A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.
By Professor Joseph B. Varner
Global War on Terror
Bomb-making supplies, guns, narcotics and money, but no Taliban, were seized by Canadian troops during the first days of what is being called a major offensive into the northwestern part Afghanistan’s dangerous Kandahar province.
The Canadian soldiers, their NATO allies based in Kandahar, Afghan National Security Forces, and British troops from Helmand province moved into Band-E-Timour and the Maywand district northwest of Kandahar city on Sunday. The offensive is taking large number of coalition forces in Kandahar further from their base than they normally venture and marks one of the rare times they have conducted a joint operation with the British next door. The assault, dubbed Roob Unyip Janubi, or Southern Beast in the native Pashto, is aimed at shutting down the sites where the Taliban make the explosive devices that are responsible for the deaths of many of the Canadian soldiers who have been killed in Afghanistan.
(Source: Globe and Mail)
Six Canadian soldiers were wounded yesterday after being ambushed by insurgents in what is arguably the most dangerous area in Afghanistan. The soldiers were conducting a patrol shortly after dawn in the troubled Zhari district of Kandahar province when their armoured vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device. The soldiers quickly got out of the vehicle, but found themselves under attack once again, this time from insurgents with automatic weapons. Other soldiers rushed to their aid as artillery at a Canadian forward base opened fire with 30 rounds of high explosive shells to help drive back the insurgents. The wounded Canadians were flown by helicopter to a multinational hospital in the main coalition base at Kandahar Airfield, where they were treated. Their injuries were not considered serious and all were released, according to military officials who do not provide the names of wounded soldiers or the nature of their injuries as a matter of course. (Source: Canada.com)
Military chiefs have been in discussion to almost double troop numbers in Afghanistan, the Daily Telegraph understands. Senior military officers have held preliminary talks about troop strenght and believe increasing numbers up to approximately 14,000 from the current 8,200 may be necessary to defeat the Taliban. During a trip to the frontline in Helmand province yesterday Des Browne said he already agreed on three occasions to military requests for increases. Mr Browne, who is the first senior politician to visit the volatile front line in Sangin town where 10 British troops have been killed since June, said British forces were making progress in Afghanistan, but acknowledged it had come at a “high price”. (Source: Telegraph-UK)
U.S.-led coalition forces “inadvertently” killed four women and a child during a clash with militants in central Afghanistan, the military said Friday. Meanwhile, a coalition service member died in a roadside blast in the nation’s west. Several militants also were killed and three detained in the clash Thursday in Ghazni province’s Giro district.
In other violence, Afghan and coalition forces killed at least four militants in Nahr Surkh district of Helmand province in the south on Thursday. (Source: AP)
At least 30 militants and seven Pakistani paramilitary troops died in clashes near the Afghan border, where helicopter gunships and mortars pounded insurgent hide-outs Friday. The offensive in the tribal region of Bajur came in the wake of a militant assault Wednesday on an outpost manned by security forces. Officials said those initial clashes killed 25 militants and two troops. Details of the renewed fighting on Friday were scarce. However, the death toll rose among government forces to seven, according to an army official and a Peshawar-based intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. The army official said 30 militants were killed, while the intelligence official said 40 militants died and at least 25 were wounded. The latter said more paramilitary troops were advancing toward Loi Sam, a village that has been a main site of the fighting. (Source: AP)
Police shut down a bustling bazaar in the capital of China’s restive Muslim region of Xinjiang Friday, tightening security there after an Islamic group seeking independence for the area threatened to attack buses, trains and planes during the Olympics. In Tokyo, an anonymous bomb threat e-mailed to Air China’s Tokyo offices forced a passenger jet to make an emergency return to Japan, the Japanese Transport Ministry said. Four other flights were delayed. Xinjiang’s regional capital Urumqi was on high alert with security guards checking bags at the entrances of hotels, department stores and discos in the busy city the day after a new Olympics threat from the Turkistan Islamic Party, a militant group seeking independence for Xinjiang. A videotape purportedly made by the group warned Muslims to avoid being on planes, trains and buses with Chinese during the Beijing games beginning Friday. The Turkistan Islamic Party is believed to be based across the border in Pakistan, where security experts say core members have received training from Al Qaeda. (Source: AP)
Shells fired from a mortar-like mechanism near a municipal government building in Istanbul slightly injured three people. Unknown assailants fired the shells from a cemetery near the building that houses the Uskudar district’s Parks Department, and one of them hit a truck parked outside the building. Others fell short and exploded in the cemetery. The assailants used a simple mechanism that worked like a mortar to catapult the shells. (Source: AP)
Iraq
Iraq and the U.S. are near an agreement on all American combat troops leaving Iraq by October 2010, with the last soldiers out three years after that. U.S. officials, however, insisted no dates had been agreed. The proposed agreement calls for Americans to hand over parts of Baghdad’s Green Zone, where the U.S. Embassy is located, to the Iraqis by the end of 2008. It would also remove U.S. forces from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, according to the two senior officials, both close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and familiar with the negotiations. The officials, who spoke separately on condition of anonymity because the talks are ongoing, said all U.S. combat troops would leave Iraq by October 2010, with the remaining support personnel gone “around 2013.” The schedule could be amended if both sides agree, a face-saving escape clause that would extend the presence of U.S. forces if security conditions warrant it. U.S. acceptance, even tentatively of a specific timeline would represent a dramatic reversal of American policy in place since the war began in March 2003. In London, Britain’s defense ministry said it is also in talks with Iraq’s government over the role of British troops after the U.N. mandate runs out. Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently said that early next year Britain will reduce its troops in Iraq, now at about 4,100, and that Britain’s role in the country will change fundamentally. On Thursday, a spokesman for Muqtada al-Sadr said the Shiite cleric will call on his fighters to maintain a cease-fire against American troops, but may lift the order if the security agreement fails to contain a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal. (Source: AP)
Anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered most of his followers to disarm but says he will maintain an elite fighting unit to resist the Americans in Iraq. Shiite cleric Mudhafar al-Moussawi read al-Sadr’s latest instructions to worshippers after Friday prayers in Baghdad’s former militia stronghold of Sadr City. (Source: AP)
United States
A federal judge on Thursday signed search warrants allowing FBI agents to analyze two computers that Army microbiologist Bruce E. Ivins used July 24, just days before he killed himself. According to an affidavit seeking the warrants, Mr. Ivins said during a group therapy session on July 9 that he knew federal investigators were closing in on him in their probe into the 2001 anthrax attacks. “He said he was not going to face the death penalty, but instead planned to kill co-workers and other individuals who had wronged him,” the affidavit stated. “He said he had a bullet-proof vest, and a list of co-workers, and added that he was going to obtain a Glock firearm from his son within the next day, because he knew federal agents are watching him and he could not obtain a weapon on his own.” Mr. Ivins’ threats led authorities to confine him for two weeks to a psychiatric hospital, according to the affidavit. Mr. Ivins, 62, of Frederick, Md., was identified Wednesday as the sole culprit in the anthrax mailings that killed five people and sickened 17 others, several weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. His lawyer contends that the Justice Department hasn’t proven Mr. Ivins was the killer. According to the affidavit seeking the warrants, authorities said they seized a bulletproof vest, homemade body armor and ammunition from Mr. Ivins’ home while he was hospitalized. (Source: Washington Times)
A military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would probably only delay the country’s progress toward nuclear-weapons capability, according to a study that concludes that such an attack could backfire by strengthening Tehran’s resolve to acquire the bomb.
The analysis by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security found that Iran’s uranium facilities are too widely dispersed and protected, and, in some cases, concealed too well, to be effectively destroyed by warplanes. And any damage to the country’s nuclear program could be quickly repaired. “Following an attack, Iran could quickly rebuild its centrifuge program in small, easily hidden facilities focused on making weapon-grade uranium for nuclear weapons,” said principal author David Albright, ISIS president and a former U.N. weapons inspector. The study, scheduled for release today, is based in part on a comparison of Iran’s known nuclear facilities with Iraq’s Osirak reactor, which Israeli jets destroyed in a 1981 strike intended to curb Baghdad’s nuclear ambitions. Although Israel struck a devastating blow against Iraq’s program, a strike against Iran would be harder by several orders of magnitude, according to Albright and co-authors Paul Brannan and Jacqueline Shire. (Source: Washington Post)
Americas
If you witness a murder or a drug deal in the crime-stricken border city of Tijuana, don’t bother calling the police, call the Mexican army. In a slap at the police, Gen. Sergio Aponte Polito, the army’s top officer in northwest Mexico, has publicized a phone number for pleas for help and on Sunday gave the news media his latest 5,700-word bombshell letter complaining of police corruption. Such public provocations are extremely out of character for military leaders in Mexico, and the general may have gone so far that he might be forced out: A state official who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed Mexican newspaper reports that the general will be relieved of his command as early as Friday. A Defense Secretary spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. (Source: AP)
Asia
A U.S. nuclear-powered submarine leaked radiation for more than two years, releasing the bulk of the material in its home port of Guam and at Pearl Harbor, Japanese and U.S. officials said Thursday. The Navy on Aug. 1 notified Japan that the USS Houston had leaked water containing small amounts of radiation during three calls to the southern Japanese ports of Sasebo and Okinawa in March and April this year but caused no threat to people or the environment. (Source: AP)
The ruling coalition won’t be able to easily impeach Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, opposition leaders warned Friday, while some papers suggested the former army strongman resign to spare the country another messy political fight. Leaders of the main ruling parties announced Thursday they will seek to impeach the embattled president, accusing him of undermining Pakistan’s economy and constitution. (Source: AP)
Fresh fighting between government forces and Tamil Tiger separatists across Sri Lanka’s embattled north killed 17 rebels and four soldiers, the military said Friday. Separately, Tamil rebels accused government troops of firing artillery shells into a hospital deep in rebel territory overnight, killing one infant and wounding 16 people. The military denied the claim. Fighting has escalated on this Indian Ocean island in recent months with the government intensifying its campaign against the rebels’ de facto state in the north, promising to crush them by the end of the year. (Source: AP)
Europe
Bomb squads defused three explosive devices planted Friday at tourist areas in France’s southwest Basque region on the Atlantic coast. Rescue services received an anonymous phone call before dawn, warning that bombs had been left at five tourist sites in the Basque region near France’s border with Spain. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Basque separatist group ETA, however, has been fighting since 1968 for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France. But the group’s bombs have generally targeted the Basque region in Spain, not France. (Source: AP)
Heavy fighting was reported early this morning in the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia after Georgian forces, backed by war planes, launched an assault on Russian-backed rebels. The battles erupted shortly after President Saakashvili, of Georgia, made a dramatic appeal for a ceasefire after a day of heavy clashes that claimed at least 15 lives. In a televised address, Mr Saakashvili offered “an immediate ceasefire and an immediate beginning of talks” with the separatist region. He repeated an offer of autonomy within Georgia, saying that he was willing to make Russia the guarantor of any agreement. However, shortly before midnight, the Georgian Government announced that it had begun an “operation to restore constitutional order”. Witnesses said the night sky over Tskhinvali, the rebel region’s capital, was lit up by explosions. (Source: The Times-UK)
A Georgian cabinet minister says troops control the capital of the breakaway province of South Ossetia. A convoy of Russian tanks move towards Tskhinvali in the South Ossetian Georgian enclave on Friday. Georgian troops launched a major military offensive earlier Friday to regain control of South Ossetia, prompting a furious response from Russia. Russia has sent tanks into the region and the convoy is expected to reach the provincial capital by evening. The fighting is the worst outbreak of hostilities since the province won de-facto independence in a war that ended in 1992, raising fears that war could once again erupt. A Russian military officer says that 10 Russian peacekeepers have been killed and another 30 wounded in South Ossetia. (Source: Canadaeast.com)
Middle East
Abu Ibrahim, 38, the king of the Gaza tunnel builders, is the richest man in Rafah and is believed to be worth millions. He drives a gold-colored Jeep and has built a multistory commercial building. Hamas owes its power in Gaza to Abu Ibrahim. It was Ibrahim who helped arm the Islamists and provided them with the weapons they have used since assuming power in June of last year. According to Israel, 175 tons of explosives have been smuggled into Gaza since June 2007, along with 10 million rounds of ammunition, tens of thousands of machine guns, grenades, land mines and precision-guided missiles. Abu Yakub, an assistant of Ibrahim, squats next to a new shaft where his men are in the process of digging a new tunnel. Using satellite images from Google Earth, they install power cables, oxygen lines and intercom systems underground. Hamas is believed to collect about $10,000 a day from the tunnel owners in the form of “usage fees,” as well as “value-added taxes,” all payable in cash to armed money collectors who wait at the tunnel exits. (Source: Der Spiegel-Germany)
Alexander Ritzmann, a Hizbullah expert and senior fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy, said Wednesday that mosques and Iranian cultural centers in such cities as Hamburg, Berlin and Munster were hotbeds of Hizbullah activity. Hizbullah has not been outlawed in Germany, and its approximately 900 supporters are permitted to raise funds and call for the destruction of Israel. Ritzmann said he favored a ban on Hizbullah and stressed that it was “totally unacceptable that a democratic state” had failed to outlaw a “super-professional and dangerous group” that sought to launch terror attacks against Israeli, American and Jewish institutions. (Source: Jerusalem Post)
Israel will hold Lebanon responsible for any attacks against Israel, in particular for any Hizbullah efforts to avenge the death of its military leader Imad Mughniyeh. This decision on Wednesday by the security cabinet represents a change in Israeli policy, which had always firmly separated Hizbullah and the Lebanese government. Israel will treat the Lebanese unity government, which is headed by Fouad Siniora and includes Hizbullah, as responsible for any event that takes place in its sovereign territory or events for which Lebanese nationals are responsible. A senior Jerusalem source said if Hizbullah attacks Israel from Lebanese territory, shoots at Israel Air Force aircraft, or carries out a terror attack abroad, Israel will hold Lebanon responsible and respond appropriately.
In the Second Lebanon War, Israel avoided damaging Lebanese civilian infrastructure such as power stations, ports or government institutions, despite the recommendation of then-IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, due to pressure from Washington on Israel. Defense officials noted that the guidelines of the new Lebanese government, approved by President Michel Suleiman, allow Hizbullah to continue its military activity against Israel. (Source: Ha’aretz)
Syria’s return to Lebanon is a work in progress. The formation of the new Lebanese government after the Beirut clashes in May represented a very significant gain for the pro-Syria element in Lebanese politics. Hizbullah now controls a blocking 11 of the 30 cabinet seats. With a Lebanese government of this type, there is no reason for Syria to be in dispute there. The short period when Damascus felt the need to express its will in Lebanon solely in a clandestine way is drawing to a close. The Syrians hope the May 2009 general election will see the establishment of a government more fully dominated by Hizbullah and its allies, in which the pro-Western element will have been marginalized. This would mark the effective final reversal of the events of the spring of 2005, when the Cedar Revolution compelled the Syrian army to leave Lebanon. This would represent the enveloping of Lebanon into the regional alliance led by Iran, of which Syria is a senior member. The writer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. (Source: Jerusalem Post)
If Russia delivers its most advanced anti-aircraft missile system to Iran, Israel will use an electronic warfare device now under development to neutralize it and as a result present Russia as vulnerable to air infiltration, a top Israeli defense official told the Jerusalem Post. The Russian S-300 system has a reported ability to track up to 100 targets simultaneously while engaging up to 12 at the same time at a range of about 200 kilometers. The defense official said, “no one really knows yet if and when Iran will get the system.” “No country will want to buy the system if it is proven to be ineffective…. For this reason, Russia may not deliver it in the end to Iran.” (Source: Jerusalem Post)
Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University.
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