Pakistan Security Brief

TTP Spokesmen says security forces have continued operations against TTP despite ceasefire; TTP Mohmand promises to abide by ceasefire; Government officials agree to shortlist for new negotiating committee; PTI Chairman says negotiations have separated reconcilable and irreconcilable militants; Minister says no request for TTP office in Peshawar submitted or being considered; Pakistani Ambassador to U.S. presents credentials to President Obama; Al Qaeda convict admits to plot to bomb the U.S; Gang-related grenade attacks in Karachi kill 14 and injure 25; Gunmen kill ASWJ member in Rawalpindi; Pakistan accused of ignoring sectarian violence; Peshawar’s Bomb Disposal Squads suffer heavy losses; Finance Minister says confidence in rupee is rising.

Military Operations

• On Tuesday, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Spokesman Shahidullah Shahid stated that security forces have continued targeted operations, arrests, and the torture of TTP prisoners despite the ceasefire. Shahid also reiterated that the TTP had no affiliation with Ahrar-ul-Hind, the militant group that claimed responsibility for the Islamabad court attacks, or Jundullah.[1]

• On Tuesday, the Chief of the TTP in Mohmand agency, Umar Khalid Khurasani, promised to abide by the ceasefire negotiated between the government and the TTP. The announcement comes approximately one month after the Mohmand chapter of the TTP claimed responsibility for the killing of 23 Frontier Corps soldiers, which temporarily suspended peace talks. Khurasani also denied any active plan to attack former president Pervez Musharraf.[2]

Peace Talks

• On Tuesday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif chaired a high-level meeting to review the overall security situation in Pakistan and to discuss how to proceed with peace talks. Additionally, members of the meeting agreed to a shortlist of names for the new government committee that will engage in direct talks with the TTP. An unnamed source, however, told the Express Tribune that there will be no chance of any peace deal unless all major stakeholders are included in the process, implying that the decision to not include a military representative will have a negative impact on peace talks. According to a Tuesday article in The News, the Chief of the Army Staff General Raheel Sharif expressed the military’s support for decisions made by the government and said it will fully cooperate with any mechanism the government develops for successful talks.[3]

• A Tuesday article in the Express Tribune reported that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan, after a meeting with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said that the peace negotiations have successfully separated the Taliban factions that are willing to negotiate from the factions that continue to carry out attacks. Khan stated that he appreciated the government’s efforts to negotiate, adding that a national consensus was forming on the issue. The same article reported that the government’s new peace committee will include PTI leader and member of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Advisory committee, Rustam Shah Mohmand, the Additional Chief Secretary of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) Arbab Arif, the Secretary of Ports and Shipping Habibullah Khattak, and an Additional Secretary to the Prime Minister Fawad Hasan Fawad.[4]

• On Tuesday, in response to questions from lawmakers in the upper house of parliament over an offer to set up an office for the TTP in Peshawar, the State Minister for Education Muhammad Baleeghur Rehman stated that the government had not been contacted and that no offer had been submitted. The Health Minister of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Shaukat Yousufzai, made the offer to the Taliban, stating that the provincial government was ready to help the TPP set up the office, if needed.[5]

U.S.-Pakistan Relations

• On Monday, Jalil Abbas Jilani, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the U.S. presented his credentials to President Barack Obama. Both Obama and Jilani pledged to strengthen U.S.-Pakistan relationship.[6]

Militancy

• On Tuesday, at the trial of Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law in New York, a witness for the prosecution, Saajid Badat, admitted that he flew from Pakistan to London wearing a shoe bomb that he had been instructed to detonate on a U.S. passenger jet. Badat, who admitted to meeting two of the 9/11 hijackers, traveled to Belgium in connection with a thwarted plot, researching Jewish targets to attack in South Africa, and handing a shoe bomb to Malaysian plotters in December 2001, said he backed out of the mission to visit his parents after three years in Afghanistan. Because of his cooperation with British and U.S. officials, Badat’s life sentence was reduced to 6.5 years.[7]

• On Wednesday, three grenade attacks in Karachi’s Lyari neighborhood killed 14 people and injured 25. The attacks were reportedly linked to Lyari gang violence.[8]

• On Wednesday, Rangers and police in Lyari, Karachi killed the brother of Ghaffar Zikri, a gang leader in the neighborhood.[9]

• On Tuesday, unidentified gunmen killed a member of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) in Pirwadhai, Rawalpindi district.[10]

• At an event on religious intolerance at the United Nations Human Rights Council, campaigners accused the Pakistani government of ignoring sectarian violence. They alleged that 21,000 Shia have been killed in sectarian attacks in Pakistan over the last 30 years, and that “not a single one of the killers has been brought to justice.”[11]

• A Monday article in BBC highlighted the heavy losses that Peshawar’s bomb disposal squads have suffered due to intense bombing campaigns by the region’s militants.[12]

Domestic

• On Wednesday, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said that confidence in the Pakistani rupee is rising, noting that the rupee has appreciated against the dollar.[13]