(Previous Incident Code: Ob243 )

Jalil Haqqani, 32, is an Afghan national and operated between Pakistan and Afghanistan.’

Unusually Haqqani was reported killed as he walked down a street. The Washington Post later raised doubts about his status, with suggestions that the man was not directly related to leaders of the Haqqani Network, and was only a street guard. The attack followed recent comments on September 22 by US Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the Haqqani Network was a ‘veritable arm’ of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service, further straining relations between the two nominal allies. Marc Grossman, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, arrived in Islamabad for talks on improving those relations on the day of the attack. Maulana Iftiqar was later identified as killed in the strike, described as the head of a religious school in Miranshah. More than 2,000 people attended his funeral.

In January 2014 the Bureau published an internal record of drone strikes kept by the local political authority form information provided by a network of sources in the tribal region. It said ‘one Afghani was killed as reported’ in this attack.

The Washington Post stated that the attack – and subsequent strikes aimed at the Haqqani Network –  were ordered at a September 29 meeting attended by President Obama:

The decision to strike Miran Shah was made at a National Security Council meeting chaired by President Obama … and was intended to ‘send a signal’ that the United States would no longer tolerate a safe haven for the most lethal enemy of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, or Pakistan’s backing for it, said one of several U.S. officials who spoke about internal deliberations on the condition of anonymity. The senior Haqqani figure, Janbaz Zadran, was selected along with other targets to ‘demonstrate how seriously we take the Miran Shah’ threat.

A later secret cable sent by US ambassador to Pakistan Ryan Crocker and leaked to the Washington Post appeared to indicate that there was no clear follow-up.