Word: hakimullah
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...According to the BBC, "Hakimullah" is a nom de guerre; the militant's real first name is said to be Zulfiqar...
...Taliban has ravaged Pakistan, but its leadership is in tatters. After weeks of denials, two Pakistani Taliban commanders admitted on Aug. 25 that the group's chief, Baitullah Mehsud, had been killed in an Aug. 5 U.S. missile strike. The commanders also confirmed reports that Hakimullah Mehsud, a regional chieftain close to Baitullah and one of the organization's rising stars, had been tapped to take...
...announcement highlighted the degree to which the Taliban has been decimated by infighting and drone attacks - as well as the degree to which keeping tabs on a group shrouded in secrecy remains a formidable challenge. Pakistani officials had recently issued conflicting reports as to whether Hakimullah was even alive; intelligence sources suggested he had been killed in a shootout during a Taliban meeting convened to decide on Baitullah's successor. Some still suspect that the man calling himself Hakimullah is, in fact, an imposter claiming to be the terror chief in a bid to convince the world that the group...
...that inaccessibility has made the details of the battle to become the successor to Mehsud equally hard to pin down. Through the weekend, speculation has been rife that Hakimullah Mehsud and Wali-ur-Rehman, two Taliban leaders tipped for the top slot, turned their guns on each other as the power struggle within turned bloody. Malik insisted that one of the men was dead. General James Jones, President Barack Obama's National Security Adviser, said that signs of internal dissension were encouraging. But on Sunday, Wali-ur-Rehman called a Reuters reporter familiar with his voice to assert that...
Still, experts believe that Baitullah's successor will likely be one of three top TTP figures: Hakimullah, Azmatullah and Wali-ur-Rehman. Of the three, Hakimullah Mehsud has the largest number of men at arms under his direct command: up to 8,000 fighters. He is thought to be in charge of recruiting and training suicide bombers. Azmatullah's claim may rest on his being the most closely related to Baitullah: they both come from the same branch of the Mehsud tribe. As a maulana, or Islamic scholar, he may have the best religious credentials of the three. Wali...