Challenger to Pakistani warlord Baitullah Mehsud killed

The only challenger to Pakistani warlord Baitullah Mehsud from within his tribe was gunned down Tuesday, dealing a major blow to government efforts to destroy the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban. Qari Zainuddin, the sole leader to emerge from Mehsud's clan to resist him openly, was shot as he slept at his headquarters Tuesday morning in Dera Ismail Khan, a town on the edge of the extremist-controlled South Waziristan region, close to the Afghan border. He was killed by one of his own guards, who almost certainly was working for Mehsud, according to Baaz Muhammad, a follower of Zainuddin who was with him when he was shot and also was wounded in the attack. The Pakistani army–which plans to start an operation shortly in South Waziristan against Mehsud, who's closely affiliated with al Qaida–had hoped that Zainuddin would weaken the warlord or open a second front against him. Some thought that Mehsud feared Zainuddin more than he feared the army, because Zainuddin would have been an opponent from within. In an interview with McClatchy earlier this month near Dera Ismail Khan, Zainuddin vowed to foment a tribal uprising against Mehsud, claiming already to have gathered 3,000 armed supporters to fight him. "It is better that we Mehsuds take care of this," he said, saying that a military operation would destroy the homes of ordinary people and cost innocent lives. Baitullah Mehsud and the Taliban had turned his South Waziristan homeland into a stronghold for the Taliban and al Qaida, a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al Zawahri. Mehsud is Pakistan's public enemy number one, accused of being behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007 and a long list of bombings of hotels, mosques, hospitals and funeral processions. For the first time since Mehsud became the leader of the main group of Pakistani Taliban in 2005, Zainuddin's bold stance had given others the courage to speak up. Mehsud's regime has been a brutal one; his followers specialize in slitting people's throats and staging suicide bombings. He slaughtered hundreds of traditional tribal elders in his rise to power, removing those who could lead resistance and terrifying the remainder into submission. He broke off from the Taliban movement, which was focused on Afghanistan, and organized a Pakistani branch, taking over territory in the northwest and staging terrorist attacks. Zainuddin opposed this reorientation from Afghanistan to Pakistan. "To fight our own country is wrong," Zainuddin said in the interview. "Islam doesn't give permission to fight against a Muslim country. This is where we differ. What we're seeing these days, these bombings . . . are not allowed in Islam."