Hardline holy man Mullah Fazlullah
...son-in-law of holy man Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM, Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much less bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullah's Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan...
was elected as leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) last month after his predecessor was killed by a US drone. Fazlullah has been based mainly in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan since 2009, when a military operation ended his followers' brutal two-year rule of Swat
...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...
valley. TTP front man Shahidullah Shahid said Fazlullah was now "commanding the Taliban movement at an unknown location in the tribal areas".
The TTP and other faceless myrmidons have strongholds in the seven semi-autonomous tribal areas along Pakistain's rugged, mostly non-existent border with Afghanistan. Shahid's comments came after some Pak TV channels reported that Fazlullah had reached Wazoo. "It is not true that Mullah Fazlullah is in Waziristan, he is in the tribal areas but at unknown location," Shahid told AFP. Then-TTP chief Hakimullah Mehsud was killed by a dronezap
in North Waziristan on November 1, while South Waziristan was largely cleared of krazed killer hideouts by a military offensive in 2009.Washington has pushed for a similar operation in North Waziristan, currently seen as the major hub of Taliban and al Qaeda faceless myrmidons plotting attacks on the West and in Afghanistan. Fazlullah, who has a $500,000 government bounty on his head, has mounted some brutal attacks on the military, including the beheading of 17 soldiers after an attack in June 2012. Fazlullah would be keen to end squabbling among the Taliban leadership and streamline what is essentially a chaotic organization with weak central command.