Peace Talks May Be Casualty as Pakistani Taliban Pick Hard-Liner as Leader - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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In a surprise choice that bodes poorly for proposed peace talks, the Pakistani Taliban on Thursday appointed as its new leader the hard-line commander responsible for last year’s attack on Malala Yousafzai, the teenage Pakistani education activist.
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Mr. Fazlullah is best known for ordering public beatings, executions and beheadings, and delivering thunderous radio broadcasts — in which he denounced polio vaccinations, among other topics
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But the news was likely to be received with less enthusiasm by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government
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Furious government officials criticized the United States’ killing of the previous Taliban leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, in a drone strike last Friday, claiming that the Mr. Mehsud had been on the verge of starting peace talks that could end seven years of bloodshed in Pakistan’s major cities.
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He set up a pirate radio station that broadcast jihadist propaganda across the valley, at one point urging women not to sleep with their husbands if they refused to join his jihad.
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For the Pakistani military, Mr. Fazlullah is a cherished enemy, too. He escaped the army’s toughest anti-Taliban offensive of recent years in 2009 when, as thousands of soldiers swept through Swat, following the collapse of a peace deal, he slipped through the dragnet and fled across the border into Afghanistan.
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Shahidullah Shahid, said there would be “no more talks as Mullah Fazlullah is already against negotiations.”
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armed fighters displaced the civil government, instituting a authoritarian and often cruel rule that mandated public floggings, executions and the closure of girls’ schools.
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But those compromises quickly foundered — there was public outrage across Pakistan over a video that showed Taliban fighters flogging a teenage girl in Swat — and by summer 2009, the army had moved in.
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Mr. Khan has vowed to block NATO military supply lines into Afghanistan after Nov. 20 if the United States does not halt drone attacks in the tribal belt.
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But Mr. Khan’s aggressive anti-American stance could be complicated by a fresh wave of Taliban violence — particularly if it is engineered by a Taliban leader who hails from the province that Mr. Khan controls.
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The Pakistani Taliban is related to, but distinct from, the Afghan Taliban. The group has largely attacked targets inside Pakistan but has also deployed suicide bombers into Afghanistan and claimed responsibility for an attempted bombing of Times Square in May 2010. As a result, its leadership has been repeatedly targeted by American drones.