Purported Pakistani Taliban chief tape emerges after missile strike he’s said to have evaded

Pakistan Taliban chief tape emerges post-strike

MIR ALI, Pakistan — A purported audiotape of Pakistan’s Taliban chief denying his death emerged Friday but contained no specific reference to a U.S. missile strike believed to have targeted him the day before that killed at least 12 insurgents.

The U.S., meanwhile, kept up an unprecedented surge in its use of the missiles, sending four more Friday to level a house and kill three people in North Waziristan tribal region. It was the ninth such strike in the area in about two weeks.

Intelligence officials said Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud appeared to have escaped Thursday’s strike in North Waziristan’s Pasalkot area. A local Taliban commander also denied rising speculation Friday that Mehsud was wounded.

Still, the lack of a reference to Thursday’s strike in the audiotape means it could have been recorded prior, possibly to keep the Pakistani Taliban, who face an army operation in South Waziristan, united in case Mehsud was incapacitated. Verifying deaths in such strikes often takes weeks, and militants have in the past given misleading information about who lived and who died.

“Propaganda is spreading through the media that Hakimullah has been martyred, and propaganda is spreading that the operation in South Waziristan has successfully concluded. It can never happen,” Mehsud said in the Pashto language on the audio recording.

Another Pakistani Taliban militant played the tape for an AP reporter in a landline phone call, which the reporter recorded. The reporter recognized the voice as Mehsud’s.

Killing Mehsud would be a major victory for both Washington and Islamabad.

Under the 28-year-old’s watch, militant attacks in Pakistan have soared since October, even as the army has waged an offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan. Mehsud also appeared on a recent video with the Jordanian militant who killed seven CIA employees in a December suicide attack in Afghanistan.

The surge in U.S. missile strikes has signaled the Obama administration’s confidence in the tactic despite official protest from Islamabad. The area hit Friday, Zarniri, was near the spot where U.S. missiles are believed to have missed Mehsud.

Three Pakistani intelligence officials told the AP that Mehsud was not among the dead in Thursday’s strike, but he had been expected to attend the meeting. The officials cited wireless communications intercepts tracking Mehsud’s movements, but said it was unclear if he had been at the meeting when the missiles landed.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

A local Taliban commander in South Waziristan, who agreed to a walkie-talkie conversation with an AP reporter, said Friday that Mehsud was in the area at the time the missile struck but he was fine.

“I can confirm that our emir, Hakimullah Mehsud, is alive. He is not wounded. He is leading the fighters in South Waziristan,” said the commander, Omar Khatab.

Mehsud’s predecessor, fellow tribesman Baitullah Mehsud, died in a missile strike last August in neighboring South Waziristan. For nearly three weeks, militants denied his death even as U.S. and Pakistani officials said they were increasingly confident of it.

The Pakistani Taliban appeared in disarray for those initial weeks following Baitullah Mehsud’s death, with several reports emerging of a power struggle between Hakimullah Mehsud and the man who eventually became his deputy, Waliur Rehman.

In public, Pakistani government officials criticize the missile strikes and say the United States is violating its sovereignty. But there is little doubt that Islamabad agrees to at least some of the attacks and provides targeting information for them.