A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.
By Professor Joseph B. Varner
Global War on Terror
Hundreds of Taliban fighters took control of seven villages in southern Afghanistan on Monday in what appeared to be a major offensive near the country's second-largest city, according to Afghan officials. An estimated 500 Taliban fighters swept into several villages in the Arghandab district, about 15 miles northwest of Kandahar, officials said. Agha Lalai Wali, an official with the government-sponsored Peace and Reconciliation Commission in Kandahar, said the fighters surged into the area Sunday evening, setting up several checkpoints in the district. Wali said local residents had reported seeing dozens of fighters believed to be of Pakistani and Arab origin traveling in the area in pickup trucks shortly before the incursion.
The Taliban's seizure of the villages comes three days after an audacious prison break at a Kandahar jail, in which an estimated 1,000 to 1,200 prisoners, many of them Taliban fighters, escaped. A spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, Brigadier General M. Zaher Azimi, said Monday evening that hundreds of Afghan army troops were being deployed to the south from the capital, Kabul, and elsewhere around the country to mount a counteroffensive following the attacks in Arghandab. Officials with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said Western troops were also being redeployed to support Afghan forces leading the counteroffensive. A spokesman for the force, Gen. Carlos Brancos, said he could not confirm that the Taliban had taken control of the villages in Arghandab, but said ISAF officials had received "information that Taliban insurgents were active in the area." (Source: Washington Post)
Canadian commanders met with their Afghan allies in an emergency session late yesterday afternoon at an ornate hall in downtown Kandahar, planning a counterattack that promises to transform the lush fields and orchards of Arghandab district into a battleground in the coming days. Taliban fighters were rumored to be taunting their opponents by taking leisurely swims in the Arghandab River, and bringing truckloads of ammunition into the district in preparation for a bloody defense of their newly conquered territory after their largest attack of the year. Local officials also described the Taliban conducting patrols, rigging land mines on the roads, destroying irrigation wells and warning villagers to evacuate. Many residents took the insurgents' advice, as wildly conflicting reports described 800 to 8,000 people fleeing the district. The Afghan official responsible for the district said he's frustrated that Canadian and other foreign troops have not yet responded. The attack is the culmination of what observers describe as a methodical effort by the insurgency to carve out a new front against the Canadians defending Kandahar city. In recent months, the Taliban hit important figures in Arghandab whose loyalty to Kabul prevented the insurgency from taking root in the district. Mullah Naqib, the most prominent tribal elder in the district, was hit by a roadside bomb last year and later died of heart failure; Abdul Hakim Jan, a senior police commander, was the main target of a suicide bomber who killed him and roughly 100 others earlier this year; and Malim Akbar Khakrezwal, a former intelligence chief, was gunned down outside his house at the beginning of the month. (
Source: Globe and Mail-CAN)
The attack was little reported at the time. A suicide bombing on March 3 killed two NATO soldiers and two Afghan civilians and wounded 19 others in an American military base. Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose group claimed responsibility for the attack.
It was only weeks later, when Taliban militants put out a propaganda DVD, that the implications of the attack became clear. The DVD shows an enormous explosion, with shock waves rippling out far beyond the base. As a thick cloud of dust rises, the face of Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, a Taliban commander who presents one of the biggest threats to NATO and United States forces, appears. He taunts his opponents and derides rumors of his demise. The deadly attack demonstrates the persistence of the Afghan insurgency and the way former mujahedeen leaders, like Maulavi Haqqani, combine tactics and forces with Al Qaeda and other foreign terrorist groups. (Source: New York Times)
U.S. President George Bush says his country can help "calm down" the strained relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan over insurgent attacks. At a news conference Monday in London, Bush did not endorse the threat issued Sunday by Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai to send troops into Pakistan to battle the Taliban. (Source: CTV.ca)
Gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying four Shiite Muslims in northwestern Pakistan Tuesday, killing them all, officials said. It was unclear whether the attack was sectarian.
Hangu and other towns in northwest Pakistan bordering Afghanistan have seen many sectarian attacks recently. On Monday, a bomb exploded at a Shiite mosque in the town of Dera Ismail Khan, killing four worshippers. Scores of people have reportedly died in months of intermittent fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Kurram, a mountain valley next to the frontier. Minority Shiites and majority Sunnis generally live in peace in Pakistan, but extremists on both sides often target each other's leaders and activists. (Source: AP)
Al Qaeda-linked militants extended a Tuesday deadline for a ransom payment to free a popular TV news anchor and her cameraman kidnapped in the southern Philippines. The kidnappers, whom police have identified as Abu Sayyaf militants, earlier set the deadline at noon Tuesday for the payment of a $337,000 ransom for ABS-CBN anchor Ces Drilon, her cameraman and a university professor. They had threatened to behead the hostages two hours later if the ransom was not paid, one of the negotiators, Jun Isnaji, told reporters on southern Jolo Island. (Source: Washington Times)
Iraq
Iraq's parliament will start holding sessions outside the U.S.-protected Green Zone in the fall, the deputy speaker said Tuesday. The 275-member legislative body currently meets in a heavily guarded convention center inside the Green Zone, a sprawling maze of concrete barriers and checkpoints in central Baghdad. Underscoring the continued dangers, an Iraqi state TV reporter was shot to death Tuesday near his apartment in the northern city of Mosul. In other violence Tuesday, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle struck a Baghdad checkpoint manned by U.S.-allied fighters Tuesday, killing one and wounding four, officials said, in the latest attack targeting Sunni groups that have turned against al-Qaida in Iraq. The U.S. military, meanwhile, continued its campaign against Sunni insurgents in northern Iraq, killing four and detaining 10 others. South of Baghdad, Iraq's Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said large numbers of gunmen have surrendered to government forces and handed over weapons in Amarah ahead of a military operation due to begin there on Thursday. He was not more specific. The Iraqi government has given residents in Amarah a Wednesday deadline to turn over heavy weapons, saying it hoped to "demilitarize" the Shiite city without bloodshed. Iraqi troops have fanned out across Amarah, a stronghold of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and the purported center of weapons smuggling from Iran. But no fighting has been reported and Sadrist officials have said they won't put up any resistance unless government troops make arrests without warrants or commit other violations.Iraqi security forces have collected an unspecified number of weapons from streets and school yards since Monday, said Latif Abboud, the head of the security committee for Maysan province, which includes Amarah. (Source: AP)
United States
A Senate investigation has concluded that top Pentagon officials began assembling lists of harsh interrogation techniques in the summer of 2002 for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay and that those officials later cited memos from field commanders to suggest that the proposals originated far down the chain of command, according to congressional sources briefed on the findings. The sources said that memos and other evidence obtained during the inquiry show that officials in the office of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld started to research the use of waterboarding, stress positions, sensory deprivation and other practices in July 2002, months before memos from commanders at the detention facility in Cuba requested permission to use those measures on suspected terrorists. The reported evidence, some of which is expected to be made public at a Senate hearing today, also shows that military lawyers raised strong concerns about the legality of the practices as early as November 2002, a month before Rumsfeld approved them. The findings contradict previous accounts by top Bush administration appointees, setting the stage for new clashes between the White House and Congress over the origins of interrogation methods that many lawmakers regard as torture and possibly illegal. (Source: Washington Post)
Africa
A war crimes tribunal reprimanded prosecutors for withholding evidence vital to the defense of a former Congolese warlord charged with recruiting child soldiers, and said Monday that it will consider whether to release him. The ruling opened the prospect that the first case to come before the International Criminal Court will be thrown out before going to trial, and could raise barriers for future cases in gathering information on potential war crimes suspects. Thomas Lubanga, head of the Union of Congolese Patriots, is charged with recruiting, conscripting and sending children into battle in the Congo in 2002-2003. (Source: AP)
After 15 years of off-again-on-again civil war, the last of Burundi's rebel groups has finally come to the negotiating table. A cease-fire signed in late May is still holding, and for the first time all the decision makers, including top rebel leaders who until recently had been demonized as terrorists and commanded troops from exile, are in the same place, here in the capital, Bujumbura. Burundi, with a population of 8.7 million, is one of the smallest countries in Africa. Its troubles have often disappeared into the shadow cast by its gigantic, turbulent neighbor Congo, where millions have died in a series of seemingly endless conflicts that rage on to this day. Just north of Burundi is Rwanda, which was racked by genocide in 1994 when Hutu death squads exterminated 800,000 people, most of them Tutsi. The same combustible mix that exploded in Rwanda exists in Burundi.Both countries are desperately poor, beautifully hilly and divided between Hutus and Tutsis. In both places, Hutus make up a vast majority of the population, while Tutsis hold much of the power and wealth. Resentment among Hutus had been bubbling for years, and in Burundi the spark was a 1993 coup by mostly Tutsi army officers who assassinated the country's first Hutu president. Burundi then cracked open into a violent free-for-all involving warring militias, rival politicians, criminal gangs and child soldiers. More than 200,000 people died. (Source: IHT)
President Robert Mugabe, campaigning for re-election in a presidential runoff June 27, warned he would not cede power to Western-backed opponents, the state media reported Monday. "We shed a lot of blood for this country. We are not going to give up our country for a mere X on a ballot. How can a ball point pen fight with a gun?" the Herald, a government mouthpiece, quoted Mugabe as saying. Speaking in the local Shona language in the central Silobela district Sunday, Mugabe said, that the nation threw off colonial domination in a guerrilla war in 1980, and his party was ready to fight again to stop the pro-Western Movement for Democratic Change from gaining control of the government, the paper reported. (Source: AP)
Americas
Several youths caught up in an alleged terrorist conspiracy that included a plot to behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper were essentially dupes with no idea of the murderous scheme unfolding in their midst, an Ontario court heard Monday. In fact, the prosecution's star witness conceded, the youths were naive and easily deceived.
“It was obvious to me from Day 1 that I didn't have to keep too much of an eye on them,” paid RCMP informant Mubin Shaikh told the court. Shaikh made the comments under cross-examination from defence lawyer Mitchell Chernovsky, who is acting for the one youth still charged as part of the alleged conspiracy. (Source: Globe and Mail-CAN)
The police handler for Momin Khawaja is in charge of signaling court staff, from the clerk to the judge, if there is a "threat" during the historic terrorism trial that begins June 23. According to a briefing note obtained by the Citizen, the police handler, in the event of a threat, is to escort the "prisoner" out of Room No. 37, alerting court staff at the same time that something serious is happening. Ottawa police are in charge of security for the trial, with the RCMP responsible for transporting the 29-year-old accused and witnesses. There were reports last week about a heightened police presence for the high-profile case. The Citizen has since learned the full details, including the fact that a tactical team using "long guns" and a K-9 unit will be deployed. Police will also install physical barriers at the Elgin Street courthouse, inside and out. It is against this backdrop that Ottawa software developer Momin Khawaja will go on trial as the first person accused under Canada's anti-terrorism laws. He has been kept in jail on Innes Road for four years, and is now in isolation. If convicted, Mr. Khawaja's time served will be considered the equivalent of eight to 12 years in prison. (Source: Ottawa Citizen-CAN)
As Omar Khadr's war crimes trial pushes forward this week, his lawyers are furiously working behind the scenes to establish a rehabilitative program that would ease the Toronto detainee back to freedom. The proposed plan includes psychiatric treatment at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, religious counselling by a local imam and a tiered integration program that would see Khadr closely monitored for as long as four years. His lawyers are also trying to find a way to keep Khadr away from family members who have been vilified in Canada since they admitted having ties to Al Qaeda's elite. (Source: The Star-CAN)
The controversial World Tamil Movement has been added to Canada's list of terrorist organizations, the latest move in an ongoing investigation that links the group to Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers. The group's assets have been frozen and could be seized by Canada's attorney general, said Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, who announced the decision at a Toronto news conference yesterday. "We want to make sure any group who would help terrorist organizations is prevented from doing that," said Day. The minister would not say whether charges would be laid against the group or its members, citing a continuing government probe. In 2006, the RCMP raided the group's office in Scarborough and seized documents that included step-by-step instructions on how to set up a front organization and indoctrinate children. About two months ago, the federal police force sought court approval to seize the WTM's bank accounts. In a 400-page affidavit filed in federal court, the RCMP accuses the World Tamil Movement of orchestrating a complex extortion scheme that targets Tamil Canadians and pressures them to donate money to the LTTE, a militant separatist group that has been fighting for an independent homeland in north and east Sri Lanka since the 1970s. (Source: The Star-CAN)
A Colombian paramilitary group has sent threatening e-mails to Canada's embassy in Bogota because it provides asylum for former members. El Tiempo reported on Sunday that for the past 12 days, the Black Eagles have sent intimidating correspondence to the embassy, criticizing Canada for giving exile to former paramilitary members who have become state witnesses. The e-mails also suggest there might be a leak in the Bogota mission. The report comes 10 days after Canada signed a much-noted free-trade agreement with the embattled South American country, and more than a month after the National Post revealed that a hit squad had planned to enter Canada on tourist visas and assassinate a former paramilitary member who had implicated a cousin of president Álvaro Uribe Vélez for his role in various death squads. Dozens of congressional members have already been scrutinized for their connection to paramilitary groups in Colombia, an investigation that has undercut the legitimacy of Mr. Uribe. (Source: National Post-CAN)
Asia
Battles across Sri Lanka's volatile north killed 14 ethnic Tamil rebels and one government soldier, the military said Tuesday. In the worst fighting Monday, soldiers killed six rebels in the Mannar region bordering the rebels' de facto state, a Defense Ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. One soldier was wounded in the confrontation. In the Welioya district, separate clashes killed three rebels and one soldier. Other fighting in the Jaffna and Vavuniya regions killed five rebels and wounded six soldiers. Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan was not immediately available for comment. (Source: Washington Times)
India's army chief said his country needs a military space program because its satellites are vulnerable to attack from countries like China, which shot down a disabled weather satellite last year. General Deepak Kapoor's comments highlight the military's growing concern that China, India's giant neighbor to the north, poses a threat to India as it expands its power and influence in the region. The Indian Express newspaper quoted Kapoor, speaking Monday at a local conference on using space for military purposes, as saying that India urgently needed to "optimize space applications for military purposes." He pointed out that "the Chinese space program is expanding at an exponentially rapid pace in both offensive and defensive content." (Source: AP)
Europe
France announced a vision Monday for its 21st-century military, a leaner, smarter and more high-tech force capable of detecting threats like terrorism early and deploying quickly to battlefields abroad. The outlook was laid out in the first top-to-bottom review of the defense posture of this nuclear-armed country in 14 years. The review, nearly a year in the making, suggests that France wants to move closer to the NATO alliance, while maintaining a free hand on its commitments. The review comes as France, like many other European countries, is grappling with aging military equipment, tight budget constraints and threats like terrorism, drug trafficking and Internet-based crime. The document places a greater focus on intelligence-gathering and more spending on satellite and airborne drones, paid for in part by reducing staff. The review calls for a reduction of 54,000 defense jobs among the Defense Ministry's total staff of about 340,000 today. President Nicolas Sarkozy is to present the plan to military and security officials Tuesday. The new strategy, to be discussed in parliament later this month, foresees no expansion of France's nuclear arsenal, though it says that will remain the country's "life insurance." The review would also re-center France's military power on a "strategic axis" stretching from the North Atlantic Ocean through the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean in traditional spheres of French military influence. (Source: AP)
A new Kosovo Constitution signed Sunday represents another milestone for the disputed nation in the heart of the Balkans. But this next step toward legitimacy for the 90 percent Albanian state, while applauded by the European Union and the US as a step toward normalcy, takes place in the middle of what many senior diplomats describe as a "mess."
There is no agreement by Russia over how the UN mission here will hand over police and civil duties to the EU in the volatile region. Nor has the EU mission, described as crucial in Brussels after Kosovo declared independence February 17, started to deploy some 2,200 police needed to avoid Serb-Albanian violence. Indeed, Serbs in north Kosovo responded to the Constitution by declaring a "parallel" parliament, to start June 28. Russia and Serbia still assert that Kosovo is an illegitimate state. One UN official here says that Serbia and Russia are "trying to create dust-ups and dissonance in order to scare other nations away from recognizing [Kosovo.]" (Source: CSM)
Middle East
Israel and Syria held indirect peace talks in Turkey on Sunday and Monday, Israeli and Turkish officials said. "It is still early to talk about diplomatic agreements between the two sides since there are many technical issues remaining," a Turkish source said. (
Source: Ha'aretz)
Syria will not give up its ties with Hizbullah and Hamas, Syrian minister Buthaina Sha'aban, a close ally of President Bashar Assad, said Monday. "The Israeli demand that Syria shake off Hizbullah and Hamas as a condition for peace negotiations is like a demand that the U.S. shake off its ties with Israel," Sha'aban said during a visit to India. Sha'aban also said that Syria would "never give up on a centimeter" of the Golan Heights. (Source: Jerusalem Post)
Palestinians in Gaza fired two Grad-type rockets at the Israeli city of Ashkelon on Monday. One person suffered shrapnel wounds in the neck, and several others suffered from shock. Israel has charged that Iran has supplied Hamas with Grad rockets, smuggled into Gaza from Egypt. (Source: Ha'aretz)
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday she welcomes a new power-sharing arrangement in Lebanon even though it increased the power of Hizbullah at the expense of U.S.-backed moderates. Rice's blessing, during a surprise visit to meet Lebanon's new president, former Army chief Michel Suleiman, is a sign that the Bush administration has accepted that Western-backed democratic leaders who helped Lebanon throw off three decades of Syrian domination could not govern the country alone. Rice also said, "The time has come to deal with the Shebaa Farms issue," referring to a patch of land under Israel’s control and claimed by Lebanon. (Source: AP)
Lebanese security officials say that clashes between pro- and anti-government supporters overnight left three people dead and four wounded in the east of the country. The officials say the violence, which involved machinegun fire and rockets, occurred in the eastern villages of Taalabaya and Saadnayel but calmed Tuesday morning after the army sent reinforcements. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. The incident was the worst since last month's agreement in Qatar between rival Lebanese factions to end an 18-month political crisis. The deal followed sectarian gunbattles between Hezbollah-led opposition supporters and pro-government Sunni loyalists that claimed 81 lives. (Source: AP)
Crude oil futures swung wildly on Monday, rising to a record and then tumbling as investors wrestled with whether they should put stock in Saudi Arabia's promise to boost production. Light, sweet crude for July delivery fell 25 cents (U.S.) to settle at $134.61 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after earlier soaring to a trading record of $139.89. Earlier, they dropped as low as $132.84. With little in the way of news to explain oil's turnabout, analysts pointed to Saudi Arabia's weekend decision to boost production and to Tuesday's expiration of crude options, which are agreements to buy or sell futures at higher or lower prices. Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, told United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon over the weekend that it would boost oil output by 200,000 barrels a day, or by two per cent, from June to July. In May, the kingdom raised production by 300,000 barrels a day. (Source: AP)
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a ringing endorsement of President Bush's pro-democracy agenda in the Middle East, and said he will increase British troop levels in Afghanistan. Mr. Brown also announced new sanctions against Iran and urged the European Union to join Britain in freezing the assets of Iran's largest bank, Melli, which has been linked to Tehran's missile and nuclear efforts. (Source: Washington Times)
Iran reiterated on Tuesday that any demand to suspend uranium enrichment would cross its "red line", after world powers offered Tehran incentives in return for halting the controversial nuclear work. "We have said several times that uranium enrichment is Iran's red line and we must have this technology," Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Reza Sheikh Attar said, quoted by the state IRNA news agency. Iran is to respond to a proposal by world powers offering Iran talks on a package of technological and economic incentives, so long as Tehran suspends uranium enrichment, which the West fears could be used to make an atomic bomb. Sheikh Attar said Iran will give the offer "an expert examination and respond as soon as possible." (Source: Breitbart.com)
Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan on Tuesday denied selling blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon to Iran or North Korea, telling AFP that Western countries were to blame. Khan's comments came a day after a former arms inspector said in a report that the United States and the UN atomic watchdog must be allowed to question Khan to learn if he sold the plans. "This is all a lie, there is no truth in this. It is total bullshit," Khan told AFP by telephone from his Islamabad villa, where he has been kept under house arrest since confessing to proliferation activities in 2004. (Source: Breitbart.com)
Iran has withdrawn $75 billion from Europe to prevent the assets from being blocked under threatened new sanctions, Shahrvand-e Emrouz, an Iranian weekly, reported. "Part of Iran's assets in European banks have been converted to gold and shares and another part has been transferred to Asian banks," Mohsen Talaie, deputy foreign minister in charge of economic affairs, was quoted as saying. (Source: Reuters)
Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University
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