Pakistani Taliban chief plans attack on the U.S.

Washington Post

KABUL, Afghanistan — The reclusive commander of the Pakistani Taliban said Tuesday that his fighters had carried out Monday’s bold assault on a police academy in eastern Pakistan and boasted that he was planning a terrorist attack in Washington that would astonish the world.

Baitullah Mehsud, an Islamist leader from the South Waziristan tribal area in northwest Pakistan, called several international news agencies in Pakistan to assert responsibility for the armed occupation of the police training compound that ended with 11 people dead.

He also told reporters that he was planning to attack targets in the U.S. capital in retaliation for more than 30 strikes by unmanned U.S. drones that have targeted suspected al-Qaida and Taliban sanctuaries in northwest Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan.

“Soon we will launch an attack on Washington that will amaze everyone in the world,” Mehsud told the Associated Press. In a separate phone conversation, he told Agence France Presse that his forces had carried out the police academy attack near the city of Lahore as an act of revenge for the drone raids. “There will be more such attacks,” he said.

The U.S. government has already offered a $5 million reward for the capture of Mehsud, and the State Department has described him as a major “al-Qaida facilitator” in the northwest tribal region near the Afghan border, where he commands thousands of fighters.

The young, religious guerrilla leader has rarely been seen or heard in public. He has never before issued such a specific threat to do harm directly to the West. However, he has denounced Western culture and values as decadent and vowed to bring strict Islamic rule to the area of Pakistan where he resides.

U.S. counter-terrorism officials Tuesday dismissed Mehsud’s threat to attack Washington.

Mehsud, believed to be in his 30s, has been accused by Pakistani authorities of masterminding the December 2007 assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto in the city of Rawalpindi. In addition, he is believed to have organized the truck bombing of a luxury hotel in Islamabad, the capital, that killed more than 60 people last September.

Mehsud heads an alliance of extreme Islamist groups in northwest Pakistan called Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, or Taliban Movement of Pakistan. For the past several years, the groups have been spreading violent religious dogma throughout the area’s lawless tribal zones, attacking Pakistani military and police units and sending followers into Afghanistan to fight government and U.S.-led coalition forces.