Morning Brief - 3/30/12

The New York Times reports that Mohammed Merah’s path to radicalism remains a “bitter puzzle.” French authorities “say they have grown doubtful of his claims to terrorist ties,” and that early investigations “suggest that his personal angst was at least as important to his evolution into a self-styled jihadist as any terrorist network that might have been available to him.” (NYT)

Amid France’s soul-searching over the killings, a French former nuclear physicist has gone on trial, accused of plotting with al Qaeda’s north African arm to attack a French military base or economic interests. Adlene Hicheur, 35, insists he only exchanged ideas online and never took steps toward carrying out terror acts. (AP, BBC News)

The United States
Militia trial: A Michigan militia leader and his son pleaded guilty to a weapons charge on Thursday, after having charges of plotting against the government dismissed against them and other militia members earlier this week by a federal judge. David Stone called himself a “true American patriot” after the plea; he faces up to 41 months in prison and his son up to 33 months, but time served might be considered. (AP, Detroit Free Press, Detroit News)

Anti-terror law: Activists and journalists argued yesterday before a federal judge in the Southern District of New York that portions of the National Defense Authorization Act will have a “chilling effect” on their work. (Reuters)

2012 election: The Washington Post reports that Mitt Romney’s campaign is preparing to pivot their criticisms of President Obama from economic issues to foreign policy. (WaPo)

Conflict Zones
NEW DETAILS ABOUT BIN LADEN’S LIFE IN HIDING
Osama bin Laden’s youngest wife has told Pakistani investigators that he spent nine years on the run in Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks, “during which time he moved among five safe houses and fathered four children, at least two of whom were born in a government hospital,” reports the New York Times. However, the account of Amal Ahmad Abdul Fateh, contained in a January police report, has “manifest flaws,” the NYT reports. “Ms. Fateh’s words are paraphrased by a police officer, and there is noticeably little detail about the Pakistanis who helped her husband evade his American pursuers. Nevertheless, it raises more questions about how the world’s most wanted man managed to shunt his family between cities that span the breadth of Pakistan, apparently undetected and unmolested by the otherwise formidable security services.” (NYT) 

Afghanistan: U.S. officials are pressing President Hamid Karzai to prosecute former Kapisa governor Ghulam Qawis Abu Bakr, who they say was involved in the killings of an American lieutenant colonel and a U.S. servicewoman, among other crimes. Karzai’s administration has maintained that evidence is lacking. (WSJ) In other news, a second Afghan insurgent group - Hezb-i-Islami, or Islamic Party - has suspended formal peace talks with the Afghan government. (NYT)

Pakistan: Amid a debate over drones between Pakistani and U.S. officials, a drone killed four suspected militants on Friday in northwest Pakistan. (AP)

Syria: President Bashar al-Assad has signaled provisional support for a ceasefire plan, but only if it addresses “terrorism” in Syria. (CNN) Fresh clashes in the northern part of the country erupted on Friday, with opposition forces saying Assad has accepted the ceasefire “just to win time while his forces continue their bloody campaign to crush the uprising.” (AP) And Reuters reports that Iran is helping Syria defy Western sanctions by helping ship oil to China. (Reuters)

World News
UK: An appeals court in Britain has ruled that Hilal Al-Jedda, an Iraqi who was stripped of British nationality after he was held on suspicion of terror links in Iraq, may return to the UK. (BBC News)

Arguments, Editorials, and Must Reads
Peter Bergen and Jennifer Rowland on the drone war’s sharp decline in Pakistan: “The past year has seen the number of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan plummet. In the first three months of 2012, there were 11, compared with 21 in the first three months of 2011 and a record 28 in the first quarter of 2010,” write Bergen and Rowland in CNN.com. The drop is likely attributable to the frosty relations between the U.S. and Pakistan following the deadly November NATO raid that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. But “according to senior U.S. counterterrorism officials, al Qaeda’s leadership bench has been so thinned by the drone campaign that there are only two real leaders of the organization left: bin Laden’s successor as overall leader of the group, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Abu Yahya al-Libi. This raises an interesting question: Maybe one of the reasons that the drone campaign has eased off in the past several months is that the CIA has begun to run out of real targets?”