A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.
By Professor Joseph B. Varner
Global War on Terror
Al Qaeda’s media wing says the terrorist network’s No. 2 leader will soon issue a message marking the anniversary of the start of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The announcement by al-Sahab media group is posted on a Web site that commonly carries Islamic militant messages. It doesn’t say whether the promised statement by Ayman al-Zawahri, who is Osama bin Laden’s deputy, will be in audio or video format. Al Qaeda’s messages typically appear within 72 hours of announcement. (Source: Washington Post)
U.S. General David McKiernan took command of around 50,000 troops in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan on Tuesday, pledging that anyone who stood in the way of security would be dealt with. McKiernan takes over ISAF at a time when the international community is trying to put new momentum into military and aid efforts in Afghanistan, but the Taliban show few signs of bringing an end to their insurgency. ISAF has grown from some 36,000 troops a year ago and the Afghan army has more than doubled in size from just over 20,000 at the beginning of last year to about 57,000 now. The large Taliban offensives in 2006 in the south, in which the insurgents suffered heavy losses, have not been repeated and many militant commanders have been killed or captured in a campaign to decapitate the hardline Islamist guerrilla movement. But the Taliban have answered back with suicide bomb campaigns across the country that has undermined the perception of security among Afghans frustrated with the seeming inability of their government and Western troops to stop the attacks. (Source: Reuters)
Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan are fleeing to the Pakistani border after being routed in recent operations by the United States Marines, the American commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said on Monday. Routing the Taliban Marines of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit have been clearing Taliban and foreign fighters from the district of Garmser, in southern Helmand Province, an important infiltration and drug trafficking route used by the Taliban to supply insurgents farther north. NATO commander, General Dan K. McNeill, “The insurgents, after experiencing these several weeks of pressure below Garmser, are trying to flee to the south, perhaps to go back to the sanctuaries in another country.” (Source: New York Times)
Canadian officer leading his troops to safety after a foot patrol came under attack yesterday was killed by enemy small arms fire, the deputy commander of Joint Task Force Afghanistan told reporters in Kandahar on Tuesday. (Source: Ottawa Citizen-CAN)
A suicide car bomber rammed a car into a convoy of NATO-led forces in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing two Afghan civilians and wounding three alliance soldiers. The attack occurred on a road in Spin Boldak’s town which lies on the border with Pakistan. Smoke could be seen rising from the site of the incident and soldiers had cordoned off the area. In a separate suicide attack in the southeastern province of Khost, another bomber drove a car into a government building, provincial governor Arsala Jamal said. He had no more details. (Source: Reuters)
Denmark’s intelligence service cast blame on Al Qaeda for an attack near its embassy in Pakistan that investigators said Tuesday was carried out by a suicide bomber. No one has asserted responsibility for Monday’s car bombing, which killed six people, including two Pakistani policemen. But Danish authorities said the terrorist network or one of its affiliates was likely behind the explosion. The group had recently threatened Denmark over caricatures of the prophet Muhammad that were reprinted earlier this year in newspapers in that country. (Source: AP)
A Yemeni-American on the FBI’s Most Wanted list of terrorism suspects appeared briefly in court Tuesday for an appeals hearing, two weeks after he was returned to jail.
Jaber Elbaneh, who has been accused of belonging to Al Qaeda, is appealing a 10-year sentence in Yemen. He was convicted of plots to attack oil installations in Yemen and of involvement in a 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg off Yemen’s coast that killed one person. (Source: Washington Post)
Sources say intelligence agents from key North African nations believe the United States is exaggerating Al Qaeda’s threat in the Maghreb. Citing unnamed intelligence sources, Med Basin Newsline reported military analysts in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia doubt the U.S. assessment that Al Qaeda’s presence in the region is growing, and that the American military may be using a scare tactic to recruit a host country for its new African Command. (Source: UPI)
A British man accused of leading a plot to blow up as many as seven trans-Atlantic airliners on a single day in 2006 said in a London court on Tuesday that he had planned to set off one or two explosive devices at Heathrow Airport, but that he had never intended to place them on aircraft. The man, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, is one of eight Muslim men on trial on charges of planning suicide attacks on airliners using bombs mixed from household chemicals carried on board. Ali said the plan had been to “create a disturbance” outside one of the American airlines’ offices at Heathrow’s Terminal 3 that would attract “a lot of attention” to Muslim militants’ opposition to British and American policy in Iraq and Afghanistan and to a video documentary his group planned to place on YouTube. The defendants are charged with conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to “commit an act of violence likely to endanger the safety of an aircraft.” All have denied the accusations.
The trial is expected to last eight months. The men were arrested in a series of police raids in and around London before any attacks were carried out. But the scale of the alleged plot, a year after the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings on the London transit system that killed 56 people, including 4 bombers, had a major impact in Britain, prompting a further tightening security at airports and other public buildings. The repercussions were felt around the world. Police claims that the raids had recovered equipment for making bombs from hydrogen peroxide and other liquids that could be carried aboard a plane disguised as bottled drinks led to a tightening of airport security in many parts of the world, including Europe and the United States. (Source: IHT)
More than six and a half years after devastating suicide attacks against the United States launched the Bush administration’s fight against global terrorism the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, plot is scheduled to appear in a Guantanamo Bay courtroom tomorrow morning. The military commission arraignment is expected to give the public its first glimpse of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four alleged September 11 co-conspirators since they were captured years ago, beginning trial proceedings aimed at bringing the alleged Al Qaeda terrorists to justice.
Military law experts and those involved in the process believe the September 11 conspiracy case could be among the most important criminal trials in modern U.S. history, with defense attorneys vowing to challenge the untested military commissions and government officials touting the system’s fairness. The Bush administration’s effort to try these men has met obstacles at every level, including at the Supreme Court, which put Congress in charge of rewriting the rules two years ago. The conspiracy case could end up focusing as much on evidence of the suspects’ wrongdoing as on the legitimacy of the military commissions themselves, with lawyers challenging their legality, the use of statements obtained via coercive interrogation methods, and rules that allow hearsay evidence. (Source: Washington Post)
Pentagon prosecutors have charged an Ethiopian-born prisoner with conspiring to commit terrorist attacks in the United States, including planning to use a radioactive “dirty bomb,” according to documents released on Tuesday. The charges against Guantanamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed, who had been a legal resident of Britain since 1994, were filed last week and made public on Tuesday. Mohamed, who was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002, is accused of training at Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, joining a squad of Al Qaeda bomb-makers in Pakistan and plotting to set off a radioactive bomb in the United States. (Source: Reuters)
U.S. District Court Judge Dennis Saylor IV on Tuesday threw out the government’s case against a former Islamic charity leader and partially overturned the convictions of two others, ruling prosecutors failed to prove all the charges. The three were convicted in January of duping the U.S. government into awarding their Boston-based organization, Care International Inc., tax-exempt status by hiding its pro-jihad activities. (Source: AP)
Iraq
American troops grabbed two Al Qaeda in Iraq bombing suspects and a Shiite militia leader Tuesday in separate raids north and south of Baghdad. One of the two Al Qaeda suspects, who was captured with four aides in Mosul, is believed to have overseen security for the group’s branch in that northern city. Mosul is one of the terror network’s last urban strongholds and the target of a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation. The man, who was not identified by name, is also suspected of masterminding bombings against Iraqi police in the area. The other Al Qaeda in Iraq suspect was apprehended along with an assistant in Tikrit, a Sunni Arab city south of Mosul. He allegedly helped organize suicide bombings and the movement of foreign fighters into the country. The suspected Shiite militia leader and five associates surrendered without incident at his home in Kut, southeast of the Iraqi capital. He was accused of involvement in the murder of Iraqis and American soldiers.
The command also said U.S. soldiers killed four other suspects a day earlier after coming under fire from machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in Shiite sections of the capital. The troops seized dozens of rifles and several rounds of ammunition. Violence has dropped dramatically in Iraq since a May 11 cease-fire put an end to seven weeks of fighting by U.S. and Iraqi troops against Shiite militias in Baghdad’s Sadr City district. Despite the improvements, an Iraqi cameraman working for state television was wounded Tuesday night when a bomb exploded at a newly-reopened music shop. Witnesses in Mosul, meanwhile, said Kurdish troops reinforced their positions at Iraqi government buildings in the city’s northern al-Arabi district, deploying fighters to rooftops despite an order from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to vacate the area. (Source: AP)
Three U.S. soldiers were shot dead Wednesday in northern Iraq, and the decaying bodies of at least 23 Iraqis were discovered in a shallow grave and a sewer shaft at separate sites near the capital. The Americans were killed when gunmen opened fire on them in the northern Iraqi village of Hawija, according to a brief military statement. The area, once a hub for Sunni militants and disaffected allies of Saddam Hussein, is thought to have been pacified in recent months. Last year, it hosted one of the largest sign-on ceremonies for tribal sheiks partnering with U.S. forces to fight Al Qaeda in Iraq. South of Baghdad, Iraqi villagers and soldiers unearthed at least 13 bodies from a shallow, dusty grave in farmland on the outskirts of Latifiyah, a mostly Sunni town that also has some Shiite residents. The bodies were first discovered Tuesday, but digging continued a day later. (Source: AP)
United States
Visitors to the United States, not including Canadians, at least initially, will need to fill out online forms with personal biographical details at least three days before they arrive, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced yesterday. The new rules, the latest in a long series since 19 Al Qaeda operatives slipped undetected into the United States and staged the horrific multiple suicide hijackings of September 11, 2001, are designed to track and intercept terrorists and others on American watch lists. They will go into effect Jan. 12, 2009. Canadians flying to the United States and Americans returning home by air after visiting Canada will be exempt from the online registration requirements. The new rules also won’t apply to the nearly 200 million vehicle crossings annually at U.S.-Canadian land borders involving citizens of both countries. However, all citizens of 27 other countries who currently don’t need visas to visit the United States, including Britain, most of Western Europe, Japan and Australia, will now need to register their details online in advance, in place of filling out the paper entry forms now handed out on international flights. (Source: Globe and Mail-CAN)
Congressional Democrats want to ban Pentagon propaganda on the Iraq war, but they are likely to find that enforcement is easier said than done. An existing legal prohibition, for example, didn’t deter a Pentagon program aimed at influencing retired military officers frequently interviewed by the news media. It also didn’t prevent a culture within the Bush administration that former White House spokesman Scott McClellan claims favored propaganda over honesty in selling the war to the public. (Source: Washington Times)
Africa
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans, orphans and old people, the sick and the down-and-out, have lost access to food and other basic humanitarian assistance as the government there has clamped down on international aid groups it claims are backing the political opposition. In recent days, CARE, one of the largest nonprofit groups working in the country, has been ordered by the Zimbabwean government to suspend all its operations, which helps 500,000 of the country’s most vulnerable people. This month alone, CARE would have fed more than 110,000 people in schools, orphanages, old age homes and other programs. But the aid restrictions go far beyond any one group. Muktar Farah, deputy head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Zimbabwe, said Tuesday that millions of people have lost assistance due to what he called “the shrinking of humanitarian space.” Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Mugabe, speaking on Tuesday at a U.N. food conference in Rome, accused nongovernmental organizations of interfering in politics and contended that the West had conspired “to cripple Zimbabwe’s economy” and bring about “illegal regime change.” (Source: IHT)
The leader of Sudan’s troubled South called on the country’s president Tuesday to pull back government troops in a contested oil-rich border region between the north and south that has been the site of recent fighting. Salva Kiir, who also serves as Sudan’s Vice President, said more northern troops were heading from Khartoum, the capital, to Abyei, but dismissed the notion of fighting them, saying the south wants talks. Abyei lies just north of the disputed boundary line between north and south Sudan, which fought a civil war for more than two decades before a 2005 peace agreement. Both sides want the area because of its oil resources and green fields used for grazing cattle. Abyei has become a potential flashpoint that could wreck the fragile peace between the ethnic African south and Sudan’s Arab-dominated government in Khartoum. Their 21-year civil war left an estimated 2 million people dead. (Source: AP)
Sudan’s ambassador to the U.N. said Wednesday that the allegations his government is involved in crimes against humanity in Darfur are “fictitious and vicious” and harmful to the prospects of peace in the war-torn country. Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed accused International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of destroying the peace process with his charges and demanded he be held accountable.
His comments came a day after Ocampo charged in a report to the U.N. Security Council that “the whole state apparatus” of Sudan is implicated in crimes against humanity in the country’s western Darfur region. (Source: Washington Post)
Somalia is facing its worst humanitarian crisis in a decade, and the situation is deteriorating, an international aid agency said Wednesday. Worsening armed conflict, rising global prices of food and fuel, and severe drought in central Somalia are the main factors contributing to the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa nation, said Pascal Hundt, head of the International Red Cross’ delegation for Somalia. (Source: Washington Post)
Gunmen in Nigeria have kidnapped two Lebanese construction workers in the southern oil-producing Niger Delta and are demanding a ransom for their release, security sources said on Wednesday. The men were working for Setraco, a local engineering company specializing in building roads and bridges, when they were kidnapped near the town of Amassoma on Tuesday. (Source: Reuters)
Americas
World powers must act quickly to control soaring food prices that threaten nearly one billion people with hunger and could trigger global social unrest, the United Nations said Tuesday. At a three-day emergency food summit, U.N. officials urged nations to eliminate trade barriers, expand research into biotechnology and boost production with an annual investment of $20 billion to $30 billion. “Nothing is more degrading than hunger, especially when man-made,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told more than 40 world leaders gathered here. Hungry people, he warned, are angry people. Hunger breeds “social disintegration, ill health and economic decline,” he said. Ban and other senior U.N. officials painted a picture of potential political turmoil fueled by starvation and shortages, and of rich countries that have failed to keep promises to confront the global food crisis. (Source: Los Angeles Times)
Asia
The defense chiefs of South Korea and the United States agreed Tuesday to bolster their alliance, which has been tested over fierce protests here against U.S. beef imports and a revival of anti-American sentiment. At the military talks in Seoul, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the U.S. would not pull out any additional troops, reaffirming “the solid U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea.” (Source: Washington Times)
U.S. Navy ships are leaving Myanmar after failing to get the junta’s permission to unload aid to “ease the suffering of hundreds of thousands” of cyclone survivors, the top U.S. military commander in the Pacific said Tuesday. Word of the aborted mercy mission comes even as the U.N. warned that a month after the cyclone swept through Myanmar, more than 1 million people still don’t have adequate food, water or shelter and junta policies are hindering relief efforts. (Source: AP)
A bomb blast targeting a passenger train wounded 18 bystanders in Sri Lanka’s capital Wednesday in the latest attack on civilians in the island nation. Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara blamed Tamil Tiger rebels for the attack in the Wellawatte district of Colombo. Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan could not immediately be contacted for comment. The blast went off near railroad tracks just after a train passed. The train suffered only slight damage, but 18 people near the tracks were wounded
(Source: AP
Europe
President Dmitri Medvedev dismissed the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces Tuesday, moving to tighten the Kremlin’s grip on the massive military and its purse strings. Medvedev announced the removal of General Yuri Baluyevsky, who was loyal to the Kremlin but had become an obstacle to a campaign launched by former President Vladimir Putin to tighten control over military spending. Baluyevsky and other top brass have clashed with Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, a onetime furniture store manager appointed by Putin early last year with a mandate to clean up the military’s finances. While supporters said Putin appointed Serdyukov to cut waste and corruption in a military that mixes Communist-era management with acquisitive post-Soviet capitalism, critics said his brief is to ensure that the Kremlin controls the flow of money.
Whatever the case, Baluyevsky got in the way. He “was in an open fight with the defense minister, a fight to resist his reforms, and he was kicked out,” said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst in Moscow. Medvedev softened the blow by giving Baluyevsky another job in Russia’s elite, making him a deputy chairman of the presidential Security Council. He praised Baluyevsky and decreed that he be awarded an Order for Service to the Fatherland medal. Medvedev replaced Baluyevsky with a Serdyukov ally, General Nikolai Makarov. The changes were announced at a meeting at the Kremlin and were featured prominently in state-run television newscasts. Medvedev stressed that he was accepting Serdyukov’s recommendation, seemingly warning his critics in the military that the Kremlin was behind him. (Source: IHT)
Middle East
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who toured Israel’s northern border Tuesday, said that Hizbullah is setting up fortified positions in villages along the Israel-Lebanon border while continuing to grow stronger and collect weapons. He said Hizbullah is also setting up positions in 150 villages deep within southern Lebanon. He added that the strategic positions were established in clear violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war with Hizbullah. “The Syrians are working in intimate cooperation with Hizbullah, and they are in large part responsible for the transfer of weapons and supplies to Hizbullah. The ultimate responsibility, as far as we’re concerned, lies with Hizbullah on the one hand, and with the Iranians and the Syrians on the other,” Barak said.
On the recently renewed negations between Israel and Syria, he said, “Initial contact with the Syrians is aimed at determining whether there will be proper conditions in the future to launch direct negotiations and discuss all the issues. But the issues themselves require, like in any negotiations, some tough concession. That means difficult decisions on [Syrian President] Assad’s part as well as on ours.” (Source: Ha’aretz)
Five people sustained shrapnel wounds Tuesday after a Palestinian rocket landed outside a packing factory in an Israeli community, near the residence quarters of foreign laborers employed there. Four foreign workers and an Israeli were wounded. (Source: Ynet News)
The United States on Wednesday demanded Syria give free rein to U.N. nuclear investigators after diplomats said Damascus would bar access to some sites Washington believes are linked to a secret atomic reactor. The United States says Syria was close to completing a reactor with North Korean help that could have yielded plutonium for nuclear arms before it was bombed by Israel last September. The U.N. nuclear watchdog began an inquiry after receiving U.S. intelligence documentation in April. International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohamed ElBaradei said on Monday that Syria, which had not responded to IAEA requests for explanations since the bombing, would allow in United Nations inspectors on June 22-24 to pursue the inquiry. (Source: AP)
Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University.
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