Daily brief: Indian forces battle Kashmiris in streets

Event notice: Peter Bergen, Maj. Michael Waltz, and Shuja Nawaz will be discussing the Battle for Afghanistan and Pakistan tomorrow in DC. Details and RSVP available here (NAF).

Flashpoint

On Saturday, tens of thousands of separatist protesters took to the streets across Indian-administered Kashmir, causing the Indian government to deploy thousands of security forces to impose an indefinite curfew (AJE, AP, AFP). Separatist leader and chief Muslim cleric in Kashmir Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was formally accused of treason for encouraging the march, and separatists then stoned the house of India’s state education minister (AP, Dawn).

Protesters defied curfews earlier today to torch a missionary school in Tangmarg, after Iranian television showed footage of Christians tearing out pages of a book alleged to be the Quran on September 11 in the United States (AFP, Hindu). As many as 12 demonstrators and one police officer were killed across the valley, the single biggest death toll from protests in years (AFP, Reuters, AP). Today, Indian officials are meeting to discuss whether to offer an olive branch and lift 20 year old emergency measures that give Indian security forces sweeping powers to use force (BBC, AFP, NDTV, Hindu).

India’s Hindustan Times conducted a poll finding that two-thirds of Kashmiris surveyed want complete independence for Jammu and Kashmir and 56 percent blame India for for the summer’s unrest (ET, AFP). In Pakistani-administered Kashmir, a rare suicide attack in Rawalakot killed the bomber when his timer went off early (Dawn). Steve Coll has a must-read in the current NYRB, "Kashmir: the time has come" (NYRB).

The return of the president

Former Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, currently living in London, said he would return to Pakistan and run for parliament in 2013, forming his own new political party (BBC, AFP). Leaders of several Pakistani political parties ridiculed the claim, calling the former president a "coward" who "preferred to run away instead of facing courts of law in Pakistan" (ET).

A suspected U.S. drone strike reportedly targeted fighters for local Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur early Sunday morning in North Waziristan, killing a handful in the 63rd such strike this year (AJE, Dawn/AFP, AFP, AP, Geo, The News, CNN).

Flood watch: As floodwaters continue to make their way toward the Arabian Sea six weeks after the beginning of Pakistan’s devastating floods, new towns in Sindh have been inundated and in Baluchistan, desperate flood victims looted aid trucks (Reuters, ET). The normally festive celebration of Eid was muted in relief camps; some 70 percent of those affected by the floods are children and women, and the AP considers the dangers to pregnant Pakistani women in flood zones (AP, AP). Punjab and Sindh have contributed two billion rupees each to the federal government’s flood relief fund (ET).

Protesting Quran burning

Two Afghans were killed in central Logar province when Afghan police opened fire into a crowd of stone-throwing Afghans protesting a Florida pastor’s canceled plan to burn Qurans on September 11 (LAT, AP, Pajhwok, NYT, Dawn/Reuters, Reuters, Post, Independent). The Afghan NGO Safety Office reports that by nearly every metric it tracks that Afghanistan is more dangerous now than it has been since 2001, finding that the Taliban are now active in 33 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, compared with four provinces four years ago (NYT).

An Air Force investigation has found that the crew of a Predator drone played down two warnings about the presence of children near Shahidi Hassas in Uruzgan before military commanders ordered a helicopter attack that left 23 Afghan civilians dead in February (NYT, WSJ). NATO forces conceded Sunday that there could have been civilian casualties in a NATO airstrike in Takhar that wounded an Afghan election candidate, though assessed that the target of the airstrike, a leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, was killed (Reuters, AP). The head of the investigation commented, "The question remains why an election official or candidate was traveling with a known terrorist." The Afghan government disputes the NATO finding, claiming ten Afghan civilians were killed (AP).

Top military commander in Afghanistan Gen. David Petraeus has issued a two-page memo revising alliance guidelines for awarding the roughly $14 billion a year of international contracts in the country, encouraging commanders to seek new companies with the aim of breaking up "monopolies and helping to weaken patronage networks" (AP, NYT). In Kandahar’s Now Ruzi area, the one functioning school is protected by a local anti-Taliban warlord who works with the U.S. military (McClatchy). Initiatives to recruit Pashtuns from southern Afghanistan to join the Afghan security forces are not going as planned (WSJ).

Al Jazeera reports from a Taliban group in northern Afghanistan that has al-Qaeda fighters bolstering its presence, and Time writes that the nominally Kashmir-oriented Lashkar-e-Taiba is upping its involvement in Afghanistan (AJE, Time). London’s Sunday Times profiles a teenage would-be Taliban suicide bomber Toryelai, who received conflicting messages about the validity of suicide attacks from different insurgent commanders (Times).

Speaking of corruption

U.S. officials have reportedly decided to step back from prosecuting members of the Karzai administration because of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s protests, though they don’t yet agree on the nuances of a new approach toward combating Afghanistan’s endemic graft (Post, NYT). The Karzai administration has been attempting to limit the role of Western officials who mentor Afghan anti-corruption prosecutors (WSJ).

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistran Reconstruction has assessed that Saturday’s parliamentary elections will be troubled by fraud, institutional problems, and an absence of sufficient candidate vetting and the lack of a list of registered voters (AP). To watch for: poll violence, forged voting cards, bribery, and other forms of fraud (Tolo, McClatchy, Tel). The Post profiles a 25 year old female candidate from Kabul who is a former Olympian, and the AFP visits a 40 year old female MP running for reelection in Herat, both of whom face intimidation and threats of violence (Post, AFP). Fawzya Gailani, who has worked to set up literacy and computer courses for Afghan women, observed, "Being killed is normal for Afghan women. If I am killed because I am a woman politician, it is all the same."

Sawn off

Before the summer’s protests kicked into high gear in June, a Kashmiri cricket bat factory used to produce 200 bats a day; now, output is down to 50 (AFP). The cricket bat industry employs some 10,000 people, and the bats are sold to Indian tourists or shipped to cricket shops across India.

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