Bin Laden family members deported to Saudi Arabia

Moving out: Osama bin Laden’s three widows and 11 children and grandchildren were deported late Thursday night from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, after being detained in Pakistan for almost a year following the U.S. operation against the bin Laden compound in Abottabad last May (Reuters, ET, CNN, AP).

Despite vehement American opposition, Pakistan’s state-run Inter State Gas Systems has issued a tender calling for applications from contractors interested in building the proposed Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline, and one of the company’s officials said they hope to begin construction by the end of the year, to (Reuters). Bilateral meetings on Thursday and Friday between U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman and Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar made little progress, with Khar standing firm on Pakistan’s opposition to drone strikes, and Grossman unable to secure a promise to reopen NATO ground supply routes through Pakistan (ET, AJE).

The CIA reportedly handed over to Pakistani officials intelligence obtained from Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad that outlines al-Qaeda plots to launch attacks in Pakistan (Dawn). Details of the information remain unclear. Pakistani security forces killed four suspected militants and detained seven others in a raid on a flood-damaged girls’ school being used by the men in Turbat, Balochistan on Friday morning (ET, Dawn).

Unfriendly fire

NATO officials revealed Friday that a man wearing an Afghan Army uniform shot and killed an American soldier in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar Province on Wednesday, the latest in a rising trend of so-called green-on-blue attacks (AP). And on Thursday evening, an Afghan policemen opened fire on Afghan and Western troops in the Zhari district of Kandahar Province, killing at least one Afghan policeman and injuring two U.S. service members (LAT).

Unidentified hackers took down the Afghan Taliban’s main website for the third time in less than a year on Thursday, replacing the insurgent group’s usual propaganda with images of Taliban executions, and messages of support for the Afghan government and rejection of violence (Reuters). Pakistani, U.S., and Afghan officials said at the end of a two-day meeting in Islamabad on Friday that the three countries are working on ways to provide safe passage to Taliban militants who wish to participate in peace talks (Reuters).

The Afghan Foreign Ministry said Thursday that Afghanistan and Iran have agreed to a prisoner swap, in a sign of improving relations between the two neighbors, though it is unclear how many convicts would be transferred (Reuters). Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Musazai said that Iran is holding some 3,000 Afghans in its prisons, some having been convicted of narcotics trafficking, which carries the death penalty in Iran.

Chillin’ like willens

When Lt. Col. Robert Horney asked his interpreter, Khan, why the local Afghan commander was short soldiers, Khan relayed the commander’s explanation that his soldiers had gone home for leave and refused to come back; they were "chillin’ like willens" (Post). Unprepared for Khan’s use of the American idiom, Horney asked "Those were the exact words he used?" Khan replied, "No sir. Not exact words. But I don’t just translate. I like to put it into words that you understand."

— Jennifer Rowland