Within minutes the remote pilots’ screens back at CIA Headquarters in Langley were filled with the images of explosions as the drones’ AGM-114 Hellfire antiarmor missiles slammed into the gathered crowd. As the smoke cleared, the CIA drone operators would have doubtless seen many “squirters” (i.e., survivors fleeing the explosions) as well as numerous dead and dying people lying scattered around the detonation zone (known as “bugsplats” in CIA parlance). But the drones were not done. According to one source, the drones subsequently fired missiles at Taliban members attempting to flee the scene of the attack in sport utility vehicles (SUVs), killing several more.16
Having decimated the funeral, the remote-control drones then flew back to their bases, located to the south, in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, and the CIA waited for human intelligence (humint) to tell them whether they had killed Mehsud or any of his top leadership.
It did not take long for reports to come from the agency. Even though Pakistani and foreign journalists were denied access to this remote region, word began to trickle out that between sixty and seventy people had been killed in the missile strikes. This was the second deadliest drone strike in the ongoing campaign (the first took place in 2006 in the town of Damadola).
Then came the unfortunate news: for all the mayhem, Mehsud was not among those killed. Minutes before the strike, he had left the funeral and thus avoided the fate of several of his top commanders, who were blown up by the missiles. Mehsud had reportedly been so close to the explosion that it had damaged his car.17 Among those who were not so lucky was a notorious leader named Sangeen Khan, who was the Pakistani Taliban’s top commander in Afghanistan.
Members of the Taliban were not the only ones killed. According to one Pakistani source half of those killed in the strike were villagers.18 Another local source claimed that of the sixty-seven people killed in the explosion eighteen had been villagers.19 For their part, the Taliban, which had cause to inflate the number of dead civilians, claimed that only five of its members had been killed; the rest of the casualties were bystanders.
As with most of the CIA’s strikes on the Taliban, it was difficult to nail down the details of who had died in this remote zone. One eyewitness who lost a leg in the strike reported, “After the prayers ended people were asking each other to leave the area as drones were hovering. First two drones fired two missiles, it created havoc, there was smoke and dust everywhere. Injured people were crying and asking for help…. They fired the third missile after a minute, and I fell on the ground.”20
Regardless of what portion of the victims comprised civilian bystanders, it was the second highest death toll from a drone strike to date. Surprisingly, although there had been protest marches against previous drone strikes—most notably after the aforementioned Damadola strike—on this occasion there seemed to be little outrage in Pakistan at the killing of so many people at a funeral. Many in the pro-Taliban Islamist political parties grumbled about the sacrilege of attacking a funeral, but by this time most Pakistanis were willing to countenance the unpopular CIA drone strikes if it would rid them of Mehsud.
So the drone hunt continued. In the succeeding weeks and months the Pakistanis worked hand in glove with the CIA to track down the elusive Mehsud. The CIA launched several strikes on Mehsud’s followers in an effort to kill him, but he never seemed to be at the scene of the attack.
Then, in August 2009 the CIA got lucky. Word came out of South Waziristan that Mehsud had married a second wife with the aim of having a male child after his first wife had given him only daughters. CIA and ISI spies determined who the woman was and found that she was the daughter of local cleric named Ikramuddin Mehsud. The trackers now had the scent of the prey. On the night of August 5, the CIA learned that Baitullah Mehsud, who was a diabetic, had traveled to his father-in-law’s house in the village of Zanghara because he was feeling ill.
When a drone was sent to the scene, the CIA pilots flying the plane from seven thousand miles away in the United States were shocked to see images of several people gathered on the roof of the father-in-law’s house. The man in the center of the crowd was receiving a glucose drip while his bodyguards looked on. Mehsud was known to be a diabetic; the man had to be him. This was the opportunity of a lifetime for the CIA pilots. The order was given to fire Hellfire missiles. Once again the CIA screens in distant America were lit up with explosions as the precision-guided missiles slammed into the unsuspecting people on the clay house below. The ultimate combination of humint and technological intelligence (techint) had called forth a “decapitation strike.”
Then the smoke cleared. Although the CIA pilots could not be sure, it looked as if everyone on the roof, including seven bodyguards, Mehsud’s new wife, and Baitullah Mehsud himself, was dead. Having expended its ammunition, the Predator drone turned and flew back to its base in the south while its handlers awaited news from distant Pakistan on the fate of the target.
It did not take long for word to emerge from South Waziristan. On the following day rumors began to spread that someone important had indeed been killed in the strike—Mehsud’s wife. By that evening newspapers around the globe were publishing stories about the killing of the terrorist mastermind’s wife.21 Panicked Pakistanis feared a wave of suicide bombings as revenge for her death while Taliban leaders denied that Mehsud himself had been killed.
Then word of a large funeral to be held in the village the next day trickled out from the Taliban-controlled territory. A woman would never merit such an honor among the conservative Pashtun tribesmen of South Waziristan. It had to be someone more important than Mehsud’s wife. A Taliban spokesman delivered the stunning news: With great sadness he announced that Mehsud had achieved “martyrdom.” Pakistan’s most wanted man was finally dead. Almost simultaneously a Pakistani military spokesman announced that he had actually seen the kill video filmed by the very drone that had fired on Mehsud. The Pakistani source claimed, “This is one hundred per cent. We have no doubt about his death. He is dead and buried.” According to this source, “He was clearly visible with his wife. And the missile hit the target as it was. His torso remained, while half of the body was blown up.”22
There were no public outcries from Pakistanis about CIA violations of sovereignty on this occasion. On the contrary, many Pakistanis secretly celebrated. The Pakistani newspaper Dawn ran a headline celebrating the death of Mehsud that read, “Good Riddance, Killer Baitullah.”23 One blogger from the Pakistani port city of Karachi claimed, “If [his death is] true, it would be good news and shows the value of drone attacks,” and another wrote, “The mass murderer has met his fate. He was responsible for the death of thousands of innocent Pakistanis. May he burn in hell for eternity.”24