Pakistan Security Brief

Pakistani government announces it will try Musharraf for treason; Civil unrest in Rawalpindi, elsewhere over Ashura, army deployed to keep peace and enforce curfew; PTI says it will postpone sit-in against NATO supply routes; TTP leader says group willing to debate Sharia law; spokesmen say revenge attacks against government forthcoming; Multiple bomb blasts, militant attacks target government, military targets across northwest Pakistan over the weekend; Personnel kidnapped in multiple raids in Balochistan; Karachi’s Lyari violence continues; Iran fires rockets into Pakistan.

Treason Trial

• Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Chaudry Nisar Ali Khan, announced on Sunday that the Pakistani government intended to try former President Pervez Musharraf for treason under Article 6 of the Constitution. The charges relate to Musharraf’s abrogation of the Constitution and declaration of a state of emergency in 2007. If convicted, Musharraf could face the death penalty or life imprisonment.[1]

Civil Unrest

• On Friday, sectarian strife erupted into large-scale unrest in Rawalpindi following clashes between Sunni and Shia groups that left nine Sunni Muslim seminary students dead and 80 other people injured. Army units were reportedly called to the scene to quell the violence that began after the seminary students allegedly insulted Shia Muslims partaking in a religious procession marking Ashura. An army-imposed curfew following the unrest lasted until Sunday.[2]

• On Saturday, following unrest in Rawalpindi, army units were deployed to quell sectarian unrest in Multan and Chishtian, Bahawalnagar district, Punjab. Sunni demonstrators in Multan protesting the Rawalpindi violence clashed with Shia groups, injuring 12 people. Protestors in Chishtian damaged a mosque and torched several shops.[3]

• The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party headed by Imran Khan declared on Sunday that it would postpone its sit-in, scheduled to take place on November 20, against NATO supply routes in Pakistan due to the sectarian clashes in Rawalpindi.[4]

Pakistani Taliban

• The head of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Mohmand agency, Umar Khalid Khorasani, released a statement reported on Sunday in which he said his group did not want unnecessary destruction in Pakistan and, given the right guarantees and presence of particular interlocutors, was willing to have a “debate” on the establishment of Sharia law in Pakistan in the city of Lahore.[5]

• In a report in The News on Sunday, TTP spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said that the group had begun launching revenge attacks against the Pakistani military for the death of TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud, starting with a Saturday bomb attack on military officials in Bannu. He threatened that the coming days and weeks would be “disastrous” for the government and that it had dispatched suicide bombers across the country to target government and military targets and the leaders of several secular political parties.[6]

• According to a Sunday report in The News, a man calling himself Ahmed Ali Inteqami, and claiming to be the spokesman for the Rawapindi branch of the TTP, contacted reporters to condemn the violence against Sunnis that took place in Rawalpindi on Friday. He added that the TTP would target the local Deputy Inspector General of Police and the District Commissioner within three days for their alleged support to Shia protestors.[7]

Militancy

• Multiple bomb blasts across Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa killed two people and injured a dozen more on Saturday. A roadside bomb targeted a police vehicle in the Mandi area while it was travelling from Dera Ismail Khan to Hangu district. One policeman was killed and two others were injured in the blast. Earlier, four Frontier Corps soldiers and two civilians were wounded in a suicide bomb attack in Bannu that killed only the bomber. A third bomb targeting a police vehicle on Kohat Road in the Badhaber area on the outskirts of Peshawar injured three more people.[8]

• An attack by two armed militants on a police checkpost in Swabi district, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa left two policemen dead on Sunday. The checkpost was also destroyed. An earlier grenade attack on a house in the Bamkhel area of Swabi killed one person and injured four others.[9]

• Two security officials were injured in a remote-controlled bomb attack on their vehicle by unknown militants in the Mir Ali sub-district of North Waziristan agency on Sunday.[10]

• Militants on Sunday reportedly attacked a Levies checkpost in Halimzai sub-district of Mohmand agency with hand grenades. No casualties were reported.[11]

• Armed militants on Sunday kidnapped five Levies personnel from Balochistan’s Kharan district. The kidnapping follows an attack on a Levies checkpost by over a dozen armed militants. Baloch separatists are suspected of carrying out the attack. The attack comes just hours after six Pakistan Customs officials were kidnapped by unknown persons from the coastal city of Jiwany, Balochistan, near Gwadar district. Elsewhere in Kharan, unknown gunmen killed a local district official.[12]

• Four policemen were killed on Saturday when a rocket was fired at their vehicle in Karachi’s troubled Lyari neighborhood. Earlier in the day, five people were injured in multiple clashes in Lyari. Also on Saturday, police officials began to tighten a cordon around Lyari, closing in on areas dominated by notorious Lyari gangster Noor Muhammad, aka Baba Ladla. Four suspected gang members were killed in the same neighborhood by police and Rangers forces on Saturday during ongoing operations.[13]

Iran-Pakistan Relations

• Iranian border guards reportedly fired rockets into Pakistan that landed in the border town of Mashkail, Balochistan. There were no reported casualties. This is the third reported incident of Iranian forces firing into Pakistani territory.[14]