Taliban successor ‘dies in shoot-out’

The killing of Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone attack last week is reported to have led to a shoot-out between the two men hoping to succeed him - Hakimullah Mehsud and Wali-ur-Rehman.

According to Pakistan's interior minister Rehman Malik, Hakimullah Mehsud died when the two men turned their guns on each other at the shura or council where senior Taliban were meeting to choose a new leader.

But Malik's statement has to led to further claims and counter-claims - including one that Baitullah Mehsud never died when, as reported here on Friday, the US drone fired missiles into a remote farmhouse in south Waziristan.

The first claim that Baitullah Mehsud had survived the attack came from Hakimullah Mehsud, only hours before he himself was reported dead. However, Baitullah Mehsud has not come forward to prove he is alive, and US National Security Adviser General James Jones said on Sunday that evidence of Baitullah's death's was "pretty conclusive".

Meanwhile, Wali-ur-Rehman, the man who is supposed to have killed Hakimullah Mehsud, told Reuters on Sunday that the shoot-out was a myth. "There are no differences," he said. "There was no fighting. We both are alive, and there was no special shura meeting."

The two men offered a very different style of leadership. While Hakimullah has a reputation as young hot-head, Rehman, a former spokesman for Baitullah Mehsud, is seen as intelligent and far-sighted, according to a report in the Times.

The question now is whether the power struggle is wishful thinking on the part of the Pakistani authorities, or a genuine sign that the US attack achieved exactly what was intended - not only the death of Pakistan's most wanted man, but dissention in the ranks of the Taliban.

However, an unnamed American adviser in Pakistan has told the New York Times that even if the Mehsuds are proved to be dead, it is no guarantee that the Pakistani Taliban will fall apart.

"There is broad recognition that this is no longer an old-fashioned test of wills with troublesome Pashtun warlords and that eliminating Baitullah Mehsud would not end the insurgency in South Waziristan nor its influence on the insurgencies in the North-West Frontier Province," the adviser said. ·