Nine fighters killed by drone missiles in Afghanistan, as US hands over Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan leader to Islamabad

All summer Pakistan has missed no opportunity to complain that the leaders of one of the country’s deadliest militant groups have found safe haven across the border in the wilds of eastern Afghanistan. But with the election of a more amenable president in Kabul and a dramatic improvement in relations between Islamabad and Washington, the Pakistani Taliban fighters hiding inside Afghanistan have suddenly become vulnerable, as a surge of counter-terror operations take place on both sides of the border.

In the latest attack, nine members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) were killed on Sunday by missiles fired by a US drone, according to the police chief of Kunar, an Afghan province bordering Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

On the same day it was revealed a top TTP commander captured by US troops last year had been secretly handed over to Pakistan.

Security officials in Pakistan confirmed that Latif Mehsud, the former second in command of the TTP, had been flown from the US detention facility at Bagram airbase to Islamabad on Saturday.

Pakistan has demanded the militant chief be handed over ever since he was captured by US forces in October 2013.

The episode caused anger in Pakistan because Mehsud had been on his way to a secret rendezvous with Afghan intelligence officers at the time he was captured. Islamabad feared that Hamid Karzai, the then president of Afghanistan, was covertly offering support to the TTP in the same way Pakistan has long been accused of supporting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

But Ashraf Ghani, the newly elected Afghan president, who is determined to improve relations with Pakistan, has vowed his country will not allow its territory to be used to harm its neighbours.

Although a Pakistani official claimed the decision to move Mehsud was taken after the successful visit of the Afghan president to Islamabad last month, Ghani’s spokesman said the government had been unaware of the plan to transfer the high-profile prisoner.

US officials also painted the episode as a matter strictly between Pakistan and the US, which is working to empty its prisons in Afghanistan as the 13-year combat mission in the country comes to an end.

Whether or not Ghani gave his blessing to the move, the improved relations between the two neighbours has already reaped dividends for Kabul.

In recent weeks Pakistan took the unusual step of taking credit for targeting and killing members of the Haqqani Network, a fierce militant group allied to the Afghan Taliban that Pakistan has long been accused of covertly backing. Analysts say Pakistan’s readiness to attack Afghanistan’s enemies is a direct result of Ghani’s willingness to accommodate its concerns.

Whereas a deeply distrustful Karzai always refused Islamabad’s offers to help train Afghanistan’s army, Ghani has swiftly accepted.

He also won plaudits in Islamabad for publicly declining an offer of military assistance from India, which Pakistan fears has acquired too much influence in post-2001 Afghanistan.

Analyst Zahid Hussain said Ghani had opened a new chapter between the countries. “Things are changing very fast because Ashraf Ghani has shown a flexibility and a lot of understanding,” he said.

“Since he came to power we have not seen Kabul blaming everything that goes wrong on Pakistan, even though there has been a big increase in Taliban attacks [in Afghanistan].”

Hussain added that Pakistan’s often fraught relationship with the US has also been transformed, in large part because of Pakistan’s decision this summer to finally launch a military operation against terrorist sanctuaries in North Waziristan, a lawless region bordering Afghanistan.

In a sign of the strength of Pakistan-US ties, the country’s army chief Raheel Sharif recently returned from an official trip to the US lasting almost two weeks – an unusual length of time for such an important figure to be out of the country. Pakistan also announced on Saturday it had killed the senior al-Qaida commander in charge of planning attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan during a raid in South Waziristan. Adnan el Shukrijuma, a Saudi national, was accused of planning to bomb trains in London and New York, and a $5m US bounty was put on his head.

On Sunday army and intelligence officials in the tribal north-west of the country initially reported a US drone strike in North Waziristan killed another al-Qaida commander called Umer Farooqi. However, the claim was later denied by army sources.