“Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.” Amen.
Amen, indeed. So has Tohir Yuldashev, as his bodyguard insists, been killed by a flying American robot? There is no official IMU claim this is so, nor is there any evidence. And there’s something of a cycle to how many times we’ve killed him off, as well.
Considering the supposedly more active role of IMU fighters in Waziristan, this could be good news, though probably not game-changing news: recall the IMU didn’t exactly vanish after Juma died near Mazar=i Sharif in 2001, though the IMU was hampered for some time.
So let’s see if this actually happened. Then we can decide whether or not it warrants corking some champagne.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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Some people get more dangerious after they actually die. So, Yoldash’s death might cause more consolidation within IMU and more intense propoganda of self-sacrifice (a la, Yoldash himself gave his life on this cause).
“He is dead beyond doubt.” See? Pakistani military says so!