Daily brief: three drone strikes in 24 hours pound Pakistani tribal regions

Note: This is the last AfPak Channel Daily Brief of 2009. We will return on Monday, January 4, 2010. Happy new year!

Drones and bombs

Three suspected U.S.-operated Predator drones have struck the Pakistani tribal agency of North Waziristan in the past 24 hours, hammering an alleged stronghold for al Qaeda fighters and Afghan insurgent commander Siraj Haqqani and killing at least 15 people (Wash Post, AP, Reuters, AFP, Dawn, Geo, NYT). The second of the three assaults hit the hometown of Pakistani Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur, with whom the Pakistani military has a truce while it continues to fight in South Waziristan.

After the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that insurgents in Iraq had been able to hack into video feed from drones in the country, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen said that no significant military damage had been done (AP). Senior military officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff reportedly discussed the potential security shortfalls of the drones feeds in 2004, but did not start securing the signals until earlier this year (WSJ).

A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives during Friday prayers near a mosque popular with military officers in Pakistan’s Lower Dir district, killing around a dozen people (AFP, Geo, BBC, AP, Pajhwok). The attack has not yet been claimed. And suspected Taliban militants attacked a NATO supply truck in Baluchistan late last night, underlining the vulnerability of supply lines to Afghanistan (Pajhwok). Yesterday, Pakistan’s army dismissed calls from the United States to make moves against the Afghan Taliban, saying it is already stretched to the limit elsewhere in the northwest of the country (AP).

Taking the fallout

In the fallout of this week’s Pakistani Supreme Court decision to nullify an amnesty protecting Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and thousands of other politicians from corruption charges, an arrest warrant has been issued for the country’s Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, and Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar was blocked from leaving the country for an official visit to China (BBC, McClatchy, Dawn, AFP, FT, AJE, Telegraph). Malik is one of around 250 officials whose dormant corruption and criminal cases has already been re-opened, though Zardari himself is immune from prosecution while he holds the presidency.

Zardari’s spokesman denied rumors that the Pakistani Army may be plotting a coup against the civilian government, after CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. Husain Haqqani if there is a coup brewing and Haqqani replied, "I hope not" (CNN, Bloomberg, The News).

A starting lineup

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is set to announce his lineup of cabinet ministers to the Afghan Parliament tomorrow, reportedly keeping some key ministers who are backed by the international community, tossing at least two who face serious corruption charges, and introducing a handful of new faces (WSJ, McClatchy). The AP has a partial list of ministers who will stay on, including the controversial Ismail Khan, a powerful figure in western Afghanistan accused of human rights violations over the last 25 years (AP).

Peter Galbraith, the United Nations’ former number two man in Afghanistan who left his position in Kabul after protesting the way claims of corruption were being handled in the aftermath of the August 20 presidential election, has reportedly decided to challenge his dismissal, saying, "I was terminated for no reason at all and this is the reason I am taking legal action" (NYT).

The alliance

French, Afghan, and U.S. troops are currently involved in an offensive named Operation Septentrion in the Uzbeen Valley, east of Kabul, the site of a Taliban ambush in August 2008 that left 10 French soldiers dead (BBC, AFP, AP). France currently has some 3,000 troops in Afghanistan. And Spain has agreed to send an additional 511 soldiers, mostly to help train Afghan forces, bringing its deployment to more than 1,500 (NYT).  A NATO airstrike late last night left three civilians in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar dead, after initial reports suggested that men were placing a roadside bomb (AFP).

Eric Schmitt profiles a battalion of soldiers deployed in Afghanistan in a snapshot of the Obama administration’s war effort there (NYT).

Empowered against corruption

Last week, several hundred Afghan women took to the streets of Kabul in a nonviolent protest against corruption in Hamid Karzai’s government, followed by about 500 men in an unusual instance of men allowing women to take leadership roles in Afghanistan (LAT).

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