P U L S E

Looks like the drone attack which purportedly eliminated the Taliban leadership killed yet more innocents. Hakimullah Mehsud is alive and well, and gave a press conference right in Srarogha.  ‘In truth we don’t want to fight the Pakistan Army’, said Mehsud, ‘Our aim is to remove the Americans from this region and to fight the Americans’.

AlJazeeraEnglish — 06 October 2009 — This week, Pakistan’s interior minister said that military operations carried out against the Taliban in the Swat valley, and North and South Waziristan had “broken the back” of the Taliban.

However, South Waziristan is home to an estimated 10,000 Taliban fighters and it was here that Hakimullah Mehsud, the new Taliban leader, ended rumours that he had been killed by a recent drone attack.

Kamal Hyder reports from Islamabad.