Nasiruddin Haqqani, the eldest son of Afghan Insurgency Jalaluddin Haqqani and a key financier of the Haqqani network

The son of Jalaluddin Haqqani network was gunned down on Monday in a suburb of the Pakistani capital

LONDON: Nasiruddin Haqqani, the eldest son of Afghan warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani and a key financier of the Haqqani network, one of the most lethal elements of the insurgency in Afghanistan, has been killed on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, Pakistani militants and Afghan intelligence officials said on Monday.He was shot dead late on Sunday as he was returning home from a mosque, reports said. There were no immediate indications of who was responsible.

Nasiruddin Haqqani, the group's chief fund-raiser, was shot dead by a gunman riding a motorbike outside a bread store on Sunday night, the militants said. In telephone interviews from Peshawar and the tribal belt, two Haqqani network commanders confirmed that Nasiruddin, who was designated by the United States as a "global terrorist" in 2010, had been killed."We have received his body, and the funeral has taken place," said Gul Hassan, a commander in North Waziristan, the main hub of Haqqani network activity in Pakistan's tribal belt.


"The mujahedeen are in shock," said Mr. Gul, describing the dead militant as "a devoted brother who had been doing jihad against the crusaders."

A Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity, said that after funeral prayers in Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, Mr. Haqqani was buried in the family graveyard at Danday Darpa Khel — the same village where Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was killed in an American drone strike on Nov. 1.

It is unclear whether the two events are linked. An Afghan intelligence official, speaking in Kabul, said that preliminary intelligence assessments showed that Mr. Haqqani died as a result of a family dispute.

A tribal leader in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, which is the main stronghold of the Haqqani tribe, noted that Nasiruddin Haqqani had a long-running financial dispute with a cousin, Ishaq, whom he had accused of working with Afghan intelligence officials.

The fact that Mr. Haqqani was killed on the edge of the Pakistani capital was a major embarrassment to the Pakistani government, underscoring long-held accusations that the Haqqani network operates with ease inside the country, and not just inside the tribal belt.

"Another Abottabad? Massive Embarrassment," Talat Hussain, a senior television journalist, said on Twitter, referring to the embarrassment caused by the American commando assault that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, near Islamabad, in May 2011.


The Haqqani network is one of the most prominent elements of the Afghan insurgency, with a track record of well-organized and ruthless operations on high-profile targets in Afghanistan's major cities. Over the years, it has launched coordinated assaults on government ministries and five-star hotels in central Kabul, American bases near the border with Pakistan, and Indian diplomatic facilities across the country.
Fund-raising is crucial to the group's success, thanks to links to drug smuggling, kidnapping and gun running, as well as links to rich jihadi donors in the Persian Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia.


Those links stretch back to the 1980s, when Jalaluddin Haqqani was both an ally of the United States and widely viewed as a heroic Islamic warrior among conservative Muslims. His son Nasiruddin, whose mother is an Arab, a NATO official said, was seen as the best-placed person to exploit those fund-raising links.

In recent years, Jalaluddin Haqqani is believed to have grown ill, and leadership of the group passed to another son, Sirajuddin. His third son, Badruddin, was killed in an American drone strike in North Waziristan in August 2012.

Despite its fierce reputation, the group has come under strain this year amid reports of discontent and even resentment inside its tribal support base in the mountains of Paktika and Khost Provinces in eastern Afghanistan.

Mr. Haqqani's death will renew the focus on the ease with which the Haqqani network can operate inside Pakistan. The shooting occurred in Bhara Kahu, a village on the edge of Islamabad that has long been known for its links to violent jihadi groups.

In August, the Islamabad police recovered an explosives-laden vehicle from a house in Bhara Kahu that, they said, was being prepared to be used in a militant attack.

In 2010, Newsweek magazine reported that Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, under pressure from the United States over its links to the Haqqani network, had arrested Nasiruddin Haqqani. He was later released, according to news media reports. TOI