A new piece for Jamestown’s Militant Leadership Monitor that unfortunately lives behind a paywall so I cannot simply post it here. However, they did send it out with their daily email update about the journal, so drop me a note if you are interested and I can try to forward you that. A very difficult piece to pull together given lack of data and confusion over who is who. I would also like to thank Jake for taking the time to read a draft and giving me some thoughts, he also pointed out that apparently local analysts have stated that Yakuf was also known as Abdul Shakoor Turkistani – something that confuses matters a great deal. It is also odd to note how there has been no mention of any of these losses in the spate of recent TIP publications (that can be found at the excellent Jihadology)
Emeti Yakuf (Ministry of Public Security, People’s Republic of China)
In late August, a series of drone strikes in Northern Waziristan were reported to have killed a number of jihadist leaders. Most media attention focused on the possible demise of Badruddin Haqqani, son of the fabled mujahedeen leader, with conflicting reports about whether he had died or not. Almost as an afterthought, some of the stories highlighted that the strikes were believed to have also killed Emeti Yakuf, the current leader of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) (Dawn, August 24). This overshadowed death reflected the generally low profile that TIP is often given amongst jihadist groups, and highlighted once again the difficulties in obtaining information about the mysterious China-focused terrorist organization.
