This week, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari put the fight against polio at the forefront of his domestic agenda, announcing emergency measures to vaccinate 32 million children at risk of the disease. Pakistan is one of four countries in the world to continue to suffer serious incidences of the disease, and this new attention to polio eradication shows how far the world has come in battling the disease, while also showing the serious challenges standing in the way of eliminating it forever.

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Breaking news

Initial reports about a blast just heard in Lahore say that at least 7 people were killed, including four policemen, and at least 47 wounded in an explosion near a Shia mourning procession at the Bhati Gate (The News, Geo, Dawn, AP, BBC). Police said the blast, coming as thousands of Shia worshippers marked the end of the holy month of Muharram, was a suicide attack by a teenage boy.

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Behind closed doors

Afghan president Hamid Karzai, under pressure from international diplomats and Afghan politicians, appeared to back down from his one-month delay of the inauguration of Afghanistan's parliament over the weekend after the legislature said it would convene itself late last week, which caused concern about a potential constitutional crisis (AP, NYT, Post, WSJ, Pajhwok, AFP, FT, AJE, AP). Karzai, who is said to have stormed out of a meeting with MPs on Saturday, reportedly agreed to open parliament this Wednesday, if his worries about electoral fraud investigations are addressed; the terms of still-tentative deal are unclear, however. Afghanistan's Supreme Court will reportedly rule today whether the opening can go ahead (Reuters).

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Today would have been the first day of Afghanistan's second elected parliament had it not been for Afghan President Hamid Karzai's announcement on Wednesday that the inauguration should be postponed for a month to allow a specially created tribunal to rule on election disputes. If the extraordinary five-member panel of judges appointed by Karzai to review fraud nullifies the results of the September 2010 vote, it will provoke a constitutional crisis and leave Afghanistan without a legitimate parliament at a time when national unity is urgently needed to fight the insurgency and manage a delicate reintegration process with militants. The delay is also a strong signal that the international community's $500 million investment in Afghan elections over the past two years, and a fundamental pillar of the rule of law in Afghanistan, is about to fail.

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News about the top

In a new audiotape directed at the French people, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden linked the release of two French television journalists who have been held in captivity for more than a year to the pullout of French troops from Afghanistan (AP, AFP, Le Monde, Reuters). Bin Laden's last audiotape to France was released in October and criticized the planned French ban on Islamic veils. New on bookshelves: Peter Bergen's The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and al-Qaeda, available on Amazon.com.

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Pakistan marked the start of 2011 with a series of events that signal another year of turmoil.  In the span of little more than a week, Pakistan's governing coalition fell apart and then reunited in equally dramatic fashion, a secular-minded provincial governor was assassinated, and progress on critical economic reforms was rolled back, putting more than $3 billion in IMF funds in jeopardy. Within days, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden arrived unannounced in Islamabad, offering his assurances of sustained U.S. support. The turmoil illustrates two hard realities for U.S. policy in Pakistan.  First, despite commitment from Pakistan's technocratic economic team, its leaders have yet to find a way around the political roadblocks standing in the way of urgently needed economic reforms. And second, the deep pockets of the United States' civilian program in Pakistan-in the form of $1.5 billion a year in development assistance-don't seem to contain the leverage to push those reforms through.

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Five months without a parliament

After yesterday's news that Afghan President Hamid Karzai, "heightening a constitutional crisis," has delayed the opening of Afghanistan's parliament by a month to February 22 -- in order to accommodate requests of an appointed special court for more time to investigate fraud -- more than 200 members of parliament condemned the special court as unconstitutional, chose a temporary speaker, and said they would hold an unofficial opening for the original inauguration day of January 23 (Reuters, NYT, Pajhwok, WSJ). The Post notes, "The situation is a reversal of circumstances from the last presidential election, in 2009, when Karzai fought against allegations of voting fraud that threatened to unseat him and were highlighted by American officials. This time, Afghan officials have trumpeted the fraud allegations while U.S. officials have argued the results should stand" (Post).

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Quake shakes Pakistan

A massive earthquake of magnitude 7.2 shook Pakistan early this morning, centered 30 miles west to the closest town of Dalbandin and some 200 miles southwest of the Baluchistan capital of Quetta, and reverberated across the country and region (WSJ, AP, Geo, AJE, Reuters, ET, Reuters, Guardian, Tel). Few casualties and little damage were reported, though aftershocks were felt from Dubai to Delhi.

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