Shootout in Lahore
A U.S. consular employee Geo
TV names as "Davis" reportedly shot and killed two men on motorcycles
who apparently tried to rob him in Lahore earlier today, and another may
also have died in connection with the incident (Geo, AP, AFP/ET, Reuters, BBC). A crowd reportedly gathered at the scene and set tires on fire in protest (AFP).
Ustadh
Ahmad Farooq, al-Qaeda's purported media chief in Pakistan, said in a
recent audio recording in a rare admission of pressure, "There were many
areas where we once had freedom, but now they have been lost... We are
the ones that are losing people, we are the ones facing shortages of
resources. Our land is shrinking and drones are flying in the sky" (AP). There were 118 reported U.S. drone strikes in northwest Pakistan last year, and 9 so far in 2011, most in North Waziristan (NAF).
Sebastian
Rotella has a massive profile of Sajid Mir, one of the lead plotters of
the deadly 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks with ties to Pakistani
security forces whose "global trail traces Lashkar[e-Taiba]'s evolution"
(ProPublica).
Rotella writes that Mir and those killed represent a "wrenching
national-security dilemma" for the Obama administration: "whether the
larger interests of the United States in maintaining good relations
with Pakistan will permit Mir and other suspects to get away."
Human rights in Afghanistan
Afghan
president Hamid Karzai's apparent early pick for speaker of
Afghanistan's newly inaugurated parliament, Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayyaf, has
been accused of ties in the 1980 and 90s with Osama bin Laden and with
ordering a 1993 massacre of hundreds of Hazara civilians in Kabul, among
other "horrific episodes" during Afghanistan's civil war (McClatchy).
Alissa Rubin writes that Karzai, "outnumbered and outmaneuvered" by
Afghan MPs who pushed for parliament to be inaugurated yesterday, "has
become increasingly isolated over the past 16 months since the 2009
presidential election" and "increasingly turns to a small group of
advisers and on several occasions has begun to miscalculate" (NYT).
Nick
Schifrin has today's must-read describing a graphic video of an October
2010 Taliban-ordered stoning of a couple who ran away together in
northern and eastern Afghanistan, the first documented stoning in the
country since the Taliban were in power (ABC).
The stoning took place in Kunduz in front of a crowd of around 200
people, and the video was captured on a cell phone. Afghan authorities
say the men who carried out the stoning, which was defended by a Taliban
spokesman, will be brought to justice (BBC).
Some
Afghan officials reportedly want to "adopt the U.S. practice of
detaining suspected insurgents indefinitely without trial," and though
Karzai has complained about the U.S. policy before, some of his senior
officials support the move as a step toward taking charge of detentions
from the U.S. and NATO (Post).
American officials and some international Christian organizations are
pressing for the release of two men who were arrested on charges of
apostasy after converting to Christianity, which carries a death
sentence for those convicted (WSJ).
The chief of staff for Afghanistan's ministry of justice asserted, "The
sentence for a convert is death and there is no exception. They must be
sentenced to death to serve as a lesson for others."
Hello hello baby, you called?
Britain's
ministry of defense is on the hunt for a soldier in Afghanistan who
left a message for his pregnant girlfriend, Samantha, on the answering
machine of a 44 year old mother of three from Gateshead (Times, CNN, BBC, Sky).
The soldier said, "I love you so much, I love you with all my heart and
I was going to ask you, don't answer, obviously you can't answer, but
will you marry me?"
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