Baitullah Mehsud reportedly dead, how would it impact on Pakistan polity?

Baitullah Mehsud, the fearsome top leader of the self-styled Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan, is reportedly dead, killed. However, there is no categorical confirmation from the government, obviously because it has no physical presence in the area, where the US drones fired two missiles in the early hours of Wednesday.

Following four long days of suspense, Hakimullah Mehsud, Tahreek-e-Taliban spokesman and a close relative of Baitullah Mehsud reportedly denied that TTP Chief is killed claiming he is alive, an Arabic Television reported. However, a senior security official requesting not to be named insisted, “This is one hundred per cent true. We have no doubt about his death, he is dead and buried”, the official said.

Meanwhile, US said that Pakistan would be safer, if Taliban chief is dead. The spokesman for US President Barack Obama further said White House could not confirm the killing of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan chief, adding the people of Pakistan are now safer, if reports are accurate. The Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, led a violent campaign of suicide attacks and assassinations against the Pakistani government. He is believed to have been killed in a US drone attack. Describing Mehsud as a murderous thug, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Friday: “We cannot confirm whether he is dead. There seems to be a growing consensus among credible observers that he is indeed dead.”

If he is indeed dead — and many credible sources have independently suggested that he is in fact dead — then a devastating blow has been struck right at the heart of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the umbrella group of militant networks formed under Mehsud’s command in December 2007.

Instead an Afghan Taliban spokesman Friday said that Mehsud’s reported death would not hurt the Taliban cause in Afghanistan. Among the religious parties in Pakistan thus far only Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam- Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rahman made a brief comment saying he was unaware how the TTP would react to the death of their leader. He also said that he could not predict the impact the death of Mehsud might have on Pakistan. He claimed Baitullah had been ‘martyred’ in the US drone attack, adding he termed anyone killed in a US attack a ‘martyr’.

On the other hand, Awami National party (ANP) leader and senior NWFP Minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour urged upon the accomplices of Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) chief Baitullah Mehsud to lay down their weapons adding that the Taliban were already divided, and a division would emerge within the militia after the death of their leader. Barring handful of clerics and bigots, general public on the whole has welcomed Mehsud’s elimination.

May be, it urgently raises several issues---that you are invited to conceive of and suggest measures government tackling those deftly.