War and Terrorism

The Yemeni-Huthi truce, signed more than a month ago, is still holding on -- and a couple of recent developments suggest the Huthis are serious about implementing its terms.

The Huthis released 178 prisoners today, according to the cease-fire monitoring committee, a government body that oversees implementation of the truce. The prisoners include both soldiers and civilians; they've been transported from Saada to Sana'a.

A U.S. drone fired three to five missiles at a "militant compound" near the village of Datta Khel in Pakistan's North Waziristan province today, killing at least eight suspected pro-Taliban fighters.

I was off the grid all day, so I'm just now getting a chance to respond to the reports that the Afghan government was negotiating with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar when he was arrested by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence.

Karzai "was very angry" when he heard that the Pakistanis had picked up Baradar with an assist from U.S. intelligence, the adviser said. Besides the ongoing talks, he said Baradar had "given a green light" to participating in a three-day peace jirga that Karzai is hosting next month.

If this report is true, it basically confirms one of the two rumors about Pakistan's motives for arresting Baradar: The ISI wants to control Taliban reconciliation talks in Afghanistan, so it's going to round up "moderate" Afghan Taliban figures who are talking directly with Karzai and replace them with "extremists" loyal to the ISI (Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, come on down).

An airstrike in Yemen's Abyan province killed two alleged al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula members -- at least according to Yemen's interior ministry. But there are reports in the Yemeni press (عربي) that the bombing actually targeted members of the Southern Movement. 

The interior ministry says the attack was carried out by the Yemeni air force (it's probably keen to dispel any rumors of U.S. involvement). Security officials say the victims were AQAP members, plotting to attack targets on the Arabian Sea (a claim we've heard before).

Important story by Mark Perry this morning on Foreign Policy's Middle East Channel: Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, reportedly warned the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the White House that the Israeli-Arab conflict is endangering U.S. interests in the region.

Four explosions struck the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Saturday night, killing at least 35 and wounding around 45, according to Al-Jazeera.

Three of the bombs appeared to be a diversion to a larger blast at a prison that had been targeted during a successful jailbreak two years ago, Reuters reported.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks and called them a "message" to NATO commanders who have announced an impending offensive in Kandahar this summer, similar to the just-completed operation in Marja.

Heavy fighting in Mogadishu is entering its third day; the violence has already killed 40 people in the Somali capital, and the Shabab militia is apparently trying to surround the Transitional Federal Government and the African Union peacekeepers who support it.

Militants attacking from the north on Wednesday reached to within a mile (2 kilometers) of the presidential place in the heart of the capital, Mogadishu, before African Union peacekeepers in tanks reinforced government troops, residents said.

Hard to tell, as ever, what's really happening in Mogadishu, but it sounds like both sides have basically fought to a stalemate. Shabab can't advance the final mile to the presidential palace -- the one area of Mogadishu that's legitimately under the TFG's control -- and the government, despite launching a barrage of artillery fire at Shabab's positions, can't force the rebels out of the capital.

Dozens of people were killed in two explosions that targeted military vehicles in Lahore this morning.

Rescue workers say the death toll was between 25 and 30; most news reports put it closer to 40. Nearly 100 other people were injured.

Two suicide bombers walked up to the vehicles in Lahore's busy R.A. Bazaar area and blew themselves up shortly before Friday prayers were scheduled to begin. The bazaar area houses many army officials, as well as military-run hospitals and schools.

Nobody has claimed responsibility yet for the bombings. But the Tehrik-i-Taliban seems the likely culprit: The group claimed responsibility for a bombing in Lahore earlier this week, which targeted an interrogation building used by the provincial government's Special Investigation Agency. 14 people were killed in that explosion.

As many as 21 people were killed today by two U.S. drone strikes in North Waziristan's Madakhel tehsil.

David Miliband's MIT speech on Afghanistan yesterday spent a good deal of time on two issues: reconciling the Taliban with the central government in Kabul, and integrating Afghanistan into the region.

On the first point, as expected, Miliband urged Afghan president Hamid Karzai to accelerate his Taliban reintegration and reconciliation programs.

Earlier this week, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh extended an offer of negotiation to southern separatists who have grown increasingly strident about their grievances with Sana'a, but he also sounded a warning.

"I am certain the flags of separation will burn in the days and weeks ahead," Saleh said.

With thousands gathering across southern Yemen to protest today, Saleh got his chance to demonstrate the hard side of the government's carrot-and-stick approach.

U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates deserves some credit for his fairly reasoned and non-triumphal public statements during this week's trip to Afghanistan. He warned against over-optimism in Afghanistan, stressing that there are "dark days" ahead and that the quick "clear" phase in Marja doesn't suddenly mean the war is won (or even that Operation Moshtarak is won).

In Now Zad yesterday, he commended soldiers and Marines for clearing the area of Taliban, but then said "you own it" -- and warned of a complicated path ahead.

Alex Thurston over at the excellent Sahel Blog flags Simon Tisdall's weirdly optimistic comment about the "turning tide" in Somalia.

As Alex notes, there's not much evidence to back up Tisdall's claim. The humanitarian situation is dire: More than half of Somalia's population relies on food aid, and more than half of Somalia's aid doesn't reach its intended recipients, according to a new United Nations Security Council report. Shabab still controls most of the country. President Sharif Ahmed's Transitional Federal Government is broke and poorly-equipped. (Recent US, EU and African Union training efforts are slowly reversing that, though much of the aid they've promised hasn't materialized yet.)

One theme that's clear in a lot of recent writing on the war in Afghanistan -- particularly writing from the policy community in Washington -- is the delineation between what's good for the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, and what's good for Afghanistan itself.

There's scant information on the wires this morning, but NBC News and the AP are both reporting that a U.S. drone fired at least two missiles at a house in Miram Shah in Pakistan's North Waziristan province on Monday.

The AP reported three dead and one wounded, while NBC said five were killed and four wounded in the attack. Neither outlet reported their identities, though the Washington Post said that three foreigners were among the dead.

Also in Pakistan today, a car bomb struck a police building in Lahore where security forces interrogate "high-value suspects," killing 13 people and wounding 61, including civilians. The Tehrik-e-Taliban claimed responsibility and said that the attack "was to avenge drone attacks and military operations in the tribal areas.

President Obama issued a few brief remarks yesterday afternoon, after polls closed in Iraq. Most of it was fairly standard stuff -- glad to see the brave Iraqi people exercising their right to vote, terrorists tried and failed to disrupt the election, etc. -- but he also made a slightly interesting comment about the withdrawal timetable.

Update, 9:51 p.m.: Well, maybe not. ABC News and several other outlets are now reporting that the man arrested wasn't Gadahn, but rather "Abu Yahya Mujahideen al-Adam," described as an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen from Pennsylvania, described as a "close associate" of Osama bin Laden.

Except... I've never heard of the guy. Nor have several counterterrorism analysts I asked tonight. A search for that name, in both Arabic and English, yields nothing (except for today's news reports).

Polls closed in Iraq a few minutes ago after 10 hours of voting. The ballot was marred by a few dozen insurgent attacks around the country -- but casualties are remarkably low, and voter turnout (anecdotally at least) seems to be fairly high.

We'll update this thread throughout the day with new developments. Today's news will largely come from non-Iraqi sources: Many Iraqi newspapers suspended publication for the day to allow their staffs time to vote. Here's Al-Rafidayn's statement on the suspension (عربي), for example; As-Sabaah has a banner across its homepage (عربي). So most of today's news comes from Western and pan-Arab news sources.

Monica Bernabe, a Spanish journalist writing on the Afghanistan Analysts Network, says Badghis province is basically a mess.

'Everybody has left because of the fighting', the American Major Richard Wade said in June 2009 to justify why very few civilians could be seen in the Bala Murghab bazaar. 'The Taleban have check points outside the town and force the people to pay if they want to enter', he added. ANA captain Abbasi Ghazanfar described the brutality of the insurgents: 'When they capture an Afghan soldier, they take out their eyes first and afterward behead him. Only those soldiers who are Pashtuns have a chance to save their lives.'

The deteriorating security in Badghis could have implications for other provinces in the north, like Faryab. And the minimal Afghan police/army presence in the province isn't large enough to confront an influx of Taliban (on the contrary: a police official was arrested last month for feeding information to the Taliban).

I forgot to make this point in yesterday's Maliki/SOFA post -- thanks to Joel Wing (in comments) and Michael Hanna (via e-mail) for reminding me.

I do think the Iraqi and American governments will renegotiate the status of forces in a very limited sense, either later this year or next, to provide for a small contingent of U.S. trainers in Iraq. This is standard practice in countries that receive U.S. military aid: If the Pentagon gives high-tech military hardware to another army, someone has to teach that army how to use its new equipment. And Iraq will continue to receive billions in military aid for years to come.

But we're talking about, at most, a few thousand troops -- not the Korea on the Tigris envisioned by Tom Ricks. When I said yesterday that Maliki is unlikely to renegotiate the SOFA, I was referring to that latter scenario.