- Saudi Arabia stymies U.S. over Pakistan terror list
Saudi Arabia joined Turkey and China in a move to block a U.S.-led attempt this week to place Pakistan on an international terror-financing watch list, according to officials involved in the process, in a rare disagreement between Riyadh and the Trump administration. - Wall Street Journal
An Afghan official says Taliban fighters have attacked a police security post in central Ghazni province, killing eight local police. - Associated Press
U.S. Demands Pakistan Arrest 'Hit List' of Top Haqqani & Taliban Leaders
By Kimberly Dozier, The Cipher Brief: “The Trump administration has given Pakistan a new “hit list” of nearly a dozen top militants to detain, to show its willingness to fight terrorism, but the U.S. won’t share intelligence that would help lead to their capture, and has snubbed Pakistani requests to meet CIA chief Mike Pompeo in Washington, a senior Pakistani official tells The Cipher Brief.”
- In response, senior U.S. administration officials would only say that Washington has asked Pakistan to take “specific” action against the Taliban and the Haqqani network, which have been blamed for recent violent attacks in Kabul, Afghanistan. The officials tell The Cipher Brief that Pakistan’s intelligence service and military have failed to sever ties with either militant group and continue to protect their top leaders within Pakistani territory.
- Pakistani officials said they don’t believe the high-level targets on the new U.S. list are in Pakistan, and they griped that the U.S. won’t share coordinates of where the militant leaders are, even though Pakistan has “offered to fly U.S. operatives anywhere in Pakistan and bomb whatever they tell us to bomb.”
- The he-said, she-said highlights the continued tension between the Trump administration and Islamabad that spiked in January when President Donald Trump greeted the new year by tweeting that Pakistan has shown “nothing but lies and deceit” in return for U.S. aid.
For more background on the breakdown in U.S.-Pakistan relations, read today’s brief.
(Dawn News) Seventeen US intelligence agencies have warned Congress that Pakistan will continue to slip out of America’s influence and into China’s orbit in 2019, and will become a threat to Washington’s interests in the South Asian region.
(Long War Journal) Pakistani terror groups Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) launched two attacks against security forces this week in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Both attacks targeted Indian military facilities and together resulted in the deaths of six Indian security personnel and one civilian.