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Agence France-Presse

The Pakistani Taliban announced it had appointed a new leader on Saturday after the militant group confirmed for the first time its former chief Maulana Fazlullah was killed in a US drone strike last week.
Fazlullah is believed to have ordered the failed 2012 assassination of Malala Yousafzai, who became a global symbol of the fight for girls’ rights to schooling, and who later won the Nobel Peace Prize.
His group – Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – was also behind the massacre of more than 150 people, including more than 100 schoolchildren, at a Peshawar school in December 2014.
US forces targeted Fazlullah in a counterterrorism strike on June 14 in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province, close to the border with Pakistan.
US officials had not said whether the strike was successful but Afghan President Ashraf Ghani later confirmed the killing to Pakistan’s leader and army chief in phone calls.
In a statement from TTP spokesman Mohammad Khurasani confirmed Fazlullah was killed in the US drone strike.
“It is a matter of pride that all leaders of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan have been martyred by infidels,” Khurasani said, referring to Fazlullah’s two predecessors who were also killed in drone strikes.
The group’s shura council elected Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud to replace him and also appointed as deputy Mufti Mazahim, also known as Mufti Hafza Ullah, he added.
It is a matter of pride that all leaders of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan have been martyred by infidels
TTP spokesman Mohammad Khurasani
Pakistan has long been accused of supporting the Afghan Taliban and providing safe haven to its leaders – charges Islamabad denies. Pakistan, in return, has accused Afghanistan of sheltering the Pakistani Taliban.
Pakistan’s army called Fazlullah’s death a “positive development”.
The militant leader went into hiding in Afghanistan in 2009 and his death “gives relief to scores of Pakistani families who fell victims to TTP terror including the [school] massacre,” the army said in a statement after Fazlullah’s death was confirmed.
The 40-year-old Mehsud is a respected Islamic scholar or mufti as well as a fighter, and belongs to the fierce Mehsud tribe in South Waziristan district.
He was the Pakistani Taliban’s chief justice and wrote a book last year detailing the assassination plot of the country’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.
Mehsud hails from Sararogha, a Taliban stronghold where Pakistan’s military has fought many pitched battles against fighters from the group in the past years.
“With the appointment of Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud the leadership of TTP has returned to Mehsud tribe in its home base South Waziristan as Fazlullah was from Swat,” said Rahimullah Yusufzai, an acclaimed journalist and expert on the Taliban.
Mehsud’s leadership could see the breakaway factions which emerged in the TTP after Fazlullah fled to Afghanistan in 2009 reunite, Yusufzai said.
Killing of Pakistani Taliban chief ‘significant’, prime minister says
Mehsud is reported to have studied in various seminaries in Pakistani cities of Faisalabad, Gujranwala and Karachi. He is also known as Abu Mansoor Asim.
He fought against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in 1990 along with Afghan mujahideen fighters.
Mehsud had also served as deputy of TTP founder Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a US air strike in 2009 in South Waziristan.
Mehsud says in his book that when the United States attacked Afghanistan after 9/11 he rushed to Kabul to fight but was saddened to see the fall of the Taliban.


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Mullah Fazlullah (centre) in 2014. Photo: EPA

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Haqqani network militants. Photo: AFP

Pakistan's former defence minister Khawaja Asif arrives at Parliament House to cast his vote during the election for interim prime minister in Islamabad on August 1, 2017. Pakistan's parliament is set to elect a new prime minister on August 1, after the Supreme Court ousted Nawaz Sharif following an investigation into corruption allegations against his family. / AFP PHOTO / AAMIR QURESHI

Supporters of the Pakistan Defense Council, an alliance of hardline Islamist religious leaders and politicians, gather during an anti-U.S protest in Islamabad on August 27, 2017. Pakistan's political, religious and military leaders have rejected President Donald Trump's allegation that Islamabad is harboring militants who battle U.S. forces in Afghanistan. / AFP PHOTO / FAROOQ NAEEM

US President Donald Trump ends his address to the nation from Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia, on August 21, 2017. Trump warned Pakistan on Monday that Washington will no longer tolerate Pakistan offering "safe havens" to extremists. "Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan," he said. "It has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists." / AFP PHOTO / Nicholas Kamm

Two Pakistani soldiers man a position in the tribal area of Wana, the main town of South Waziristan district bordering Afghanistan, 26 August 2004. Two Pakistani soldiers were killed and five injured on today when a landmine believed planted by Al-Qaeda militants ripped through their vehicle in a remote village near the Afghan border. AFP PHOTO / AFP PHOTO / AFP

Pakistani soldiers in South Waziristan, on the border with Afghanistan. Photo: AFP