KABUL, March 31 — 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. aircraft that have targeted suspected al-Qaeda 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 U.S. 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-Qaeda facilitator” in the northwest tribal region, 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. But 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. counterterrorism officials Tuesday dismissed Mehsud’s threat to attack Washington.
Mehsud, believed to be in his 30s, has been accused by Pakistani authorities of organizing 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.
Mehsud’s assertion of responsibility for a sophisticated terrorist attack on a large police compound more than 300 miles from his base suggests that his terrorist reach is longer and stronger than ever, and that he may have forged broader alliances with anti-government Islamist groups in Punjab province, a region with a different ethnic and cultural base than South Waziristan.
On Monday, Pakistani officials initially suggested that several banned Islamist groups based in Punjab were responsible for the latest attack, then later broadened their list of suspects to include Mehsud.
Pakistan’s year-old civilian government has been unable to quell a growing tide of Islamist and criminal violence in the northwest and has been badly shaken by attacks in Punjab, including an assault on a visiting cricket team from Sri Lanka that killed seven people in Lahore on March 3.
On Tuesday, Pakistan’s Supreme Court lifted emergency federal rule in Punjab province and restored its chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif, a powerful opposition politician and the brother of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
President Asif Ali Zardari, a longtime adversary of the Sharifs, had used the court to attempt to seize control of the province in February, but backed off in the face of massive public unrest that also included demands to restore the deposed chief justice of the Supreme Court. The government reinstated the chief justice two weeks ago.
Shahbaz Sharif’s return to power could help strengthen the province’s efforts against terrorism, which some analysts said had been flagging under federal rule. On Tuesday, thousands of supporters greeted the news of Sharif’s reinstatement by celebrating in the streets. Initial gestures of reconciliation between the Sharifs and Zardari also bode well for a more unified, tougher response to Islamist terrorism.
But Pakistan’s leaders face contradictory pressures from Muslim constituents and Western allies on what to do about Islamist militancy. The Obama administration has demanded that Pakistan take sterner action against the insurgents, especially those causing mayhem in Afghanistan, in return for economic aid.
Inside Pakistan, many conservative Muslims sympathize with the fighters and are incensed by reports of civilian casualties caused by U.S.-launched drone attacks. More than 300 people have died in such attacks. Pakistani officials, including Zardari, have repeatedly denounced them, but the government is also reported to have tacitly accepted the strikes.
