ISLAMABAD — Missiles from a CIA drone killed a Pakistani Taliban leader Wednesday who had a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head, Pakistani security officials said.
The strike against Waliur Rehman was the first in Pakistan since President Barack Obama outlined tighter rules for the controversial targeted killing program in a speech last week. Some experts questioned whether the criteria used to target him conformed to the president’s pledges of greater accountability and transparency.
Administration officials have said anonymously that for months to come the CIA will carry out drone strikes in Pakistan under the more permissive standards used in the past.
In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to confirm U.S. involvement in Rehman’s death. But he said that Rehman “has participated in cross-border attacks in Afghanistan against U.S. and NATO personnel and horrific attacks against Pakistani civilians and soldiers.”
Carney noted that Rehman was wanted in connection with a Dec. 30, 2009, suicide bombing at a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven Americans working for the CIA and a Jordanian intelligence officer. Since 2010, the Justice Department has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to Rehman.
Rehman and three other militants died when two missiles leveled a mud-brick house in Chashma, a village outside Miran Shah, the administrative center for the North Waziristan tribal agency, according to Pakistani security officials, who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Four other people were wounded.
A Taliban commander, speaking in a telephone interview on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that Rehman was among the dead. But the official Taliban spokesman said he had no such information. “I am neither denying nor confirming it,” said the spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, in a telephone interview.
North Waziristan borders eastern Afghanistan and is a haven for al-Qaeda, Pakistani Islamists, and Afghan and other foreign extremists.
About half is controlled by the Pakistani Taliban.
Although officially designated the No. 2, Rehman in practice has been the chief since December, when the leadership council effectively fired its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, for ordering the assassination of another senior commander. Mehsud has since led his own, more radical faction.
Rehman’s death “will create a crisis of leadership because there is no obvious successor, and Hakim is in no position to make a comeback,” said Mansur Khan, director of research at the FATA Research Center, an independent policy institute in Islamabad.
In his early 40s and from a mountainous district of South Waziristan, Rehman was seen as a conciliatory figure inside the Taliban. He helped mediate disputes with other militant factions and was opposed to the indiscriminate attacks on civilians that have become the Taliban hallmark in recent years.
“Wali was always at the forefront whenever a dispute emerged with Hafiz Gul Bahadur, the Haqqanis or Mullah Nazeer,” said one Taliban commander, referring to the leaders of Taliban-linked militant factions in Waziristan, speaking on condition of diplomacy.
Inside the movement, the militant added, “his weapon was diplomacy.”
Inside Pakistan, Rehman’s death provoked a complex set of reactions. The Foreign Ministry condemned the strike in a statement, while the incoming prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who is due to take office next week, has vowed to restrict drone activity as part of a broader tightening to relations with the United States.
Some analysts and conservative leaders speculated that Rehman’s death could make it harder for Pakistan to strike a peace deal with the Taliban because Rehman was seen as less extreme than Mehsud.
The CIA has carried out about 360 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, but the rate of attack has dropped sharply this year amid scrutiny of the program in the United States. So far this year there have been about 13 strikes.
The New York Times contributed to this report.
