Daily brief: Committee disqualifies nine Afghan parliamentarians

Crisis decision

In a bid to end Afghanistan’s constitutional crisis, the country’s Independent Election Committee (IEC) announced Sunday that it would invalidate the elections of nine parliamentarians, saying they won their seats through fraud, and replacing them with nine others (NYT, McClatchy, Post, LAT, WSJ, AJE, AP, CNN). Though IEC head Fazil Ahmad Manawi denied the influence of political pressure on the committee’s decision, some lawmakers and the country’s Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) protested the decision to intervene after election results were already announced; a parliamentary group containing more than half of the country’s MP’s, the Coalition for Support of the Law, has formed in opposition to the move (NYT). 

The Telegraph reports that Afghanistan and the United States are close to signing a strategic partnership agreement that will allow U.S. troops — not only trainers, but also Special Operations Forces and aerial assets — to remain in the country through 2024 (Tel). In an interview last week, the head of the NATO mission to train Afghan security forces, U.S. Army Gen. William Caldwell, said that several thousand trainers would be needed in Afghanistan until at least 2020 (AFP). And Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said this weekend that he believed the United States had been "swindled" during negotiations by a man posing as key Mullah Omar confidant Tayyeb Agha (ET).

In Helmand province, a district prosecutor was shot dead Sunday by unidentified gunmen during his commute to work, while in neighboring Kandahar province an Agriculture Ministry employee was killed in a similar manner (AJE, Tel, AFP). Kabul’s police chief Gen. Ayub Slangi said Friday that the Taliban attack on the British Council compound in the city was directed by militant commanders in Pakistan, while Ben Farmer reports that as a result of attacks against Western targets, the city has, "disappeared under layers of concrete blast walls and coils of razor wire" (ABC, Tel). And a bomb exploded in a market in the Gereshk district of Helmand province Monday, killing two civilians, as Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security called for the creation of a special tribunal to try terrorism suspects (AP, Tolo).

Three stories round out the weekend: In Kandahar province, a bus crash Saturday killed 35 people on their way to Kabul (BBC, DT, AP). The BBC reports that according to military logs, Afghan security forces fired on British troops accidentally 19 times in the last three-and-a-half years in southern Afghanistan, while British troops accidentally fired on Afghan forces at least 10 times (BBC). And CNN looks at a controversial plan to nationalize Afghanistan’s women’s shelters (CNN).

Containment

Killings continue to rock Karachi, as Pakistani prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani arrived in the city Monday to discuss the security situation with local officials (Dawn, ET, Dawn, Dawn, VOA, Dawn, The News, Dawn, DT, The News, Dawn, Bloomberg). Business leaders in the city demanded the intervention of the army Friday, as religious leaders called this weekend for an end to the violence, and the country’s army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani told a newspaper Sunday that the army was ready to intervene in Karachi, if asked by the civilian government (The News, DT, Dawn, ET, Reuters, ET, Dawn). The chief justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, said Monday that he would be looking into the bloodshed in the city (ET).

Three Pakistani soldiers were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Khyber Agency Sunday, after two soldiers and five militants were killing in a firefight in the agency Saturday (ET, AFP/ET, AP). The minister of education for Khyber-Puktunkhwa province was injured this weekend during a militant attack, while the Tribune reports that families displaced during combat operations in Orakzai are still unable to return due to the persistent militant threat in the agency (Dawn, ET). Pakistan will reportedly receive additional aid from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates destined for the country’s tribal areas (ET). And in Baluchistan, five NATO fuel tankers were destroyed Saturday (AFP, DT).

A Pakistani anti-terrorism court will likely indict seven people on August 27 in the killing of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, including several members of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and two former police officers (ET). Pakistan’s government will propose a new anti-terrorism law in an attempt to shore up the country’s troubled legal system (ET, The News). Meanwhile, the United Nations has called on Pakistan to do more to investigate the killings and disappearances of journalists in Pakistan (Dawn).

In other news, police still have few clues in the abduction of American aid expert Warren Weinstein, while in Peshawar four American diplomats evaded a police roadblock this weekend and "took refuge" in the U.S. consulate in the city (NPR, ET, Dawn). Pakistan’s currency, the rupee, fell to a record low on Saturday (Reuters). And Pakistan’s government will merge its ministries of power and petroleum as the country’s energy situation worsens (Dawn).

Flashpoint

An Indian government report has concluded after a three-year investigation that innocent civilians may be buried in unmarked graves in Indian-administered Kashmir that contain as many as 2,000 bodies, though police say the graves hold only militants who died fighting Indian security forces (AP, Guardian). And Indian authorities say they killed as many as 12 militants trying to cross from Pakistan into Indian-administered Kashmir this weekend (Reuters, AJE, CNN).

Bad influences

Having grown up with numerous cricket scandals, the Tribune reports that young Pakistanis are increasingly involved in betting and "match-fixing" of even casual cricket matches (ET). Some teenagers interviewed for the piece said that they first heard of the latter practice only after key Pakistani players were banned from cricket because of their involvement in fixing games.

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