Daily brief: Suicide bomber demolishes Peshawar police station

To watch: AfPak Channel editor and director of the New America Foundation’s National Security Studies Program Peter Bergen will testify at 9:30 this morning before the House Homeland Security Committee today on "Threats to the American Homeland After Killing bin Laden." Read Bergen’s testimony here, and explore the New America Foundation’s newly-launched and searchable database of homegrown terrorism arrests since 9/11 (NAF).

Destructive power

A suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed car into the three-story building housing Peshawar’s Criminal Investigations Division yesterday, killing at least seven police officers and soldiers (CNN, Reuters, AP, AJE, BBC, Guardian, Dawn, AFP, Geo, The News). A Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman claimed credit for the blast, which destroyed the building, saying the attack was in revenge for the killing of Osama bin Laden. And a Pentagon spokesman announced today that Pakistan returned the pieces of a U.S. helicopter used in the May 2 raid that killed bin Laden (Reuters, Tel).

China confirmed yesterday that some of its nationals were taken hostage during the nearly 16-hour siege Sunday and Monday of the Mehran naval base, just a day after saying no Chinese citizens had gotten caught up in the raid (NYT). Dawn has new details about the raid, including that the attackers reportedly spoke Urdu like locals and that the attackers shot at armored cars tasked with getting six Americans and 11 Chinese away from danger, with some sources telling the paper that the attackers seemed to know the base’s contingency plans for foreigners (Dawn). Rear Adm. Tahseenullah Khan will head up the investigation into the attack, and the commander of the base has reportedly been replaced (AFP/ET).

The daring raid has sparked concern amongst Pakistan’s allies about its ability to secure its growing nuclear arsenal, with NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen calling Pakistan’s nuclear security after the raid a "matter of concern" (AJE, AP).

Frenemies

A new batch of U.S. diplomatic cables released by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks show that despite assurances from Pakistan that its nuclear proliferation problems had been fixed, U.S. officials continued for several years to watch business transactions related to the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs around the world closely (Dawn). And a 2008 cable described U.S. concerns that military officers were being taught biased and inaccurate information about the United States at Pakistan’s elite National Defense University, but found that "students and instructors were adamant in their approval of all things Chinese" (Dawn, AP, Reuters).

Testimony from key witness David Coleman Headley continued yesterday in the trial of Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Hussain Rana, who is accused of providing support for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, as Headley told the jury that the man he called his handler from Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Major Iqbal, helped choose targets in the attack, including the Jewish Chabad House in the city (ET, WSJ). Headley says Iqbal and his Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) handler Sajid Mir met in 2008 to discuss an attack against the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which in 2005 had published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad (ProPublica, Post).

Flashpoint

Indian security forces announced yesterday that they had shot and killed a "senior" LeT commander named Amir Khan near the Line of Control in Kashmir, and were searching for two other militants who escaped (Daily Times).

Come together

International forces in Afghanistan yesterday announced the capture of a Germany-based Moroccan al-Qaeda facilitator in southeast Afghanistan, who has reportedly told his interrogators that foreign fighters are "converging" on Pakistan so as to be able to cross across to Afghanistan to fight (ABC, Post). The alleged facilitator, whose name has not been released, was picked up after a raid in which NATO forces say they killed 10 insurgents, and found French, Pakistani, and Saudi passports (CNN).   

The Times of London provides more detail on the direct talks reportedly taking place in Germany between the United States and a representative of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, news first reported this weekend by the German magazine Der Spiegel (Times). And in a press conference in Kabul Afghan president Hamid Karzai and NATO chief Rasmussen called on the Taliban to lay down their arms and renounce al-Qaeda in order to reconcile with the government (Pajhwok).

The governor of Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand survived an assassination attempt yesterday in Sangin district (Pajhwok). Taliban fighters overran police forces guarding a government building in Afghanistan’s mountainous province of Nuristan yesterday, and seized half of the Duab district (AP, Pajhwok). And the Taliban yesterday killed the head of a girls’ school in Logar province, near the capital Kabul (Guardian).   

Long wake

The Express Tribune yesterday observed the sixth anniversary of the death of "legendary" Pakistani comedian and film star Rangeela (ET). In addition to being a comedian, Rangeela was also a body builder, a painter, a composer, a producer, a director, and a writer.

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