WASHINGTON — Early Saturday, a middle-aged Pashtun man used forged documents to cross from Iran into Pakistan. A few hours later, on a lonely stretch of highway, he was incinerated by a US drone.
It is not exactly clear how the Americans tracked Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour, leader of the Afghan Taliban, to a white sedan rattling across the arid expanse of Baluchistan province. The United States picked up a mix of phone intercepts and tips from sources, US and European officials said, and there were reports that Pakistan also provided intelligence.
President Obama described Mansour’s death Monday as an “important milestone,’’ but the strike was also an illustration of the tangled relationship between Washington and Islamabad.
Not since Obama ordered Navy SEALs to hunt down Osama bin Laden in May 2011 has he authorized a military incursion in Pakistan as audacious as this one. The White House did not inform the Pakistanis in advance of the operation, which occurred outside the frontier region near Afghanistan, the one place where Pakistan has tolerated US drone strikes in the past.
By using the military’s Joint Special Operations Command rather than the CIA to carry out the attack, the United States denied Pakistan the fig leaf of a covert operation, which in the past has given the Pakistanis the ability to claim they had been consulted beforehand.
The fact that the top official of Afghanistan’s Taliban was able to travel freely through Pakistan, and even into Iran, contradicted years of denials by Pakistani officials that they were harboring Taliban leaders. Obama offered no apology for the decision to strike Mansour in Pakistani territory, saying it was a simple case of self-defense.
Barnett Rubin, a former senior State Department official, said Mansour’s death is unlikely to have a significant impact on the Taliban, which can easily replace him. The effect could be far greater on Pakistan’s government, he said, which now must deal with the embarrassing circumstance.
“We killed the leader of the Taliban driving across Baluchistan in a taxi,’’ Rubin said. “I think we have some questions to ask of Pakistan.’’
