US Predators kill 5 ‘militants’ in al Qaeda stronghold of Datta Khel

Today, US Predators launched the first strike in Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan in six days, killing five “militants” in an area known to shelter al Qaeda’s top leaders.

The strike took place in the Datta Khel area, a command and control center for al Qaeda and allied terror groups. The unmanned Predators or the more deadly Reapers fired two or three missiles at a compound in Datta Khel, according to reports from the region.

A Pakistani intelligence official said all five people killed in the strike were “militants,” but did not identify which group they belonged to. No senior al Qaeda, Taliban, or other terrorist leaders have been reported killed in today’s strike.

The target of today’s attack is not clear. The US targets senior al Qaeda leaders, al Qaeda’s external operations networks, and the mishmash of terrorist groups, including the Taliban and the Haqqani Network, that carry out attacks in Afghanistan.

The Datta Khel area is administered by Hafiz Gul Bahadar, the Taliban commander for North Waziristan. Bahadar provides shelter to top al Qaeda leaders as well as terrorists from numerous Pakistani and Central Asian terror groups.

Datta Khel is a known hub of Taliban, Haqqani Network, and al Qaeda activity. While Bahadar administers the region, the Haqqani Network, al Qaeda, and allied Central Asian jihadi groups are also based in the area. The Lashkar al Zil, or al Qaeda’s Shadow Army, is known to have a command center in Datta Khel.

Datta Khel serves as a command and control center for al Qaeda’s top leaders, and some of them have been targeted and killed there. A strike in Datta Khel on Dec. 17, 2009, targeted Sheikh Saeed al Saudi, Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law and a member of al Qaeda’s Shura Majlis, or executive council. Al Saudi is thought to have survived the strike, but Abdullah Said al Libi, the commander of the Shadow Army or Lashkar al Zil, and Zuhaib al Zahibi, a general in the Shadow Army, were both killed in the attack.

But the most significant attack in Datta Khel took place on May 21, 2010, which resulted in the death of Mustafa Abu Yazid, a longtime al Qaeda leader and close confidant of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri.

Yazid served as the leader of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the wider Khorasan, a region that encompasses portions of Pakistan, Iran, and several Central Asian states. More importantly, Yazid was as al Qaeda’s top financier, which put him in charge of the terror group’s purse strings. He served on al Qaeda’s Shura Majlis, or top decision-making council. Yazid also was closely allied with the Taliban and advocated the program of embedding small al Qaeda teams with Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

Despite the known presence of al Qaeda and other foreign terrorist organizations in North Waziristan, and requests by the US that action be taken against these groups, the Pakistani military has indicated that it has no plans to take on Bahadar or the Haqqani Network, the other major Taliban group based there. Bahadar and the Haqqanis are considered “good Taliban” by the Pakistani military establishment as they do not carry out attacks inside Pakistan. Yet Bahadar, the Haqqanis, and other Taliban groups openly carry out attacks in Afghanistan.

The Predator strikes, by the numbers

The US has launched six Predator strikes inside Pakistan this year; all six strikes have hit targets in North Waziristan.

The pace of the strikes from the beginning of September 2010 until the end of December has been unprecedented since the US began the air campaign in Pakistan in 2004. September’s record number of 21 strikes was followed by 16 strikes in October, 14 in November, and 12 in December. The previous monthly high was 11 strikes in January 2010, after the Taliban and al Qaeda executed a successful suicide attack at Combat Outpost Chapman that targeted CIA personnel who were active in gathering intelligence for the Predator campaign in Pakistan. The suicide bombing at COP Chapman killed seven CIA officials and a Jordanian intelligence officer.

The US carried out 117 attacks inside Pakistan in 2010, more than doubling the number of strikes in 2009. In late August 2010, the US exceeded 2009’s strike total of 53 with a strike in Kurram. In 2008, the US carried out a total of 36 strikes inside Pakistan. [For up-to-date charts on the US air campaign in Pakistan, see LWJ Special Report, Charting the data for US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 – 2011.]

In 2010 the strikes were confined almost exclusively to North Waziristan, where the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, the Haqqani Network, al Qaeda, and a host of Pakistani and Central and South Asian terror groups are based. All but 13 of the 117 strikes took place North Waziristan. Of the 13 strikes that occurred outside of North Waziristan, seven took place in South Waziristan, five occurred in Khyber, and one took place in Kurram.

Since Sept. 1, 2010, the US has conducted 69 strikes in Pakistan’s tribal agencies. The bulk of those attacks have aimed at the terror groups in North Waziristan, with 62 strikes in the tribal agency. Many of the strikes targeted cells run by the Islamic Jihad Group, which have been plotting to conduct Mumbai-styled terror assaults in Europe. A Sept. 8 strike killed an IJU commander known as Qureshi, who specialized in training Germans to conduct attacks in their home country.

The US campaign in northwestern Pakistan has targeted top al Qaeda leaders, al Qaeda’s external operations network, and Taliban leaders and fighters who threaten both the Afghan and Pakistani states as well as support al Qaeda’s external operations. [For a list of al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in the US air campaign in Pakistan, see LWJ Special Report, Senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 – 2011.]

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

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6 Comments

  • Exactly says:

    When a post regarding these predator strikes is posted I read the first five or six sentences.
    The rest of the post has been submitted hundreds of times an to my way of thinking makes no sense to keep repeating it over and over again.
    Informing the public of actions taken in this war is, of course, very important and nobody would dispute that but the repetition of facts after the action gets kinda old.

  • JT says:

    After nine years, I like to think that there are a few well placed guys undercover and that info about the location of some very big fish will be uncovered some time soon.
    News about possible locations for Osama, Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, and Adam Gadahn has been mighty sparse the last couple of years. Not sure if that means that intel is less or the system is better now at keeping things secret that should be kept secret. I hope it’s the latter.

  • g says:

    I hope they were Canadian, eh.

  • JRP says:

    I’m thinking like JT. I’m interested in apprehension or elimination of Osama et al. I fear the problem is that we do not have a clue as to the whereabouts of these guys because Pakistani intelligence is shielding and protecting them. Possibly Iranian authorities, but I tend to doubt Osama et al. are anywhere other than Pakistan. I am so ticked off at the way our country has been a beggar, as it were, in our dealings with Pakistan. I would pull our ambassador; cut off all funding to Pakistan; and start really getting tough with them. If the sun is setting on America’s leadership position in the World, it is because we are knuckling under to Pakistan militarily and to China economically. It is disgusting to see how the much lauded globalization has so undermined so much about America that we used to be so proud of.

  • Zeissa says:

    I’d be happy if they were Norwegian or Chinese.

  • JT says:

    exactly
    I am sure your opinion is noted by longwarjournal. However, do not assume most people think like you do. That is a bad assumption we all fall into occasionally.
    I for one appreciate the updated summary. And think about those who read the current article and aren’t regular readers of these particular posts. The info is very useful. For people like you and me who are familiar with it, no big deal. You read what you want and leave the rest for those interested in it. When in doubt, include the info.

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