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By Professor Joseph B. Varner
The volume of Afghan poppy sap in 2008 is expected to crest 9,000 tons, increasingly concentrated in the southwestern Helmand province, where British forces dominate, and the Kandahar region under Canadian military supervision
. The UN estimates opium production from Kandahar alone increased by more than 300 tons last year, even after the province's governor ploughed under some 8,000 hectares of poppy crop. (Source: National Post-CAN)
Afghan and NATO-led troops backed by air power killed more than 20 Taliban insurgents southwest of the capital Kabul, a provincial official said on Thursday. Taliban insurgents have vowed to intensify their attacks on Afghan and foreign troops across the country and launch a wave of suicide and roadside bombs attacks this year to expel international troops and bring down pro-Western government. The latest fighting broke out in the Andar, Ghazni province, after a vehicle belonging to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) hit a roadside bomb that wounded four its soldiers. An ISAF spokesman confirmed the incident and the use of air support, but could not confirm any insurgent casualties. Meanwhile, Afghan troops backed by Western forces killed around 18 Taliban insurgents during an operation in the southern province of Uruzgan on Wednesday. Clashes have increased by some 40 percent in the last two months over last year, NATO says, because of more ISAF and Afghan troop patrols, better weather and also because of more militants crossing the border from Pakistan. (Source: Reuters)
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said "anti-government elements" have been trying to blow up a major hydro-electric power plant, the Naghlu Dam, to the east of Kabul, which supplies electricity to over three million people. "We have received credible intelligence reports indicating that insurgents are trying to demolish the Naghlu power dam," said Zahir Azimi, a spokesman of the MoD. Gunmen believed to be associated with Taliban insurgents attacked a security post near the Naghlu Dam on 29 July but withdrew after Afghan forces put up a fight, the MoD said. (Source: Reuters)
At least 13 people, including two women, were killed in clashes between troops and militants on Thursday in Pakistan's Swat valley, police said, taking the death toll in days of fighting to nearly 50. The mounting casualties from renewed fighting in the scenic valley has virtually ended a peace deal the government signed in May to end a wave of violence that erupted late last year when militants tried to enforce Taliban-style rule.
Clashes broke out this week when militants killed three intelligence officials and captured up to 30 police and paramilitary troops in an attack on a checkpost. Thursday's fatalities included villagers whose houses were hit by mortar bombs overnight around Kabal, a militant stronghold. (Source: Reuters)
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said U.S. concerns about collusion between members of his nation's intelligence agency and terrorists are being taken seriously and "will be resolved." In an interview with reporters and editors of The Washington Times, Mr. Gilani said he had seen no evidence to support allegations that Pakistan´s Inter-Services Intelligence, known as ISI, is compromised. Asked whether he was confident that the ISI contained no pockets of Taliban sympathy, Mr. Gilani said, "I'm pretty sure about it." But he added, "We still have to look into [the accusations]. ... It will be resolved." Top CIA and U.S. military officials traveled to Pakistan this month in part to complain about ties between Pakistani officials and Taliban insurgent groups that may have contributed to a rise in attacks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Source: Washington Times)
The Japanese embassy has received an e-mail warning of a bomb planted at a market in India's capital, and has warned its citizens to stay away from crowded public places. Police were investigating the e-mail, though there was no immediate indication whether the threat was credible. The e-mail warning comes just days after 29 explosions shook two Indian cities, killing at least 43 people and wounding scores. An e-mail warning preceded most of those bombings. Another 19 unexploded bombs have since been found in a western Indian city. Alok Kumar, a senior New Delhi officer, said police had already stepped up security across New Delhi following the weekend bombings and no extra measures were being taken Thursday. Japan's embassy said it had received an e-mail warning of a bomb planted in the capital's popular Sarojini Nagar market, one of three New Delhi markets bombed in October 2005. Those blasts killed 62 people. (Source: Washington Times)
Suspected Muslim militants shot dead a Buddhist teacher and detonated a small bomb in a busy market in Thailand's Muslim south on Thursday, wounding 18 people. The teacher, 57, was shot dead by a man riding pillion on a motorcycle as he left his home for school in Pattani, one of the three southernmost provinces where more than 3,000 people have been killed in separatist violence since 2004. In the nearby province of Narathiwat, a militant used a mobile phone to detonate a 5-kg (11-lb) bomb hidden in a motorcycle at a market, wounding two soldiers and 16 civilians, one of them a six-month-old girl.
Thai authorities feared a spike in violence after an unknown rebel group the Thailand United Southern Underground announced a "ceasefire" two weeks ago. (Source: Reuters)
A roadside bomb in Lebanon Tuesday critically wounded Talal Sleim, a Fatah military commander, setting off gunbattles at Ein el-Hilweh, where Fatah guerrillas exchanged machine-gun fire with Palestinian gunmen of the Jund al-Sham group, which follows the extremist ideology of Al Qaeda. (Source: AP/Washington Post)
Since the tide of the war turned last winter, thousands of Al Qaeda jihadists have fled Iraq. Some returned home and resumed normal life. Others ended up in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Thailand to help reignite the fires of jihad. However, North Africa appears to have attracted the largest number of returnees. A new arc of terror is taking shape in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania, the five countries of the so-called Arab Maghreb in North Africa. (Source: Times-UK)
Iraq
The leader of the Sunni insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq and several of his top lieutenants have recently left Iraq for Afghanistan, according to group leaders and Iraqi intelligence officials, a possible further sign of what Iraqi and U.S. officials call growing disarray and weakness in the organization. U.S. officials say there are indications that Al Qaeda is diverting new recruits from going to Iraq, where its fighters have suffered dramatic setbacks, to going to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they appear to be making gains. A largely homegrown insurgent group that American officials believe is led by foreigners, Al Qaeda in Iraq has long been one of the most ruthless and dangerous organizations in the country. But even some of its leaders acknowledge that it has been seriously weakened over the past year. The number of foreign fighters entering Iraq has dropped to 20 a month, down from about 110 a month last summer and as many as 50 a month earlier this year, according to a senior U.S. intelligence analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of his work. Some Al Qaeda in Iraq members blamed the group's troubles on failed leadership by its head since 2006, an Egyptian who has used the pseudonyms Abu Hamza al-Muhajer and Abu Ayyub al-Masri. Some of the fighters said they have become so frustrated by Masri that they recently split off to form their own Sunni insurgent group. (Source: Washington Post)
A suicide car bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle against the wall of a police station south of Mosul on Thursday, killing three policemen and wounding four others. It was the fifth suicide attack in Iraq this week and showed that insurgents can still carry out assaults despite security gains in urban areas of the country. Four suicide bombers killed 57 people in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk on Monday. The Thursday attack occurred on a police station in the Qayara area about 30 miles south of Mosul, according to a police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. A statement posted Wednesday on a Web site in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq, an Al Qaeda front group, warned of a campaign of attacks in the Mosul area in retaliation for the killing of one of its "hero brothers." On Thursday, a judge died of wounds suffered in an attack the day before in Mosul, police said. One of the judge's bodyguards was killed in the attack. About 50,000 U.S.-backed Iraqi military and police forces have launched a major operation against Al Qaeda insurgents in Diyala province northwest of the capital. Iraqi officials say Diyala is one of the last major al-Qaida strongholds near the capital. Also Thursday, the U.S. military said American soldiers wounded a civilian woman after opening fire on a group of four suspected militants during an operation in Samarra, north of Baghdad. The military said another woman was also killed in the confrontation but her status had not been determined. (Source: Washington Times)
Iraq and the United States are close to a deal on a sensitive security agreement that Iraqi officials said on Wednesday satisfies the nation’s desire to be treated as sovereign and independent. The agreement, under intense scrutiny in both countries, sets the terms for the presence of American troops in Iraq. Negotiations had stalled a month ago largely over the Bush administration’s refusal to specify an intention to withdraw troops. While the current version does not specify any exact date, officials said, President Bush’s recent acknowledgment that withdrawal was an “aspirational goal” has revived the talks and pushed them closer to completion. The emerging agreement, officials said, gives Iraqis much of what they want, most notably the guarantee that there would no longer be foreign troops visible on their land, and leaves room for them to discreetly ask for an extended American presence should security deteriorate. (Source: New York Times)
The commander of U.S. and allied air forces in the Middle East has completed a detailed plan for how air power would be refocused in Iraq if, as is widely anticipated, the number of U.S. ground troops is reduced in the final months of the Bush presidency and beyond.
The commander, Lieutenant General Gary North, described a future approach that would rely on jet fighters and bombers to help ensure the safety of U.S. troops who remained behind to train Iraqis as the number of allied ground combat troops decreased. In addition, surveillance aircraft would take on an ever-increasing role in spotting adversaries, while transport planes would continue to support a growing Iraqi military, which for now is not capable of supplying itself. (Source: IHT)
Don Bordenkircher, who served two years as national director of prison and jail operations in Iraq, said that about 40 prisoners he spoke with "boasted of being involved in the transport of WMD warheads to Syria" in the three months prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom. He said he was told the WMDs were shipped by truck into Syria, and some ended up in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Prisoners who said they worked at the al-Muthana Chemical Industries site said the cargo included nitrogen mustard gas warheads for Tariq I and II missiles. (Source: WorldNetDaily)
United States
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates says that even winning the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will not end the "Long War" against violent extremism and that the fight against al-Qaeda and other terrorists should be the nation's top military priority over coming decades, according to a new National Defense Strategy he approved last month.
The strategy document, which has not been released, calls for the military to master "irregular" warfare rather than focusing on conventional conflicts against other nations, though Gates also recommends partnering with China and Russia in order to blunt their rise as potential adversaries. The strategy is a culmination of Gates's work since he took over the Pentagon in late 2006 and spells out his view that the nation must harness both military assets and "soft power" to defeat a complex, transnational foe. "Iraq and Afghanistan remain the central fronts in the struggle, but we cannot lose sight of the implications of fighting a long-term, episodic, multi-front, and multi-dimensional conflict more complex and diverse than the Cold War confrontation with communism," according to the 23-page document, provided to The Washington Post by InsideDefense.com, a defense industry news service. "Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is crucial to winning this conflict, but it alone will not bring victory." (Source: Washington Post)
Since early 2001, the U.S. Air Force has received more than $200 billion above and beyond what was then planned for it in the medium-term future. This $200 billion "plus-up" does not include any of the approximate $80 billion that the Air Force has received to support its operations in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Has this extra money been put to good use? Is today's Air Force any larger? Is its equipment inventory more modern? Is it more ready to fight? In early 2001, the Pentagon anticipated an approximate budget of $850 billion for the Air Force for the period from 2001 to 2009. Not counting $80 billion-plus subsequently received for the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Air Force's "base," nonwar, budget was increased by more than $200 billion to $1.06 trillion.
Did this additional $200 billion reverse three central, negative trends that have beset the Air Force for decades? Did the extra $200 billion stem the tide of a shrinking and aging tactical aircraft inventory, and a force becoming less ready to fight? (Source: Washington Times)
Smoking appears to have sparked a fire that caused $70 million in damage to the Norfolk, Va.-based nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington. (Source: Washington Times)
President Bush ordered a major restructuring of the nation's intelligence-gathering community yesterday, approving new guidelines aimed at bolstering the authority of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) as the leader of the nation's 16 spy agencies. The long-awaited overhaul of Executive Order 12333 gives the DNI greater control over spending and priority-setting, and also over contacts with foreign intelligence services, a responsibility that has traditionally fallen to the CIA, according to a Bush administration document describing the changes. Executive Order 12333, which was originally issued by President Ronald Regan in 1981, established the powers and responsibilities of the major U.S. intelligence services. Administration officials have been quietly negotiating the overhaul for more than a year, seeking to modernize the law to reflect the new role of the DNI as the head of the intelligence community. The DNI was created by Congress three years ago in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but critics have charged that the agency was not given the budgetary and policy-setting authorities it needs to lead the intelligence community. Details of the revamped order were expected to be unveiled by the White House today, but a summary of the major changes was spelled out in a White House PowerPoint presentation shared in advance with congressional oversight committees. The eight-page slide presentation was obtained by The Washington Post. (Source: Washington Post)
Hoping to persuade a military judge to exclude a federal agent's key testimony in the trial of terrorism suspect Salim Ahmed Hamdan, defense lawyers Wednesday attempted to prove that coercive interrogation tactics were used on their client. Counter-terrorism specialist Robert McFadden said that during an interrogation he had elicited a statement from the former driver for Osama bin Laden that he had pledged an oath of loyalty to the Al Qaeda leader. Hamdan, captured in November 2001 in Afghanistan, was interrogated more than 40 times, but McFadden was the only questioner who reported that Hamdan had confessed to having sworn loyalty. Hamdan's May 2003 interviews by McFadden and then-FBI Al Qaeda expert Ali Soufan occurred a day after intelligence agents here had put the detainee on what was apparently a punishment regime and delivered him for late-night activities described in detention records only as "reservations." The unusual handling of the defendant prior to the McFadden interview came a month after then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's memorandum authorizing harsh interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects. The defense also presented secret evidence apparently validating Hamdan's claims to have been subjected to sexual humiliation by a female intelligence agent. McFadden's planned testimony that Hamdan told him he'd sworn bayat to Bin Laden could be crucial in the government's bid to cast the first war crimes defendant here as a committed supporter of the terrorist network, not just a $200-a-month servant. (Source: Los Angeles Times)
Africa
Zimbabwe will drop 10 zeros from its hyper-inflated currency, turning 10 billion dollars into one, the country's reserve bank said Wednesday. President Robert Mugabe threatened a state of emergency if businesses profiteer from the country's economic and political unraveling. The longtime ruler issued the warning in a televised address to the nation as South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki flew in to meet with him about stalled power-sharing talks. Mr. Mbeki insisted Tuesday that the talks that started last Thursday were going well and had simply adjourned on Monday. But several officials said Mr. Mugabe's negotiators left for home and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai went to South Africa, the venue of the talks, after they deadlocked over who would lead the “inclusive” government under negotiation. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because all parties agreed to a media blackout surrounding the talks. (Source: AP)
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said in an interview published Thursday that he will never appear before the International Criminal Court to face charges of genocide and war crimes in his country's Darfur region. Al-Bashir's comments to the Khartoum independent newspaper al-Ayyam were his first that directly address the court prosecutor's July 14 indictment against him. ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has asked the court for an arrest warrant for Sudan's leader, but it may be weeks before a ruling is made on that request. A team of legal experts will challenge the indictment before the U.N. Security Council and the International Court of Justice, al-Bashir said in the interview. (Source: AP)
The U.N. Security Council is set to renew a mandate for peacekeepers in Darfur on Thursday in a resolution that will echo African concerns at efforts to indict Sudan's president for war crimes there. Western powers agreed to wording making clear the council is ready to discuss suspending any future International Criminal Court indictment of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for genocide in the interest of peace in Darfur. Five years of war have brought humanitarian disaster to the western Sudanese region and Darfur campaigners accused the world on Thursday of failing to provide helicopters and other badly needed support for the struggling peacekeeping mission there. Western diplomats said the resolution extending the mission would likely be adopted unanimously when the council meets at 1900 GMT. Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem told Reuters it was an "acceptable" text for Khartoum. (Source: Reuters)
Americas
NATO members must send more troops to southern Afghanistan, where Canada and a few other nations are bearing the brunt of combat against Taliban militants, Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay said yesterday. Canada, which has 2,500 soldiers in the southern city of Kandahar and plans to send 200 more, has long complained that many NATO members refuse to send soldiers to the most dangerous parts of the country. "We're doing enough ... but NATO has to do more," Mr. MacKay said in televised comments from the Conservative Party national caucus retreat at Lévis, Que. "Southern Afghan-istan is the flashpoint in this mission. It's the most vulnerable, the most volatile part of the country. ... We're not going to let up or relent on our request for other NATO countries to come to the south". Most of the soldiers fighting in southern Afghanistan are from the United States, Britain, Canada and the Netherlands. (Source: Canada.com-CAN)
Military charges against Canadian Forces members have risen dramatically in the years since Canada sent troops to Afghanistan, a CBC investigation has found. In fact, the charges have risen by as much as 62 per cent over an eight-year period. All military forces face discipline and morale issues resulting from soldiers serving in war zones, and from the latest numbers uncovered by the CBC, it seems Canada is no exception. In 1998-99, just over 1,300 so-called summary charges were laid against Canadian Forces members, for everything from drunkenness to charges of a sexual nature and drug dealing. But that number rose sharply to 2,001 in 2002-03, the year Canada first sent troops to Afghanistan, and stood at 2,100 in 2006-07, the latest year in which stats are available. Absent-without-leave charges led the way in the Canadian military, rising from 394 in 1998-99 to a peak of 716 in 2003-04 and subsiding only slightly since, according to Judge Advocate General (JAG) numbers submitted in annual reports to the Defence Department and examined by the CBC. (Source: CBC)
Canada is leasing up to eight Russian-built helicopters to fly troops around southern Afghanistan and protect them from the threat of roadside bombs and ambushes, Defence Minister Peter MacKay says.MacKay described the move yesterday as a stopgap measure until Canada takes delivery of American-built Chinook transport choppers. As well, Canada is leasing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for reconnaissance over the Afghan battlefield until it gets possession of the drones it wants to purchase. Supplying choppers and aerial drones was a condition placed on the government in return for Parliament's endorsement of extending the Afghan mission to 2011. Canada has finalized a deal to buy six CH-47-D Chinooks from the U.S. Army, but those aren't expected to be delivered until early next year, he said. In the interim, Canada intends to lease between six and eight MI-8 transport choppers, "performing much the same purpose as the Chinooks would." The new drones and choppers will mean an extra 200 armed forces personnel will be sent to Afghanistan, but MacKay made it clear that Canada's contribution, which includes 2,500 soldiers, stops there. (Source: The Star-CAN)
Asia
The United States has decided to reverse a recent decision to change the national classification of islands at the center of a territorial dispute between Japan and South Korea, a U.S. official said Wednesday. The initial decision by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names was to change the islands' listing from South Korean to "nondesignated sovereignty." It infuriated people in South Korea. The Seoul government recalled its ambassador to Tokyo early this month to protest Japan's inclusion in school textbooks of a Japanese claim to the Korean-controlled islands. (Source: AP)
Sri Lankan troops killed 24 Tamil Tiger rebels in clashes in the north of the island while helicopter gunships bombed a rebel position on Thursday, the military said, as security was tightened ahead of a regional summit in the capital. The leaders of eight South Asian countries are meeting in Colombo for an August 2-3 summit that will discuss, among other issues, terrorism and food and energy security. "Mi-24 helicopter gun ships attacked a Tamil Tiger position offering resistance to the ground troops in Mannar," said air force spokesman Wing Commander Janaka Nanayakkara. Mannar is in the northwest of the island where fighting has escalated in recent months. The military said ground troops had also killed 24 Tamil Tiger rebels in day-earlier fighting. One solder died in the fighting. The air raids on rebel position in Mannar and the fighting in the north came as the security in capital Colombo was beefed up for the South Asian Association of Regional Corporation (SAARC) summit from July 27 to August 3. (Source: Reuters)
Europe
Former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic will appear in a courtroom here Thursday to be formally charged with war crimes related to the siege of Sarajevo, the execution of 8,000 prisoners in the town of Srebrenica and other atrocities of the three-year war in Bosnia. After more than a decade on the run, Karadzic, 63, was being held in a jail in The Hague on Wednesday, awaiting his first appearance before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Hours earlier, he had been flown from the Serbian capital, Belgrade, under heavy security and secrecy. On Thursday, Karadzic will be asked to enter a plea for each of the 11 counts against him. Karadzic, indicted in 1995, was found in Belgrade disguised as a heavily bearded alternative-medicine practitioner. He has shaved and had his hair cut since his arrest, according to Serbian officials. He again resembles the swaggering leader who, along with his military commander, Ratko Mladic, became the public face of an "ethnic cleansing" campaign that brought some of Europe's worst atrocities since World War II. (Source: Washington Post)
Middle East
In the past few weeks, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been holding summer camps, some of them proudly displaying rockets and other weaponry. Hamas alone is conducting 300 summer camps for tens of thousands of children. The focus is on familiarizing kids with the Palestinian towns and cities destroyed in 1948, as well as instilling religious fervor in them. The camps also feature military-type training such as crawling under barbed-wire. At Islamic Jihad summer camps, children learn how to hold a Kassam rocket-launcher. (Source: Ynet News)
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) Southern Command has begun using a laser system developed by Rafael to detonate explosive devices planted alongside the border fence. "With the laser, there is no need to send troops across the border to destroy the bomb," one official explained. (Source: Jerusalem Post)
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced on Wednesday that he would resign after his Kadima party chose a new leader in September elections. The leadership race has been set for Sept. 17, with a runoff, if necessary, on Sept. 24. The main contenders are Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, a former defense minister. (Source: New York Times)
Twelve Syrian dissidents went on trial in Damascus on Wednesday for signing a declaration calling for democracy in the biggest collective trial of dissidents since 2001. They were charged with "spreading false information which weakens the morale of the nation and national sentiment, joining a secret organization with the aim of modifying the nation's political and economic status, inciting racial and sectarian dissent and harming the state." (Source: AFP)
Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University