Militant Leader Killed in Pakistan

Updated Nov. 11, 2013 4:10 p.m. ETISLAMABAD—A top leader of the Haqqani terrorist network in Afghanistan was gunned down in Pakistan’s capital, dealing a major blow to the insurgent group behind some of the most brazen attacks on Afghan and U.S. targets in recent years.
Nasiruddin Haqqani was the son of the movement’s founder, Jalaluddin Haqqani, and the brother of its day-to-day chief, Sirajuddin Haqqani. All three are designated “global terrorists” by the U.S. “His death has an important impact not only on the Haqqani family, but also on the operations of the Taliban and al Qaeda,” said Javed Kohistani, a Kabul-based security analyst. “In fact, Sirajuddin lost his right hand.”

Nasiruddin Haqqani, pictured above left, meeting in Islamabad in 2001 with his father, Jalaluddin Haqqani. REUTERS

The U.S. accuses the Haqqani network, which dates back to the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, of orchestrating the 2011 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul that killed 16 people, and an assault on the Intercontinental Hotel in the Afghan capital the same year that killed more than 20.
Mr. Haqqani was shot late Sunday night by assailants on motorcycles as he stopped by a ramshackle market off the main road in the Bara Kahu suburb of Islamabad, witnesses said. While no one has claimed responsibility for the shooting, several analysts in Pakistan and Afghanistan named the Afghan spy service as a likely suspect—an accusation that, if true, would further strain ties between the neighboring countries.
Mr. Haqqani, resided relatively openly in Islamabad despite being wanted by the U.S. “After Osama bin Laden it comes as the second-most embarrassing event” for Pakistan, said political analyst Razan Rumi. “The fact that the Haqqani network operates with relative freedom and ease is an open secret.”

Traces of the shooting could still be seen Monday at the market where Nasiruddin was gunned down. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Mr. Haqqani’s death comes just over a week after a U.S. drone strike killed Hakimullah Mehsud, who ran the Pakistani Taliban, causing an outcry among Pakistani officials. Pakistan was trying to reach a peace accord with the group and accused Washington of derailing efforts to bring the militant into peace negotiations.
A senior official at the Afghan National Directorate of Security, confirmed Mr. Haqqani’s death but denied that the agency was involved, blaming the killing on an internal dispute within the Taliban-linked militant groups.
The Pakistani Taliban—whose stated mission is the destruction of the Pakistani state—meanwhile, accused Pakistan’s own intelligence agency of killing Mr. Haqqani, and vowed retribution.
The killing of Mr. Haqqani was “no less significant” than the death of Mr. Mehsud, said Ijaz Khan, a professor of international relations at Peshawar University. “He was not in some remote place, but right in Islamabad,” Mr. Khan said. “If Afghan intelligence can operate so deep inside Pakistan, that is another embarrassment for Pakistan.”
Pakistani officials declined to comment on Mr. Haqqani’s death.
The Pakistani militants, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, and the Afghan Taliban have fundamentally diverging objectives.
In seeking to overthrow the Pakistani state, the TTP have attacked Pakistani troops and officials in a spree that has killed tens of thousands of people.
The Afghan Taliban, including the Haqqanis, by contrast, are closely aligned with the Pakistani security establishment and focus their attacks on the Afghan government and the U.S.-led coalition, using Pakistan as a haven and training ground.
In 2011, Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, singled out the Haqqanis as “a veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI—a characterization Islamabad has disputed.
The Haqqani network and the TTP operate side-by-side in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal region.
Mr. Haqqani oversaw foreign affairs, representing the Haqqani position to the Taliban in the peace process with Kabul, said people who knew him. According to the United Nations sanctions committee, which blacklisted him in 2010,Mr. Haqqani was in his early 40s and traveled to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to raise funds for the group.
At the market where Mr. Haqqani was shot, bullet damage could be seen at the front of a shop on Monday, and blood stained the pavement outside. “It was very precise, as if the men on the motorcycle knew exactly who this was. They only attacked him, shooting straight at him,” one shopkeeper said. “They emptied a whole magazine, they wanted to make sure he was dead.”
Mr. Haqqani’s bodyguards quickly scooped up the body and drove off, witnesses said. According to residents, Mr. Haqqani had been living in the area for four years, and recently told people in the market that he would soon go for pilgrimage to Mecca.
The chairman of Pakistan’s Ulema Council, which unites the country’s Islamic scholars, says Mr. Haqqani spent most of his time in Arab countries, and didn’t have feuds with other militant groups. “If Afghan intelligence indeed made this kind of action here, then it is not good for Pakistan, or for Afghanistan,” Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi said.
The U.S. has gone after the Haqqani network in the past. Last year, a U.S. drone strike killed a brother of Mr. Haqqani in North Waziristan, and in September this year another senior member of the group, Mullah Sangeen Zadran, was killed in a drone attack.
“The Haqqani remains the most credible threat, probably the one we are most concerned about,” a senior coalition official in Afghanistan saidbefore Sunday’s killing. “They are diversified, they are a mafia-like organization, and they do not necessarily starve for resources.”
—Ehsanullah Amiri and Margherita Stancati contributed to this article.
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com and Saeed Shah at saeed.shah@wsj.com

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