A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.
By Professor Joseph B. Varner
Global War on Terror
The top U.S. general in Afghanistan issued a rare public warning that militants are planning attacks during the country’s Independence Day on Monday. Just hours before the alert went out, a suicide bomber killed nine Afghans near a U.S. base.
The warning by Major General Jeffrey J. Schloesser said “credible intelligence” indicated that militants planned to attack civilian, military and government targets. A U.S. military statement said an increase in security and public awareness can “save Afghan lives, defeating the enemies’ plan to discredit the Afghan government.” Two hours before the warning was issued, a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside a U.S. base in the eastern province of Khost, killing nine Afghan laborers and wounding 13. Security forces stopped a second attacker from detonating his explosives. While Afghan, U.S. and NATO intelligence officials say they often hear of and disrupt plans by militants, rarely does the U.S. go to such lengths to publicize the threat. All United Nations staff were ordered to work from home Monday as a security precaution. The U.S. warning came one day after 7,000 police flooded the Afghan capital in advance of Afghanistan’s 89th anniversary of independence from Britain. Even the location of the official celebration was kept secret and was to remain closed to the public to try to minimize the risk that insurgents could again disrupt a national commemoration. In other violence reported Monday, a bomb blast in the eastern province of Nangarhar killed two police on patrol late Sunday. Also, several militants were killed in two separate clashes with U.S.-led coalition troops in the eastern provinces of Kapisa and Paktika on Sunday. It did not provide an exact number of militants killed. (Source: Washington Times)
British troops accidentally killed four civilians and wounded three others with rockets during an operation against Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, NATO and British officials said on Sunday. NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said women and children were among the casualties, but it did not give a detailed breakdown of the dead and injured. Britain’s Ministry of Defence said British paratroopers were involved in the incident in the Sangin district of Helmand province on Saturday. ISAF and British forces would investigate. (Source: Reuters)
The Taliban issued a dire warning to Canada yesterday that if it does not withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, insurgents would continue to target all Canadians in the country, like they did earlier this week in an ambush attack on female aid workers outside Kabul. The Taliban urged Canadians in an open letter to press the government to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan or risk further attacks. “The Afghans did not go to Canada to kill the Canadians. Rather, it is the Canadians who came to Afghanistan to kill and torture the Afghan,” the letter states, adding that they felt Canada was pandering to the United States in doing so. “Therefore, you have to convince your government to put an end to the occupation of Afghanistan, so that the Afghans are not killed with your hands and so that you are not killed with the hands of the Afghans.” In a statement, Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay condemned the letter, saying that it will not deter Canadian soldiers currently in Afghanistan. (Source: Canada.com)
Canada’s NATO partners are being asked to ride shotgun on rented Russian-built transport helicopters and newly purchased Chinooks once the air force takes possession of them in Afghanistan, says a senior Canadian military planner. Both the U.S. Army and Dutch forces have operated armed escort helicopters out of Kandahar Airfield since 2006.
And the allies will be asked to protect the Canadian transports. The decision potentially puts to rest rampant speculation that a flight of specially-modified CH-146 Griffon utility helicopters, which have been given weapons and extra sensors, will be deployed to the war zone. (Source: CTV)
Pakistan’s mounting insurgency, centered in the north-western tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, has been exacerbated by a weak, four-month-old coalition government that lacks an effective antimili-tant strategy. Following the suicide bombing near a mosque in Lahore last Wednesday, just before the anniversary of Pakistan’s independence, concern is growing that the insurgency is increasingly spilling into Pakistan’s towns and cities. Lahore’s blast occurred only days after 13 people were killed by a bus bombing in Peshawar, a frontier town near Afghanistan increasingly targeted by the Taliban and aligned militant groups. Exacerbating the problem is the government’s preoccupation with its attempt to boot President Pervez Musharraf from power. Sunday, the coalition’s leaders, Asif Ali Zardari of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of the PML-N Party, finished drawing up the charges they will launch against the former Army chief if he refuses to step down. It was a rare moment of unity between the former bitter enemies. (Source: CSM)
On a recent four-month trek through hundreds of Kashmiri villages, separatist leader Yasin Malik called on people to adopt his new Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence. Malik, a secular Muslim, soon became an icon of peace to many youths in this turbulent region that India and Pakistan have fought over for decades. But Malik’s commitment to nonviolence is now being tested amid a wave of unrest in Indian-administered Kashmir. Over the past six weeks, tensions between Muslims and Hindus have left 34 people dead, most of them unarmed protesters shot by Indian security forces. Like many leaders here, Malik worries that Kashmir’s separatist movement is once again on the verge of becoming an armed struggle. (Source: Washington Post)
Muslim rebels attacked several southern coastal townships Monday, killing a local official and burning houses in a sharp escalation of fighting amid uncertainty over a fragile peace process. Regional military spokesman Major Armand Rico said the towns of Kulambugan and Kauswagan in Lanao del Norte province came under attack early Monday from renegade forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. He said the rebels executed the leader of Libertad village in Kauswagan town. Government troops in armored vehicles fought the rebels in efforts to push them back into the hinterland, where they maintain camps. Local officials ordered the evacuation of residents from nearby communities to avoid casualties. (Source: AP)
Iraq
A suicide bomber killed 15 people Sunday night, including at least six U.S.-backed Sunni Arab fighters, near a crowded outdoor market in east Baghdad. At least 30 people were wounded in the attack near the historic Abu Hanifa Mosque in the Sunni district of Adhamiya. Women and children were among the dead, said Abu Abed, the head of the U.S.-funded Sons of Iraq neighborhood security group there. There were contradictory accounts of the incident. One police officer said the bomber was disguised as a woman and arrived on foot; another said the attacker was not disguised and arrived on a bike.The bomber struck about 7:30 p.m., when the shift of local Sunni guards normally changes over. The commander at the checkpoint, Farouq abu Omar, and four of his men were slain. At least 16 Sons of Iraq fighters have died in Adhamiya since the group was founded in winter. He warned that Al Qaeda in Iraq was regrouping in Baghdad. (Source: Los Angeles Times)
Masked gunmen ambushed a bus carrying electoral officials in southern Iraq on Monday, killing two and seriously wounding a third. The attackers opened fire from a passing car in the Abu al-Khasib area south of Basra, which saw bitter infighting among Shiite factions before a U.S.-backed Iraqi military operation curbed violence earlier this year.
Two top members of a local committee preparing for provincial elections were killed, according to police and the head of Basra’s elections panel, Hazim al-Rubaie. Also Monday, mourners in Baghdad’s Azamiyah district fired guns in the air to show their grief during the funeral of Farooq al-Obeidi, deputy head of a group of U.S.-allied Sunni fighters who was killed by a suicide bomber. (Source: AP)
United States
A growing array of American military leaders, Arctic experts and lawmakers say the United States is losing its ability to patrol and safeguard Arctic waters even as climate change and high energy prices have triggered a burst of shipping and oil and gas exploration in the thawing region. In the meantime, a resurgent Russia has been busy expanding its fleet of large ocean-going icebreakers to about 14, launching a large conventional icebreaker in May and, last year, the world’s largest icebreaker, named 50 Years of Victory, the newest of its seven nuclear-powered, pole-hardy ships. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Coast Guard and others have warned over the last several years that the United States’ two 30-year-old heavy icebreakers, the Polar Sea and Polar Star, and one smaller ice-breaking ship devoted mainly to science, the Healy, are grossly inadequate. Also, the Polar Star is out of service. And this spring, the leaders of the Pentagon’s Pacific Command, Northern Command and Transportation Command strongly recommended in a letter that the Joint Chiefs of Staff endorse a fresh push by the Coast Guard to increase the United States’ ability to gain access to and control its Arctic waters. (Source: IHT)
The Defense Intelligence Agency’s newly created Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center is going to have an office authorized for the first time to carry out “strategic offensive counterintelligence operations,” according to Mike Pick, who will direct the program. Such covert offensive operations are carried out at home and abroad against people known or suspected to be foreign intelligence officers or connected to foreign intelligence or international terrorist activities — but not against U.S. citizens, said Toby Sullivan, director of counterintelligence for James R. Clapper Jr., the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. Sullivan and Pick, who is chief of the agency’s Counterintelligence Human Intelligence Enterprise Management Office, spoke to reporters during a Pentagon briefing this month. These sensitive, clandestine operations are “tightly controlled departmental activities run by a small group of specially selected people” within the Defense Department, said Sullivan, who exercises authority over all Pentagon counterintelligence activities. The investigative branches of the three services, the Army’s Counterintelligence Corps, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, have done secret offensive counterintelligence operations for years, and now DIA has been given the authority. The purpose of an offensive counterintelligence operation is not criminal prosecution, which would be the goal if the target were an American recruited by a foreign power to be an agent in this country. In such an investigation, DIA officers would work with the FBI to gather evidence for use in an indictment and a trial. (Source: Washington Post)
A National Research Council blue-ribbon panel of defense experts is recommending development and testing of a conventional warhead for submarine-launched intercontinental Trident missiles to give the president an alternative to using nuclear weapons for a prompt strike anywhere in the world. In critical situations, such an immediate global strike weapon “would eliminate the dilemma of having to choose between responding to a sudden threat either by using nuclear weapons or by not responding at all,” the panel said in a final report requested by Congress in early 2007 and released yesterday. Congress has delayed funding the conventional Trident program for two years while providing more than $200 million for research and development of additional, longer-term concepts for quick global strikes. One major congressional concern was that to other countries, such as Russia or China, the launch of a conventional Trident missile could not be distinguished from a nuclear one and could be mistaken for the start of a nuclear war. The panel recognized that problem and suggested several ways to mitigate it, but in the end it concluded that the benefits outweighed the risks. The panel said that before any deployment takes place, there should be diplomatic discussions, particularly with partner countries. It said these talks should include “the doctrine for its use, immediate notifying of launches against countries, and installing devices (such as monitoring systems) to increase confidence that conventional warheads had not been replaced by nuclear ones.” The panel also said that few countries, other than Russia and perhaps China, would be able to detect a sub-launched missile “in the next five years,” and that because of the few warheads that would be involved, “the risk of the observing nation’s launching a nuclear retaliatory attack is very low.” (Source: Washington Post)
The United States has called an emergency meeting of NATO foreign ministers to review the alliance’s worsening relations with Russia following Moscow’s military intervention in Georgia. The military alliance is expected to consider a range of upcoming activities planned with Russia, from military exercises to ministerial meetings, and decide case-by-case at the meeting Tuesday whether to go ahead with each activity. Allied ministers will also discuss support for a planned international monitoring mission in the region and a package of support to help Georgia rebuild infrastructure damaged in its devastating defeat at the hands of the Russian armed forces. Washington has denied claims by Russia’s ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin that it is out to wreck the NATO-Russia Council, a consultative panel set up in 2002 to improve relations between the former Cold War foes. (Source: AP)
Africa
Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai would accept the prime minister’s post and concede the presidency to President Robert Mugabe to settle a political crisis in his country. Tsvangirai outlined his proposal for resolving the contentious issue of who would lead any unity government in Zimbabwe in a speech Friday to regional cabinet ministers gathered for the Southern African Development Community summit. Tsvangirai said his Movement for Democratic Change presented the proposal during the deadlocked negotiations with Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party. It would mean a major curbing of the powers Mugabe has wielded since the country gained independence in 1980. But it would also leave Tsvangirai working closely with a leader he has reviled as a brutal dictator. South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has been mediating Zimbabwe’s power-sharing talks, spent much of the past week in Zimbabwe trying to push Mugabe and Tsvangirai to strike a deal. The question of Mugabe’s role has been a major sticking point, with the longtime president reportedly refusing to yield any power and his administration publicly mocking Tsvangirai’s claim to have the mandate to lead Zimbabwe. (Source: Washington Post)
A Sudanese anti-terrorist court has convicted and sentenced to death by hanging two senior members of a Darfur rebel group and six others for their role in an attack on the capital three months ago. Defence lawyer Kamal al-Jazouli says the eight convicted include Abdel Aziz Ushar, a senior commander in the Justice and Equality movement and half-brother of the group’s leader. The charges include waging war against the state and the illicit use of weapons. Al-Jazouli said he will appeal within a week. Today’s ruling brings to 38 the number of people sentenced to death for their role in the May 10 attack by Darfur rebels on Khartoum. Hundreds of Darfurians were arrested after the attack which left 200 people dead. (Source: TheSpec.com)
Americas
In a summer of record marine traffic in the Arctic, the Canadian military is about to begin a series of elaborate rehearsals on how to react in case of emergency on one of the cruise ships, pleasure craft, research or commercial vessels plying the northern waters. Beginning tomorrow, the army, navy and air force will begin Operation Nanook 08, the latest in a series of maneuvers designed to boost Canada’s Arctic sovereignty and increase the military’s ability to respond to emergencies. The exercise will involve 120 regular soldiers and about 70 Canadian Rangers, the largely aboriginal reserve force that acts as the army’s eyes and ears in the North. Two warships will be deployed, including the frigate HMCS Toronto, as well as air force Twin Otters and Aurora surveillance planes. A record number of civilian agencies will also take part, including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Canadian Border Services Agency. (Source: Globe and Mail)
Asia
North Korea accused the United States on Monday of using human rights to block progress in a six-nation agreement on eliminating nuclear weapons in the communist country. President Bush “blustered that he would handle the ‘human rights issue’ as ‘an element for negotiations with North Korea,'” the official Korean Central News Agency said, referring to comments made by Bush during his recent visit to Asia. (Source: AP)
Pervez Musharraf, a key Muslim ally in the U.S.-led War on Terror, resigned as President of Pakistan today to avoid impeachment by a hostile parliament, nine years after he seized power in a bloodless coup. Musharraf, who stepped down as army chief last year, announced his resignation in a rambling and sometimes emotional one-hour address to the nation following a dramatic slump in his popularity over the last 18 months. The ruling coalition, which trounced his allies in a parliamentary election in February, had drawn up impeachment charges yesterday and warned him that it would present them to parliament this week if he did not resign. (Source: The Times-UK)
Sri Lankan troops captured a massive Tamil Tiger training base with underground bunkers, lecture halls and a cemetery as government forces pushed ahead with their offensive against the rebels, the military said Sunday. A series of raging battles across the northern war zone Saturday killed 27 Tamil Tiger fighters and seven government troops.
Troops have broken through the rebels’ defenses in recent weeks and seized a series of key towns and bases. Government officials say they hope to rout the Tamil Tigers by the end of the year and end the Indian Ocean island nation’s 25-year-old civil war. On Saturday evening, soldiers took control of a rebel training base in Andankulam in the Welioya region after Tamil Tiger fighters fled the area. (Source: The Times-UK)
Europe
Two small bombs blamed on Basque separatist group ETA exploded at tourist resorts in southern Spain on Sunday, authorities said. No injuries were reported, but more than 10,000 people were evacuated from a harbor area. It is the height of the summer tourist season in Spain, and ETA has previously carried out attacks in vacation areas at this time of year in an effort to disrupt tourism. The first blast occurred on a beach in Guadalmar at around 1 p.m. (7 a.m. EDT), and a second device exploded at a tourist marina parking lot in Benalmadena Costa two hours later. Both towns are around 340 miles south of Madrid in the Costa del Sol resort area on a stretch of coastline popular with foreign tourists, especially the British. A caller who said he spoke in the name of ETA warned the fire department in the beach resort of Benalmadena that three bombs would explode. The caller said bombs had been placed in Guadalmar, Benalmadena and on a highway linking Malaga to its international airport. (Source: AP)
Turkish warplanes hit a suspected Kurdish rebel target in northern Iraq, Turkey’s military said Sunday. The cross-border air assault targeted a rebel shelter late Saturday where a group of PKK Kurdish rebels was believed to have gathered before a planned attack in Turkey, the military said on its Web site. The military provided no casualty figures. The reported air raid on the Avasin-Basyan region of Iraq could not independently be confirmed. Turkey’s military has launched several air strikes and one ground incursion targeting the PKK rebel safe havens in northern Iraq since the parliament authorized cross-border military moves following a surge in PKK ambushes inside Turkey late last year. (Source: AP)
In the last week, two major pillars of President Bush’s approach to foreign policy have crumbled, jeopardizing eight years of work and sending the administration scrambling for new strategies in the waning months of its term. From the earliest days of his presidency, Bush had said spreading democracy was a centerpiece of his foreign policy. At the same time, he sought to develop a more productive relationship with Russia, seeking Moscow’s cooperation on issues such as terrorism, Iran’s nuclear program and expansion of global energy supplies. And in pursuing both these major goals, Bush relied heavily on developing what he saw as strong personal relationships with foreign leaders. The recent setbacks to the president’s approach were all the more unsettling because Georgia had appeared to be one of the few success stories in the administration’s effort to nurture new democracies that could advance U.S. interests. (Source: Los Angeles Times)
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said two decades of work to bring Russia into the international community must be reassessed in the wake of its actions in Georgia, while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that Russia’s actions “look like they do belong to the Soviet Union.” The Bush administration’s two senior defense and foreign affairs officials made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows with harsh words for Russia, citing consequences for Moscow but offering few specifics. “There’s no doubt there will be further consequences,” Rice said on “Fox News Sunday.” “There have already been significant consequences for Russia.” She said, for instance, that “any notion that Russia was the kind of responsible state, ready to integrate into international institutions” is now a nation “in tatters.” (Source: Washington Post)
Russian troops remained in control of Gori in central Georgian and appeared to be bolstering some positions on Monday, even as military officials in Moscow said that a withdrawal from the country had begun. Russian forces continued to operate checkpoints on the roads leading into Gori, and earthmoving equipment was seen shoring up protective berms around Russian tanks. On the outskirts of town, meanwhile, groups of Georgian police in fresh uniforms stood idle, denied, so far, permission to reenter the city and resume their jobs. Troops also showed no signs of movement from the far western town of Zubdidi, where Russian forces took up positions last week after moving in through the disputed province of Abkhazia. Russian armor and soldiers remained stationed around the city, including tanks positioned at the local home of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvilli. It was not clear whether Moscow had begun repositioning its forces in other parts of the country. The Georgian government claimed that Russia had in fact expanded its presence, moving for the first time into the towns of Borjomi and Khashuri, west of Gori. Russian military officials in Moscow, however, said that a pull-out was underway, under the terms of a French-brokered ceasefire agreement. “According to the peace plan, the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers and reinforcements has begun,” Anatoly Nogovitsyn, a colonel-general on the Russian General Staff, said at a news briefing. President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to “begin the withdrawal of the military contingent” starting Monday. Russian leaders have made contradictory and at times clearly false statements about their troops’ plans and positions ever since the Georgia operation began. On Saturday, a top Russian general told reporters that his country had no troops in Gori. (Source: Washington Post)
Middle East
The Italian government allowed Palestinian terror organizations to act freely within its territory in the 1970s and 80s in exchange for their commitment to refrain from targeting Italians. Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga told Corriere della Sera, “I always knew…about the existence of an agreement based on ‘don’t harm me and I won’t harm you’ between the Italian Republic and organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the PLO.” According to Cossiga, the agreement was approved and directed by former Italian Premier Aldo Moro. “According to the deal, the Palestinian organizations could establish bases in Italy, enjoyed freedom of movement when entering and exiting the country, and could move around without undergoing mandatory security checks because they were protected by the secret service,” Cossiga explained. “During my time as interior minister I learned that PLO people were holding heavy artillery in their homes and protected by diplomatic immunity as representatives of the Arab League.” The agreement did not always run smoothly. On August 2, 1980, an explosion shook Bologna’s train station; 85 people were killed and 200 were injured. Cossiga believes the explosion may have been due to a Palestinian “work accident.” (Source: Ynet News)
The Israeli cabinet on Sunday approved the release of some 200 Palestinian prisoners as a gesture to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. The Prime Minister’s Office said, “This is a gesture and a trust-building move aimed at bolstering the moderates in the Palestinian Authority and the peace process.” Among the prisoners who are slated to be released are two Palestinians “with blood on their hands.” One murdered Israelis and the other sent murderers. (Source: Ynet News)
Senior Fatah and PA figures will meet the released prisoners near the entrance to Ramallah and lead them on a victory parade through the streets to the Muqata, where they will pay their respects at Yasser Arafat’s grave before listening to speeches that will be broadcast by Al Jazeera. (Source: Ha’aretz)
The government’s decision to release some 200 security prisoners, mainly from Fatah, was unlikely to help that group, Brigadier General (res.) Shalom Harari, a senior research scholar with the Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, said on Sunday. Harari, who was a senior adviser on Palestinian affairs to the Defense Ministry for 20 years, said Fatah was in an extremely vulnerable state, and that the proposed prisoner release would likely be “forgotten after two days.” (Source: Jerusalem Post)
Ambassador Dan Carmon, acting head of Israel’s UN delegation, met on Friday with Claudio Graziano, head of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), and told him that Israel is concerned about Hizbullah’s violations of UN Resolution 1701 and the group’s increasing power. Carmon said Hizbullah’s rearmament and the transferring of weapons from Iran and Syria to Lebanon should be mentioned in UNIFIL’s reports to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Graziano claimed Thursday that Israel is the main culprit in violations of the UN resolution for its intelligence-gathering overflights of Lebanon. (Source: Ynet News)
Palestinians in Gaza fired a Kassam rocket Sunday afternoon that landed in Israel. Another rocket had landed on Friday afternoon. (Source: Ynet News)
Iran test-fired a new rocket capable of carrying a satellite into orbit, the Iranian state news media reported Sunday. Western experts said the launching represented a potentially significant if much-delayed step in Iran’s efforts to join the international space club. The report comes amid growing Western nervousness about Iran’s nuclear program and concerns that it could one day use its missile expertise to threaten enemies with annihilation by means of atomic warheads. “The Iranian development and testing of rockets is troubling and raises further questions about their intentions,” a White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said Sunday. Rocket scientists agree that the same technology that puts satellites into orbit can deliver warheads. Iranian officials also point to the use of satellites by the U.S. to monitor Afghanistan and Iraq and say they need similar abilities for their security. (Source: New York Times)
Iran’s claim of having increased the range of its fighter jets, allowing them to fly as far as Israel and back without refueling, did not signify any new operational abilities, an arms expert said on Sunday. Yiftah Shapir, head of the Middle East Military Balance project at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, said, “You may be able to technically fly the distance at high altitude without arms on the jet, but there’s a big difference between that and flying low as you would on a mission to avoid radar, laden with arms, which takes up more fuel. I’m certain the Iranians are far from having that capability,” he added. (Source: Jerusalem Post)
Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University.
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