---

Middle East

• A series of bombings targeting Shiite worshippers during Friday prayers exploded in Karbala.
• In a leaked memo, a senior Israeli diplomat warned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's confrontational stance toward the United States was hurting Israel's strategic interests.
• New opposition protests have broken out in Tehran.  

Africa

• Visiting South Africa, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged the government to do more to pressure Zimbabwe. 
• Eritrea denied Clinton's accusation that it is supplying weapons to the Somali insurgency. 
• Niger's president is claiming victory in a referendum that would allow him to extend his term.

Asia

• Sri Lankan authorities have arrested the new leader of the Tamil Tigers. 
• One of the two journalists recently released from North Korea admitted that they did briefly cross into North Korean territory. 
• China executed the director of the Beijing airport on embezzlement charges.

Europe

• Georgia marked the one-year anniversary of its war with Russia. 
• Germany's own "cash for clunkers" scheme has been mired by abuse and organized crime.  
• French President Nicolas Sarkozy is cracking down on banker bonuses. 

Americas

• Barack Obama heads to his first "three amigos" summit with Mexico and Canada this weekend. The drug war and trade are on the agenda. 
• The leader of Brazil's senate is under pressure to step down over corruption allegations. 
• Demonstrators clashed with U.N. troops in rural Haiti. 

The following is a sneak preview of a new joint venture between Foreign Policy and the New America Foundation called The AfPak Channel. Each morning, Katherine Tiedemann, a policy analyst at New America, will run down the best and latest reporting on Afghanistan and Pakistan, from security, to economics, to politics, to the lighter side of this most volatile of regions. Sign up here to receive the AfPak Daily Brief in your in box.

Baitullah Mehsud: Dead or Alive?

Leader of the Pakistani Taliban Baitullah Mehsud may have been killed in Wednesday's Predator drone strike, which left his wife dead (AFP). One of his top aides confirmed to the AP that he was among the dead (AP). US officials said there are visual and other confirmations, and they are 95% certain he was killed in the missile strike, which targeted the home of his father in law in his home base of South Waziristan (ABC).

And Pakistan's foreign minister told reporters in Islamabad that Pakistani intelligence sources had confirmed his death and were traveling to the site to re-confirm on the ground (Dawn). Pakistan's interior minister said he "suspect[s]" Mehsud was killed in the strike, but Pakistani officials are still seeking material evidence of his death (Dawn).

A Pakistani official told CNN that after the attack, "the Mehsud network has gone quiet as if in shock" (CNN). Two Taliban fighters have also said he is dead, killed while receiving treatment for his diabetes (New York Times). Another Pakistani security official believes his funeral was already held in Nargosai, a village in the Zanghara area.

Mehsud, the author of Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto's December 2007 assassination and responsible for nearly 80% of suicide attacks in Afghanistan according to the United Nations, has been targeted by many of this year's CIA-operated drones (AFP).

The CIA made killing the militant leader "one of its top priorities" earlier this year, and believed he had been killed on several other occasions (New York Times). Commander of up to 20,000 Taliban militants and allied with al Qaeda, Mehsud has a $5 million reward on his head (Washington Post and AP). Analysts caution, however, that the militant network has proven resilient after past leaders were killed, so though this would be a symbolic victory if proven true, enthusiasm should be tempered.

There has been little speculation thus far about who may succeed Baitullah Mehsud as the face of the Pakistani Taliban if he is actually dead, though the New York Times reports that a meeting of his top deputies has been convened to figure it out (New York Times). One possible candidate is his deputy and fellow tribesman Hakimullah Mehsud (Daily Times). Other potential new leaders include Maulana Azmatullah, a Taliban commander and member of the Pakistani shura or council of leaders, and Wali-ur-Rehman, another shura member and former spokesman for Baitullah (Reuters).

Wanted: metric to measure Afghan war metrics

The Obama administration is struggling to come up with concrete ways to measure progress in the Afghan theater to present to Congress and the military (New York Times). The specter of failed benchmarks in Iraq hangs heavily over officials' heads as they plan out specific goals and ways to measure progress, but President Obama has emphasized the need for accountability in the war efforts.

Self help

Some 5,000 men have joined a tribal militia to fight the Taliban in the Swat Valley, site of this spring's pitched battles between the militants and Pakistani security forces (AFP). Supporting and arming local tribesmen is one way Pakistan has approached counterinsurgency, since the Pakistani Army is a conventional force designed to fight India, not Taliban militants.

There's no App for that

The Taliban have been sending night letters to Afghans in the volatile southeastern province of Ghazni warning them that owning "shiny new phones" is against Islam (Daily Mail). The militant group has yet to weigh in on Twitter.

Tips? Suggestions? Recommended links? E-mail Katherine Tiedemann.

As far as executive tributes go, Australia's latest ranks pretty low.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd spoke today in fond memory of Sam the koala, who died in surgery six months after she was rescued from the country's worst wildfires and became an international "symbol of hope."

The four-year-old koala suffered second- and third- degree burns on her paws in the February fires across southern Australia that killed 200 people, destroyed 1,800 homes and devastated more than 1,500 square miles of land. A video of Sam's rescue by a volunteer firefighter made celebrities of them both. But during a risky operation to remove life-threatening cysts associated with urogenital chlamydiosis, which affects more than half of Australia's koala population, the disease was determined to be far too advanced and Sam was, sadly, euthanized.

To all those who question Australia's political relevance, Rudd retorts:

The symbol of hope for so many people around the world was the great picture of that wonderful koala being fed water by one of our firefighters. And I think that gave people of the world a great sense that this country, Australia, could come through those fire -- as we have, and Sam the koala was part of the symbolism of that and it's tragic that Sam the koala is no longer with us.

Mike Clarke/AFP/Getty images

Indian writer and top intellectual Ramachandra Guha has a piece in the Hindustan Times with a novel argument for why India's foreign policy seems so dysfunctional: the people making it are just too old. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna and National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan are all in their late 70s. Guha writes:

By way of comparison, consider the ages of those with principal responsibility for foreign policy in other countries. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is 61. British Foreign Secretary David Milliband is 44. His German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is nine years older. Also 53 years of age is Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Qureshi. I suspect that the equivalent of our NSA in these (and other countries) is likewise in his 50s or 60s. Age apart, the videshi equivalents of our foreign minister and NSA often also have better credentials in the field.

To work in foreign affairs or national security requires one to be awake at all hours and alert to all possibilities, to be comfortable with modern technology and to be interested even in obscure parts of the world, and, finally, to be willing to travel long distances at the drop of a hat. To be sure, youth by itself does not qualify one to be a good diplomat, foreign policy expert, or strategic thinker. (Consider the callowness of David Milliband). Energy and alertness do need to be accompanied by wisdom and experience. But the latter without the former can be equally unhelpful. A useful rule of thumb may be to get someone more than 50 but less than 70.

At the risk of being accused of ‘age-ism’, one must ask whether the recent misjudgements in our dealings with Pakistan and the United States are completely unconnected with the age of our principal negotiators. For the worrying thing is that the prime minister, the foreign minister and the NSA are all the wrong side of 75. In the rocky ocean of global politics, the Indian ship of State can carry one old man, perhaps even two. But three?

I'm not quite sure that the spring chickens who run Pakistan have quite as much of an intellectual advantage as Guha is suggesting, but his larger point is interesting. While it's generally acceptable to question a politician's youth and inexperience, saying they're too old to handle the responsibilities of the job is a little dicier. (Remember the uproar when Barack Obama suggested that John McCain has "lost his bearings"?)

Why shouldn't Indians to ask whether they really want a 77-year old who's had two bypass surgeries answering the 3 a.m. phone call?

PRAKASH SINGH/AFP/Getty Images

A breaking report from ABC News says Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, may have been killed by a U.S. drone strike.

A month ago, Imtiaz Ali profiled Mehsud for Foreign Policy:

Meet Baitullah Mehsud -- Pakistan's biggest problem, and the man who has taken his country of 176 million to the center of the West's war on terror. Once described by a Pakistani general as a "soldier of peace," he now carries a 50 million rupee (about $615,300) bounty on his head from Pakistan and a $5 million one from the United States. Mehsud is earning the ire of the Pakistani military and Western policymakers alike as his movement destabilizes Pakistan, and the United States has destroyed several of his hide-outs with drone strikes in recent months. His now-famous 2008 press conference -- which came almost exactly a decade after Osama bin Laden called for the killing of Americans in a similar announcement just across the border in Khost, Afghanistan -- was an extraordinary piece of stagecraft even for a commander with a certain penchant for public flare. By incautiously exposing his location to a big group of journalists, Mehsud should have facilitated his own capture; that he didn't serves as ongoing testament to the incompetence (and perhaps lack of will) of those who purport to pursue him.

Mehsud's growing influence is of particular concern to Western policymakers because Pakistan represents the gravest general security threat to the international community -- the prospect of a nuclear-armed al Qaeda. Keeping Pakistan's nuclear weapons out of the hands of Islamist extremists is contingent on a stable Pakistani state, and Mehsud is the one man perhaps most capable of destabilizing it.

One initial thought: If Mehsud is dead (and keep in mind, it's been falsely reported before), it counts most as a major victory for U.S. proponents of drone strikes. The argument against drone strikes is that they are too bloody, too ineffective, and too divisive among local populations and governments.

But if the U.S. military can kill such looming figures in the radical world without sacrificing a single troop, or ground efforts, or too many civilians? We're looking at a very different vision of counter-terrorism and war.