Maulana Fazlullah, also known as Radio Maulana, is reported killed in Nuristan which he had attacked at the head of 700 Taliban fighters, Afghan officials said on Wednesday, May 27.
At least six other Taliban fighters were killed in the fierce fighting to end the two-day Taliban seize on the Barg-e-Matal district, according to Mohammed Zaman Mamozai, the Afghan police chief for the eastern border area.
But provincial officials said they had not yet confirmed the death of Fazlullah, whose fiery radio sermons propelled him to prominence in 2007 as his troops took over the bucolic northwest region of Swat.
Mamozai said Fazlullah’s troops seemed unfamiliar with the landscape in Nuristan. Afghan police and army forces had managed to drive many of them back into Pakistan.
Fazlullah’s death would likely have minimal meaning for Pakistan’s fight against its domestic Taliban insurgency, of which Fazlullah was a part. His profile has dropped since last year, when Pakistan’s army pushed his forces out of Swat, where insurgents had bombed dozens of schools, banned music and enforced Islamic law.
However, Fazlullah’s more recent role in fighting in Afghanistan indicated that he had re-gained clout across the border and that cooperation had increased between fighters traditionally focused on the Pakistani state and those that attack coalition forces in Afghanistan. While such groups share space in Pakistan’s craggy border regions, their agendas do not always overlap.
"The Taliban and al-Qaeda say that there is no border for their jihad," said Mamozai, the Afghan police official. "They just see the opportunity to fight."
