The new head of the Pakistani Taliban has returned to the country’s tribal areas, a spokesman for the militants said Tuesday, after several years based in Afghanistan

The new head of the Pakistani Taliban has returned to the country's tribal areas, a spokesman for the militants said Tuesday, after several years based in Afghanistan.
  
Cleric Maulana Fazlullah was elected as leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) last month after his predecessor was killed by a US drone. Fazlullah has been based mainly in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan since 2009, when a military operation ended his followers' brutal two-year rule of Pakistan's northwest Swat valley.
  
TTP spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said Fazlullah was now "commanding the Taliban movement at an unknown location in the tribal areas". "It is not true that Maulana Fazlullah is in Waziristan, he is in the tribal areas but at unknown location," Shahid told AFP.