John Kerry makes unannounced visit to Afghanistan

New Post: Ziad Haider, "Could Pakistan bridge the U.S.-China divide?" (AfPak).

Surprise!

On a brief, unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry held a cheerful joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul just hours after the United States transferred all but a "small number" of the detainees at Bagram Prison to Afghan custody (NYT, Reuters, AP, LAT, Guardian, Post, NPR). Their remarks stood in stark contrast to the tense negotiations that replaced a cancelled joint press conference during a visit by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel earlier this month. The successful negotiation of an agreement on Bagram prison represents "a shift that’s going on in how the U.S. is looking at what’s important. We have to look at the big picture: What’s the U.S. strategic interest here?" said one U.S. official familiar with the issue.

Secretary Kerry also met with several Afghan women entrepreneurs at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, including the founder and captain of Afghanistan’s women’s soccer team, and the founder of a trucking and catering conglomerate (Post). The women told Kerry about the progress women have made since the fall of the Taliban, but expressed their concerns about security and the future of their country.

Eight suicide bombers attacked the Jalalabad Police Quick Reaction Forces on Tuesday, killing five officers and wounding four others (AP, CNN). The first bomber detonated a vehicle packed with bombs outside the headquarters, after which the other seven attacked the facility, with three managing to set off their explosives and the other four being shot by police officers. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack.

Modicum of intolerance

Local clerics in the Kasur District of Punjab Province allegedly attacked and tortured an Ahmadi family on Tuesday after threatening violence if the family members did not convert to Sunni Islam (ET). And a female schoolteacher was shot and killed in Khyber Agency on Tuesday (ET, AFP).

Secretary John Kerry will not be visiting Pakistan during this trip to the region, but he did meet Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani in Amman, Jordan for dinner on Sunday, where they discussed the reconciliation process in Afghanistan and security issues throughout South Asia (Dawn).

Caught red-handed

Investigations into the office of the Punjab Accountant General have discovered that the office made unauthorized payments in the amount of 1.39 billion rupees, much of it to "ghost employees" during the 2011-12 fiscal year (ET). At least 624 employees were able to receive double salaries through the use of fraudulent identification numbers.

— Jennifer Rowland