Infiltrator suspected in killing of Afghan policemen

Inside job: Militants believed to have been helped by a member of the police force and a suspected Taliban infiltrator killed nine Afghan policemen on Thursday in the southern province of Uruzgan (AFP, Tel). There were ten officers at the post, and nine were killed, leaving security officials believing that the tenth was an infiltrator who has since fled with his Taliban accomplices.

British Defense Secretary Phillip Hammond on Thursday maintained that the United Kingdom and its troops are dedicated to completing their mission in Afghanistan, after six British troops were killed by a roadside bomb on Tuesday (AP). And Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament that the incident will not impact Britain’s plan for a "proper and orderly" withdrawal of troops from the country (Tel). The number of U.S. Marines in Helmand Province will be reduced by about half this year, one of the first steps by the United States toward a withdrawal to be completed by the end of 2014 (AP).

The death toll from an avalanche that buried a remote village in northern Afghanistan this week has climbed to at least 50, as relief groups warned of another impending disaster – flooding – when the snows begin to melt (NYT, AP, Reuters). Reto Stocker, the head of the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) told Reuters Wednesday that as development aid to Afghanistan slows in the lead-up to the 2014 withdrawal deadline, the country risks reversing the gains made in health care over the past 10 years (Reuters).

U.S. military officials are probing allegations that members of the Afghan Air Force are using military aircraft to smuggle drugs and illegal weapons within the country (Reuters). Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department’s March 2012 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report — released Thursday — found that the Afghan government has had "demonstrable success" in the last year reducing the cultivation of drugs, though the "gains remain fragile" and dependent upon security and the state of the Afghan economy (AFP).

Family feud?

Members of Osama bin Laden’s family who lived with him in his Abbottabad compound were purportedly suspicious that his eldest wife, recently returned from Iran, planned to betray the al-Qaeda leader, according to a retired Pakistani army officer, Brig. Shaukat Qadir, who obtained exclusive access to Pakistani intelligence transcripts of the interrogation of bin Laden’s youngest wife (AP, Tel, NYT). And two separate "insiders" have given two of Pakistan’s leading newspapers differing accounts of Interior Minister Rehman Malik’s testimony to the judicial commission investigating bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan (Dawn, ET). One person told Dawn that Malik claimed the Pakistani government was unaware of bin Laden’s presence, while another told the Express Tribune that Malik asserted that Pakistani authorities "were about to catch Osama when U.S. Navy SEALs raided his compound."

Another "insider," this time with access to the Pakistani Taliban, has said the militant commanders of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) are in talks to repair splits over peace talks with the government that have divided the leadership (ET). In the southern province of Balochistan, two Punjabi-speaking "settlers" were shot and killed by gunmen on Wednesday, while five others were injured (ET, ). And the Pakistani Senate unanimously passed a resolution Wednesday condemning the security establishment’s practice of enforced disappearances, particularly prevalent in Balochistan (ET, Dawn).

A spokesman for Pakistan’s Foreign Office responded to allegations in a report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) that Pakistan has 90-110 nuclear warheads, calling the report "highly exaggerated and part of an insidious propaganda campaign" (The News, Dawn). And the Supreme Court of Pakistan on Thursday once again ordered Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to write a letter to Swiss authorities requesting that they reopen a graft case against President Asif Ali Zardari (ET, Dawn, BBC, The News). Gilani must either file a statement or testify in person on March 21, the same day his trial for contempt of court is set to resume.

Questionable claims

Pakistan’s Interior Ministry has blocked a bill drafted three years ago that would raise the criminal age in the country from nine years to 12, simultaneously preventing the bill from introducing a ban on child pornography, trafficking and abuse (Tel). The statement from the ministry contends that children in Pakistan mature faster than in other countries because of various factors, including the hot climate and "exotic and spicy food."

— Jennifer Rowland