Pakistan Security Brief

Drone strike kills five in near Miram Shah; PTI Chairman says give power to tribesmen in FATA; PTI planning anti-drone rally at U.N. in New York; Malala Yousafzai survives gunshot wound from Taliban; Pakistan Supreme Court approves government draft of Swiss letter; ISI and MI officers have been summoned to court; Chief Justice says Balochistan’s missing persons problem an “international” issue; Eight militants killed by IED they were planting; Two bodies found near Peshawar; Militants blow up school in Charsadda district; Six people gunned down in Karachi; 30 arrested in Karachi; One killed and five injured in drive-by in Lahore; Pakistan seeks to strengthen bilateral ties with Bosnia

Drone Strike

• A U.S. drone strike killed five people in Pakistan’s North Waziristan area on Wednesday. According to security officials, multiple drones “fired four missiles on a compound,” in the Hurmuz area, east of Miram Shah. This was the first drone strike to take place since Imran Khan’s anti-drone rally over the weekend. The identities of the people killed in the drone strike have not been discovered yet.[i]

Imran Khan and Anti-Drone Rallies

• In an interview on Tuesday, Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan said that the only way to end the problem of militancy in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) was to give power to armed tribal residents rather than using drones. He declared that Pakistan needed to extricate itself from “America’s war,” fight the perception that Pakistan is simply an American puppet, and tell tribesmen that the jihad was finished; only then would locals feel compelled to stand up to the militants. Khan also said that shooting down drones would be a last resort after all diplomatic methods had been exhausted.[ii]

• PTI Chairman Imran Khan informed a press conference on Tuesday that he planned to stage an anti-drone rally outside the U.N. headquarters in New York on October 26 as well as submit a petition to U.N. authorities that the drone strikes were a violation of international law. He added that he also planned to organize a signature campaign to put pressure on the U.S. government to cease the drone strikes.[iii]

Malala Yousafzai

• Malala Yousafzai, a young girl famous for her anti-Taliban rhetoric and pro-education stance for girls, had a successful surgical operation after she was shot on Tuesday by Pakistani Taliban militants at her school in Mingora. Sources interviewed by BBC have confirmed that Yousafzai is in a stable condition after doctors removed a bullet from her neck, and she will not have to be sent abroad for foreign medical treatment.  Anti-Taliban protests sprung up in different cities as a response to the shooting. [iv]

Court Rulings

• The Pakistan Supreme Court and the government came closer to a resolution over the corruption cases against Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari when the Supreme Court accepted the letter drafted by the government to be sent to Swiss authorities on Wednesday. This comes after three years of quarreling between the government and the Supreme Court over the corruption cases. The cases are related to Zardari’s accused money laundering in the 1990s. The Supreme Court gave the government until November 14 to translate and send the new letter to Swiss Authorities. The letter still leaves open the question of whether Zardari will have to stand trial however. The Law and Justice Minister Farooq H. Naek, “was adamant that there was no threat to Zardari as a result of the letter.”[v]    

• The Director General (DG) and other senior officers of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI) have been summoned for a hearing in Rawalpindi on October 15. The petition accuses intelligence officers of the mysterious death of a prisoner that was caught on film on January 21, 2012. Previously, senior military and intelligence members have been summoned to court and decided not to show up.[vi]

Balochistan

• Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry said on Tuesday that Balochistan’s missing persons problem is now an international issue, and that the provincial government needed to act immediately to address it. Chaudhry and Justice Jawwad S. Khwaja revealed that “in every second and third case,” plaintiffs were accusing the Frontier Corps of enforcing disappearances. They threatened that if the disappeared were not recovered soon, they would pass an order to begin trying those accused in the Frontier Corps.[vii]

FATA

• According to a political administration official, “militants belonging to Mangal Bagh’s Lashkar-e-Islam (LI),” were busy planting an improvised explosive device (IED) in Khazana area of Landi Kotal on Tuesday when it exploded prematurely. The blast killed eight of the militants, and injured six more. In a separate incident, three dead bodies were found in Narai Baba near Tirah Valley on Tuesday. According to the political administration official, the dead were members of the Akkakhel peace militia.[viii]

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa

• Two people were found gunned down and tortured in Dawoodzai, near Peshawar on Wednesday. The two bodies could not be identified.[ix]

• Militants blew up a state-run school in Malkadhera, Charsadda district on Tuesday. The explosives destroyed two rooms and partially damaged another. This incident was the “27^th school blown up by the militants in Charsadda district.”[x]

 Karachi

• Six people were gunned down in Karachi on Wednesday. Unknown assailants shot and killed one person in Shah Faisal Colony. One body was found on the Hawkes Bay Beach. A resident of Orangi Town was found dead in Shershah. Three more bodies were found, one in the Garden area, another near the Shaheen Hotel in Shershah, and one more in the SITE area. An official of a political party was seriously injured by gunfire in the Sachal Iqra Apartments.[xi]

Punjab

• One man was killed and five others were injured when gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on a car in Lahore on Tuesday. In a separate incident, a man who was shot a few days ago in Burki succumbed to his injury on Tuesday. In another incident, a man who was shot and wounded in Shah Jamal a few days ago succumbed to his injury on Tuesday as well.[xii]

 Bosnian-Pakistani Relations

• On Tuesday, President Asif Ali Zardari and Bosnian President Bakir Izetbegovic agreed to strengthen their bilateral relations in defense, trade, and investment through official visits and signing memoranda of understanding. The two leaders discussed common concerns of terrorism and narcotics trading, and agreed to share intelligence concerning such developments. Zardari also expressed optimism that a Preferential Trade Agreement would be signed soon, with the second round of negotiations held later this month. He praised Bosnia’s desire for integration in Europe as well as its connections with the East, commenting that it was “ideally suited to be a center for peace and reconciliation between cultures and civilizations.”[xiii]