Mullah Fazlullah: Will Pakistan Be Able to Neutralise Him?

Comment[Another Look at Radio Mullah from Article Published 02/02/2016, a few days after India Today News publishes un confirmed Report of Fazllullah and his Family were killed in a drone strike in Nangarhar Prov, Afg. Of the Many Wicked Crimes, Mass Murders he Planned, Committed or gave his approval including assassination attempt on school Child (Malala). In 2013, Jalaluddin Haqqani arranged for Mehsud (TTP Leader)to be Eliminated, the TTP leadership was to go to another Mehsud Family. Jalaluddin Haqqani had other plans, without membership approval, Illiterate Fazlullah was installed as head of TTP Pakistan Taliban. Hardly a few weeks pass, on 11/12/2013 Jalaluddin Haqqani son Nasiruddin, Helmand Poppy Pay Master is machine gunned on his way to Islamabad for Winter. Word on the street claims Nasiruddin was shot in retaliation for Jalaluddin arranging TTP Mehsud death to install Illiterate Fazlullah. Others say Nasiruddin was paying far less this Harvest season to poor farmers as they cashed in their poppy at Helmand Province. Nassiruddin was said to be carrying a portion of the proceeds.

Poppy is largest portion of Haqqani Criminal Network Annual Budget, Pakistan ISI second. A few months later, March 2014, Pakistan Taliban, Haqqani Criminal (Murder Inc.) leader Jalaluddin Haqqani is said to have expired, no announcement is made. Jalaluddin annual new years trek to Quetta Pakistan was to have named Nasiruddin Haqqani replacement in Helmand for Poppy Pay Master. It was not announced. Serious fighting renewed in Helmand as three main "warlords" fought for control. With draw down near, Pakistan military begins their hap hazard clean out of Wazir/FATA, Fazlullah home turf. He flees to Nangarhar, Prov. East Afg, his fathers property in Kunar. Not long after ISIS begins to form from displaced Pakistan WAZIR/FATA Taliban flushed/thrown out by Haqqani-ISI and Pakistan Military. Haqqani leader Sirajuddin Haqqani is never asked to leave Wazir, instead he chooses two of the fifty or so TB Tribes, to remain as domestics, take out the trash, cut the grass. Fazlullah takes the displaced Pakistan Taliban and adds them to his re branded, patch over, ISIS group. Early selfies of the group show more than a few are actually Pakistani descendant, operating so close to border with Afg they can walk to work, (Achin District). Proof of Pakistan birthing ISIS franchise is simple. Eastern Afghanistan is too, too far way from Syria to have received support of any kind for so few. Hardly gaining attention of ISIS in beginning, Hekmatyar first in Peace process hisb-e-Islami lead, told Pres Ghani in press he was given a certain amount of US cash each month by Haqqani-ISI, to pass to Newly formed Pakistan ISIS. Coincidentally, Pakistan Government decided to vacate their position support with Saudi Arabian coalition against ISIS in Middle East, abruptly. Pakistan received annual "contributions" from Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, United States. Fazlullah handling ISIS-DAESH in east, Fasool splits with Mullah Omar son, Yaqoub, headed West towards more moderate climate, after harrowing extraction (by faked Helicopter "hard landing", complete with Russian Pilot in case Americans became involved, and staged Taliban attack on Helicopter, was actually Yaqoub, and keeping poor count of 7 IN 9 OUT, from Logar Province where Yaqoub was learning Taliban Military Strategy, Translated, Killing Innocent Civilians.

Ousted by Ahkunzada hard line no peace talk rule. Haqqani Criminal Rule #1, Never talk Peace, or Die. The move West afforded Haqqani-ISI plan to draw ANDSF away from Helmand, leaving poppy harvest(s) un guarded), launching the Shura Counsel move to Helmand from Quetta, (according to Brg Gen Raziq the move failed).

Mullah Fazlullah: Will Pakistan Be Able to Neutralise Him?

By Amitava Mukherjee

February 2, 2016, 4:14 am

Where is Radio Mullah? Is he alive or dead?

These two questions are now doing the rounds among the civil and military establishments of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US because the man has suddenly become the most crucial factor in the Afghanistan-Pakistan cauldron, overshadowing, for the time being, the Haqqani network and the internecine strife-torn Afghan Taliban.

Both the Pakistani and the US establishments think that he is the principal brain behind the recent mayhem at Charsadda’s Bacha Khan University. Mullah Fazlullah is the chief of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

Body of a victim of the Taliban attack in Bacha Khan University on 20 January 2016. (Photo: AP)

Coffin of a victim of the attack on Bacha Khan University, Pakistan. (Photo: AP)

In considerable stretches of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), as well as to the NATO forces, he is popularly known as Radio Mullah for the shrill and vituperative fundamentalist Islamic broadcasts he has carried out over his illegal FM transmitter for quite a few years.

There is also a great deal of confusion over recent media reports that he has been killed by a drone attack in Afghanistan. Neither the Pakistan government nor the TTP has confirmed this. Previously also, there were reports of his demise. But each time, Fazlullah surfaced – mocking the US and western Europe based media organisations.

Therefore, observers are taking the latest news of his death with a pinch of salt. If he survives, then there will be much more trouble for Pakistan.

Who Is Mullah Fazlullah?

Born Fazal Hayat in 1974, Fazlullah hails from the Yusufzai tribe of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and has a very pedestrian background, unlike his two more famous predecessors – Hakimullah Mehsud and Baitullah Mehsud.

In his early days, Fazlullah used to sell wooden shutters, did various odd jobs and used to roam the lanes and bylanes selling sundry articles from a pushcart. But the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the political dynamics of the fundamentalist bloc in Pakistan changed his life.

At a time when the mujahideen warlords of Afghanistan were fighting the Soviet troops, great churning was taking place in the tribal belts of Pakistan where the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) came into confrontation with the more conservative and hardline Tehrik-e-Nehfaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammed (TNSM) led by Maulana Sufi Mohammed.

There have been reports of his death, but each time he has resurfaced. (Photo: Twitter/@UmairKhanPK)

The TNSM was all for the immediate imposition of Sharia law over the whole of Pakistan and this organisation ultimately led the Taliban uprising in the northern parts of Pakistan.

From the very beginning, Fazlullah was a frontline figure in the TNSM. Although both the JeI and the Deobandi group in the Taliban subscribe to the Hanafi jurisprudence, yet JeI’s stress on political Islam and electoral participation led to a wide chasm with the Taliban.

While Sufi Mohammed led a ragtag armed cadre force into Afghanistan to fight the Soviet army, the JeI only protested against Soviet occupation but sat back in Pakistan.

Today, Fazlullah is credited with not just mass murders but the individual elimination of quite a few senior generals of the Pakistani Army, an institution he counts as one of his main enemies.

He was previously reported to be the most diabolical among all the frontline TNSM activists and engineered killings of several senior JeI leaders also when internecine strife was going on between the two organisations inside Pakistan.

Fazlullah’s Control Over TTP Is Solid

But a strange aspect is that while the Afghan Taliban has divided into many factions after the death of Mullah Omar, Fazlullah’s control over the TTP is comparatively solid – although he does not come from Pakistan’s tribal belt and is not a Mehsud, the most powerful of all the factions that make up the TTP.

Perhaps this has been possible due to the total Taliban control that he could establish in the Swat valley from 2007-2009 and the extreme savagery and religious fundamentalism he could exhibit.

Fazlullah has many savage exploits and neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan can think of any negotiated settlement till he is around. He earned the sobriquet Radio Mullah for the hate speeches he used to make over his illegal transmitter against the Americans, female education and Pakistan’s programme of polio vaccination, which he described as a conspiracy to make people impotent.

Radio Mullah. (Photo: Twitter/@ahmadnawazmoqu2)

He called television and the computer un-Islamic and ordered the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, a child activist for female education who not only survived but was awarded the Nobel Peace prize.

Still, in spite of Fazlullah’s more or less wide acceptance in the Taliban, the TTP has developed fractures. Fazlullah’s right-hand man in the TTP now is Umar Mansoor who had arranged the logistics for the attack on the Bacha Khan University.

But Mansoor is not liked by some sections of the organisation and that is the reason behind Mohammed Khorasani, the official Taliban spokesperson, disapproving of the attack on the university. However, Fazlullah himself is known to have supported the attack as “universities prepare recruits for the army”.

Fazlullah’s cherished target was General Ashfaque Pervez Kayani, the former Pakistani Army chief. So far, he has failed to eliminate him. But he has succeeded in killing, at least, two army bigwigs – Major General Sanaullah Niazi and Major General Javed Iqbal – who played leading roles in military operations against the Taliban.

Radio Mullah, a creation of Pakistan itself, has now become Frankenstein’s monster. Will Pakistan really be able to marginalise him?

(Amitava Mukherjee is a senior journalist and commentator. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at [email protected]. This article has

been published in an arrangement with IANS.)

Yesterday, in a Bizarre twist at Bacha Khan University, a student is Murdered. Too bad it is in Pakistan, Investigations are slim and none. Wonder where Fazlullah is/Was.?