Drone Strike Not Meant for Mehsud
CIA Stunned – Americans Led To Strike Wrong Target

The drone strike that resulted in the death of Pakistan’s most wanted terrorist is believed to be a result of deliberately planted false intelligence, sources in South Waziristan have confirmed.

Rival militants close to Qari Zainullah Mehsud (who was killed on Baitullah Mehsud’s orders) tipped off suspected local CIA informers about the presence of a ‘high value afghan taliban target’ in a house in South Waziristan.

Qari Zainuddin, a former aide of Baitullah Mehsud, had denounced Baitullah Mehsud in June this year and had revealed Mehsud’s links with Indian and Israeli intelligence agencies. Zainuddin was gunned down in his office the next day and Baitullah Mehsud claimed responsibility for the killing.

In what appears to be an attempt to extract revenge by those loyal to Qari Zainuddin, false intelligence was deliberately fed to a number of local residents suspected of working as informers for the Americans in Afghanistan. Hours later, a CIA operated drone guided by a physically dropped electronic homing device, attacked and destroyed the house which the Americans believed was occupied by Anti-US Afghan Taliban.

The CIA has been paying tribesman in Waziristan “plant the electronic devices” near militant safehouses, reported the Guardian on June 1st this year [see also earlier post]. “Hours or days later, a drone, guided by the signal from the chip, destroys the building with a salvo of missiles.”

This isn’t the first time an electronic homing device has led the Americans to strike a wrong target. The Guardian’s report continues:

Word of these tiny transmitters has been circulating in militant circles for months. In early April, the Pakistani Taliban leader Mullah Nazir said he had caught “spies” who were inserting into militants’ phones “location-tracking SIMs” — Subscriber Identity Module cards, used to identify mobile devices on a cellular network.

Ten days later, 19 year-old Habibur Rehman made a videotaped “confession” of planting such devices, just before he was executed by the Taliban as an American spy. “I was given $122 to drop chips wrapped in cigarette paper at Al Qaeda and Taliban houses,” he said. If I was successful, I was told, I would be given thousands of dollars.”

But Rehman says he didn’t just tag jihadists with the devices. “The money was good so I started throwing the chips all over. I knew people were dying because of what I was doing, but I needed the money,” he added. Which raises the possibility that the unmanned aircraft — America’s key weapons in its covert war on Pakistan’s jihadists and insurgents — may have been lead to the wrong targets.

The ‘wrong target’ for the Americans on this occasion has turned out to be the right one for the Pakistanis, who have seen a violent rise in suicide attacks and assasinations in recent years, most of which had been tracked backed to Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Pakistani security officials have long complained about the Americans’ choice of targets.

Various reports have also surfaced in recent months disclosing the extent of support Baitullah Mehsud received from India and Israel, using Afghanistan as a base for training and arming anti-Pakistan terrorists. US army and NATO issued rifles and communication equipment has been seized from captured militants and TTP safehouses, and captured terrorists have often spoken of training by Indian nationals in Afghanistan.

The Americans were concentrating on Taliban and Qaeda forces that attack American and coalition troops in Afghanistan but were ignoring militants operating in Pakistan, a senior Pakistani official in the administration that oversees the tribal region told TIME Magazine last year.

“The Americans are not interested in our bad guys,” the official said, referring in particular to Baitullah Mehsud.

Other sources within the Pakistani intelligence community firmly believe that Baitullah Mehsud was being protected by US Drones, warning him of Pakistan Army’s action and movement in advance.

It appears the Americans have finally heeded to the long-standing demand of the Pakistani security services, even if unintentionally.

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Who is Baitullah Mehsud? Watch this Video

First aired on Pakistan Television over a year ago – Ahmed Quraishi talks to Zaid Hamid on Baitullah Mehsud’s history and his links with foreign agencies: