Two senior TTP commanders among four killed in Afghanistan

PESHAWAR: Amid reports of reunification of different militant factions, the Pakistani Taliban on Thursday suffered a huge loss after four of their members, including two senior commanders, were killed by their fellow militants in eastern Afghanistan.The Taliban later blamed the militants who killed their commanders of having ties with the Pakistani security agencies.
Taliban sources said two senior members of the Pakistani Taliban, Qari Shakil Ahmad Haqqani and Dr Tariq Ali alias Abu Obaidah al-Islamabadi, were among the four militants killed by their fellow fighters in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province.
According to sources, all the four died on the spot.There was no clear information why the militants had killed their senior commanders.Ehsanullah Ehsan, the spokesman for the TTP-Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, however, said four militants were involved in the assassination of senior Taliban leaders, adding that they were given the task by Pakistani security agencies to kill the commanders.
“They had joined us almost four months ago and were living with us. But they were in fact planted by the Pakistani security agencies and given the task to kill our senior people,” Ehsanullah Ehsan alleged.
Talking to this correspondent on the phone from somewhere in Afghanistan, he said they had killed two out of the four captured militants involved in the killing of Taliban leaders.“Two were killed by our men soon after they shot dead our senior commanders. The two others were caught alive and were gunned down after they confessed to their relations with the Pakistani security agencies,” the Taliban spokesman said.
Qari Shakil belonged to the Mohmand Agency and had served as the head of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)’s political Shura before it split into factions. He had also led a delegation of the TTP that held one round of face-to-face talks with a team of government negotiators last year.
When the TTP splintered last year, Qari Shakil chose to

work with his close friend Omar Khalid Khurasani, a dreaded militant commander who quit the mainstream TTP and formed the breakaway group, TTP-Jamaat-ul-Ahrar.
Qari Shakil was considered as the right-hand man of Omar Khalid Khurasani, who too was reportedly wounded earlier in a joint operation by Afghan and foreign forces in the Nangarhar province. Dr Tariq Ali had served as a captain in the Pakistan Army. In one of his videos, he had claimed to have served in the Frontier Corps Balochistan, 80 Brigade Siachen, and various places in the Punjab. He cited posting in Waziristan as the reason for leaving the army.
He said he had spent two tenures in North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal regions and refused order of the second-in-command official when he was asked to go for the third time.After deserting the army, he had gone to London. He had stated that his “PA” number was 103907 and he passed out in the 18th course of the Army Medical College.
Dr Tariq Ali said that he had worked in the army for nearly seven years and about nine years ago he left the army and migrated to London where he did general surgical training in London and Cambridge.
He said he had left Britain with the intention to go to Iraq and join the Islamic State, but was arrested on the way and sent to jail in Croatia.Then he said he was deported to Pakistan and faced some difficulties in the beginning. Later, he joined the TTP-JA.
Meanwhile, the leadership of three major militant factions of the Pakistani Taliban, including the Maulana Fazlullah-led TTP, the TTP-JA headed by Omar Khalid Khurasani, and the Lashkar-i-Islami founded by Mangal Bagh, agreed to join hands and merge their groups into one main organisation, the Tehrik-i-Taliban.
According to Ehsanullah Ehsan, Maulana Fazlullah Khurasani, Omar Khalid Khurasani and Haji Mangal Bagh in a joint consultative meeting agreed on forming an organising committee that would form a central supreme Shura (Rehbari Shura) and an organising body in a few days.He said the Ameer or leader for the new joint organisation would be selected through consensus.