Wonk Watch: AfPak Channel editor and New America Foundation senior fellow Peter Bergen is testifying before the House Committee on Homeland Security this morning on the evolving threat from al Qaeda to the United States. His testimony is available here and a webcast will be available here at 10:00am EST. If you would like us to consider featuring your research in Wonk Watch, email it to tiedemann@newamerica.net.

High expectations

Nearly three months after the fraud-plagued election, Afghan President Hamid Karzai was inaugurated into his second five year term, saying that he wants Afghan security forces to be under full Afghan control within five years and called for a loya jirga, or traditional council of elders, to address the insurgent threat and the country's pervasive corruption (BBC, Washington Post, AFP, Pajhwok). In a speech that hit many of the same notes he struck during the presidential campaign, Karzai called for his erstwhile presidential rival Abdullah Abdullah to join a national unity government and also reached out to Taliban fighters for reconciliation (Times of London).

Excerpts of Karzai's inauguration speech, which was attended by some 800 Afghan and foreign dignitaries, are available from the BBC (BBC, New York Times). The Taliban, for their part, dismissed the inauguration as "not a historic day" and called Kabul a "government based on nothing," though initial foreign reaction was more positive (AP). Security in the Afghan capital today was tight and the mood tense, as the government declared a holiday and encouraged Afghan and international workers alike to stay home out of fears over militant attacks (Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Los Angeles Times).

And indeed, Afghan officials say a pair of suicide bombs in neighboring Uruzgan and Zabul provinces in southern Afghanistan killed at least ten civilians and two U.S. soldiers at around the same time Karzai was being inaugurated (AP, AFP, Reuters).

A key concern of the international community is the levels of corruption in Afghanistan, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered "what amounted to a stern pep talk to a nervous partner" to Karzai, saying in private to the president that future civilian aid from the U.S. would depend in part on how well the government addressed corruption (New York Times, Reuters). Clinton later told reporters that Kabul has not done "nearly enough to demonstrate a seriousness of purpose to tackle corruption" (New York Times, Washington Post, Pajhwok). Part of addressing the corruption problem will be rooting out the cronyism that has pervaded the government, and Karzai is facing rising calls from Afghans, Western donors, and the United States to replace many of the warlords who supported him during the election season (New York Times).

The cost of doing business?

A prime example of the scope of Afghanistan's corruption problem is the case of the Afghan minister of mines, who reportedly accepted a bribe of $30 million in exchange for awarding the country's largest development project to a Chinese firm (Washington Post, Times of London, AP). Muhammad Ibrahim Adel allegedly accepted the bribe in Dubai in late 2007, when the state-run China Metallurgical Group Corp. won the nearly $3 billion bid to extract copper from the Aynak deposit, considered one of the world's largest 'unexploited' copper deposits, in Logar province. In a press conference yesterday, Adel vehemently denied the accusation and is considering suing the Washington Post, which broke the story (Pajhwok).

Corruption, violence, and political uncertainty may cause a massive capital flight from Afghanistan, according to Al Jazeera, which reports that many Afghan business owners are already moving their assets overseas to the Gulf where the economies are safer (Al Jazeera). Another reason for the exodus is the recent increase in kidnappings for ransom of the relatives of wealthy Afghan businessmen.

Afghanistan's other elections

And in an under-covered story, McClatchy checks in on the status of Afghanistan's provincial elections -- which occurred on the same day as the presidential balloting in August and suffered from similar problems of fraud and threats of violence -- to find that many of the provincial-level contests remain unresolved (McClatchy). The U.N.-backed body charged with investigating complaints about the election is still considering 640 high-priority claims before issuing final verdicts.

Afghanistan's election drama comes as the United States is contemplating a new plan for the country, the debate around which has recently shifted toward an exit strategy, which worries some lawmakers like Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MI), who said of the Taliban that "they'll just wait us out" (Wall Street Journal). Senior officials say, however, that U.S. President Barack Obama is not calling for publicly declared handover dates, but rather "key milestones" for the country to meet.

An explosive attack

In the eighth major attack since the beginning of the month, a suicide bomber who arrived in a taxi and detonated his explosives while being searched by Pakistani police at the entrance of a courthouse in Peshawar killed at least 19 and wounded more than 50 (AP, Dawn, Geo TV, Reuters, BBC). The capital of the Northwest Frontier Province, Peshawar, has been hard hit by attacks that picked up speed in early October ahead of the Pakistani military's operations in the militant stronghold of South Waziristan (AP, Bloomberg). The spate of violence has left more than 400 Pakistanis dead.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, in a news conference yesterday in a secret location in South Waziristan, told a handful of reporters that the militant group had not retreated, as the Army has claimed, but instead said, "We have voluntarily withdrawn into the mountains under a strategy that will trap the Pakistan army in the area" (AFP, Dawn, The News). Some 550 militants have reportedly been killed since the operations began.

In the United States' 46th alleged drone strike in Pakistan this year, several missiles were fired at a suspected Taliban compound in the tribal agency of North Waziristan, killing several reported militants in the Shana Khuwara village close to the South Waziristan border (Geo TV, Reuters, BBC, Dawn, AP). There have been no reports of drone strikes in South Waziristan, previously a frequent target of the CIA-operated missiles, since the Pakistani military's offensive began on October 17.

The U.S. expects to complete a review of how to spend the $7.5 billion in aid for Pakistan by the end of November, focusing on the country's "decrepit" energy sector, which economists say undermines potential for growth and weakens the already-shaky civilian government (Reuters). It is not yet known precisely how the $1.5 billion per year will be allocated, but officials say infrastructure projects are an "important part" of the review.

Complicated connections

Indian officials are investigating whether two men, recently arrested in Chicago on terrorism charges related to planning an attack on a Danish newspaper that in 2005 published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, have connections to the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks that left more than 160 dead (New York Times, Washington Post). David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana -- a U.S. and a Canadian citizen, respectively -- are also accused of reporting to Ilyas Kashmiri, a onetime Pakistani military officer turned Islamist militant commander associated with both al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba, and conspiring with another as-yet-unnamed former Pakistani military official, in one of the first cases in which authorities have seemed to link suspects directly to former officers, though such connections have long been suspected.

And in almost a dozen recent terrorism cases in the U.S., U.K., and Canada, investigators have discovered a common thread among the suspects: devotion to messages from the radical U.S.-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, who has apparently used the internet to useful effect in radicalization (New York Times). Aulaqi has been linked to the Fort Hood and Fort Dix attacks, among others.

Happily ever later

Thousands of Pakistanis have demanded that the government of Punjab province not implement a recently passed resolution to stop performing marriage ceremonies after 10:00pm (The News). The neighboring Sindh government allows marriage ceremonies until 12:00am, and the protesters want Punjab to follow suit.

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