. EDT Saturday
while Mansour was riding in a vehicle in a remote area near the town
of Ahmad Wal, Pakistan, along the border with Afghanistan, according to
Defense Department officials.
Mansour has been seen as the leader of the Taliban since it was revealed last year that famed leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had died in 2013. Since the disclosure of Omar’s death and under Mansour’s leadership, Taliban fighters have conducted numerous attacks that have resulted in the death of tens of thousands of Afghan civilians and Afghan security forces as well as a number of U.S. and coalition personnel, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in the statement.
As a reminder, the last time the US conducted a strategic mission deep inside Pakistan (to executed Osama bin Laden), it led to a furious reaction by the local government which had not preapproved the operation. We expect this time will be no different as the US once again shows that “sovereignty” means absolutely nothing to the printer of the world’s reserve currency.
Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, Taliban militants’ leader
While still unconfirmed, the death of Mullah Akhtar Mansour could further fracture the Taliban – an outcome that experts cautioned might make the insurgents even less likely to participate in long-stalled peace efforts. In other words, it would push Afghanistan that much further from some semblance of peace. It will , however, likely lead to an escalation of Taliban retaliation which will likely focus on US assets in both Afghanistan, Pakistan and all other neighboring countries where US presence is not exactly “welcome.”
According to Reuters, the assassination mission, which included multiple drones, demonstrated a clear willingness by Obama to go after the Afghan Taliban leadership in Pakistan now that the insurgents control or contest more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since being ousted by a U.S.-led intervention in 2001.
The WSJ adds that a second man who was with Mr. Mansour and was considered a combatant is also believed to have been killed in the strike. The strike was authorized by President Obama, Pentagon officials said. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook confirmed an air strike targeting Mansour in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region but declined to speculate on his fate, although multiple U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters he likely was killed.
Another Pentagon official said that there were no unintended casualties or other damage because of the remoteness of the area in which the strike occurred. He probably felt obliged to add that in light of the thousands of innocent civilians that the US has “droned to death” in its pursuit of radical militants whose every step and location it knew well in advance.
“We are still assessing the results of the strike and will provide more information as it becomes available,” Cook said.
Not surprisingly the locals have denied the story: a Taliban commander close to Mansour, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, denied Mansour was dead. It’s unclear why the Taliban was anonymous: it’s not like he is exactly leaking insider trading information.
“We heard about these baseless reports but this not first time,” the commander said. “Just wanted to share with you my own information that Mullah Mansour has not been killed.”
This is not the first time Mansour has been “killed” – in December, Mansour was reportedly wounded and possibly killed in a shootout at the house of another Taliban leader near Quetta in Pakistan. Well, not reportedly killed if he has been reportedly killed again, although as a reminder this is precisely what happened to none other than Osama bin Laden who also was “reportedly” killed numerous times before Obama finally took credit for his “final” killing.
Bruce Riedel, an Afghanistan expert at the Brookings Institution think-tank, described the U.S. operation in Pakistan as an unprecedented move but cautioned about possible fallout with Pakistan, where Taliban leadership has long been accused of having safe haven.
In other words, with ISIS cells in Europe carrying out suicide bombing missions every few months, the US decided it was a good idea to poke yet another hornets’ nest and create more chaos and retaliation. A State Department official said both Pakistan and Afghanistan were notified of the strike but did not disclose whether that notification was prior to it being carried out.
“The opportunity to conduct this operation to eliminate the threat that Mansour posed was a distinctive one and we acted on it,” the official said.
Reuters adds that the U.S. drones targeted Mansour and another combatant as the men rode in a vehicle in a remote area southwest of the town of Ahmad Wal, another U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
U.S. special operations forces operated the drones in a mission authorized by Obama that took place at about 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT), the official said. That would have placed it at Saturday at 3 p.m. in Pakistan.
Cook branded Mansour “an obstacle to peace and reconciliation between the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban” and said he was involved in planning attacks that threatened U.S., Afghan and allied forces.
Ironically, those who actually grasp what is about to happen, completely disagree. Take for example, Michael Kugelman, a senior associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center, said the strike was unlikely to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table any time soon. In fact, it will likely make the Taliban far less likely to want to sit down and discuss peace, assuming of course that Mansour is dead.
“The Taliban won’t simply meekly agree to talks and especially as this strike could worsen the fragmentation within the organization,” he said.
Kugelman said the most important target for the United States remained the top leadership of the Haqqani network, which is allied with the Taliban. Mansour had failed to win over rival factions within the Taliban after formally assuming the helm last year after the Taliban admitted the group’s founding leader, Mullah Omar, had been dead for more than two years. It was unclear who Mansour’s successor might be. “If Mansour is dead it will provoke a crisis inside the Taliban,” Riedel said.U.S.
It will also likely provoke another major diplomatic incident between Pakistani leadership and the Obama administration.
Meanwhile, the neocons in the US were giidy with delight: John McCain, the Republican head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he hoped the strike would herald a change in the Obama administration’s policy against more broadly targeting the Taliban.
The new U.S. commander in Afghanistan is currently reviewing U.S. strategy, including whether broader powers are needed to target insurgents and whether to proceed with plans to reduce the number of U.S. forces. “Our troops are in Afghanistan today for the same reason they deployed there in 2001 – to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for global terrorists,” McCain said. “The Taliban remains allied with these terrorists, including al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network, and it is the one force most able and willing to turn Afghanistan into a terrorist safe haven once again.”
As the WSJ concludes, under the current authorities, U.S. military operations against the Taliban can only be taken under three broad circumstances: when U.S. or coalition forces are under threat, when U.S. officials deem that the Taliban is providing direct support to al Qaeda or when the Taliban pose a “strategic threat” to Afghan forces.
U.S. officials said the strike Saturday was considered a “defensive” operation because the U.S. believed that the Taliban leader was actively plotting attacks against U.S. forces in neighboring Afghanistan. Even though there is clearly nothing defensive about an offensive drone assasination.
The White House has called for shifting control of U.S. drone operations from the CIA to the Pentagon, but officials said the shift wouldn’t apply anytime soon to Pakistan because of political opposition there to the U.S. conducting overt strikes on Pakistani soil.
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