Pakistan Security Brief - July 21, 2009

Pakistan Security Brief – July 21, 2009

Pakistan’s Frontier Corps claims to have killed more than fifty militants since Sunday in Dir district; Pakistani officials claim 350,000 of the two million displaced people have returned to Swat; Lashkar-e Islam militants reportedly attacked policemen in Khyber agency, killing four on Monday; an order from a political official in Waziristan has led to the arrests and seizure of businesses belonging to Mehsud tribe members.

• Pakistan’sSupreme Court is considering passing judgment on the legality of Pervez Musharraf’s 2007 presidential ordinance imposing emergency rule in Pakistan. If the move is ruled unconstitutional, the government may be pressured into taking “legal action against [Musharraf]” and dozens of judges appointed during that period of rule may be removed.[1]
   
• The Pakistan Frontier Corps claims to have killed over fifty Taliban militants since Sunday during search operations in Lower Dir district, west of the Swat. Separately, twenty people were killed in clashes during the continuing operation in the Swat valley on Monday. A further six, including a local commander, are reported to have been killed in Swat since then. Meanwhile, amid the continuing sporadic violence in the region, Pakistani officials claim over 350,000 displaced people have returned to their homes in Swat.[2]
   
• In June, a top political official in Waziristan ordered "seizure, where they may be found, of all members of the Mehsud tribe and confiscation of movable/immovable property belonging to them in the North-West Frontier Province and the arrest and taking into custody of any person of the tribe wherever he is found." The order has reportedly led to arrests and the closure of businesses in Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, and Peshawar recently. [3]
   
• Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani on Monday appealed to the EU for immediate assistance in supplying and upgrading the weapons and capabilities of its security forces and law-enforcement agencies so that they may “enable Pakistan to eliminate militancy and terrorism from its soil.”[4]
   
• Militants of the Lashkar-e-Islam group in Khyber Agency stand accused of attacking and killing four police personnel in an ambush on Monday. A case has been registered against the vigilante Taliban group’s leader, Mangal Bagh.[5]