Pakistan

I have to say, I'm a little skeptical of reports that Sirajuddin Haqqani, one of NATO's primary targets, got on a plane and flew to Kabul to meet with Hamid Karzai.

That's not to say negotiations aren't happening. Nick Schifrin reported for ABC News tonight that Karzai is holding indirect talks with Haqqani (should we call them proximity talks?) via Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.

"We don't need to deal with Haqqani directly. We can deal with the ISI," says [a] senior Afghan government official.

Haqqani has well-documented ties to the ISI -- senior Pakistani officials have reportedly referred to his network as a "strategic asset" -- and Islamabad has recently claimed that it can "deliver" the Haqqani leadership to Karzai, according to the New York Times.

And he's planning to go back. There's nothing I can add. Just... watch (h/t Andrew Exum).

Brookings has a new paper out -- it's two papers in one, really -- examining the role of madrassas (religious schools) in promoting militancy in Pakistan, and the interplay between education and conflict.

The educational system in Pakistan is a mess, due in part to the federal nature of the education system. Literacy is 54 percent nationwide, a figure that masks great regional and gender disparities (less than 10 percent of women in Balochistan can read, for example). 6.8 million children between the ages of five and nine are not in school; less than one-fourth of girls finish primary school.

Last week's deadly attacks at two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore -- and the follow-up attack on survivors in a Lahore hospital -- highlighted the strength of the Punjabi Taliban, a group that provincial officials have long preferred to ignore.

Rehman Malik, Pakistan's interior minister, called the Punjabi Taliban "a big threat" in parliamentary testimony this week, and warned (without elaborating, it seems) that the group is planning "a major attack."

Philip Alston's report on targeted killings, delivered to the United Nations' Human Rights Council this week, has received a lot of attention for being the first big takedown of the United States' clandestine drone program.

Alston makes a measured and reasoned legal attack on the general use of targeted killings by governments against non-state actors, but he specifically criticizes the American drone campaign in the Middle East, expressing doubt that the U.S. can claim to be in an armed conflict with Al-Qaeda and concluding that, "[o]utside the context of armed conflict, the use of drones for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal." 

But Howard Koh, the top Obama administration official to attempt a public legal defense of the use of drones, has invoked America's "armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces" as a justification for taking out individual fighters and leaders. So who's right when everybody's wrong?

More than 80 people were killed today in two brutal attacks in Lahore, the latest bloody outcome from decades of state-sanctioned discrimination against a religious sect (and the Pakistani government's inability, or unwillingness, to crack down on the Punjabi Taliban).

Gunmen seized two mosques after Friday prayers, one in the Model Town district, the other in Garhi Sarhu. The resulting hours-long shootout -- at one mosque, gunmen climbed the minaret and opened fire on the streets below -- left dozens dead. Scores more were wounded.

Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, will ask the Obama administration next week to stop the CIA's clandestine drone strike program, according to the New York Times.

Alston... said Thursday that he would deliver a report on June 3 to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva declaring that the "life and death power" of drones should be entrusted to regular armed forces, not intelligence agencies.

The rest of the NYT article lays out the rather convoluted legal justification for running the drone program out of the CIA (it's quite a stretch). The UN makes a compelling case that the CIA officers running the program aren't entitled to the same sort of "battlefield immunity" as uniformed soldiers.

Myra MacDonald offers a good rundown of America's post-Faisal Shahzad Pakistan policy in this Reuters post. The one-sentence summary: Washington has moved from overt threats -- step it up, or face the consequences -- to veiled warnings: If you don't do more, and there's a successful terrorist attack, we won't be able to control public opinion.

A United Nations report released yesterday concluded that Pakistan has the highest number of internally displaced people in the world in 2009. Three million people fled their homes last year, according to the study.

"The military operations of governments and armed non-state actors caused most displacement, and many people were displaced more than once."

Most of the displacements were temporary: Two million people returned to their homes, and Pakistan's IDP population at the end of 2009 was "only" 1.2 million.

Still, the numbers are staggering, particularly when you realize that nearly all of Pakistan's IDPs are coming from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (nee NWFP) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Those two regions have a combined population of roughly 25 million -- so one out of every eight residents became an IDP, at least temporarily, in 2009.

I have tended towards skepticism on the Obama administration's claim that the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan orchestrated the failed Times Square bombing. The White House hasn't released much compelling evidence to support that claim, not even to Congress, and TTP spokesman Azam Tariq denied the group was responsible last week.

The Los Angeles Times reports a few details of the TTP's alleged involvement today. But David Cloud also reports on a few discordant details in Faisal Shahzad's testimony -- why did he go to Mohmand for training, for example, instead of North Waziristan? -- and notes that investigators aren't convinced he's telling the truth.

A suspected U.S. drone strike in North Waziristan, the second in 48 hours, killed between six and ten people in the villgge of Datta Khel, about 35km west of Miranshah.

The drones fired an unusually large number of missiles -- 11, according to Dawn; 18, according to The News -- at a group of tents near the village. Local security officials told AFP that as many as five drones were involved in the attack.

The identities of the victims are unknown, and it's unclear whether the attack targeted any high-level Taliban figures.

A drone strike in Datta Khel on Sunday killed 10 people; there were no reports of high-level Taliban commanders killed in that attack, either.

A suspected U.S. drone strike killed at least ten people in Datta Khel, a tehsil in North Waziristan located roughly 35km northeast of Miranshah.

There were no reports of high-level commanders killed in the strike -- perhaps in keeping with the Obama administration's recently-disclosed policy of targeting lower-level Taliban figures. Pakistani officials say all of the victims were "militants," and that the house targeted by the drone strike was used by the Taliban.

I have a lot of questions about yesterday's New York Times report that the Obama administration is debating an expanded "boots on the ground" presence in Pakistan, but the fundamental question is this: What does Washington hope to accomplish by sending more troops to Pakistan?

Policymakers have been debating this issue for a while, but it's likely to receive renewed attention in the wake of Faisal Shehzad's failed Times Square bombing. So it's worth pondering the strategic implications of sending more U.S. troops -- trainers, most likely -- to Pakistan.

CNN's "Afghanistan Crossroads" blog points us today to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where a hearing is underway to discuss Operation Moshtarak, NATO's much-ballyhooed February offensive in the southern Afghan hamlet of Marja.

John Kerry, chairing the committee, opened with a prepared statement that praised U.S. soldiers for pushing the Taliban out of a poppy-production stronghold, but he acknowledged that NATO has failed to follow through:

Unfortunately, the initial word from hundreds of villagers of Marjah suggests the full measure of our challenge. A recent survey conducted by the International Council on Security and Development showed that a vast majority of villagers felt negatively about foreign troops and that more young Afghans had joined the Taliban over the last year.

Before I round up the latest facts about confessed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, 30, I want to address one particularly intriguing paragraph from the New York Times' Tuesday profile of the financial analyst-turned-wannabe jihadi:

George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in Norwalk, Conn., from Mr. Shahzad for $261,000 in May 2004. A few weeks after he moved in, Mr. LaMonica said, investigators from the national Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad. It struck Mr. LaMonica as unusual, but he said detectives told him they were simply "checking everything out."

We all know that one's nationality can automatically arouse suspicion and trigger surveillance these days, but counterterrorism officers interviewing the guy who bought Shahzad's house, in 2004, four years after Shahzad immigrated from Pakistan and was already well into his university studies here? Doesn't it seem like they'd need a pretty good reason to be that interested?

(Updated below)
First of all, Majlis readers, I'd like to make a bit of an apology for our lackadaisical blogging over here in recent days. As many of you know, Gregg landed in Doha late last week to begin working for Al-Jazeera English, so he is understandably wrapped up in administrative paperwork, not to mention acclimating to the "unseasonably cool" 93-degree Gulf heat. Rest assured, he'll be back in fighting form soon.

Meanwhile, as many of you probably don't know, I too will be heading off to Doha this summer to join Gregg at Al-Jazeera. We'll both be on staff, reporting for their website, but you can expect that our asinine Middle East analysis and commentary will continue, here at the Majlis or elsewhere. So please excuse our scatterbrains in the meantime.

With that out of the way, let's take a look at the most recent news emerging about Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American who has reportedly confessed to trying to detonate a car bomb in New York City's Times Square.

A U.S. drone strike in northwest Pakistan killed at least five people this morning, the second deadly strike in North Waziristan in three days.

Today's mid-morning attack blew up an alleged Taliban compound in the Khushali Toorkhel area, about 25km east of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan. Between five and eight people were killed, according to conflicting reports from local authorities.

At least six people were killed by two suspected U.S. drone strikes in northwest Pakistan today -- the second and third drone attacks this week.

Today's attacks targeted Tolkhel, a village just north of Miranshah, the most populated town in North Waziristan. AFP reports that the first attack struck a car full of alleged Taliban militants; the second targeted a group of people who rushed to help the victims.

Earlier this week, a drone strike killed three people near the village of Boya in North Waziristan, about 20km west of Miranshah.

Pakistani airstrikes killed nearly 100 "suspected militants" in two northwest districts on the border with Afghanistan on Saturday in an effort to continue to battle insurgents after hard-fought campaigns to the south.

One of the strikes occurred near the town of Bezoti, in the Orakzai district, where militants had tried to capture a military stronghold during a midnight attack on Friday.

The United Nations announced yesterday that more than 200,000 people have registered as internally displaced persons in Pakistan's Orakzai and Kurram agencies.

Both have been the site of heavy fighting over the last few months: 54 people were killed by a round of airstrikes overnight in Orakzai; more than three dozen people were killed in Orakzai roughly two weeks ago; nine alleged militants were killed in Kurram yesterday morning; and so on.