British journalist disappears in Waziristan

British journalist Asad Qureshi has disappeared in North Waziristan while attempting to make a film about the area, according to reports from Pakistan today.
The reports say that Qureshi was in the company of two former ISI officers - Colonel Imam (real name Brigadier Sultan Amir Tarar) and Khalid Khwaja. Some reports say that another UK passport holder was also with the group. On 25 March they stayed at the house of Javed Ibrahim Paracha in Kohat on the border of the tribal territory: "Both had British passports," Paracha said. Paracha, a former member of the Pakistan National Assembly, now acts as a go-between for radical Islamists.
During their journey they reportedly held a meeting with a senior TTP commander, thought to be Waliur Rahman, and interviewed him for the TV documentary they were making.
After their interview, the sources said, a clean-shaved person who was already with them, came to Colonel Imam and his colleagues and took them to a nearby house. “After this I don’t know what happened to them,” said a tribal elder based in Mirali.
Colonel Imam is US-trained and spent 20 years running insurgents in Afghanistan during the anti-Soviet jihad. He is known to be sympathetic to the Afghan Taliban and is said to have helped them stage a comeback in recent years. You can find a good backgrounder on him here.
Some accounts say that Waliur Rahman was suspicious of the group. Javed Ibrahim Paracha told The News that Rahman was suspicious about Khalid Khwaja’s activities and complained a US drone attacked his secret location near Miramshah when Khwaja left the area two months ago.
Khalid Khwaja is an interesting person. He was the lawyer whose petition to the Lahore High Court in February prevented the extradition of Mullah Omar's captured deputy, Mullah Abdul Ghani Barodar and four other senior Taliban leaders, to Kabul. It is worth reading his petition, published on the Long War Journal website.
It was also announced today that Greek national Athanassios Lerounis, who was was abducted eight months ago while based in the Kalash Valley in the northern district of Chitral, where he worked as the curator of a heritage museum, has been released.
Lerounis was taken across the border to the Afghan province of Nuristan where his captors demanded the release of militants held by Pakistan in exchange for his freedom.
"He has been released by the successful efforts of Pakistani security agencies," Rahmatullah Wazir, the top administrative official in Chitral, told the BBC.
At one point members of the Kalash community threatened to leave Pakistan en masse if Lerounis was not returned unharmed. He had lived in the Kalash Valley for many years while pursuing his interest in an ancient "lost tribe" of Greeks when he was kidnapped by armed men on 7 September 2009. During the kidnap a local man was shot dead.

Jordanian royals fighting in Afghanistan?

A curious item in the Pakistan newspapers this morning caught my eye. Details differ according to which version you read, but according to Dawn and The News, six women, all members of the Jordanian royal family, are due to be handed over to the Jordanian Embassy in Islamabad tomorrow following the death of their husbands in a Coalition airstrike several months ago.
The women were handed by tribesmen into the custody of Javed Ibrahim Paracha, a former member of Pakistan's National Assembly and now chairman of the World Prisoners Relief Commission of Pakistan, based in Kohat. His organisation specialises in repatriating foreigners who have become stranded in Pakistan.
The Dawn report says that there are six women plus children, all the widows of Jordanian Arabs who were fighting against the Coalition in Afghanistan. The report adds that the women are members of the Jordanian royal family.
Their menfolk, says the report, were killed in a bombing raid on militant hideouts in Orakzai and Kurram Agencies a few months ago.
A report in The News is more specific. It says the group includes five princesses and an eight-month old prince and that their father, named as Prince Rafiq, was recently killed in Afghanistan. It names the five princesses as Hiyyam, Fatima, Zainab, Khadija, Zuhra and the young prince as Ahmed. The report added that one of the Jordanian princesses, Hiyyam, is wife of Prince Nasir bin Saleh, who was killed in Afghanistan recently and now there was no male member in her family so she had decided to leave for Jordan.
After Mr Paracha contacted the Jordanian Embassy, an official spoke to the women and confirmed their identity and made arrangements for them to return to Jordan. They will be handed into the Embassy's custody tomorrow.
I can find no reference to Prince Nasir bin Saleh or Prince Rafiq, so cannot be sure they are members of Jordan's royal family. Anyone have any more details?
PS A small number of Jordanian military personnel run and guard a highly respected field hospital in Mazar-e-Sharif, but do not take part in offensive operations in Afghanistan.
Update: At a press conference in Peshawar yesterday, Javed Ibrahim Paracha said that although the woman claimed that she belonged to the Jordanian royal family, the ambassador refuted her claim stating that no member of the royal family had ever fought against the NATO forces in Afghanistan. Mr Paracha added that around 50 family members of deceased Arab fighters had approached him for help with repatriation to their respective countries.