Daily brief: U.S.-Pakistan intelligence cooperation scaled back after shooting

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A tense relationship

Pakistani intelligence officials are reportedly scaling back relations with the CIA following the Raymond Davis incident, in which a CIA security contractor shot and killed two Pakistanis he says were trying to rob him late last month (AP, Reuters). The AP reports that the ISI believes Davis knew the men he shot and had contacts in the country’s tribal regions. The two American CIA contractors who allegedly drove to help Davis after the January 27 incident and fatally struck a Pakistani bystander have been quietly withdrawn from the country (Reuters). The U.S. has reportedly hinted that it might take the case to the International Court of Justice if Pakistan does not agree that Davis qualifies for diplomatic immunity under the Vienna convention (ET).

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs, and Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of Pakistan’s army, Gen. David Petraeus, top commander in Afghanistan, and other military officials reportedly held a day-long meeting at a luxury resort in Oman to discuss the war (Stars and Stripes, Geo, AFP). In the tribal areas, five Pakistani security forces were killed in a militant attack on a checkpoint in Khyber, where Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Islam fighters clashed earlier today, and ten militants were killed in clashes in Kurram (Dawn, Pajhwok, Daily Times). And while the trucks were en route to the Chaman border checkpoint, gunmen attacked several NATO tankers in Baluchistan (AP).

Under fire

A suicide car bomb attack in Kandahar’s Spin Boldak killed an Afghan intelligence officer and wounded 26 other people earlier today, and two separate explosions in the eastern Afghan province of Khost left one dead and 5 injured (AP, Tolo, Pajhwok, AFP, Pajhwok). The outgoing U.N. deputy special representative to Afghanistan, the Canadian diplomat Robert Watkins, said earlier today that security in Afghanistan is at its worst since 2001, with 40 percent of the country off limits (AP, Tolo).

During a visit to the Pentagon yesterday, Afghan defense minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said Afghanistan "will need your [American] help beyond 2014" (AFP, CNN, Tolo). And a new report from 16 aid agencies warns that gains made in Afghan girls’ education are in danger of backsliding because of poor security conditions, inadequate teachers and supplies, and donor refocusing away from development more toward withdrawal (Guardian, Reuters).

Reuters reports that there have been 20 night raids per night for the last three months in Afghanistan, a controversial tactic whose pace has been ramped up under Gen. David Petraeus, and adds quotes from Afghan civilians who have been affected by the raids (Reuters, Reuters). Sgt. Derrick Anthony Miller, an Army National Guardsman accused of killing an unarmed Afghan civilian by shooting him in the head at close range last year in Laghman province, is awaiting a court martial (Post, AP). Miller has claimed the Afghan, Atta Mohammed, reached for the gun, an account disputed by two witnesses.

Eating it up

After being shuttered under Gen. Petraeus’s predecessor Gen. Stanley McChrystal, American fast food chains are reopening at bases across Afghanistan, with a new Pizza Hut coming to Bagram Air Field soon (WSJ). Individual base commanders will now get to decide which fast food franchises, if any, will be allowed to open.

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