The Rack: Matthew Teague, "Black Ops and Blood Money," Men's Journal.

Trust deficit

The Times reports that Pakistani authorities have arrested five "CIA informants" who allegedly helped track down Osama bin Laden, including a Pakistani army officer who is said to have copied the license plate numbers of cars entering bin Laden's Abbottabad compound (NYT, Guardian, AJE, CNN, BBC, Tel, AP, AFP, Dawn, Reuters). Authorities in Pakistan had detained several dozen others related to the bin Laden case, in Abbottabad as well as in the hometown of bin Laden's trusted courier. Pakistan denies having arrested an army officer (Bloomberg).

The Times also reports that in a closed-door briefing last week CIA deputy director Michael Morell ranked Pakistani counterterrorism cooperation at a three out of ten; that Pakistani intelligence had all-but-stopped cooperating with the CIA after the January incident where an American contractor shot two men dead in Lahore; that the U.S. is preparing to stage its drone strikes in Pakistan from Afghanistan, should they be ordered out of Pakistan; and that the last of the 120 Special Forces trainers working with Pakistan's Frontier Corps had left the country (NYT).

Adam Goldman has a must-read on Hassan Ghul, the Pakistani al-Qaeda figure who provided the key information leading to the identification of bin Laden's courier, and is now reportedly back fighting with al-Qaeda (AP). Ghul was held in CIA "black sites" before being transferred to the custody of Pakistan's security services, who reportedly detained him for a year before releasing him sometime in 2007.

The House Appropriations Committee passed a $649 billion defense bill Tuesday that included $1.1 billion in aid to help build Pakistan's counterinsurgency capabilities, but withheld 75 percent of the money until President Barack Obama informs Congress of how it will be spent (Tel, Dawn, Reuters, AP). The Committee also approved the creation of a panel to evaluate the war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the AP reports that Pakistan's army has had difficulty convincing tribal leaders in North Waziristan to raise local militias against al-Qaeda and other militant groups there (AP). And Dawn delves into the network of women affiliated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) who recruit and "brainwash" young men into joining the group (Dawn).

Dismal rankings

A ThomsonReuters Foundation survey has ranked Pakistan among the five most dangerous countries in the world for women, a list that also included Afghanistan, India, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Guardian). The Guardian tells the story of a female victim of an acid attack who is still trying to get her life back, eight years after the incident (Guardian). And two men have reportedly been arrested for stripping a woman naked in a village in Khyber-Puktunkhwa province and parading her around, after one of the men accused the woman's son of sleeping with his wife (BBC).

The death toll from a spate of targeted killings and ethnic conflict in the city of Karachi has risen to 20, after eight more people were killed overnight (AFP). A court in Lahore is investigating an alleged extrajudicial killing of a robbery suspect, while Saba Imtiaz reports on a new video purporting to show members of Pakistan's armed forces abusing four detained men (ET, ET).

A Pakistani Senate committee was formed yesterday to investigate the alleged destruction of evidence in the investigation of the killing of five foreigners at a Frontier Corps checkpoint outside of Karachi, while a National Assembly committee has asked that witnesses in the case be given special protection (Dawn, Dawn, ET).

Added violence

A suicide bomber in the province of Kapisa, north of Kabul, killed up to eight people Wednesday when he attacked the provincial governor's office (AP, AFP, BBC). And in the central province of Wardak, insurgents using either rockets or mortars attacked the inaugural ceremony of a police compound, where Afghan vice president Karim Khalili and interior minister Besmullah Mohammadi were in attendance (AP, AFP).  

Craig Whitlock Tuesday had a lengthy profile of Lt. Gen. John Allen, picked to be the next commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, while Joshua Partlow and Greg Jaffe identify Afghanistan's east as the emerging new center of the war against insurgents (Post, Post). Marc Ambinder writes that the review process that will result in recommendations for troop drawdown levels in Afghanistan will be quiet and more discreet than past reviews (National Journal).   

The Express Tribune reports on relative successes in American efforts to bring Taliban leaders and fighters in from the cold, while the AFP notes that reintegration efforts have proved unable to stem the violence in the southern district of Sangin (ET, AFP). And the Times Tuesday examined Zabiullah Mujahid, the chief Taliban mouthpiece who U.S. intelligence analysts believe may actually be a team of propagandists responsible for the Taliban's speedy media response to events (NYT).

A U.S. court has sentenced a former contractor with the firm Blackwater to 37 months in prison in the shooting death of an Afghan in 2009 (FBI, AFP, Reuters, Post, AP). 

And finally, the Guardian highlights the disturbing increase in self-immolations among Afghan women, including at least nine this year and at least 21 last year (Guardian).

Staying efficient

Unveiling a new strategy called "energy for the warfighter" top NATO and U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. David Petraeus ordered unit commanders to shut off lights and air conditioning when possible to lower the fuel bill for international forces (Times). Last year the United States spent $13 billion on fuel costs for military operations around the world.

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