Hakimullah Mehsud speaking to journalists in 2008. Photograph: A Majeed/AFP/Getty Images  He was a vengeful extremist who beheaded prisoners if they followed the "wrong" branch of Islam, personally appeared in grisly execution videos and was responsible for the deaths of thousands during his four-year reign as Pakistan's top militant.  And yet the demise of Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud in a barrage of CIA drone missiles has once again highlighted the country's deep divisions over the violent Islamists who have wrought ever-greater havoc there since 2001.  Yesterday as senior Taliban commanders held a shura (consultative meeting) to choose a successor to lead the loose alliance of groups known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), many Pakistanis reacted with unabashed glee at the news Mehsud had been killed.  "Thank you Allah and the Americans for ridding us of the butcher Hakimullah Mehsud," one Lahore businessman said on a social media site.  But others, including leading politicians, reacted with fury, and Pakistan's foreign ministry summoned the US ambassador to register its protest.  Although drone strikes have been highly successful in killing militants hiding beyond the reach of Pakistan's army in a lawless region neighbouring Afghanistan, they are widely hated in Pakistan as a symbol of US power.  Many people believe drones kill large numbers of civilians – the US strongly denies this – and that they encourage more terrorism.  The killing of the burly, long-haired militant in North Waziristan, a tribal area bordering Afghanistan and controlled by militants, was seen as a deathblow to hopes of a peace deal between the government and the TTP.  Most analysts believe the chances of a deal with a movement committed to turning Pakistan into a fundamentalist theocracy are vanishingly small. But this solution has been pushed hard by a new government elected in May on a promise of peace talks, and cheered along by the religious right wing. At a meeting in London last week, prime minister Nawaz Sharif told David Cameron that talks with the TTP had begun.  And the government claimed that a delegation of mullahs sanctioned to talk on its behalf had been due to start talks on Saturday.  Imran Khan, a leading opposition politician in Pakistan, was furious: "The Taliban held only one condition for the peace talks and that was that drone attacks must end," he said at a press conference. "But just before the talks began we saw this sabotage."  He said his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, would table a motion to ban cargo trucks supplying Nato troops from Pakistan's roads until the drone strikes stopped.  Interior minister Chaudhry Nisar condemned the US action, saying the strike was "the murder of progress for hope and peace in the region" and suggested the timing was deliberate. He said the government would review its relationship with the US.  The government implored the TTP not to abandon talks. But in 2009, following the death by drone of Mehsud's predecessor, Baitullah Mehsud, the TTP escalated violence. The movement has also vowed to take revenge this time.  Mehsud was buried at a secret location on Saturday, and the movement's immediate concern was to choose a new leader. Talks between top commanders broke up without a formal announcement but the favourite is Khan Syed Mehsud, a 37-year-old with no formal or religious education.  Khan, also known as Sajna, has been associated with major TTP operations, including an attack on a prison last year that freed nearly 400 inmates. He is also reported to have been closely involved with training suicide bombers.  Although undoubtedly an extremist, Khan is thought to lack some of his predecessor's flamboyant style. The dead TTP chief once rolled up to a press conference with Pakistani journalists in a stolen US Humvee.  But the outlook of the tribesman from South Waziristan was also influenced by brutal strains of sectarianism and international jihad. In 2007 he organised the kidnap of 200 Pakistani soldiers: most were later released except for those who adhered to the Shia sect of Islam, who were beheaded.  In 2011 he appeared in a video showing the execution of Sultan Amir Tarar, a retired Pakistani intelligence officer who had worked closely with the Afghan Taliban in the 1990s.  During Mehsud's time as head of the movement, the TTP sent an assassin to shoot schoolgirl activist Malala Yousafzai in the head, and sponsored Faisal Shahzad's failed bid to detonate a car bomb in New York's Times Square in 2010.  The issue of US drones in Pakistan has barely been out of the news in recent weeks. A report from Amnesty International questions the legality of many strikes and claims were made in the Washington Post that Pakistan has been complicit in strikes.  The Obama administration has long been torn between the concerns of its diplomats, who have warned that drone strikes are hugely unpopular in Pakistan, and its spies, who argue that the attacks have proved devastating to militants who pose a threat to Nato troops in Afghanistan, as well as to national security for Pakistan and the west.
As some Pakistanis rejoice in drone strike death of top militant, politicians condemn 'sabotage' of peace talks, and new TTP leader set to emerge