Blow to Taliban?
''The US forces are putting drones to effective use.''
Controversy characterises the reported death of Hakimullah Mehsud who was supposedly killed by a US drone strike recently considering the Taliban have stridently denied it. The veracity of the claim is yet to be authenticated with suitable evidence, though Pakistan media has confirmed it. Moreover the US has been gunning for him ever since he posed for a photograph with a Jordanian terrorist who masterminded the attack on the CIA facility at Khost which monitors the drone operations in Afghanistan. The US has stepped up its drone operations since then. Earlier when US forces claimed to have killed Hakimullah, he promptly released an audio tape to the media disproving the same. For the US military the capability to kill Hakimullah, who is the Taliban chief, was possible only due to accurate and actionable human intelligence inputs. Clearly Hakimullah’s killing suggests that US investments in human intelligence networks have started paying dividends. This has long term implications for the course of the war.
Assuming that the US military has neutralised Hakimullah through a drone strike it trumpets the triumph of technology that obviates the need to put any soldiers or boots on the ground. Unlike fighter aircraft which are able to ‘loiter’ over a target briefly, the drone remains airborne for extended periods of time and can successfully track down a fugitive terrorist. So much so, the drone has proved to be a game-changer in the war over Afghanistan and slowly beginning to turn the tables against the Taliban. In a sense, it replicates the Stinger missile that the Mujahideen earlier used to neutralise Soviet airpower.
Whether the killing of Hakimullah would actually make a difference to the US led war on terrorism in Afghanistan or not is difficult to assess now. The question is would his exit in any way de-grade the capability of the Taliban to wage their guerrilla war against US forces? At the most it will temporarily demoralise the Taliban who will want to avenge the death of their chief and demonstrate greater determination to deal with its enemy. Given that the Taliban is an ideologically motivated group of fighters the vacuum at the top will be filled in as quickly as Hakimullah took over the leadership from his predecessor Baithullah Mehsud.
