Mullah Omar looks to select Taliban leader

a href="http://www.abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=8300416amp;page=1"abcNEWS:/abr /br /blockquotep a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=8282356" target="external"Their bickering turned violent over the weekend/a when Mehsud's most likely successors shot at each other during a meeting to pick the next Pakistani Taliban chief. /pp In response, Mullah Omar and his allies in North Waziristan, according to people who have spoken with Pakistani intelligence agents there, called a meeting with leading a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=8295405amp;page=1" target="external"Taliban commanders /ato try and stop the infighting. A successor to Mehsud could emerge from that meeting in the coming days.br //pp.../pp Omar has intervened with the Pakistani Taliban before. He was the only person, according to Aftab Sherpao, Pakistan's interior minister at the time, who could break a deadlock when Mehsud was chosen in 2007. /ppAl Qaeda's Arab commanders have also been angling to install their own "chief terrorist" as head of the Pakistani Taliban, says Pakistan's current interior minister, Rehman Malik. U.S. and Pakistani officials believe al Qaeda is strongly trying to push the Taliban to choose a leader who will protect their safe havens in the Pakistani tribal areas and continue to allow al Qaeda plans to be executed by Taliban fighters. /ppBoth al Qaeda and the Quetta Shura, which Omar heads, "need a support base and they need hide outs," says Amir Rana, head of Pakistan's Institute for Peace Studies. "It will be difficult for them to sustain their operations in Afghanistan if they lose this."/ppIf Omar -- likely with the assistance of Sirajuddin Haqqani and his family's network in North Waziristan -- does choose the next Pakistani Taliban leader, he will likely choose someone who will shift the network's focus from Pakistan back to Afghanistan, where 100,000 international troops are currently fighting a war widely believed to be a stalemate./ppThat could make Pakistan safer, analysts say, but make the war in Afghanistan more dangerous for U.S. troops. It would also be akin to the militancy during the 1980s and 1990s, when fighters from many countries all fought together in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. When the Pakistani fighters crossed the border home, they would target minority Shiite Muslims or Indian targets in Kashmir instead of Pakistani targets.br //pp...br //p/blockquoteThe Taliban had switched their focus to Pakistan because they knew they would lose in a direct fight with US forces in Afghanistan. If they try to come back that will just make the job of the US easier. Haqqani has been in charge of their Afghan operations recently. He is also a prime target of US drones. Getting Omar out in the open would also make him a good target. He will have to use primitive communication to avoid detection if he is to participate in the selection process.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051247-563938399274817039?l=prairiepundit.blogspot.com'//div

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