By Jenni Hesterman

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recently released its 2008 Opium Winter Rapid Assessment Survey, which shows that Afghanistan not only provides 90% of the world’s supply of opium, but is now also the top supplier of cannabis, the source of marijuana and hashish. Approximately 70,000 hectares (173 acres) of the crop were cultivated in 2007, as compared to 50,000 hectares in 2006. Estimates show yet another increase in production in 2008. The UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa summed up the challenge by stating: “Thus, today, Afghanistan has become the world's biggest supplier of two drugs: the most deadly one (heroin), and the one most commonly used (cannabis)”.

With unwanted Taliban (and world) attention on poppy production, farmers are increasing their cannabis plantings. According to the UN, nearly three quarters of the farmers in the southern Kandahar province will plant cannabis this spring. Despite the fact that cannabis crop is less lucrative than poppies, cannabis farmers make $30 per day, which is five times as much as harvesting wheat. Cannabis is easier and less expensive to grow, and there is increasing demand by users in neighboring countries. Although both drugs are banned by Islam, cannabis appears to be more acceptable than opium. It is converted into “cigarette-tees”, which are widely available for purchase in local markets throughout the region.

The escalating cannabis crop in Afghanistan has several implications. The overall U.S. commitment to counternarcotics in Afghanistan is about $500 million a year, and although a portion of the funds go toward hindering narco-trafficking, the bulk is spent on poppy eradication efforts. In fact, the 2007 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, released by the State Department, does discuss hashish seizures by officials, yet doesn’t mention cannabis crop production in Afghanistan as a focus area. Addressing this issue on the ground will likely require additional money and manpower, or the diversion of resources from the poppy suppression efforts.

At the tactical level, Taliban fighters have been known to hide in the marijuana fields. Plants can grow up to 10 feet and provide a thick, dense cover not easily penetrated by thermal devices. Cannabis foliage is hearty and moist; as discovered in other eradication efforts, it does not burn easily. Once ignited, the resulting smoke has an ill effect on humans and animals in the vicinity, thus impacting those beyond the area of operations.

Finally, the increased cannabis production could affect many innocent civilians. Established drug trading routes in the region are expected to burgeon, and villages along the routes have been warned by officials to expect increasing activity by traffickers, law enforcement, and possibly the Taliban.

About the Author
Jenni Hesterman is a retired Air Force colonel and counterterrorism specialist. She is a senior analyst for The MASY Group, a Global Intelligence and Risk Management firm that supports both the U.S. Government and leading corporations. She is also an adjunct professor at American Military University, teaching courses in homeland security and intelligence studies.

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By Jenni Hesterman

The State Department recently issued its latest International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, detailing activities of countries involved in the drug trade and outlining U.S. policy and activity in the fight against the manufacturing and distribution of illegal narcotics. Released by the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, the report includes a new section entitled "Mobile Payments--A Growing Threat", which outlines the ways technology may be exploited by nefarious groups to obscurely launder, move and store cash. Mobile payments, also known as “m-payments”, “proximity payments”, or “micropayments”, are point-of-sale cash transactions made through a mobile device such as cell phone or personal data assistant.

The sender takes the cash to a remittance center, which charges a modest service fee. The center then “sends” the amount to the recipient’s mobile account, also known as an e-wallet or e-purse. The recipient gets a text message on the mobile device indicating the sum has been placed in the account. The cash can then be collected at any participating remittance center, retail store, or, if business evolves as predicted, fast food outlet. The entire transaction takes mere minutes. Furthermore, use of a “throw-away” cell, phone purchased with cash, makes the transfer even more obscure and difficult to trace.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is an inter-governmental body that works internationally to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. FATF has also shown concern over emerging telecommunications technology as related to licit financial transactions made outside the regulated banking sector. FATF calls them “new payment methods” or NPMs. NPMs are also referred to in the industry as “e-money”, “digital cash” or “e-cash”. Examples of NPMs include the following: Internet payment services; prepaid calling, retail and credit cards; digital precious metals; and the aforementioned m-payments.

Through internet payment services, money can be moved between accounts, and the balance can then be liquidated into an untraceable card used to withdraw cash from ATMs worldwide. Phone cards, retail cards and credit cards may now be purchased with cash at many stores. The owner of the cards remains anonymous, an unlimited number of small value cards may be purchased and held, and any subsequent use is virtually untraceable. Finally, the emerging commodity of digital precious metals is a way to store and move large amounts of cash. Through this service, users create an account requiring little personal information and then secure cash deposits against gold, silver and platinum held in “off shores” via the Internet.

Traditional money laundering makes “dirty” money “clean” after the crime was committed, and the money trail is usually quite easy to follow. Terrorists launder "clean" money by moving and storing it for the purposes of financing training and future operations. The lack of physical evidence in mobile transactions, and the ability to easily move and store money through various NPMs, should be of great concern to the law enforcement community.

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About the Author
Jenni Hesterman is a retired Air Force colonel and counterterrorism specialist. She is a senior analyst for The MASY Group, a Global Intelligence and Risk Management firm that supports both the U.S. Government and leading corporations. She is also an adjunct professor at American Military University, teaching courses in homeland security and intelligence studies.

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A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

Canadian military officials are claiming a major victory after blowing up a Taliban command headquarters from which they say insurgents engineered the planting of explosives on the region's major highway. “The result of this operation, thus far, has been a huge blow to the enemy's ability to plant major IEDs (improvised explosive devices) along Highway 1 in Kandahar,” Lieutenant-Colonel Dave Corbould, the Shilo-based commander of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, told reporters on Monday.

More importantly, he said, it has hurt the Taliban's ability to plan for future operations. “It has thrown them off balance and we will continue to maintain the momentum to keep them off balance,” said Corbould. The three-day offensive, which began last Thursday, struck deep in the heart of the Zhari district, west of Kandahar, where Afghan national forces rarely venture. The first strike was by air. A massive plume that followed an aerial bombardment of the Taliban target could be seen many kilometers away. Then the ground forces moved in to finish the job. Coalition troops, members of the Afghan National Army, and the Afghan National Police converged on the command centre which Corbould described as a series of underground bunkers with some surface buildings attached. In the end, about 40 insurgents lay dead. Some military officials say the strike killed two mid-level commanders but Corbould said it will be some time before that can be confirmed. One suspected Taliban member was taken into custody. (Source: Globe and Mail-UK)

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The U.N.'s anti-drug office says opium poppy production in Afghanistan was down 19 percent this year compared to 2007 due to successful campaigns in the north and east though fields in the south remain awash in the heroin-producing crop. Efforts to eradicate opium poppy fields in the south failed miserably, and the Taliban stand to earn tens of millions of dollars from the trade. Still, the U.N. and other drug officials say they're cautiously optimistic. Last year farmers cultivated 476,903 acres; this year, they cultivated 388,000 acres. (Source: AP)

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Gunmen opened fire on the top U.S. diplomat in northwestern Pakistan early Tuesday as she left for work in her armored vehicle, police and embassy officials said. No one was killed in the attack. Lynne Tracy, principal officer for the consulate in the bustling city of Peshawar, was 100 yards from her house when two men with AK-47s jumped out of their dark blue Land Cruiser and sprayed her car with dozens of rounds of ammunition. Her driver reversed the vehicle and peeled back to her home, said Arshad Khan, the local police chief and senior investigator in the case. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The brazen attack came hours after the breakup of Pakistan's ruling coalition government, a fracture that could concentrate more power into the hands of a party that says it is committed to supporting the U.S. war on terror. (Source: AP)

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A Whitehall counter-terrorism unit is targeting the BBC and other media organizations as part of a new global propaganda push designed to "taint the Al Qaeda brand", according to a secret Home Office paper seen by the Guardian. The document also shows that Whitehall counter-terrorism experts intend to exploit new media websites and outlets with a proposal to "channel messages through volunteers in internet forums" as part of their campaign. The strategy is being conducted by the research, information and communication unit, [RICU] which was set up last year by the then home secretary, John Reid, to counter al-Qaida propaganda at home and overseas. It is staffed by officials from several government departments. The report, headed, Challenging violent extremist ideology through communications, says: "We are pushing this material to UK media channels, for example, a BBC radio program exposing tensions between Al Qaeda leadership and supporters. And a restricted working group will communicate niche messages through media and non-media." (Source: Guardian-UK)

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Iraq

A teenage Iraqi girl wearing a vest packed with explosives turned herself in rather than go through with a suicide bombing in a violence-torn city north of Baghdad, police and the U.S. military said on Monday. A U.S. military statement said the girl surrendered to police on Sunday in Baquba, capital of Iraq's restive Diyala province, where Sunni Arab al Qaeda militants are waging war on U.S. and Iraqi forces. She was still wearing the vest, which police had to remove before detaining her. Iraqi police and U.S. sources differed on the girl's age, with estimates ranging from 13 to 17. (Source: Washington Post)

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A suicide bomber in a car laden with explosives sped toward a group of police recruits in an Iraqi provincial town on Tuesday, exploding and killing 25 people. Elsewhere in the volatile Diyala province, a roadside bomb killed five members of a family, bringing the day's casualty toll to 30. Diyala, a stronghold of Sunni insurgents and the Al Qaeda in Iraq terror network, has been the site of much of the recent violence, with an ebb in attacks elsewhere in the country. In the Diyala town of Jalula, the assailant drove a car Tuesday toward a building where recruits for a new police emergency response unit had assembled, said Col. Ahmed Mahmoud Khalifa, the local police chief. The U.S. military said five of the dead were police, the remainder civilians. Police guard Falah Hassan, 28, who stood at the gate of the compound, said a thunderous explosion went off about 100 yards (90 meters) away. Elsewhere in Diyala, a roadside bomb struck a van carrying a Sunni family near the town of Mandali along the Iranian border. Five members of the family were killed, including two women and two children. Also Tuesday, a bomb planted in a parked car blew up in the city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad. A police official initially said four people were killed. However, another police official later said he only received word of wounded, and security officials at a local hospital said they knew of 12 people injured in the blast. Tikrit is Saddam Hussein's hometown and has been a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency since the 2003 ouster of the late Iraqi leader. But it has enjoyed relative quiet since violence levels significantly dropped over the past year in much of Iraq. (Source: Washington Post)

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United States

Law enforcement authorities are investigating a possible threat against Senator Barack Obama in connection with the arrests on Sunday of three men suspected of firearms and drugs violations in the Denver suburbs. One arrest followed a dawn raid on a hotel that involved a suspect leaping through the window of his sixth-floor room while trying to flee local police. The police chief in Glendale, Colorado, where the hotel is located, said information uncovered in the course of his department's investigation led to the case being turned over to the Secret Service, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Ross declined to explain what led his department to call in the Secret Service, but he said a drug or weapons arrest would not usually result in involvement by the agency, which has protected Obama since the early days of his presidential campaign in 2007. Concern about his safety, he is the first African American to clinch a major-party presidential nomination, resulted in Secret Service protection far earlier than most candidates have received. Federal authorities declined to comment Monday. They said a news conference was planned Tuesday at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver to explain the nature of the case and its potential connection to Obama, who will accept the Democratic nomination for president at a large outdoor event on Thursday evening. The men were arrested on suspicion of possession of illegal drugs and weapons, and for outstanding warrants for crimes that include a carjacking. (Source: Washington Post)

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The Air Force has concluded that an F-15 fighter jet crash that killed a young officer over the Gulf of Mexico in February was the result of pilot error and was not related to the structural flaws that have been found in other aging F-15s, according to an investigation report released yesterday. The midair collision between two F-15C Eagle jets off the coast of Florida on Feb. 20 destroyed both airplanes and scattered their parts across the ocean, killing 1st Lieutenant Ali Jivanjee instantly and leaving another pilot with minor injuries. Investigators found that the aircraft were both functioning properly and had no structural or mechanical failures before the crash. Instead, Air Force officials deemed that the two pilots, both listed as "inexperienced" because they had fewer than 500 flight hours, failed to notice how close they were to each other while performing training exercises, lost sight of each other, and hit while performing a maneuver. (Source: Washington Post)

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The White House should postpone a Congressional vote on a landmark U.S.-Russia civilian nuclear pact to prevent it being held hostage to a row over the conflict with Georgia, a Russian nuclear official told Reuters. The pact between the world's two biggest nuclear powers is aimed at opening up the booming U.S. nuclear market and Russia's vast uranium fields to firms from both countries by removing Cold War-era restrictions. The deal was signed in May but needs approval from Congress. A Russian official told Reuters it would be better for the deal to be delayed until next year to prevent it being blocked. (Source: Reuters)

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Africa

Sudanese troops raided one of Darfur's biggest and most volatile camps early Monday, setting off a deadly clash that killed an unknown number of people and wounded dozens, according to U.N. and humanitarian officials. More than 20 people were believed to be dead, but that estimate could not be confirmed because access to the camp for 90,000 displaced people remains restricted. At least 48 gunshot victims, two-thirds of whom were women and children, were evacuated Monday evening to nearby hospitals. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

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Asia

Less than two months after it blew up the cooling tower of its main nuclear plant in a televised spectacle, North Korea announced that it has suspended the dismantling of its nuclear program. North Korea's foreign ministry said today it was responding to the United States' failure to live up to its promises of removing it from a blacklist of "terror-sponsoring" states. It said the suspension had taken place as of Aug. 14 and that it would next consider restoring some of what it had dismantled already at its main nuclear compound in Yongbyon. President Bush indeed asked Congress on June 27 to remove North Korea from the terror list, but the administration has also said that the measure wouldn't go through until it could verify a 60-page inventory that North Korea had submitted of its nuclear program. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

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Pakistan sank into a new political crisis yesterday with the collapse of the ruling coalition after Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N left the government in protest over the future of the nation's judiciary. The Muslim League-N will now join the opposition, blaming the coalition leader, the Pakistan Peoples Party, for failing to fulfill a pledge to reinstate the 60 judges fired by former president Pervez Musharraf last November. The fate of the short-lived coalition marks the failure of an attempt at national unity after democracy was restored in Pakistan with elections in February. The coalition was always fragile. The ousting of the parties' common enemy, Musharraf, as president just a week ago, was meant to end the infighting in the coalition; instead, it left them with little to hold them together. (Source: Globe and Mail-CAN)

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A series of gunbattles between government forces and the Tamil Tigers killed 15 rebels and seven soldiers in war-torn northern Sri Lanka, the military said Tuesday. Fighting broke out Monday along the front lines separating government-controlled territory and the rebels' de facto state in the north. The heaviest fighting was reported in Kilinochchi district, where two separate clashes killed six rebels and one soldier, it said. Eleven fighters were wounded. Other battles in Mullaitivu and Welioya regions killed four soldiers and one rebel. (Source: AP)

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Europe

British Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), is understood to have told the Prime Minister that Browne should remain in his post while Britain attempts to withdraw from Iraq and expand its force in Afghanistan. Browne, who is also Scottish Secretary, has been the subject of persistent rumors that he will be removed from the Ministry of Defence in a Cabinet reshuffle next month. (Source: Telegraph-UK)

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Four masked men pulled up alongside the £20 million sailing vessel in a speedboat, then forced their way aboard brandishing handguns and rifles. They ordered the captain to empty the boat's safe, then demanded cash and valuables from passengers before fleeing in less than 10 minutes. The 160ft long yacht was anchored several miles off southern Corsica when the raid happened on Sunday night. The nine guests had paid a total of £130,000 to charter the boat for a week. Police said the raiders escaped with cash, gold watches, jewellery and several artworks. The yacht, named 'Tiara' was commissioned by Israeli millionaire Jonathan Lietersdorf in 2002 and is said to be the largest sailing boat able to pass through the Panama Canal. (Source: Telegraph-UK)

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Russia's parliament voted unanimously to recognize the independence of Georgia's two breakaway regions today in a direct challenge to the West. The Federation Council voted 130-0 to ask President Dmitri Medvedev to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma, followed shortly after with a 447-0 vote in favor of recognition. The votes throw down the gauntlet to the West over its support for the democratic regime of President Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia. The final decision will rest with Medvedev, who has already declared his readiness to "make the decision which unambiguously supports the will of these two Caucasus peoples". It remains to be seen if he will defy intense international pressure by recognizing the two regions. The United States, European Union and NATO have all backed Georgia's territorial integrity, including South Ossetia and Abkhazia. (Source: Times-UK)

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The Russian soldiers peered nervously from a freshly dug trench at hundreds of Georgian protesters who were waving placards and yelling that they should leave. Positioned by a bridge at the entrance to the strategic port city of Poti in western Georgia, these troops represent the new face of Russian occupation. Five armored vehicles stood behind them as a Russian flag flew overhead next to one declaring the area a peacekeeping post. The Kremlin insists that the Russian Army has left Georgian soil and only such “peacekeepers” remain. But Russia’s checkpoints occupy key positions along the main highway from Poti to Tbilisi, the capital, giving Moscow a potential stranglehold on Georgia’s economy and an excuse for future military intervention. Two soldiers with blue “peacekeeper” arm-bands stood before the demonstrators, one filming with a small video camera as the crowd chanted “Georgia, Georgia” and “Russians go home”. They refused to allow The Times to approach to ask what their orders were. The Times had travelled to Poti in a Defence Ministry helicopter organized by Georgian officials keen to show journalists the continued Russian presence in the Black Sea port, far from the conflict zone in South Ossetia where the crisis began. The flight also exposed Georgian nervousness over the possibility of an incident sparking renewed hostilities. Instead of taking the most direct route from Tbilisi, which would have followed the highway where Russian peacekeepers were dug in, the helicopter made for Batumi 50 miles to the south, then dog-legged up over the sea to Poti. It flew low on the 90-minute journey, hugging the mountainous landscape and skimming over forests as if anxious to avoid radar detection. (Source: Times)

Russia's flagship cruiser re-entered the Black Sea on Monday for weapons tests hours after the Russian military complained about the presence of U.S. and other NATO naval ships near the Georgian coast. The "Moskva" had led a battle group of Russian naval vessels stationed off the coastline of Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia during Russia's recent conflict with Georgia and sank smaller Georgian craft. The assistant to the Russian Navy's commander-in-chief told Russian news agencies the cruiser had put to sea again two days after returning to its base at the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. (Source: Washington Post)

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Ukraine's President declared yesterday that membership of NATO was vital to the security of his country. Alarmed by Russia's invasion of Georgia, President Yushchenko marked the anniversary of Ukrainian independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union by calling for a steep increase in defence spending and a speedy entry into NATO. His speech to thousands of people in Kiev's Independence Square scene of the 2004 Orange revolution that swept the pro-Western president to power took place during Ukraine's first military parade since 2001. (Source: Times-UK)

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Middle East

Israel has ordered the Gaza Strip's border crossings closed after militants violated a cease-fire by launching two rockets. The Israeli military says Gaza gunmen launched two rockets Monday evening, causing no damage or casualties. The military says Monday's fire brought to 46 the number of rockets launched by militants since the truce began. (Source: AP/Washington Post)

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Islamic Jihad is using the Gaza ceasefire to concentrate on training to kidnap IDF soldiers, in a similar manner to Hizbullah's 2006 attack. "Thousands of Palestinian fighters recently trained in how to kidnap Zionist soldiers," reported the London-based Arabic-language al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper on Monday, quoting the conservative Iranian Kayhan newspaper and Quds news agency. (Source: Ynet News)

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French soldiers take off their body armor but keep their FAMAS rifles slung over their backs before moving off on a leisurely foot patrol through this pro-Hezbollah Shi'ite Muslim village in south Lebanon. The troops, wearing the blue berets of U.N. peacekeepers, chat with shopkeepers in Shaqra, trying to win local friends without abandoning military muscle to deter would-be assailants. "What I hope to do here is instill confidence," Lieutenant Colonel Marc Ollier, commander of the French contingent in the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Without firing a shot in anger, U.N. troops have imparted a degree of stability that has enabled rebuilding and revival in a region wrecked by Israel's war with Hezbollah two years ago. (Source: Reuters)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

One Canadian soldier was seriously injured and two embedded reporters were shaken up when the military vehicle they were riding in early Sunday hit a roadside bomb near the town of Salawat, southwest of Kandahar City.

Scott Deveau, who is covering the Afghanistan mission for Canwest News Service and the National Post, was sitting in the back of an armored vehicle with a Canadian Press reporter and a group of soldiers when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device (IED) around 11:30 a.m. local time.

One of the two soldiers in the front of the armored personnel vehicle, usually used to transport troops, was seriously injured during the blast. (Source: National Post-CAN)

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President Karzai accused Afghan and U.S. led coalition forces yesterday of killing at least 89 civilians in an attack in the western province of Herat in what could be one of the worst cases of “collateral damage” in Afghanistan since 2001. The US military said that 25 militants and five civilians, including two children, were killed in the ground attack and airstrike on Friday, and added that it was investigating reports of further noncombatant casualties. An Afghan minister who visited the area put the civilian death toll at 90, a human rights group at the scene estimated it at 78 and the Interior Ministry reported 76 non-combatants dead, including 50 children. (Source: The Times-UK)

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President Hamid Karzai dismissed an Afghan Army general and another officer on Sunday for their part in a commando operation in western Afghanistan that Afghan officials said killed about 90 civilians on Friday. Afghan officials say that mostly women and children died and that they were killed when a joint patrol of Afghan Army commandos and American Special Forces trainers called in airstrikes on a compound in the village of Azizabad. Major General Jalandar Shah Behnam, commander of the 207th Corps, based in Herat, and Major Abdul Jabar, commander of an Afghan Special Forces battalion, were removed from their posts for negligence and for concealing the truth, the president’s office said in a statement. Both men have been summoned to Kabul for further investigation. (Source: NY Times)

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Militants used rockets and a bomb to attack the family home of a lawmaker in Pakistan's volatile northwest early Monday, killing eight people including the politician's brother.

Meanwhile, Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik announced a ban on the country's umbrella Taliban group, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. The militants targeted the Swat Valley residence of provincial lawmaker Waqar Ahmed Khan of the ruling Awami National Party. Khan said his brother, two nephews and several guards died in the attack on the compound, which belongs to him and his extended family. Pakistan's Taliban movement has claimed responsibility for a handful of devastating suicide bombings in recent days, calling them revenge for military offensives in Swat, once a tourist destination, and the northwest Bajur tribal region. A peace deal struck between provincial lawmakers and militants in Swat appears to be in tatters amid ongoing fighting. (Source: AP)

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Soldiers and police fired at Muslim protesters demanding an end to Indian rule in Kashmir as authorities arrested top separatist leaders Monday in a bid to quash unrest that has left at least 37 people dead since June. The three latest deaths came late Sunday in Srinagar, Kashmir's main city, and Monday in a village on the city's outskirts and a nearby town, when security forces confronted angry protesters defying a curfew in the Muslim heart of India's Jammu and Kashmir state. The state government said in a statement that soldiers opened fire Monday after they were shot at by protesters, who wounded two soldiers and two police. At least 15 protesters were believed to have been wounded. (Source: Washington Times)

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There was no immediate reaction from the separatist groups that are organizing protests.

Algerian security forces killed 10 Islamist rebels in a security operation southwest of the capital on Sunday, state news agency APS cited the Interior Ministry as saying. The ministry said in a short statement carried by APS that troops also seized five Kalashnikov automatic rifles, a grenade launcher and four FSA semi-automatic guns in the operation in Ain Defla province, 110 km (70 miles) from Algiers. The security operation followed two car bombings in Bouira town southeast of Algiers on Wednesday that killed 12 people and wounded 42. A bombing on Tuesday killed 48 people and guerrilla ambushes on Sunday killed 11 in areas east of Algiers. Al Qaeda's Maghreb wing claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attacks, Al Jazeera television network reported. (Source: Washington Post)

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Conventional wisdom long held that Somalia was so inhospitable that even Al Qaeda gave up trying to gain a foothold amid feuding clans, erratic warlords and a wily population hardened by years of anarchy. Now, in the wake of an aggressive U.S. counter-terrorism program that has alienated many Somalis, there are signs that Al Qaeda may have its best chance in years to win over Islamic hard-liners in the Horn of Africa nation. After once denying or downplaying links to the terrorist network, a senior leader of Somalia's most notorious Islamic militia now acknowledges that his group has long-standing ties to Al Qaeda and says he is seeking to forge a closer relationship. (Source:LA Times)

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Three men arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences have been linked to an investigation into threats to kill Gordon Brown, it emerged last night. The suspects were detained on August 14 in a joint operation between Lancashire Police and the Greater Manchester police counter-terrorism unit. Police confirmed that the arrests are linked to a posting on the al-Ekhlaas website in January calling for the deaths of Brown and his predecessor Tony Blair. The group making the threats called itself "al-Qaeda in Britain" and demanded the withdrawal of British forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. It also demanded the release of Muslim inmates from the high-security Belmarsh prison. Two of the suspects were arrested at Manchester airport as they were about to board a flight to Finland. The third was arrested in Accrington, Lancashire. (Source: Guardian)

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Iraq

U.S. forces said on Sunday they had caught two prominent Al Qaeda leaders, including one they blamed for the kidnapping of an American journalist. They said they had captured Ali Rash Nasir Jiyad al-Shammari, known as Abu Tiba, on August 17 and Salim Abdallah Ashur al-Shujayri, known as Abu Uthman, on August 11. Abu Tiba was the Sunni militant group's senior advisor in the Iraqi capital, while Abu Uthman was its "emir," or leader, for the capital's eastern Rusafa district. Abu Tiba was in charge of al Qaeda during its most active period in early 2007, they said in a statement. Abu Uthman was believed to be the planner directly behind the kidnapping of U.S. journalist Jill Carroll, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor who was held for nearly three months after being abducted in 2006. His associates were also involved in the kidnappings of British/Iraqi aid worker Margaret Hassan, who was slain by her captors in 2004, and of a group of Christian peace activists. (Source: Reuters)

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A suicide bomber killed at least 25 people celebrating the return of an Iraqi detainee from U.S. custody, Iraqi officials said Sunday night. The blast at a tribal feast in suburban Baghdad's Abu Ghraib area was one of the deadliest attacks in recent months. It served as a grisly reminder of the carnage that insurgents can still inflict in Iraq even as violence reaches its lowest level since the war began. The attack occurred at 8 p.m. as members of the Awakening Movement, a group mainly made up of former Sunni insurgents who have now joined with U.S. forces, gathered for a party in the city of al-Nasr Wal Salam, west of the capital. The men were celebrating the release of a son of Adnan Hanoush, head of the Awakening Movement in the city, witnesses said. They said the son, Sami Hanoush, was freed from Camp Bucca, a U.S.-run detention facility, three days ago. The bombing also exacerbated tensions among the Awakening Movement toward the Shiite-led Iraqi government. Government leaders have criticized the arming of former Sunni insurgents and recently stepped up their rhetoric and actions against the program. Also on Sunday, the U.S. military said it had captured a Sunni insurgent who planned the kidnapping of Jill Carroll, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor who was held captive for 82 days in 2006. The military said it captured Salim Abdallah Ashur al-Shujayri, a senior leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, on August 11. (Source: Washington Post)

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United States

The Defense Department is looking for an "energetic and imaginative executive" to run its newly formed Defense Media Activity, according to an advertisement on the agency's Web site. The executive would earn as much as $172,200 a year overseeing DMA, which since its establishment in January combines formerly separate Pentagon media organizations, such as the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, the Stars and Stripes newspaper, and the Pentagon Channel on television. It also includes the DefenseLink Web site and the military services' Web sites, the Bloggers Roundtable, and the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine magazines. All told, the new chief would oversee 2,400 military, government and contract employees around the world, and a budget of more than $225 million. (Source: Washington Post)

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Africa

Zimbabwe's opposition won the vote for speaker of the first parliament since disputed elections in March, claiming votes even from the ruling party of autocratic President Robert Mugabe on Monday amid stalled talks over sharing power. Shortly before the vote, police seized two opposition politicians as they entered parliament to be sworn in.

Despite the arrests, Lovemore Moyo won the key position by 110 votes to 98 votes, a distribution that indicated he got votes from both the parties of Mugabe and a splinter opposition faction. Mugabe's party had been expected to win because of divisions in the opposition amid reports from legislators that Mugabe's party had been trying to buy their votes. (Source: AP)

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Americas

The full extent of a nationwide health crisis linked to tainted deli meats will not be known for weeks, the federal Health Minister advised yesterday, as the number of confirmed cases and deaths continues to rise and Maple Leaf Foods, the company at the centre of the outbreak, extended its product recall. "We expect that both the numbers of suspected cases and confirmed cases will increase as this investigation continues and samples continue to be received from provincial, territorial and federal partners," Health Minister Tony Clement said in Ottawa. The Health Minister added that because symptoms of listeriosis can occur for months after food is consumed, it may be several weeks before this outbreak completes its course. First made public more than a week ago, the outbreak has already been linked to four deaths out of 21 confirmed cases, with 30 more under investigation. On the weekend, public health officials definitively linked Maple Leaf products to the illness, finding a match in two cases between the listeria strain found in the company's meat and the strain involved in the outbreak. Maple Leaf Foods, which had previously closed for cleaning the Toronto plant linked to the cases, has extended its product recall to all meat produced at that facility, urging Canadians to check their kitchens for affected products. (Source: Globe and Mail)

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Toronto's senior spy has told a group of Muslims he is frightened of potential terrorist attacks on Canadians and wants their help to "de-demonize" Canada's national-security agencies."I want you to help. . . . Us doing it alone is like one hand clapping," Andy Ellis implored a group of Muslims he had invited to the Meadowvale Community Centre in Mississauga. The regional director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said he is increasingly worried about young extremists. Federal agents appear frightened by what they are learning about radicalization and even more frightened by what they don't know. While more dialogue with ordinary Muslims could help pinpoint problems, it can be hard get the discussion going - especially when what the agents regard as their success stories are often shielded by court-ordered publication bans, and the details of their mistakes are publicly picked apart by federal judges. "The RCMP, CSIS and other agencies have lost credibility," one of more than 20 Muslims who came out for the meeting stood up to tell Mr. Ellis. Citing the charges dropped against several suspects rounded up in Toronto two years ago, and raising the 2002 case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen sent to a brutal Syrian interrogation prison aboard a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency jet, he asked a pointed question: "Is there a campaign to pick on Muslims?" (Source: Globe and Mail-CAN)

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The Conservative government is shelving a $2.1-billion project to replace Canada’s aging naval supply ships because bids from the shipbuilding industry were "significantly" higher than the money set aside for the program. The government also cancelled a tender call for the purchase of 12 mid-shore patrol ships for the Canadian Coast Guard. Public Works Minister Christian Paradis announced the decisions in a statement released at 8:30 p.m. Friday. (Source: Chronicle Herald-CAN)

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Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson says the government views the recent actions of Russia in Georgia and in the Far North "with great concern," and this is helping drive the Conservatives' Arctic strategy. (Source: CTV.ca)

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Asia

North Korea claimed Sunday that joint military exercises by South Korea and the United States were a rehearsal for an attack against it and warned it would repel any aggression.

"The army and people of (North Korea) will never remain an onlooker to the U.S. military and the South Korean bellicose forces staging frantic anti-(North Korea) war moves," the North's official Korean Central News Agency quoted Gen. Kim Jong Gak as saying at a meeting in its capital. Soldiers killed 12 Tamil separatists in fighting along the front lines dividing government territory from the rebels de facto state in northern Sri Lanka, the military said Monday. (Source: AP)

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Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif says he is withdrawing his party from Pakistan's ruling coalition. The move will likely concentrate power in the hands of the main ruling Pakistan People's Party, which wants to maintain the country's close ties with the United States. Sharif said Monday that he is pulling out of the five-month-old alliance because it has failed to restore judges ousted by ex-President Pervez Musharraf. Lawmakers are expected to choose People's Party leader Asif Ali Zardari as Musharraf's successor on September 6. (Source: AP)

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At least four rebels died in clashes Sunday in the Kilinochchi region, military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said. Thirteen soldiers were wounded in the same battles. Also Sunday, clashes in Vavuniya, Welioya and Mullaitivu regions killed eight rebels and wounded three soldiers. Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan could not be reached for comment on the military's claims. Both sides routinely exaggerate enemy casualties and underreport their own. Independent verification of the fighting was not possible because most journalists are barred from the war zone in the north. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-sri-lanka-civil-war,1,4551107.story

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Europe

This ancient hilltop town, ripe with Roman, Greek, Norman and other influences, has hosted a very modern gathering: a conference on global risks like cyberterrorism, climate change, nuclear weapons and the world's lagging energy supply. More than 120 scientists, engineers, analysts and economists from 30 countries were hunkered down here for the 40th annual conference on "planetary emergencies." The term was coined by Antonino Zichichi, a native son and a theoretical physicist who has made Erice a hub for experts to discuss persistent, and potentially catastrophic, global challenges. (Source: IHT)

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The U.S. and other Western nations may not like what Russia is doing, but officials in Moscow believe those countries lack the leverage, strength or unity to intervene. In this historic hub of expansion and empire, Russia's military victory over U.S.-backed Georgia was cheered as evidence that Moscow has regained its global dominance, and proof that the rest of the world can't risk standing in its way. As Russian soldiers poured into neighboring Georgia this month and Russian warplanes bombed fleeing, ill-equipped Georgian troops, U.S. and European officials condemned Moscow. But the image of Russia that appeared over and over in media here was that of a country rising from its knees. The United States and the nations of Europe may not like what Russia is doing, but officials in Moscow now believe those countries lack the leverage, strength or unity to intervene, analysts here say. Several of them repeated the same idea: that the West no longer exists as a unified force. (Source: IHT)

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President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia said Sunday that he planned to rebuild the shattered Georgian Army, and that even after its decisive defeat in the war for control of one of Georgia's two separatist enclaves he would continue to pursue a policy of uniting both enclaves under the Georgian flag. Also Sunday, France called an emergency summit meeting of the European Union for September 1 to discuss "the future of relations with Russia" and aid to Georgia, according to a statement from the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The meeting was framed as a response to Russia's failure to meet the terms of the cease-fire agreement that Sarkozy negotiated between Moscow and Tbilisi. Sarkozy said he was responding to the demands of "several states" for the meeting, which will take place in Brussels. According to senior French officials who helped negotiate the cease-fire agreement, the Russians must pull all their troops back to positions before the crisis began on August 7. The Russian peacekeepers stationed in South Ossetia and Abkhazia before that date may stay, and may continue to send out patrols into a "security zone," a thin buffer zone about eight kilometers, or five miles, beyond the borders of the ethnic enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia said Saturday that its military pullback from Georgia had been completed. But Russian forces remained entrenched deep inside Georgia, maintaining checkpoints several kilometers from Gori close to the South Ossetian border and two observation posts near the Georgian Black Sea port city of Poti. Separately, in the Georgian port of Batumi, the first American naval vessel arrived Sunday to distribute American humanitarian aid. A train carrying oil cars exploded while traveling near Gori, the city in central Georgia that Russia had occupied for about 10 days. Georgian officials said the train had struck a mine left behind by Russian troops. No one was reported killed in the blast and the raging fire that followed, which sent thick plumes of black smoke across the countryside. (Source: IHT)

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Russia's parliament voted unanimously Monday to urge the president to recognize the independence of Georgia's two breakaway regions, a move likely to stoke further tensions between Moscow and the small Caucasus nation's Western allies. The votes by both chambers of Russia's parliament, which were not legally binding, come as the White House announced Vice President Dick Cheney would travel to three former Soviet republics next week, Georgia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan. (Source: AP)

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Russian general suggested that U.S. ships in the Black Sea loaded with humanitarian aid would worsen tensions already driven to a post-Cold War high by a short but intense war between Russia and Georgia. The U.S. Navy destroyer U.S.S. McFaul reached Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi on Sunday, bringing baby food, bottled water and a message of support for an embattled ally. The deputy chief of Russia's general staff suggested the arrival of the McFaul and other U.S. and NATO ships would increase tensions: Russia shares the sea with NATO members Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria as well as Georgia and Ukraine, whose pro-Western presidents are leading drives for NATO membership. (Source: AP)

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Middle East

Two boats carrying dozens of international activists sailed into the Gaza Strip Saturday in defiance of an Israeli blockade, receiving a jubilant welcome from thousands of Palestinians. Since setting sail from Cyprus early Friday, the mission by the U.S.-based Free Gaza Movement had been in question. Israel initially hinted it would prevent the vessels from reaching Gaza. But late Saturday, Israel said it would permit the boats to dock in Gaza after determining the activists did not pose a security threat. Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said Israel wanted "to avoid the media provocation" that the group was seeking. (Source: AP/San Francisco Gate)

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Israel began releasing 199 Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank on Monday, as a gesture of good will to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Israel Prison Service was to take the prisoners from Ofer Prison, close to Jerusalem, to the Beituniya checkpoint near Ramallah, Israel Radio reported. Upon their arrival, Abbas was to welcome them at a formal ceremony in his Muqata headquarters in the West Bank city. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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Earlier this month the U.S. and Israel agreed on the deployment of a high-powered early-warning missile radar system in the Negev, to be staffed by U.S. military personnel. The station will receive information from the U.S. team in Europe that will aid it in its work. The deployment of the Joint Tactical Ground Station (JTAGS) system, is widely seen as a kind of parting gift from Washington to Jerusalem as President George W. Bush prepares to leave office. The new system is significantly more accurate than Israel's "Green Pine" radar system, which supports the Arrow anti-missile system. The system will protect Israel's skies from missile attacks, but the flip side of the deal is that Israel's freedom of action against Iran or Syria will be significantly curtailed.

Senior Israeli defense officials view the radar system deployment as a signal of Washington's opposition to an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear program. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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Israeli police and Shin Bet forces raided the Islamic Movement's al-Aqsa institution offices in the northern city of Umm al-Fahm on Saturday night and shut down the place. The operation was carried out in accordance with an "unlawful organization" order issued by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, following information that the institution had ties with the Hamas headquarters in Jerusalem. Simultaneously, some of the movement's bank accounts were frozen. (Source: Ynet News)

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U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is heading back to the Middle East for a new peace mission, but there are few expectations for a major breakthrough. She is still pushing for a peace agreement by the end of the year. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert plans to resign next month over a corruption scandal, but under Israel's complicated system of government, Mr. Olmert could remain in office for many months as caretaker prime minister, even after his Kadima party chooses a new leader in September. Mr. Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, says Israel will do all it can to reach a peace deal before U.S. President George Bush leaves office in January. As a goodwill gesture to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel free Palestinian prisoners on Monday to coincide with Rice's arrival. While Palestinian officials have welcomed the prisoner release as an important step, they are pessimistic about the chances of a broader peace deal. (Source: Voice of America)

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Iranian state media say the country's supreme leader has urged President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to plan for a second four-year term in office. It is the first time that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has made such a strong public endorsement of Ahmadinejad, who faces re-election next year. The ayatollah has the final say on all the country's affairs. Ayatollah Khamenei met Mr. Ahmadinejad and the Cabinet Saturday and praised them for defying international pressure to stop Iran's nuclear program. (Source: Voice of America)

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Iran's official news agency says the country has begun designing its second light-water nuclear power plant, a 360-megawatt facility in the southwest. Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, says experts have chosen the site where the light-water nuclear reactor will be built using local technology. Iran is still finishing building its first nuclear power plant, a 1,000-megawatt reactor in the southern city of Bushehr being constructed with Russian help. It is to begin operations early next year. Iran has said for years that it was planning to build a 360-megawatt nuclear power plant in Darkhovin, in the southwestern Khuzestan province. (Source: AP)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited a military chapel in Kabul on Wednesday where the bodies of 10 French soldiers killed in battle lay before they were to be flown home. Sarkozy spoke to French troops from units who lost some of the 10 soldiers killed in a fierce Taliban ambush and firefight in the mountains about 30 miles east of Kabul on Monday. He also visited some of the 21 soldiers wounded in the battle.He told a group of soldiers some 200 strong that France must learn lessons from the attack and change its procedures.

French Defense Minister Herve Morin said about 30 militants were killed and 30 wounded. Taliban fighters and militants allied to renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar operate in Surobi. It was the deadliest attack on international troops in Afghanistan since June 2005, when 16 American soldiers were killed when their helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade. Meanwhile, some 19 Taliban fighters were killed in two separate clashes Wednesday in the eastern provinces of Khost and Paktia and a soldier from the U.S.-led coalition was killed by militants while on patrol in the west of the country. Ten militants were killed in Alisher district of Khost province early Wednesday after they attacked a construction company. Another nine militants were killed in clashes in Zormat district of Paktia province on Wednesday. The militants had gathered in an open area when Afghan and foreign troops attacked them. There were no casualties among Afghan and foreign troops. A coalition soldier was killed by small arms fire while on patrol in western Afghanistan, the coalition said in a statement Wednesday without identifying the soldier's nationality.

(Source: AP)

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The beleaguered Philippine peace process was thrown into disarray Wednesday, with the government saying a proposed deal with Muslim rebels must be renegotiated after the guerrillas shot or hacked 37 people to death. The announcement came as the peace process with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front already appeared to be unraveling after Monday's rampage, which also led 44,000 people to flee their homes for evacuation centers in the troubled south. Jesus Dureza, the president's press secretary, said the government was concerned that the rebel leadership may not be able to control all their forces and such attacks could be repeated. (Source: AP)

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Twin car bombings rocked a hotel and military headquarters in the Algerian town of Bouira on Wednesday, killing 11 people a day after a suicide bombing in a neighboring region killed 43. Wednesday's first bomb targeted Bouira's regional military command and injured four soldiers, the state-run APS news agency said. A minute later, 11 people died and 27 were wounded when a second bomb went off next to a hotel in downtown Bouira. It was not immediately clear whether the bombings, which occurred at about 6 a.m. local time, were suicide attacks or if the two cars blew up by remote control. There was no immediate official comment on the attacks. (Source: AP)

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Iraq

The U.S. military says Iraqi troops have detained the son of a prominent Sunni leader during a raid in Baghdad. The arrest of Adnan al-Dulaimi's son Muthanna comes eight months after the detention of another son prompted an outcry among Sunni politicians. The military's statement on Wednesday says the detention took place the night before but that American troops were not involved. Al-Dulaimi is the head of the largest Sunni Arab police bloc the National Accordance Front. (Source: AP)

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Also Tuesday, a car bomb killed three policemen in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, once a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. (Source: Washington Post)

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United States

The federal government has been using its system of border checkpoints to greatly expand a database on travelers entering the country by collecting information on all U.S. citizens crossing by land, compiling data that will be stored for 15 years and may be used in criminal and intelligence investigations. Officials say the Border Crossing Information system, disclosed last month by the Department of Homeland Security in a Federal Register notice, is part of a broader effort to guard against terrorist threats. It also reflects the growing number of government systems containing personal information on Americans that can be shared for a broad range of law enforcement and intelligence purposes, some of which are exempt from some Privacy Act protections. While international air passenger data has long been captured this way, Customs and Border Protection agents only this year began to log the arrivals of all U.S. citizens across land borders, through which about three-quarters of border entries occur. (Source: Washington Post)

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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Polish counterpart signed a deal Wednesday to build a U.S. missile defense base in Poland, an agreement that prompted an infuriated Russia to warn of a possible attack against the former Soviet satellite. The deal to install 10 U.S. interceptor missiles just 115 miles from Russia's westernmost frontier also has strained relations between Moscow and the West, ties that already troubled by Russia's invasion of its former Soviet neighbor, U.S. ally Georgia, earlier this month. Rice and Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski signed the deal Wednesday morning. (Source: AP)

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Africa

Sudan's indicted president denied Wednesday that his regime is orchestrating genocide in the troubled western region of Darfur, and offered hope for an end to the violence and the dawn of reconciliation by promising free and fair elections next year. President Omar al-Bashir was indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague last month on genocide and war crimes charges. Prosecutors say militias unleashed by his government have killed some 300,000 ethnic Africans since 2003. More than 2.5 million have been displaced. Al-Bashir, speaking in Turkey during his first trip abroad since the indictment, said the death toll was inflated. (Source: AP)

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Americas

A Canadian man accused of involvement in a plot to bomb British targets wanted to fight alongside insurgents in Afghanistan but never intended to bomb civilians in Britain, his lawyer said Tuesday. Momin Khawaja, a Pakistani-born Canadian citizen, is accused of collaborating with a group of British Muslims, also of Pakistani descent, in a thwarted 2004 plan to bomb British buildings and natural gas grids. Attorney Lawrence Greenspon presented a motion Tuesday demanding that terrorism charges against his client be dropped, arguing the prosecution hasn't produced enough evidence to substantiate the British bomb-plot allegations. Greenspon told Ontario Superior Court there is evidence Khawaja trained to become a jihadi soldier so he could battle Western troops in Afghanistan. (Source: Washington Times)

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The crew of a Canadian frigate got a glimpse of piracy as it sailed around the Horn of Africa en route to its mission escorting food shipments into Somalia. Within the past five days, HMCS Ville de Quebec came within about 25 kilometers of two small bulk carriers that had been seized by Somalian pirates. (Source: Chronicle Herald-CAN)

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Canada will be keeping closer watch on Russian activities in the Arctic following the invasion of Georgia, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said yesterday, adding that the country appears to have entered a "new era" of relations with Moscow. "We're obviously very concerned about much of what Russia has been doing lately," Mr. MacKay said after launching Operation Nanook, an Arctic sovereignty exercise. "When we see a Russian bear approaching Canadian air space, we meet them with an F-18," said Mr. MacKay, referring to Arctic patrol flights by Russian bombers. "We remind them that this is Canadian air space that this is Canadian sovereign air space, and they turn back. And we are going to continue to do that, to demonstrate that we are watching closely their activities here." Mr. MacKay's comments came as NATO allies issued a joint statement saying relations with Russia could not remain "business as usual." Russian forces pushed into Georgia earlier this month after the Georgian army occupied the breakaway province of South Ossetia. Yesterday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada would review all aspects of its relations with Russia. Last week, the prime minister accused Russia of reverting to a "Soviet-era mentality" with the invasion.

(Source: Canada.com)

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Asia

North Korea stepped up criticism of ongoing U.S.-South Korea military exercises, warning Wednesday that it would boost its "war deterrent," a euphemism for its nuclear programs. North Korea "will increase its war deterrent in every way as long as the U.S. and its followers continue posing military threats to it," a spokesman for the North's Foreign Ministry said in comments carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency. The remarks came two days after South Korea and the U.S. launched Ulchi Freedom Guardian, an annual computer-simulated war game and follow daily criticisms of the exercises in North Korean media. The exercises come amid a dispute between the U.S. and North Korea over ways to verify the North's declared nuclear programs under an aid-for disarmament deal. (Source: AP)

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Cracks appeared in Pakistan's ruling coalition yesterday as the death toll from a bomb attack outside a hospital rose to 30, highlighting the daunting problems facing the country after Pervez Musharraf's resignation as President on Monday. Coalition leaders met for several hours in Islamabad to discuss whether to prosecute Musharraf, who should replace him and how to tackle the nation's dire economic and security problems. Negotiations stalled over the thorny question of whether to reinstate the judges whom Musharraf dismissed last year when he imposed emergency rule to ensure his re-election. Sherry Rehman, the Information Minister, said that no progress had been made in talks between the leaders of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the Pakistan Muslim League (N) and two smaller coalition partners. (Source: The Times-UK)

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Police using tear gas and batons clashed with Hindu protesters defying a fresh curfew in Indian Kashmir on Wednesday, injuring at least 25 people. Authorities re-imposed a curfew in Jammu, the region's only predominantly Hindu city, and several nearby towns after several incidents of violence were reported overnight. The clashes, which come after several days of relative calm, were small compared to the massive protests that have rocked the state over the last two months. At least 34 people have been killed in the violence. The crisis began in June with a dispute over land near a Hindu shrine. Muslims held protests complaining that a state government plan to transfer 99 acres (40 hectares) to a Hindu trust to build facilities for pilgrims near the shrine was actually a settlement plan meant to alter the religious balance in the region. (Source: AP)

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Europe

Semtex explosive formerly belonging to the Provisional IRA was used in a terrorist attack on police officers in Northern Ireland at the weekend, marking a dangerous escalation in the capabilities of so-called ‘dissident’ republican groups intent on reigniting the province’s long and bloody conflict. Two police officers narrowly escaped death or serious injury on Saturday night in the border town of Lisnaskea, Co Fermanagh, according to Paul Leighton, the Deputy Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). The most alarming element of the rocket attack was the detection of Semtex, an explosive imported into Ireland in vast quantities in the mid to late 1980s by the Provisionals as a gift from Colonel Muammar Gadaffi of Libya. The Provisional IRA was meant to have decommissioned its stockpiles of weaponry in what had proved to be the most difficult part of the peace process to accomplish, with an independent group led by the retired Canadian General John de Chastelain overseeing the operation. The decommissioning process was formally concluded in 2005. (Source: The Times-UK)

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Turkey's interior minister on Wednesday confirmed that 13 policemen were wounded in a suicide bombing this week. The minister, Besir Atalay, said that a man who was being pursued by police detonated the explosives at a checkpoint outside the southern city of Mersin on Tuesday, wounding the policemen, two of them seriously. Authorities were investigating who was behind the attack, but Mersin Gov. Huseyin Aksoy blamed Kurdish rebels. There has been no claim of responsibility. Kurdish guerrillas have been fighting for the country's Kurdish-dominated southeast since 1984. The guerrillas have carried out suicide bomb attacks in the past. (Source: AP)

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A convoy of badly needed food aid for beleaguered Georgians rumbled through a Russian checkpoint Wednesday, waved through by soldiers who themselves showed no signs of fulfilling their president's promise of a pullback within two days. A top Russian general, meanwhile, said Russia plans to construct a series of checkpoints manned by hundreds of soldiers in the so-called "security zone" around Georgia's de-facto border with the breakaway territory of South Ossetia. Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of the Russian general staff, told a briefing Wednesday that Russia will build a double line of 18 checkpoints in the zone, with the posts in the front line to be manned by about 270 soldiers. The Russian-backed separatist region was the flashpoint of fighting this month that brought Russian troops deep into Georgia. A cease-fire that calls for both sides to pull back to their positions before the brief war allows Russia to maintain troops in a zone extending more than four miles into Georgia from South Ossetian line. The Russian forces in Georgia appear to be aiming to weaken Georgia's military through the detention of personnel and destruction of equipment before they withdraw as promised. On Tuesday, Russian forces drove out of the Black Sea port city of Poti with about 20 blindfolded and bound Georgian prisoners, identified by local officials as soldiers and police, and seized four U.S. Humvees. They reportedly were taken to a Russian-controlled military base nearby, and Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said Wednesday they still were being held. Nogovitsyn, the Russian general, indicated his forces may not return the U.S. vehicles, which had been waiting at Poti to be shipped home after being used in recent U.S.-Georgia military exercises. Asked about U.S. demands that Russia return seized weaponry to the Georgian military, he said "we don't intend to give up trophies." Nogovistsyn said that 64 Russian soldiers were killed in the fighting and 323 were wounded. Russia previously had said 74 soldiers were killed and 170 were wounded in the conflict. Georgian officials have said they lost 160 soldiers and that 300 are missing. Russia claims Georgian losses are much higher. Civilian casualties remain unclear. South Ossetian officials on Wednesday said 1,492 civilians in the breakaway province had been killed. The investigative committee of the Russian prosecutor general's office on Wednesday confirmed 133 civilian deaths in South Ossetia, but said it could not be sure of a complete figure because many victims had already been buried. However, the two nations exchanged 20 prisoners of war, 15 Georgians and five Russians, according to the head of Georgia's Security Council, in an effort to reduce tensions. On the diplomatic front, NATO foreign ministers suspended their formal contacts with Russia as punishment. Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said "there can be no business as usual with Russia under present circumstances." (Source: AP)

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Middle East

Hamas has rejected a proposal to deploy Arab troops in Gaza to help the Palestinians "reconstruct" their police forces and pave the way for a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation. The proposal, presented to Hamas by Egypt and Jordan in recent days, has won the full backing of the PA leadership in Ramallah, as well as the Saudis. Ayman Taha, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza City, said that "Hamas is capable of imposing law and order in the Gaza Strip, and we don't need external forces here." Hamas legislator Ismail al-Ashkar expressed fear that the proposal was aimed at restoring the pre-1967 situation, in which Gaza was under Egyptian rule while the West Bank was ruled by Jordan. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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Palestinians in Gaza fired a Kassam rocket into Israel Tuesday, in violation of the two-month old truce. Defense Minister Barak ordered the border crossings with Gaza closed between Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon in response to the rocket attack. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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The Israel Air Force will receive a new refueling aircraft in 2009, a Boeing 707 containing a refueling system, from Israel Aerospace Industries. "We are talking about a very big project that will give the IAF another refueling system," said Major Shlomi Shefer, the Head of the IAF Aerial Refueling Department. "We took the airplane used by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and turned it into an aerial refueling plane. The fact that the IAF will have another of these aircraft means that more planes will be able to achieve their mission. We expect this aircraft to have the ability to refuel other planes in a short amount of time." (Source: Israel Defense Forces)

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Four Jordanian prisoners handed over by Israel last year to complete their life sentences in the kingdom were released from jail on Wednesday. The four, who were convicted of killing two Israeli soldiers in November 1990, received a hero's welcome from relatives as they walked out of Qafqafa prison carrying Jordanian flags. Under Jordanian law, a life sentence is equivalent to 25 years in prison and a "year" of jail comprises just nine months. (Source: AFP)

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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that Israel had "massive capabilities and tools during the Second Lebanon War that it refrained from using, because it was fighting a terror organization, not a state." Should a Hizbullah-led Lebanon lead to a war in which Israel will be under a comprehensive attack, "There will no longer be a situation of distant fighting, where major cities continue with life as usual. The war will reach the cities and homes of Israeli citizens and our enemy's objective will be to target the homefront," he said. At that point, "we will be forced to bring an end to hostilities quickly, at the smallest possible cost, using our comparative advantage," Olmert said. Olmert emphasized that "there is no need to frighten ourselves more than is necessary regarding the threats." He stated that during the 33 days of fighting in Lebanon, no one who had been staying inside a bunker had been hurt. (Source: Ynet News)

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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Wednesday he would use this week's visit to Russia to expand military ties with Moscow. Assad told Kommersant newspaper, "Of course military and technical cooperation is the main issue. Weapons purchases are very important. I think we should speed it up." A diplomatic source in Moscow said that Russia and Syria were preparing a number of deals involving anti-aircraft and anti-tank missile systems. Syria is interested in Russia's Pantsyr-S1 air defense missile systems, the BUK-M1 surface-to-air medium-range missile system, military aircraft and other hardware, the source said. (Source: Reuters)

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Last year, Russian media reported that Moscow had delivered MiG-31 fighter planes and modern air defense systems to Syria, angering Israel. Damascus is a Soviet-era ally of Moscow, which maintained a naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus starting in the 1970s. The Russian media has speculated in recent years that Moscow is hoping to revive the base. (Source: AFP)

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Ahmad Fayyazbakhsh, the head of a state-owned nuclear energy production company, said Tuesday that his company signed agreements with other Iranian firms to find locations to build new nuclear power plants. Iran has previously announced plans to build six more nuclear power plants by 2021. The U.S. suspects Iran's nuclear program is a cover for developing weapons. (Source: AP)

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In an August 11 editorial titled "When Will the Hormuz Strait Be Closed?" in the Iranian weekly Sobh-e Sadeq, the mouthpiece of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei circulated among the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, IRGC political bureau chief Yadollah Javani wrote: "The Strait of Hormuz is one of 14 locations in the world with unique strategic importance. Over 60 percent of the world's energy reserves are located in the Persian Gulf, and 17 million barrels of oil are transported daily from the strait by oil tankers....Closing the Strait of Hormuz is part of Iran's defense policy in the face of the U.S. military threat." (Source: MEMRI)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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Palestinians in Gaza fired a Kassam rocket Sunday afternoon that landed in Israel. Another rocket had landed on Friday afternoon. (Source: Ynet News)

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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)

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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)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

An explosion targeting international troops on a foot patrol in southern Afghanistan killed three members of the U.S.-led coalition Thursday. The coalition did not release any details about the attack, including the troops' nationalities or the location of the blast. American forces make up the vast majority of the coalition, which includes special forces units and soldiers who train Afghan army and police forces.

The 40-nation NATO-led force operates under a separate command. Southern Afghanistan is the center of the Taliban-led insurgency. The last three months have been the deadliest for international troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S. led invasion. (Source: AP)

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A 40-year-old Briton was among three women aid workers killed yesterday in an ambush by Taleban gunmen in one of the worst attacks on foreign civilians in Afghanistan in recent years. The body of Jacqueline Kirk and the two other women, as well as their Afghan driver, were found riddled with bullets in the province of Logar, about 50kilometers (30 miles) south of the capital, Kabul. The women were travelling from the eastern city of Gardez to Kabul in two vehicles when they were attacked by five gunmen on a road near the town of Pul-i-Alam. A second driver was critically wounded but survived. Agencies say that there has been a sharp rise in attacks on aid workers in Afghanistan; 84 incidents have been reported already this year. Zabihullah Mujahed, a Taleban spokesman, admitted responsibility for yesterday’s attack but claimed that the vehicle was carrying military personnel, “most of them female”. (Source: The Times-UK)

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A homemade bomb hurt a would-be attacker in the Philippines on Thursday while another device was defused at a southern bus terminal in what the military suggested was retaliation from Muslim rebels for a recent government offensive. The mayor of M'lang town said an explosive device, concealed in a milk carton, went off prematurely at a public market, slightly wounding the man carrying it. The man was arrested and allegedly admitted to being a member of the rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front who wanted to "sow terror." (Source: AP)

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Iraq

Iraqi police say at least 15 people have been killed and 40 wounded when a female suicide bomber blew herself up among Shiite pilgrims south of Baghdad. Police spokesman Captain Muthanna Khalid says the woman detonated her explosives belt in Iskandariyah. The city is a former Sunni insurgent stronghold that has seen a sharp decline in violence after local tribal leaders joined forces with the Americans against Al Qaeda in Iraq. Shiite pilgrims have faced a series of attacks Thursday as they headed on foot to the holy city of Karbala for a major religious festival. Two roadside bombs went off Thursday in separate Baghdad locations, killing a Shiite pilgrim and a policeman and wounding 16 people, most of them Shiite pilgrims headed on foot to the holy city of Karbala for a major religious festival. The first bomb, in the southeastern district of Zafaraniyah, killed the policeman and wounded nine others, six pilgrims and three policemen. The second, in the central Alwiya district, killed one pilgrim and wounded seven, all males in their late teens and early 20s. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. The Shabaniyah festival, which climaxes over the weekend, marks the birth of Mohammed al-Mahdi, the 12th Shiite imam, who disappeared in the 9th century. Devout Shiites believe he will return to Earth to restore peace and harmony. Shiite religious festivals have often been targeted by militants from Al Qaeda in Iraq, the country's deadliest Sunni terror group. In other incidents Thursday, three policemen were killed and six others wounded when a roadside bomb hit their patrol near Buhriz, a town about 35 miles north of Baghdad in the turbulent Diyala province, according to the provincial joint operations center. Farther north, in the city of Mosul, gunmen shot dead an off-duty policeman and army soldier in separate incidents. (Source: AP)

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United States

The Polish prime minister says that Poland and the U.S. have reached an agreement that will see a battery of American missiles established inside Poland, a plan that has infuriated Russia and raised the specter of an escalation of tension with the country. Donald Tusk, speaking in a televised interview from the capital, said Thursday that the U.S. agreed to Polish proposals that it help augment its defenses in exchange for placing 10 missile defense interceptors. The deal has been reached after more than 18 months of back-and-forth, often terse, negotiations between the two countries. Its conclusion carries an especially symbolic weight in the aftermath of Russia's incursion into Georgia in recent days. (Source: AP)

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Libya and the U.S. settled all outstanding lawsuits by American victims of terrorism on Thursday, clearing the way for the full restoration of diplomatic relations. There were 26 pending lawsuits filed by American citizens against Libya for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and other attacks, said a senior Libyan government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details of the deal had not been publicly announced. He said there were also three outstanding lawsuits filed by Libyan citizens for U.S. airstrikes on Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986 that Libyans say killed 41 people, including leader Moammar Gadhafi's adopted daughter.

(Source: AP)

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Africa

Officials briefly confiscated the passports of Zimbabwe's top opposition leader and two aides as they tried to fly to South Africa Thursday to attend a regional summit. The seizure kept the three from flying Thursday, but opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, his secretary general Tendai Biti and a third Movement for Democratic Change official still have time to get to the weekend summit of the Southern African Development Community. "They have confiscated my passport," Tsvangirai told The Associated Press as he left the airport. Shortly afterward, party official Nqobizitha Mlilo said the passports had been returned. Attempts to reach Zimbabwean government officials for comment were not immediately successful. In South Africa, presidential spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga said South African officials appealed to Zimbabwean officials to allow the opposition team attend the summit. (Source: AP)

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Americas

The switch by Taliban insurgents to spectacular attacks, including the daylight murders of international aid workers that left two Canadians among the dead, has shattered Afghans' confidence in the international community and the Afghan government's ability to provide basic security, says a top Canadian adviser to President Hamid Karzai. Retired colonel Mike Capstick returned 10 days ago from Kabul, where he worked on a British-led counter-narcotics project with Karzai's government. In an interview, Capstick gave a grim assessment of the latest developments in Afghanistan, saying there is a sense of growing insecurity in the country. (Source: The Star)

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Omar Khadr's defence team pushed the U.S. military commission here yesterday to allow expert testimony that could throw into doubt confessions made by juvenile defendants. The lawyers also want to use the request as a wedge to allow independent psychologists to interview Khadr, who so far has been assessed only by government psychologists who, the defence contends, wanted to manipulate Khadr in order to extract information from him. The tactic will probe the extent to which the military commission is prepared to grant certain requests to Khadr's legal team based on his age, 15, at the time he was captured. Lieutenant-Commander Bill Kuebler, Khadr's U.S. military defence lawyer, asked the court to allow the defence to introduce testimony from an expert on false confessions made by juveniles, a request the government doesn't appear to oppose. (Source: Globe and Mail)

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Asia

A wave of battles across the front lines in Sri Lanka's 25-year-old civil war killed 14 ethnic Tamil rebels and two government soldiers, the military said Thursday. Government jets hit a series of Tamil Tiger targets in the Mullaittivu region early Thursday in support of troops fighting on the ground, the military said in a statement.

Fighting has escalated in recent weeks, with the military capturing a series of rebel bases and large chunks of territory, and government officials reiterating their pledge to crush the rebel group by the end of the year. The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday that tens of thousands of people were displaced by recent fighting, most of them heading deeper into rebel-held territory. Some were forced to abandon their homes repeatedly in recent months. (Source: AP)

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Europe

A fire that killed two sailors aboard a nuclear-powered submarine as it patrolled beneath the Arctic ice was caused by a catalogue of errors that could have been avoided, the Ministry of Defence admitted yesterday. Paul McCann, 32, and Anthony Huntrod, 20, died when a unit used to provide extra oxygen exploded aboard HMS Tireless in March last year. Yesterday, a board of inquiry report detailed failures in the "acquisition, manufacture, transport, storage, stowage and logistics management" of the units. The armed forces minister, Bob Ainsworth, apologized "unreservedly" to the men's families. (Source: Globe and Mail)

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Rapid advances in neuroscience could have a dramatic impact on national security and the way in which future wars are fought, U.S. intelligence officials have been told. In a report commissioned by the Defense Intelligence Agency, leading scientists were asked to examine how a greater understanding of the brain over the next 20 years is likely to drive the development of new medicines and technologies. They found several areas in which progress could have a profound impact, including behaviour-altering drugs, scanners that can interpret a person's state of mind and devices capable of boosting senses such as hearing and vision. On the battlefield, bullets may be replaced with "pharmacological land mines" that release drugs to incapacitate soldiers on contact, while scanners and other electronic devices could be developed to identify suspects from their brain activity and even disrupt their ability to tell lies when questioned. (Source: Guardian)

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Russia has thrown down a gauntlet to the United States, challenging President George W Bush to "choose" between Washington's relationship with Georgia and its future ties with Moscow. In what appeared to be calculated defiance of the U.S. and the European Union, which mediated a ceasefire deal struck less than 24 hours earlier, Moscow earlier sent its forces to occupy the Georgian town of Gori, just 50 miles from the capital Tbilisi. Commanders say they will remain there until Saturday. After an E.U. foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband said: "Russian incursions into Georgia from South Ossetia or from Abkhazia are contrary to international law. But following Bush's offer of humanitarian aid, he claimed that Georgia's ports and airports would be placed under US military protection, a suggestion quickly denied by the Pentagon. Russian forces on Wednesday entered the main port at Poti and detonated explosives on three Georgian patrol vessels. In and around Gori, several reports suggested Russian forces backed by South Ossetian militias were engaged in looting and violence, but Moscow denied the claims. As Russia extended its grip in the north of the country, about 70 military vehicles left Gori, heading towards Tbilisi, but the column later halted its advance. Russia's foreign ministry said its forces were securing weapons and army bases abandoned by the US-equipped and trained Georgian army. The ceasefire brokered by the EU on Tuesday called for Russian and Georgian forces to return to positions they occupied before hostilities began, obliging Russian troops to withdraw to from Georgian territory beyond the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. But though President Dmitri Medvedev officially signed up to the deal in Moscow, Russian forces on the ground appeared bent on crippling Georgia's military capabilities for years to come. Apart from taking control of Georgian bases and securing weapons around Gori, Russian forces also struck at Georgian navy vessels, surveillance drones and radar stations. Georgian forces also appeared to have been routed from Abkhazia, the country's other breakaway zone, which lies on the Black Sea coast. There, separatist forces took full control as Georgian forces pulled out of the strategic Kodori Gorge, their last remaining foothold in the region. They reportedly hoisted their colours within Georgian territory beyond Abkhazia, taunting Tblisi by saying that retreating Georgian soldiers had received "American training in running away". Lightly armed Georgian forces have apparently drawn a new front line about 40 miles north of Tbilisi, promising to defend the capital from any further southwards Russian advance. But Medvedev insisted that Russian offensive operations were over, with Lavrov and his Georgian counterpart Eka Tkeshelashvili working on "the practical implementation" of the ceasefire. (The Telegraph-UK)

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Middle East

The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) in Gaza last week showed off what they said was a new rocket, called the Nasser-4, which can travel 25 km. (16 miles) double the range of the existing Nasser-3. If true, larger Israeli cities like Ashkelon and Ashdod would be under threat of attack. Israel says the rockets would represent a violation of the six-month Egyptian-brokered truce reached in June. "If the cease-fire is just a front for extremists in Gaza to rearm and regroup, of course we have the right to act," Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev told CNN. "Any arms buildup is a direct violation of the calm that was achieved." CNN was the only Western news organization to take part in the tour of the PRC rocket factory. Inside the "factory" a tiny room with rockets lining the walls, masked men tried to light a fire from a gas canister in order to heat the explosives to liquefy them so that they could be poured into the shells. But first, the lighter didn't work. Then, a leak in a canister filled the room with suffocating gas. Explosions, euphemistically called "workplace accidents," occur in Gaza from time to time. (Source: CNN)

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Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers on Wednesday detained a Palestinian at the Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus in the West Bank, after he was found to be carrying two pipe bombs. The bombs were detonated by military sappers. Over the past few years the IDF has thwarted numerous attempts to smuggle explosives and weapons through the Hawara checkpoint. (Source: Ynet News)

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Lebanon's fragile status quo suffered a new blow yesterday when a bomb killed 18 people in the northern city of Tripoli, the scene of recent sectarian clashes. The blast came just before President Michel Suleiman left for a landmark visit to Syria, where the two neighbors finally agreed to establish formal diplomatic relations, and a day after Beirut's new national unity government won a parliamentary vote of confidence after weeks of stormy debates. Ten of the dead were soldiers and 30 other people were wounded by the remote-controlled bomb at a bus stop in a busy shopping street. A baby and an eight-year-old shoeshine boy were among the dead. No claim of responsibility was made, but suspicion fell on Fatah al-Islam, an extremist Sunni group with links to al-Qaida that fought the Lebanese army for three months last year they had vowed revenge against the army's then commander, who is now the president. Suleiman condemned the "terrorist crime" before leaving for Damascus, where his talks with President Bashar al-Assad were billed as the start of a new era, following the withdrawal of Syrian troops in 2005 after nearly three decades of military domination of its "sister" nation. That withdrawal was triggered by outrage over the assassination of the former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, in a Beirut bomb blast in which Syria has consistently denied charges of involvement. Yesterday's Tripoli attack was a bloody beginning for the new 30-member cabinet, led by the prime minister, Fuad Siniora, which was formed last month with the participation of the Iranian-backed Shia movement Hizbullah, after a long crisis that descended into street violence that killed 65 people in May. (The Guardian-UK)

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IDF forces shot and wounded an armed man who crossed from Syria into the Golan Heights on Wednesday. The infiltrator was taken to an Israeli hospital for treatment. (Source: Ynet News)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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Written by Joseph B. Varner and Joseph C. Ben-Ami
Originally Published in Canadian Centre for Policy Studies

In the debate over the Munich Accord in 1938, Winston Churchill pointed out what he called “the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing,” that what was being represented as a victory for peace and diplomacy was in fact “a total and unmitigated defeat”. The same thing might be said of NATO diplomacy over the past 12 months.

With their blitzkrieg-style invasion of neighbouring Georgia now winding down, Russia is on the threshold of turning what was a strategic mistake by NATO at last spring’s summit in Bucharest into a massive strategic defeat for the alliance; one that threatens to drive a wedge between its original members and its newest, all of which – significantly – are located in Eastern Europe.

One of the key items on the agenda of that meeting was separate requests by Ukraine and Georgia that they be permitted to join NATO, something the Russians adamantly opposed in both cases.

In the weeks and months preceding the conference the Russians waged a surprisingly aggressive campaign to discourage approval of these requests. For the first time in many years Russia conducted military maneuvers in both the Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea. Russian naval and air forces test fired cruise missiles in the Bay of Biscay, their combat aircraft 'buzzed' a US aircraft carrier in international waters, and their strategic bomber command – resuming combat air patrols on a level not seen since the end of the Cold war – tested NATO air defenses by staging mock air raids.

In addition to these tangible acts of reckless behaviour, the Russian government threatened to target Poland and the Czech Republic with missiles if either participated in the United States’ missile defense plan. It claimed sovereignty over much of the arctic, including areas of Canada’s north and, in the middle of the winter, it threatened to cut Ukraine off of its fuel supplies.

All the while, the Russians continued to stoke independence movements in Georgia’s provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as it had been doing since the early 90s.

Of course, not all of these provocations were calculated to prevent Ukraine and Georgia from joining NATO, but to the extent that they were, they had the desired effect. When the time came for a decision, although as many as 10 countries – including Canada and the United States – were in favour of welcoming Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance, a faction led by France and Germany said no, and so the applications were turned down.

It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of this outcome. In the first place, it confirmed that the Russians now possess a de facto veto over NATO’s most fundamental strategic decisions, something no rational government would ever consider surrendering to a potential enemy. But what’s worse – far worse – is the fact that Russia was able to gain a concession of this magnitude through the use of nakedly coercive tactics and without having to offer up anything in return. In each of the world’s trouble spots – Iran and the Middle East, the Balkans, the Korean Peninsula, Darfur – the Russians have been singularly unhelpful in solving problems. Indeed like the old Soviet leaders who came before them, the Putin gang seems to believe that what’s bad for the West must be, by default, good for Russia.

It may be that the Georgian government led by President Mikheil Saakashvili grossly miscalculated in deciding to use the military to enforce its sovereignty in South Ossetia, but the Russian response has been anything but justified. South Ossetia is, after all, a part of the democratic Republic of Georgia. For that reason, the international community as a whole is obliged to take strong punitive action against Russia, even if it does not intervene militarily in the conflict. Anything less would be a signal to other potential aggressors that they too can use armed force to impose their will on their neighbours and beyond.

For NATO, however, the challenges posed by the Georgian crisis are especially acute. It may be politically incorrect to say it, but NATO’s whole reason for existence is to keep the peace by deterring Russian expansion in Europe. As such, the rejection of Georgia’s request to join the alliance last spring was bound to be interpreted by Putin and his entourage as a sign that they could do as they pleased in the Caucasus. And that is what the world is now witnessing.

In his Munich speech, Churchill described the diplomacy that led to the accord as a “disaster of the first magnitude” and concluded that as a result, “all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will (now) make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi power.” Substitute Russian for Nazi and it’s hard to see the difference between then and now.

Consider the Baltic states. Putin has made no secret of his ambition to reconstitute the old Russian empire, nor has his government (Putin remains the centre of power in Russia despite the fact that he is now “only” the Prime Minister) been reluctant to use any means at its disposal to advance this goal, as evidenced by the events of the past week in Georgia. Once Georgia has been restored to its “rightful” place as a vassal of the Russian bear, will these countries be next? Certainly they will now be so fearful of provoking their restless neighbour that, henceforth, they will be less likely to promote freedom for their citizens internally, and more likely to support Russian diplomacy externally.

What about Ukraine? Unlike the small countries that lie on the Baltic coast, Ukraine is large, powerful and fiercely determined to defend its independence. Will Putin interpret NATO’s rejection of democratic Ukraine’s request to join the alliance as a sign that he can do as he pleases on his western border as well? Only time will tell, but this much is certain: given the example of Georgia, and the ongoing feeble response of NATO to other acts of Russian intransigence, the Ukrainian government is likely to be more bellicose, not less, in defending its own interests. As a consequence, the chance of a major armed conflict in Europe has been increased immeasurably by recent events.

Can anything be done to salvage the situation? The answer to that question is yes, but it will take determination on the part of Western governments and their willingness to assume some degree of risk to succeed.

NATO must convene an emergency summit to discuss the crisis and resolve on a course of action. It is pointless to wait for the United Nations to take the lead on this. If the UN cannot get its act together on Darfur or Iran, it will never be an effective instrument of deterrence against the Russians – especially since Russia has a veto in the Security Council.

What measures should NATO countries take?

First, they should impose meaningful economic sanctions against Russia. The risk in this is that the Russians may retaliate by reducing – or even cutting off – oil and natural gas supplies to Western Europe, but this is a double edged sword for them. Energy is the principle source of foreign currency for the Russian economy, so any long term interruption of supplies to the West will hurt them as much as it hurts NATO countries.

Second, they should announce that they are reassessing Ukraine’s application to join the alliance. The Russians will howl at this, but with the exception of cutting off energy supplies to the West – an act that would, as explained above, be devastating for their own economy – there is little more that they can do in response short of actually going to war. By reopening the question of Ukraine becoming a full-fledged member of the alliance, NATO will accomplish two things: a) it will dispel the misconception that the alliance has, by default, no interest in defending the independence of non-member states, and b) it will leave the door open to Russian concessions.

Third, they must agree to the deployment of the missile defence system in Europe. Like the Pershing II missile deployment of the early 1980s, this will demonstrate more than anything else that NATO is serious about European security. Not only will missile defence guard against Russian missiles, it will also counter the growing threat posed by Iran’s long-range missile development program.

Finally, they must agree on what concessions the Russians must make in order to end economic sanctions or avert other NATO actions, they must establish a timetable for compliance, and once these decisions have been made, they must stick to them. This latter point is crucial, and not just because the Russians respect strength. A policy of deterrence can only work if those against whom it is directed are reasonably certain that the threatened response will be implemented. If Russia (or Iran for that matter) calculates that there will never be real consequences to their actions because NATO is too timid or too divided to react effectively, they will continue to indulge the behaviour that led to the crisis in the first place.

After elaborating on the nature and depth of the calamity at Munich, and the string of diplomatic blunders that led to the conference, Churchill predicted that the appeasement embodied in the deal would not be the last of the moral or material demands made on the free world under threat of war.

“(D)o not suppose that this is the end,” he warned, “this is only the beginning of the reckoning…the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless, by a supreme recovery of our moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom.”

Stirring words indeed, and words that today’s diplomats should heed.

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Joseph C. Ben-Ami is President of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies.
Joseph B. Varner is the Centre's Director of National Security and Intelligence Studies.

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Global War on Terror

Taliban suicide bomber has killed a British soldier travelling in a convoy in the Afghan capital of Kabul. The NATO convoy was travelling on the main road on Kabul's eastern outskirts when the device was detonated also killing three civilians and wounding 12 others.

The soldier, who has not yet been named, was travelling in a fleet of NATO vehicles when his vehicle was deliberately rammed by the bomber driving a car, the Ministry of Defence confirmed. The British mission in Afghanistan has now suffered 28 fatalities this year compared to 42 for the whole of last year and 39 in 2006. The total British death toll now stands at 115. A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahed, claimed responsibility for the blast, and said a man named Aminullah from the eastern Khost province blew himself up. The claim could not be independently verified. The attacks come at a time of an increased insurgent activity throughout the country. The number of insurgent attacks in the first six months of 2008 were over 50 per cent higher compared to the same period last year, according to an Afghan security group that advises foreign aid agencies. (Source: Telegraph-UK)

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Gunmen wielding assault rifles ambushed a New York-based aid organization's vehicle one province south of Kabul on Wednesday, killing a Canadian and along with a British-Canadian colleague and an American-Trinidadian aid worker. The three women worked for the International Rescue Committee and were attacked in Logar province while traveling to Kabul, said Abdullah Khan, the deputy counterterrorism director in Logar. The women's Afghan driver was also killed. Melissa Winkler, a spokeswoman for the International Rescue Committee, said the group was in the process of alerting family members and would issue a statement soon. Ms. Winkler said the women were a dual American-Trinidadian citizen, a dual British-Canadian citizen and a Canadian citizen. Earlier, an Afghan police official had said the women were American, Canadian and Irish. (Source: Globe and Mail-CAN)

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At least 14 people were killed on the outskirts of the northwest city of Peshawar on Tuesday by a powerful bomb blast that targeted Pakistani air force personnel and badly damaged a key bridge that links the city to Pakistan's volatile tribal areas. Rehman Malik, an adviser to the Pakistani prime minister, said evidence indicates that a roadside bomb caused the blast. Seven of the dead were air force officers, Malik said. Several other people were wounded. Malik said that no one had asserted responsibility for the bombing but that he suspects it was carried out by Pakistani Taliban forces in direct response to the recent launch of Pakistani army operations in the nearby tribal area of Bajaur. Pakistani officials said more than 150 insurgents were killed in clashes there in the last six days. Fighting erupted there again Wednesday after insurgents allied with the hard-line Islamist Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan group overran a government checkpoint near the tribal town of Khar. (Source: Washington Post)

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Al Qaeda has exploited recent political turmoil in Pakistan to strengthen its foothold along the country's border with Afghanistan, a top U.S. counterterrorism official said yesterday in an assessment that also warned of a heightened risk of attack during the upcoming U.S. election season. Despite the loss of key leaders to U.S. strikes, Osama bin Laden continues to enjoy a haven in the border region and has managed to deepen alliances with a wide range of Islamist groups from South Asia to the Middle East, said Ted Gistaro, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats and an Al Qaeda expert. With the help of such allies, Al Qaeda is seeking to position terrorist operatives in the United States and other Western countries. "We assess that Al Qaeda's intent to attack the U.S. homeland remains undiminished," Gistaro said in a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Gistaro was the principal author of a "National Intelligence Estimate" report last August that described a resurgent Al Qaeda rebuilding its network inside the autonomous tribal lands in Pakistan's northwestern frontier. Such estimates represent the consensus view of U.S. intelligence agencies. (Source: Washington Post)

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A missile strike targeting an alleged militant gathering point killed at least nine people, including foreigners, in northwestern Pakistan, military and intelligence officials said Wednesday. At least four missiles struck a compound in a remote and mountainous area near Angore Adda in the South Waziristan tribal region late Tuesday. The tribal regions are considered havens for al-Qaida and Taliban-linked militants, and the U.S. has pushed Pakistan to root out insurgents in those semiautonomous areas bordering Afghanistan.

The military official said at least nine people died. Two intelligence officials said between 22 and 25 people died, including Arabs, Turkmen and Pakistani militants in what they believed was a U.S. missile strike launched from Afghanistan. They said the camp is linked to the militant group of Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose followers are fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. They said it was not clear if the camp leader, an Afghan identified as Commander Zangeer, or senior militants were killed. (Source: AP)

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Indian state police shot dead at least 13 people in Kashmir yesterday during Muslim protests over an alleged economic blockade by Hindus as a land dispute began to morph into independence calls. Violence swept the Hindu-dominated Jammu region, too, where two people were killed and several hurt as thousands of Hindus and Muslims clashed with each other and with police. Thirteen protesters killed and at least 200 people were injured, including 85 police, in a dozen separate incidents a day after a Kashmiri separatist leader was killed by police while trying to lead Muslim traders into the part of Kashmir Pakistan controls. Protesters shouted slogans against India's government as Kashmir's main separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, buried senior leader Sheikh Aziz, one of four people killed by police as he led Monday's march.

(Source: The Star-CAN)

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Efforts to revive a landmark peace deal could collapse if renewed fighting between government forces and Muslim rebels spreads in the southern Philippines, the guerrillas warned Tuesday. Skirmishes between Philippine troops and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front continued in the southern region of Mindanao as government forces drove rebels from Christian villages that the guerrillas seized last week. As many as 160,000 people have fled the fighting. Police say renegades led by rebel commander Ameril Umbra Kato looted and burned down homes, took land by force and killed livestock in at least 15 villages. The rebels have killed three members of a family who were taken hostage Monday. Last month, negotiators for the rebels and President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's government reached a peace agreement, brokered by Malaysia that would end decades of conflict by establishing an expanded Muslim homeland in the southern Philippines, a mainly Roman Catholic nation. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

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Three security officials were killed at a roadside checkpoint in western China's Xinjiang region Tuesday when at least one assailant jumped off a passing vehicle and stabbed them to death, state media reported. It was the third deadly incident in nine days, coinciding with the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing. A fourth security official was wounded in the attack in Yamanya town, according to the New China News Agency. The assailants were still at large. The attack occurred around 9 a.m. as local government officials were checking the names of people passing through a checkpoint about 18 miles from Kashgar, the oasis town where 16 paramilitary border guards were killed in an attack Aug. 4. In a separate incident, assailants detonated explosives and clashed with police in the Xinjiang town of Kucha on Sunday; 10 attackers, one security guard and one bystander died, according to state media reports. The spike in violence has claimed 31 lives in the restive desert region where China meets central Asia. It comes after a separatist group that calls itself the Turkestan Islamic Party released three videos threatening attacks during the Olympic Games, especially targeted at government and police facilities and key Olympic areas. Chinese government officials say they have no evidence the attacks are linked to separatist groups, but they have suggested that the attacks are terrorism. Xinjiang is home to a large population of Uighurs, a primarily Muslim ethnic group that speaks a Turkic language and has long chafed under Chinese authority. The Chinese government responded with overwhelming force after sporadic bombings in the region during the 1990s. The area has been tense but mostly quiet for more than a decade. (Source: Washington Post)

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On August 9, 2008, a member of the Islamist website forum Al-Boraq proposed poisoning the water systems of major European cities, explaining that this is just one of many options - some "more powerful and more damaging" - but that the posting was meant to "prompt the mind [to generate] innovative [ideas]." (Source: MEMRI)

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Iraq

Insurgents, who have increasingly turned to women to stage suicide bombings, on Tuesday used a man dressed as a woman in a failed assassination attempt on a provincial governor. The target, Governor Raad Tamimi of Diyala province, escaped unharmed. But at least one other person was killed and several were wounded when the bomber's vest exploded near the governor's convoy. The use of the man in disguise appeared designed to give the attacker easier access to his target. It was the second suicide bomb attack in two days in Baqubah, the capital of Diyala. On Monday, a 15-year-old girl blew herself up, killing one Iraqi police officer. Witnesses said the bomber Tuesday was foiled by Iraqi soldiers stationed along the route. U.S. Army Maj. Margaret Kageleiry said the soldiers shot at the bomber, which caused him to detonate his vest prematurely. Iraqi officials said two civilians died and nine were injured. The U.S. military said one civilian was killed and nine people were wounded. The military warned months back that Al Qaeda in Iraq was finding it harder to recruit men and had turned to women to stage suicide attacks. At least 28 women have carried them out this year, according to U.S. Army figures, compared with seven last year. Also Tuesday, the military announced the death of a U.S. Marine in the western province of Anbar. Attackers shot the Marine to death Sunday. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

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United States

The mysterious death of an Ottawa man in a Denver hotel is now the subject of a terrorism investigation. Saleman Abdirahman Dirie, 29, was found dead in a room at the Burnsley Hotel in downtown Denver Monday morning, less than two weeks before the Democratic National Convention takes place in the Colorado city. The hotel is about four blocks from the State Capitol building. A coroner's investigation found indications of cyanide poisoning, Denver police detective John White told the Citizen yesterday. According to media reports from Denver, a large container of a white powdery substance was found in Mr. Dirie's room on the fourth floor of the Burnsley Hotel. Tests are now being done by the Denver Police Crime Lab to determine what the substance is. The tests could take days. The FBI and other governmental agencies, including the Joint Terrorism Task Force, are assisting in the probe. The FBI has told the Denver Post there was no reason to suspect terrorism at this time. The man did not have a passport, but Denver police identified him as a Canadian from Ottawa. Mr. Dirie is not known to have family in Ottawa and the RCMP could not be reached for comment. (Source: Ottawa Citizen)

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General Norton A. Schwartz, who began his tenure as the 19th Air Force chief of staff yesterday, has taken a frank view of the service's need to address recent failures concerning the security of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and acquisitions practices, telling senior leaders in briefings that they need to "stop the slide." In two PowerPoint documents used in recent briefings, Schwartz emphasized the need for the Air Force to recapture "top-to-bottom excellence in the nuclear mission," restore "credibility on Capitol Hill one member (and staff) at a time," and instill "a compliance culture in key disciplines" such as nuclear, aircraft and missile maintenance and acquisition. Drafts of the internal documents were obtained by The Washington Post and were verified by the Air Force yesterday. Schwartz has set his sights on restoring the service's credibility after a series of security and corruption problems that have marred its reputation in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. (Source: Washington Post)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/12/AR2008081202864.html

Colonel Abdul Karim Aziz, a fighter pilot who survived the war between Iraq and Iran during the 1980s, had all but given up hope of flying again when his mother told him in 2005 that it was time to get back in the air. "When the war began, I didn't think of coming back," said Aziz, 49, speaking about the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Referring to the American military, he added: "I didn't like the friendly side." The U.S. military all but paralyzed the Iraqi air force after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, turning veteran pilots like Aziz into grounded bureaucrats. The little that remained of the country's once-mighty fleet was obliterated during the early weeks of the Iraq war. And Iraq's skies became the domain of the U.S. military, controlled from an operations center in Qatar. Now in an about-face, the U.S. Air Force is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get Aziz and others to fly again, train a fresh generation of pilots and build up the Iraqi air force's fleet and infrastructure from scratch. The Air Force project is part of a broader effort to train and equip specialized units of Iraq's security forces, which U.S. commanders see as a critical step to set the conditions for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. As violence has decreased in Iraq in recent months, these initiatives have become one of the U.S. military's top priorities. But they are getting off the ground as Iraqis have stepped up calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and as U.S. lawmakers, who in recent years have allocated billions of dollars to train and equip Iraq's security forces, are increasingly demanding that Iraqis pick up a greater share of the tab for security. (Source: Washington Post)

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Other than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, few foreign policy initiatives have gotten more diplomatic attention from the Bush administration recently than thawing its increasingly chilly relationship with Russia. Twice over the last 10 months, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have been sent on joint missions to convince the Kremlin that it should cooperate on a variety of fronts, including missile defense and nuclear proliferation. But the conflict in Georgia this week has left efforts to engage Russia in disarray, and there are increasing signs that administration hard-liners are using the crisis to reassert their view that Moscow should be isolated. Vice President Dick Cheney's declaration Saturday that "Russian aggression must not go unanswered" was seen by some experts as the first salvo of what could be a new battle over administration policy. Some conservatives believe the administration has not been tough enough with Russia. Frederick W. Kagan, a neoconservative scholar who has advised the Bush administration, praised Cheney's comment and faulted President Bush for failing to outline to the Russians the consequences of pressing their assault. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

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A US Coast Guard cutter will depart for the Arctic this week as part of a race against Russia to claim the vast spoils of oil and natural gas below the sea floor that both nations are scrambling to exploit. The cutter Healy will leave Barrow, Alaska, tomorrow on a three-week journey to map the Arctic Ocean floor in a relatively unexplored area at the northern edge of the Beaufort Sea, in an attempt to bolster US claims to the area by proving that it is part of its extended outer continental shelf. The rush to stake out territory across the Arctic has intensified since last August, when a Russian submarine planted the nation's flag on the sea floor beneath the North Pole, which was viewed as a provocative land grab. That triggered an immediate response from the Canadian Government, which within a week announced that it was going to build two new military bases in the Arctic wilderness, a warning shot in the new Cold War over the far North's energy resources. The Healy will be joined by a Canadian icebreaker on September 6.

(Source: The Times-UK)

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Africa

Robert Mugabe last night appeared to have ensured his political survival by splitting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. A senior member of Mr Mugabe’s ruling Zanu (PF) party said that the 84-year-old dictator had agreed to set up a coalition government with Arthur Mutambara, the leader of a breakaway faction of the MDC with ten seats in Parliament. The terms of the deal were not clear, but it appeared to exclude Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the mainstream MDC who was denied victory in Zimbabwe’s recent presidential elections by vote-rigging, violence and intimidation. Mr Tsvangirai left the Rainbow Towers hotel in Harare last night grim-faced and silent after three days of talks between himself, Mr Mugabe and Mr Mutambara, on ways to end Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis. The talks were mediated by Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s President. The pact would restore the control of parliament that Zanu (PF) lost to the MDC in the March election. Together they would have 109 seats to Mr Tsvangirai’s 100. However, it do little to help a country saddled with the world’s highest inflation rate and lowest life expectancy after years of grotesque misrule. (Source: The Times-UK)

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Americas

Today's court appearance by Omar Khadr will mark the 10th time the Toronto-born prisoner will have been taken by armed convoy from his cell to a makeshift courthouse.

But this time, the political and legal backdrop for his pre-trial hearing has changed dramatically. Khadr's legal team has spent the last few months waging a high-profile media campaign it hoped would elicit sympathy for the 21-year-old and force the Canadian government to intervene. His lawyers say they see their job as twofold: fighting the legality of the military court through dozens of motions and constitutional challenges, and trying to generate public and political outcry about Khadr's trial. Khadr's lawyers will argue today that the charges should be dismissed because the trial has been tainted by political influence, an allegation the prosecution denies. They will also request that an independent medical expert be granted access to Khadr to assess his mental state. Khadr was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002 following a firefight with U.S. forces, in which Sergeant Christopher Speer was fatally wounded. (Source: The Star-CAN)

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Two members of the Canadian military have been charged with sabotage after an alleged incident involving a secure government computer system at National Defence headquarters in Ottawa last year. The highly unusual charges were laid yesterday by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service in relation to what Defence Department officials are calling an "alleged corruption of a database." Petty Officer Second Class Sylvia Reid, now based in Victoria, B.C., and Petty Officer Second Class Janet Sinclair, a member of the Maritime Forces Pacific headquarters in Victoria, were each charged with one count of sabotage, one count of conspiracy, one count of mischief in relation to data and one count of willful property damage. The charges came after a year-long investigation by the NIS and military police, a probe that also involved gathering evidence through computer forensic analysis. The two women allegedly corrupted a classified government database at headquarters in July 2007, according to the military.

(Source: Canada.com)

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Europe

Polish and U.S. negotiators begin further talks Wednesday on a proposed U.S. missile defense system, a meeting where the fighting between Russia and Georgia was certain to loom large. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday that the attacks in Georgia justified Poland's demand for additional security guarantees if it accepts a U.S. installation. Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, replacing Poland's previous chief negotiator, is to hold two days of talks with U.S. negotiator John Rood. (Source: AP)

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Attacks by Russian hackers against Georgian websites, including one hosted in the United States, continued Tuesday even as Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ordered a halt to hostilities against Georgia. Tom Burling, acting chief executive of Atlanta-based Web-hosting firm Tulip Systems Inc., said the website of the president of Georgia was the target of a flood of traffic from Russia aiming to overwhelm the site. Burling said bogus traffic outnumbered legitimate traffic 5000 to 1 at president.gov.ge. Tulip's firewall was blocking most of the malicious traffic. The site has been periodically inaccessible, though it was working midday Tuesday. Burling said the attacks have been reported to the FBI. Tom Burling, acting chief executive of Atlanta-based Web-hosting firm Tulip Systems Inc., said the website of the president of Georgia was the target of a flood of traffic from Russia. The site was transferred from servers in Georgia, the small nation south of Russia, on Saturday. Georgian-born Nino Doijashvili, Tulip's chief executive and founder, happened to be in the country on vacation when fighting broke out Thursday. Doijashvili offered help to the government when it became apparent that Russian hackers were getting the upper hand, shutting down several government and news sites. The U.S.-based Shadowserver Foundation, which tracks Internet attacks, said they had noticed commands to attack Georgian sites being issued over the weekend to “botnets,” or networks of computers that have been surreptitiously subverted by hackers. The computers are used to send bogus traffic to targeted sites, slowing them or in some cases bringing them down. The same botnets are also targeting Russian news sites and the website of Gary Kasparov, the Russian chess player and political activist, according to Steven Adair at Shadowserver. On Monday, hackers took over the website of Georgia's parliament and replaced it with an image that drew parallels between Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili and Adolf Hitler. (Source: Globe and Mail-CAN)

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The presidents of Georgia and Russia agreed early today on a framework that could end the war that flared up here five days ago, after Russia reasserted its traditional dominance of the region. Russian air strikes continued during the day yesterday, however, and hatred simmered on both sides. Declaring that "the aggressor has been punished," President Dmitry Medvedev announced early yesterday that Russia would stop its campaign. By 2 a.m. today, he and his Georgian counterpart, Mikheil Saakashvili, had agreed to a plan that would withdraw troops to the positions they had occupied before the fighting broke out. Whether the agreement holds or not, Russia has achieved its goals, effectively creating a new reality on the ground, humiliating the Georgian military and increasing the pressure on a long-time antagonist, Saakashvili. Russian authorities make no secret of their desire to see Saakashvili tried for war crimes in The Hague, and could well try other measures to undermine him. Medvedev also authorized Russian soldiers to fire on "hotbeds of resistance and other aggressive actions." As the conflict cools and hardens, the two separatist regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, could wind up permanently annexed by Russia. The Bush administration cancelled a scheduled naval exercise with Russia and is expected to press NATO to ban a Russian warship from joining a separate alliance exercise. Cancellation would be the first concrete reprisal against Russia for its actions in Georgia. (Source: The Star-CAN)

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Russian troops and paramilitaries thrust deep into Georgia on Wednesday, rolling into the strategic city of Gori and violating the truce designed to end the six-day war that has uprooted 100,000 people and scarred the Georgian landscape. Georgian officials said Gori was looted and bombed by the Russians, who denied the claim. An AP reporter later saw dozens of tanks and military vehicles leaving the city, roaring southeast. Troops waved at journalists and one soldier shouted to a photographer: "Come with us, beauty, we're going to Tbilisi!" But the convoy turned north, left the highway about a hour's drive from the Georgian capital and started setting up camp. To the west, Abkahzian separatist forces backed by Russian military might pushed out Georgian troops and even moved into Georgian territory, defiantly planting a flag. The developments came less than 12 hours after Georgia's president said he accepted a cease-fire plan brokered by France that called for both sides to retreat to their original positions. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that Russia was halting military action because Georgia had paid enough for its attack last Thursday on South Ossetia. Saakashvili gambled on a surprise attack late Thursday to regain control over South Ossetia. Instead, Georgia, a former Soviet state and current U.S. ally that wants to join NATO, suffered a punishing beating from Russian tanks and aircraft that has left the country with even less control over territory than before. About 50 Russian tanks entered Gori on Wednesday morning. The city of 50,000 sits on Georgia's only significant east-west road about 15 miles south of South Ossetia, a separatist province where much of the fighting has taken place. In the west, Georgian troops acknowledged Wednesday they had completely pulled out of a small section of Abkhazia which they had controlled, a development that leaves the entire area in the hands of the Russian-backed separatists. Georgia insisted its troops were driven out by Russian forces. At first, Russia said that separatists had done the job, not Russian forces. Nogovitsyn said Wednesday that Russian peacekeepers had disarmed Georgian troops in Kodori the same peacekeepers that Georgia wants withdrawn. The effect was clear. Abkhazia was out of Georgian hands and it would take more than an EU peace plan to get it back in. One of two separatists areas trying to leave Georgia for Russia, Abkhazia lies close to the heart of many Russians. It's Black Sea coast was a favorite vacation spot for the Soviet elite, and the province is just down the coast from Sochi, the Russian resort that will host the 2014 Olympics. Lomaia said Russian troops also still held the western town of Zugdidi near Abkhazia, controlling the region's main highway. An AP reporter saw a convoy of 13 Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers in Zugdidi's outskirts on Wednesday. Russia accused Georgia of killing more than 2,000 people, mostly civilians, in South Ossetia. The claim couldn't be independently confirmed, but witnesses who fled the area over the weekend said hundreds had died. Georgia said Wednesday that 175 Georgians had died in five days of air and ground attacks that left homes in smoldering ruins, including some killed Tuesday in a Russian bombing raid of Gori just hours before Medvedev declared fighting halted.

(Source: AP)

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Middle East

Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas has rejected an Israeli peace proposal, Nabil Abu Rdainah, Abbas' spokesman, said on Tuesday. Under the proposal, Israel would give the Palestinians 92.7 percent of the West Bank, plus all of Gaza, according to Western and Palestinian officials briefed on the negotiations. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's proposal does not offer a solution to competing claims to Jerusalem, and would only be implemented once Abbas reined in militants and re-established control of Gaza, which Hamas seized a year ago. Olmert's proposal first emerged several months ago and was published in greater detail on Tuesday, prompting Abu Rdainah's response. "The Israeli proposal is not acceptable," he said. "The Palestinian side will only accept a Palestinian state with territorial continuity, with holy Jerusalem as its capital, without settlements, and on the June 4, 1967 boundaries." He called the Israeli proposal a "waste of time." Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said, "We are committed to continuing the effort to try to reach a joint Israeli-Palestinian document." (Source: Reuters)

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Chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat said the Palestinians were unaware of the existence of such a proposal. "At no time were the Palestinians presented with a detailed set of proposals by Ehud Olmert or any Israeli official," he said. "All the details mentioned in this report are either completely untrue or are not linked to reality." Erekat said the Palestinians would not accept any solution that excludes the issues of Jerusalem and the "right of return" for Palestinians. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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The U.S. has rejected an Israeli request for military equipment and support that would improve Israel's ability to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. The Americans viewed the request, which was rejected at the highest level, as a sign that Israel is in the advanced stages of preparations to attack Iran. They warned Israel against attacking, saying such a strike would undermine American interests. When President Bush visited Jerusalem in May, he held a private meeting on the Iranian threat with Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Barak. The Israelis presented requests for specific items of military equipment, along with diplomatic and security backing. Two weeks ago, Barak visited Washington and warned that Iran was liable to advance its nuclear program under cover of the endless deliberations about sanctions. In an attempt to compensate Israel for having rejected all its proposals, Washington then offered to bolster Israel's defenses against ballistic missiles. However, it would not agree to supply Israel with any offensive systems. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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A bomb ripped through a bus carrying civilians and members of the military during Wednesday morning rush hour in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, killing 18 people and wounding 46. The officials said the dead included 10 off-duty soldiers. The bomb was planted on the side of a main street and went off as the bus passed by. The streets were filled with people heading to work, which contributed to the many casualties. The military had no immediate comment. The security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. The blast raised suspicions that al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic militants may have sought revenge on the military for its assault last year on the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared, a one-time bastion of the Fatah Islam group. The months-long battle killed hundreds and eventually drove out Fatah Islam. (Source: AP)

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The U.S. Treasury on Tuesday imposed sanctions against five more Iranian firms that had provided support or materials to Iran's nuclear and missile programs. The move bans Americans from doing business with them and freezes any assets they may have under U.S. jurisdiction. "These five nuclear and missile entities have been used by Iran to hide its illicit conduct and further its dangerous nuclear ambitions," said Stuart Levey, the Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. "Responsible financial institutions and businesses worldwide are taking steps to avoid doing business with Iranian nuclear and missile entities, as well as with the front companies and cut-outs the Iranian regime uses to disguise its activities," Levey said. (Source: Reuters)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

As U.S. military casualties mount in Afghanistan, a retired four-star Army general, who just returned from reviewing the six-plus-year war effort, said the country "is in misery" and describes the war as "a 25-year campaign."

In a memo written for the Social Sciences Department at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on July 30, Barry McCaffrey, a division commander during the 1991 Gulf War and drug czar under President Bill Clinton, writes that there is "no unity of command," either among U.S. and foreign coalition troops, or even among U.S. troops. Political and economic contributions to nation-building efforts are an additional source of disunity. Unity of command, in which all forces report to a single commander, is a basic principle of military strategy, without which military campaigns are rarely successful. McCaffrey writes that U.S. forces have two regional commands: European Command, which is also the NATO military command, and Central Command, which directs U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia. (Source: Washington Independent)

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The Pentagon will send a one-star general to Afghanistan this fall as part of a politically parlous but determined effort by the US to assume greater control in the country's troubled southern sector. It's a small change to the complex command structure blamed for an ineffective counterinsurgency strategy that allowed the Taliban to stage a comeback. But the deployment of the commander may pave the way for the US to slowly begin taking over the southern sector's military efforts as NATO's role there diminishes over time. (Source: CSM)

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A suicide bomber rammed his car into a NATO convoy in Kabul on Monday, killing three civilians and wounding at least a dozen people. (Source: AP)

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Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces killed 25 Taliban insurgents and eight civilians after an ambush in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said on Monday. The issue of civilian casualties has led to a rift between Afghanistan and its Western allies with President Hamid Karzai saying Sunday that foreign airstrikes had only succeeded in killing ordinary Afghans and would not defeat the insurgency. The Taliban launched multiple ambushes on a patrol in the Khas Uruzgan district of Uruzgan province Sunday, the U.S. military said in a statement. The militants "then fled into a neighboring compound where they held 11 non-combatants hostage, including several children and an infant," it said. The insurgents then fired on the coalition forces from the compound and the troops called in an airstrike, but the statement said they did not know there were civilians in the building. (Source: Washington Post)

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An infantryman described as a “Friendly Giant” was killed by Taliban artillery Monday at a remote outpost surrounded by grape fields in the hard-scrabble countryside west of Kandahar city. Master Corporal Erin Doyle, a member of the 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based in Edmonton, perished at dawn in the type of assault that occurs daily in small, isolated combat stations. (Source: Globe and Mail)

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Thirteen people were killed and 10 wounded in a bomb attack on an air force bus in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Tuesday. There was no claim of responsibility, but Islamist militants based on the Afghan border have been blamed for a series of attacks on security forces over the past year. The attack followed days of fighting, including air strikes, between militants and security forces in the Bajaur region, a militant hot spot north of Peshawar. About 150 militants, including a senior Al Qaeda member, have been killed. Tuesday's blast took place on the outskirts of Peshawar, the provincial capital, when the bus drove over a bridge on its way to the city. (Source: IHT)

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Muslim rebels said they were pulling back from a dozen of occupied southern Philippine villages Tuesday after government forces began retaking them amid fierce fighting that has forced nearly 160,000 civilians from their homes. Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno blamed Moro Islamic Liberation Front guerrillas for refusing to leave about 15 villages in the predominantly Christian province of North Cotabato and forcing residents to abandon their farms at harvest time. TV footage showed residents leaving with their precious water buffalos, used for plowing. They refugees described hurriedly leaving their homes at the sound of gunfire, with little time to pack their belongings. Most headed to about 40 government-run evacuation centers, while many others took refuge with relatives. Government figures showed 83 homes were burned, most in Aleosan town. (Source: AP)

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Knife-wielding assailants attacked a road checkpoint in China's troubled far west on Tuesday, killing three guards and raising the death toll to 31 from a surge in violence coinciding with the Beijing Olympics. The state-run Xinhua News Agency said an unknown number of attackers jumped from a vehicle at the checkpoint in Yamanya town in Muslim-dominated Xinjiang territory and stabbed four guards, three of whom died.

It was the third attack on government-linked guards this month in Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan and where an Islamic militant separatist group operates. An officer at Yamanya town's police post confirmed the three deaths.

(Source: AP)

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Two Yemeni security officers and five suspected Al Qaeda militants died in a gunbattle Monday in a southern Yemeni town. Authorities also captured two suspected militants during the shootout, which took place in Tarim in Hadramawt province, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information to journalists. The provincial governor, Ahmed al-Khanbashi, said earlier that troops surrounded a house and exchanged gunfire with men inside who were believed to be members of an Al Qaeda branch. He put the death toll at two militants and gave no further details. Residents of the town said shooting raged for about two hours and some armed men managed to escape. Last week, two grenades were thrown at a police convoy in the province's capital, al-Mukalla, but caused no casualties. Earlier, Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb that killed a policeman in the Interior Ministry's regional headquarters in Hadramawt. Al-Qaeda has an active presence in Yemen, which is the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden. (Source: Washington Post)

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Some of the 50 Islamic extremists from Germany who trained at terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan may be plotting attacks in Germany, Joerg Ziercke, head of the country's FBI equivalent, told the daily Tagesspiegel in an interview released Sunday. "In light of statements from al-Qaeda and (the Islamic Jihad Union) we are certain that a decision has been made to conduct attacks in Germany," Ziercke said. Ziercke said a small number of the newly trained militants had already returned to Germany and are among some 100 suspected extremists under investigation by the federal crime office.

(Source: AP/MSNBC)

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Iraq

Kenneth B. Gibson, who grew up in southwest Virginia, was remembered last night by someone who knew him as a child as sweet and outgoing. Gibson went on to become a sergeant in an Army infantry division, and Sunday he died in Tarmiyah, Iraq, the Pentagon said yesterday. Gibson, 25, died of wounds suffered when a makeshift bomb detonated near his position during dismounted operations. (Source: Washington Post)

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A female suicide bomber struck an Iraqi army convoy carrying senior officials Tuesday in Baqouba, killing at least two people, the U.S. military said. It was the second suicide attack by a woman in Diyala's provincial capital in as many days. The bombing also came a day after the Iraqi government announced a weeklong suspension of its military operations in the area north of Baghdad to give suspected insurgents time to surrender.

The woman was targeting the convoy as it carried an Iraqi commander and the provincial governor in the city center, but she was forced to detonate her explosives prematurely and missed the officials after guards noticed her suspicious behavior. Iraqi police initially said the bomber was a man. But the U.S. military in northern Iraq said American soldiers at the site had confirmed the attacker was a woman. The attack came a day after another female suicide bomber struck a market checkpoint in Baqouba, killing at least one policeman and wounding 14 other people, including nine officers. Elsewhere, U.S. soldiers captured nine suspected militants linked to what the military called an Iranian-backed group known as the Hezbollah Brigades in northern Baghdad on Monday and Tuesday. Tips indicated that one of those captured was believed to control at least one militant cell in the southern city of Basra and was involved in smuggling weapons and fighters across the Iranian border into Iraq. The military said the Hezbollah Brigades allegedly receives funding, logistics support and weapons from Iran along with "guidance or direction" from Iran's elite Quds Force, a branch of the Revolutionary Guard. Tehran has denied U.S. allegations that it is support violent groups in Iraq. (Source: AP)

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United States

North Korea missed its first chance yesterday to be removed from the State Department's list of terrorist states, U.S. officials said, because it has not provided a way for international inspectors to verify claims about its nuclear program. President Bush said in June that the United States would begin the process of taking North Korea off its terrorism blacklist, and yesterday was the earliest that Pyongyang could have been removed. But U.S. officials said that North Korea has not followed through on allowing outside verification of its nuclear program, which the Bush administration has set as a condition for action. (Source: Washington Post)

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Africa

A helicopter used by the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur was hit by gunfire Monday and forced to return to its airfield. U.N. spokesman Noureddine Mezni said it was not immediately clear who fired, damaging the rear of the aircraft and its radio. There were no casualties. Peacekeepers have frequently been attacked by armed gunmen. An ambush in July killed seven soldiers. The force took over peacekeeping duties in January from a beleaguered African Union-only force, but is operating with only about a third of its authorized 26,000 soldiers. It lacks any combat and rescue helicopters, possessing only 27 commercially-leased transport models. Fighting erupted in Darfur in 2003 when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government, accusing it of discrimination. Up to 300,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million displaced. Sudan's government is accused of unleashing janjaweed militias in a reign of terror against Darfur civilians. The government in Khartoum denies the allegation. (Source: Washington Post)

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Mauritania's ousted prime minister defiantly refused to recognize the African country's ruling military junta Monday, after he was freed from house arrest under international pressure. Prime Minister Yahya Ould Ahmed Waqef told a rally of several thousand people that the country would not accept last week's bloodless coup that forced President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi from power. Abdallahi remains under arrest. Speaking just hours after his release, Waqef said the president was in good health and encouraged them to keep pushing to restore the government to power. "The president thanks you for your untiring fight, your strong fight to restore constitutional order," he said. The rally was a significant show of support for the president, who rose to power last year as Mauritania's first freely elected president in more than two decades. Soon after last Wednesday's coup, only around 100 Abdallahi supporters gathered and were quickly dispersed by police firing tear gas. That same day, several thousand coup supporters marched with the coup leader, Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. (Source: Washington Post)

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Asia

Sri Lankan troops have killed 115 Tamil Tiger rebels in fighting since Friday, the military says. Seven soldiers also died, according to a spokesman, as government forces continued to advance into territory held by the rebels in the north. There is no word from the rebels on the claims, which cannot be independently verified as media access is barred. The United Nations says as many as 70,000 people have fled their homes in the area since the start of June. Thousands are sleeping rough in the open.

(Source: BBC)

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Europe

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk dismissed the official leading talks with Washington on placing part of a U.S. missile defense system in the country, saying Monday his performance was not satisfactory. Deputy Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski had been the chief negotiator in talks with the U.S. over placing a missile interceptor base in northern Poland ever since they officially started early last year under a previous government. Waszczykowski, 51, who is on vacation outside Poland, refused to comment when contacted by phone about Tusk's comments, saying he did not hear them and was not officially informed of his dismissal from his ministry position. Tusk said he dismissed Waszczykowski because "we were not satisfied with the way he led the negotiations, especially in the final stage." Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski will assume the post, starting with talks this week in Warsaw. (Source: Washington Post)

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Russia escalated its war in Georgia again Monday, sending troops and tanks out of friendly separatist enclaves to stage the first major invasion of undisputed Georgian territory. One armored column seized a town and major military base in the west of Georgia, while another menaced the central city of Gori. The Georgian government abandoned Gori and ordered its troops to fall back to defend against a possible drive on Tbilisi, the capital, 40 miles away. In scenes of chaos, retreating Georgian army trucks shared the highway to the capital with cars and pickups loaded with frightened civilians. Other vehicles, victims of Russian attacks, burned by the roadside. Georgian and Russian officials confirmed that Russian soldiers took over the western city of Senaki and its base, about 25 miles from Abkhazia, a disputed separatist zone where Russia has been massing troops in recent days. The seizure effectively opened a second front. There was confusion Monday night over the status of Gori, with some reports saying it was already in Russian hands. The country's main east-west highway, which passes through the city, was cut, Georgian officials said, and rumors swirled among residents of the capital that Russian soldiers would soon be on their streets. In Washington, President Bush toughened his rhetoric. "Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century," Bush said. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin used sharp language as well, accusing the West of supporting Georgian leaders who he contends committed genocide when their troops swept into the separatist zone of South Ossetia last week. The soldiers wiped out 10 villages, Putin said. "The very scale of this cynicism is astonishing," he declared. Putin also condemned the United States for airlifting Georgian troops home from Iraq on an emergency basis. Still dressed in desert fatigues, the Georgian soldiers stepped off a U.S. Air Force transport at a Georgian airport Monday. Moscow's intentions remained a mystery. Russian soldiers, riding tanks and armored personnel carriers, were on the move even as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev seemed to suggest that the military operation was nearing its end, and a Russian general said there was no plan to take territory outside Georgia's two pro-Russian separatist zones. Senior European officials flew into the Georgian capital to try to mediate a cease-fire plan that so far the Russians have ignored. Over the weekend, Georgian leaders declared a unilateral cease-fire. But with Russian troops operating outside the country's two separatist zones on soil the central government has always controlled, at least some Georgian forces were again in combat mode. Reporters witnessed Georgian troops and six helicopter gunships opening fire near the border of South Ossetia, one of the zones. Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s and have formed close relations with Russia. Last week, Georgian forces launched a major offensive that captured the South Ossetian capital in an effort to reestablish central government control; Russian forces drove them out two days later. The Russian claims of atrocities have not been independently verified. Some of them appear to echo hearsay accounts provided on Russian television by South Ossetians who fled a Georgian military assault on the capital, Tskhinvali. Some of the few reporters who have visited Tskhinvali described a devastated city with large numbers of dead. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said in a CNN interview Monday that 2,000 people had died in South Ossetia during the recent Georgian offensive. (Source: Washington Post)

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Middle East

Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman Ehab al-Ghsain said Monday that Egypt was responsible for the deaths of eight Palestinians when it used water, gas and explosives to seal a network of tunnels under its border with Gaza. Three Palestinians were crushed to death on Monday when their tunnel collapsed; five others suffocated on August 1. (Source: Reuters)

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In a statement issued Sunday, Hamas renewed its categorical rejection of the entry of foreign or Arab forces into the West Bank or Gaza, after statements to this effect were made "by the American man [PA Prime Minister] Salam Fayad." (Source: Hamas-Gaza)

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Palestinians in Gaza fired a Kassam rocket on Monday afternoon that landed near a kindergarten in the Israeli town of Sderot. The "Color Red" rocket alert sirens sounded throughout the town and neighboring communities moments before the impact. Despite a ceasefire agreement with Hamas, intermittent rocket and mortar fire has been recorded every few days. (Source: Ynet News)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

| Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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A daily, open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

Hundreds of French troops have been deployed to train and mentor Afghan security forces in a key southern province wracked by the Taliban-led insurgency, NATO said Thursday. Eight Taliban militants were also killed in the south.

The troops travelled in 94 vehicles from Kandahar to Uruzgan province Wednesday in what was one of the largest ground military convoys in southern Afghanistan in years, the military alliance said in a statement. NATO did not provide the exact number of troops deployed, and officials would not specify whether they were being relocated from other areas in Afghanistan or were new to the country. But France has about 1,500 troops in Afghanistan, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy has pledged to send 700 more soldiers by the end of the year to help NATO-led forces. (Source: AP)

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Roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan have gotten less sophisticated and as a result harder for troops to find or avoid, a military official said Wednesday. And while the number of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, found and troops injured or killed have plummeted in Iraq, they spiked recently in Afghanistan, reflecting the escalating combat there. (Source: AP)

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An attack on a Pakistani military checkpost by some 200 pro-Taliban militants triggered intense fighting that killed 25 insurgents and two paramilitary soldiers near the Afghan border, security officials said Thursday. The fighting broke out Wednesday in Loi Sam village in the Bajur tribal region, said two army officers and an area intelligence official. All three spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. The officials said they received reports from local authorities about the casualties. The local intelligence official said the militants used rockets and assault rifles in the attack. (Source: AP)

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As Pakistan faces mounting pressure from its neighbors and the United States to clear pro-Taliban elements from its intelligence service, its weak government is struggling to respond in a convincing way. Last week, American officials alleged that members of Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had helped plan the bombing of the Indian consulate in Kabul, Afghanistan, last month. The claim echoed those lodged by both affected neighbors, India and Afghanistan. On top of these accusations came reports that a top CIA official had confronted Pakistani leaders with evidence of the ISI's support for militants that the Pakistani Army has been battling in the country's restive northwest tribal areas. The timing of the allegations against the ISI is weighing heavily on Pakistan, which has struggled to assuage its neighbors' and the US's complaints. While it denies its intelligence agents' involvement in the July bombing, it has acknowledged that the ISI still includes agents who sympathize with Islamic militants. To defuse escalating diplomatic tensions, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani met last weekend with Afghan and Indian leaders on the sidelines of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit to reiterate Pakistan's commitment to fighting terror. In talks Saturday with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh, Mr. Gilani promised to investigate the ISI's alleged role in the Kabul bombing. The next day, in a meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, he also agreed to work towards "developing a common strategy" to overcome the challenges terrorism poses to the stability of both of their countries. The reports from the US surfaced just as Gilani was completing his first visit to Washington, where he met with President Bush. The tour was widely criticized for its failure to ease US growing concerns about Pakistan's role in the war on terror. A column in the Daily Times, a national English-language newspaper, called the trip an "unmitigated disaster." Even before Gilani's visit to the US, the Pakistani government appeared to be taking action to rein in the pro-militant influence in its intelligence service. In a surprising move one day before Gilani arrived in the US, it issued a proclamation that sought to bring the ISI and another secret-service agency under the control of a government ministry. (Source: CSM)

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Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday decided to visit the Beijing Olympic Games despite media reports that the ruling coalition has agreed on steps to remove him. The leaders of Pakistan's main ruling parties met for a second day in Islamabad to resolve differences over how to restore dozens of judges fired by Musharraf last year and to consider the unpopular president's fate. Rifts over those issues have weakened the four-month-old government and hampered its efforts to formulate policies to counter rising Islamic militancy and a slew of economic problems. Before dawn Thursday, a spokesman for former Prime Minister Sharif said the talks were successful and that "the nation will soon hear good news." (Source: AP)

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A device exploded Thursday on a beach in a Russian resort that will host the 2014 Winter Olympics, killing two people and wounding three. The blast occurred in the southern city of Sochi when visitors touched the device on the Black Sea resort beach.

It said a man and a woman died on the spot and three other visitors, including an 8-year-old child, were wounded on the beach, which is 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) north of central Sochi. Local authorities said they quickly evacuated visitors from all Sochi beaches and checked them for more explosives. None were found. The explosion immediately drew the concern of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev who ordered his envoy in the region to oversee the investigation. The local governor rushed to the site. An Interior Ministry official said the explosion could be part of turf battle for control over the area between local criminal groups. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. (Source: AP)

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A series of explosions at a municipal government building in Istanbul slightly injured three people Thursday. Three blasts occurred near a municipal building in the Uskudar district, a municipal official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists. It was not immediately clear what caused the blasts and officials said police were investigating. The building houses the district's Parks Department. Earlier reports said hand grenades were tossed into the building, but that could not be immediately confirmed. The three injured were taken to a nearby hospital, private NTV television reported, citing Istanbul police chief Celalettin Cerrah. Hospital officials could not immediately be reached for comment. On July 25, two bombings killed 17 people and injured more than 150 others at a packed Istanbul square. Turkey's government has blamed the attack on a Kurdish rebel organization, which denied responsibility. (Source: AP)

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Iraq

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will call on his fighters to maintain a cease-fire against American troops but may lift the order if a planned Iraq-U.S. security agreement lacks a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces, a spokesman said Thursday. The statement by Sheik Salah al-Obeidi comes as al-Sadr plans to reveal details of a formula to reorganize his Mahdi Army militia by separating it into an unarmed cultural organization and elite fighting cells. The announcement is expected during weekly Islamic prayer services on Friday. Several cease-fires by al-Sadr have been key to a sharp decline in violence over the past year, but American officials still consider his militiamen a threat and have backed the Iraqi military in operations to try to oust them from their power bases in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. Al-Sadr's move appears to be an extension of plans he announced in June aimed at asserting more control over the militia by dividing it into a group of experienced members who would be exclusively authorized to fight and others who would focus on social, religious and community work.But the cleric also apparently has decided to link the reorganization to ongoing U.S.-Iraqi negotiations over a long-term agreement that would extend the American presence in Iraq after a U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year. The White House's original goal was to have it completed by the end of July. Two U.S. soldiers were killed Monday by an armor-piercing roadside bomb known as an explosively formed penetrator, which the military believes is supplied by Iran to Shiite militia fighters. Iran denies it is supporting violence in Iraq. On Thursday, a roadside bomb killed eight Bedouins, including three women and two children, on a remote desert highway west of Nasiriyah frequently used by U.S. and Iraqi troops, a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information. Nasiriyah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, is in a Shiite area that has been the site of fierce infighting between rival Shiite factions but has been relatively peaceful since a cease-fire declaration by al-Sadr. Gunmen also killed a senior member of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, Mahmoud Younis Fathi, and a colleague as they were driving to work in the northern city of Mosul, according to the group. Elsewhere in Mosul, three Iraqi policemen were killed when a booby-trapped wooden cart exploded after they arrived to collect a body that had been left on the street beside it. (Source: AP)

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United States

Government officials asserted yesterday that a troubled bioweapons scientist acted alone to perpetrate a terrorism scheme that killed five people, a case that centered on a near-perfect match of anthrax spores in his custody and a record of his late-night laboratory work just before the toxic letters were mailed. Federal investigators uncovered e-mail messages written by bacteriologist Bruce E. Ivins describing an al-Qaeda threat that echoed language in the handwritten letters mailed to Senate offices and media organizations in September and October 2001. Ivins, who worked in high-security labs at Fort Detrick, Md., had a motive because of his work validating a controversial anthrax vaccine that had been suspended from production. Even as Justice Department officials declared the worst act of bioterrorism in U.S. history all but solved, scientists and legal experts noted that the evidence is far from foolproof. Investigators were unable to place Ivins in Princeton, N.J., on the days when the letters were dropped into a Nassau Street mailbox. They did not try to match his crabbed handwriting with the distinctive block print on the 2001 letters. And they did not silence congressional critics who wondered yesterday whether one man could have carried out the elaborate attacks. (Source: Washington Post)

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The guilty verdict delivered against former Osama bin Laden driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan on Wednesday establishes a legal precedent that will make it easier for prosecutors to convict other suspected war criminals in military commission trials at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Mr. Hamdan, a Yemeni national, was convicted of providing material support to a terror group. But the six-member war crimes tribunal also found Hamdan not guilty of charges that he was a willing participant with Al Qaeda in a terror conspiracy. The split verdict comes in the first war crimes tribunal conducted by the US military since World War II. The military commission, made up of six officers hand-picked by the Pentagon, reached its verdict after eight hours of deliberations over three days. The conviction marks an important victory for the Bush administration. (Source: CSM)

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The Pentagon on Wednesday reopened the bidding process for the controversial Air Force tanker contract in an effort to address issues raised by congressional auditors that had forced the Pentagon to reverse itself in awarding the $35 billion contract. Defense officials stressed that the new bidding process will be as transparent as possible as they released a draft "request for proposal" to the two companies wanting to build the next generation aerial refuellers, Boeing and a partnership of Northrop Grumman and EADS, a French concern that owns Airbus. (Source: CSM)

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The U.S. Air Force has been breaking in its new fleet of F-22s, the world's most advanced fighter jet, this summer by sending five of the planes from cool and dry Alaska to hot and humid Guam for the first time. The F-22 Raptors, which have unrivaled ability to fly at supersonic speeds for long periods and travel undetected by radar, have been operational for less than three years.

Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska has been home to two F-22 squadrons since last year. It's only the second base to house the stealth fighters, after Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. The July 18-August 2 deployment of five Raptors from the Elmendorf's 90th Fighter Squadron to the U.S. territory marked just the second time the F-22 has ventured outside the 50 states. Its first such trip was early last year, when Pacific Air Forces sent 12 Langley-based F-22s to Okinawa in southern Japan for three months. (Source: AP)

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At least a half-dozen rogue states and well-funded terrorist groups around the world could launch short-range Scud ballistic missiles with nuclear or biological warheads from large container cargo ships from outside U.S. territorial waters, leading experts in ballistic-missile defense warn. The entire populations of the U.S. Eastern seaboard and the West Coast, some 70 percent of Americans totaling more than 210 million people, are at risk. In addition, analyst Otto Kreisher noted there were already 75,000 anti-ship cruise missiles in circulation around the world in at least 70 countries, and many of them could easily be programmed to attack land targets instead. (Source: UPI/Washington Times)

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Africa

Army commanders ousted Mauritania's first freely elected president in two decades Wednesday after a bitter political fight over his overtures to Islamist radicals and ties to allies of a reviled former dictator. In a bloodless coup, troops detained President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, seized control of state radio and television and announced the formation of a new "state council" led by the commander of the presidential guard, Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. The junta issued no further statements at the time, but early Thursday morning the coup leaders said that they plan to hold free and open elections; they did not set a date. In a statement read on national television, the junta said the west African nation would be governed during the interim by the council, describing it as an 11-member group of military commanders. The coup, which drew widespread international condemnation, reflected the internal struggle over how to manage this desperately poor desert nation that straddles the Arab and African worlds and is Africa's newest, if small-scale, oil producer. Troubles began early Wednesday, when Abdallahi fired Aziz and three other generals, reportedly for supporting lawmakers who had accused him of corruption and disagreed with his outreach to Islamist radicals. (Source: AP)

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Senior Zimbabwean security officials, seen as key to any resolution of Zimbabwe's political crisis, have been meeting South African mediators, South Africa's Star Newspaper reported on Thursday. Citing unnamed sources, The Star said Zimbabwe's security chiefs, seen as wielding wide power, "wanted to ensure that their interests are catered for in any agreement reached" in power-sharing talks which began two-and-a-half weeks ago. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai were due to meet in Harare on Thursday after signs that progress had been made in the power-sharing talks.

Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF and the opposition MDC on Wednesday called on their supporters to end political violence in the country, the most tangible sign of forward movement in the talks since they began two weeks ago. Members of South African President Thabo Mbeki's mediation team met Zimbabwean security officials this week in Pretoria, The Star said. Mbeki, who has been leading regional mediation efforts, was expected in Harare on Thursday. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) began power-sharing talks last month, following the veteran leader's re-election in a widely condemned June poll boycotted by the opposition. (Source: Reuters)

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Americas

Defence Minister Peter MacKay confirmed Wednesday that Canada is sending a Halifax-based frigate to waters off the horn of Africa to stop pirates from attacking food shipments bound for Somalia. The navy has diverted HMCS Ville de Quebec, which left Halifax last month for a 5½-month NATO mission to the Mediterranean and Black seas. "This will be a crucial mission," Mr. MacKay said during a hastily called news conference at the Stadacona wardroom in Halifax. "The population of Somalia is facing serious food shortages. The (UN) World Food Programme has indicated that all current food stocks in Somalia will be depleted by mid-August." Ville de Quebec is already on its way to the region and is expected to arrive in Somali waters within a week.

Mr. MacKay said the warship’s presence will ensure food shipments make it past the pirates who have been haunting Somali waters. (Source: Chronicle Herald-CAN)

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There will be no flag-waving or patriotic chest-thumping, but Canadian scientists are quietly set to make one of this country's most important assertions of Arctic sovereignty in decades tomorrow at a geology conference in Norway. A year after Russian scientists planted their nation's flag on the North Pole seabed, a controversial demonstration of their country's interest in securing control over a vast undersea mountain chain stretching across the Arctic Ocean from Siberia to Ellesmere Island and Greenland -- the Canadian researchers have teamed with Danish scientists to offer proof that the Lomonosov Ridge is, in fact, a natural extension of the North American continent. Their landmark findings, the initial result of years of sea floor mapping and millions of dollars in research investments by the Canadian and Danish governments, are to be presented at the 2008 International Geological Congress in Oslo under the innocuous title "Crustal Structure from the Lincoln Sea to the Lomonosov Ridge, Arctic Ocean." But the completion of the study represents a key step in Canada's effort to eventually win rights over thousands of square kilometres of the polar seabed, a potential treasure trove of oil and gas being made more and more accessible as melting ice unlocks our High Arctic frontier. The stakes are so high that the Canadian and Danish governments set aside their differences over the ownership of Hans Island. Along with Russia, both Canada and Denmark are preparing submissions under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to secure jurisdiction over large swaths of the Arctic Ocean sea floor adjacent to their coastlines. To secure those rights, each country has to submit scientific evidence proving the claimed undersea territories are linked geologically to its mainland or its Arctic islands. (Source: Canada.com)

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The Islamic centre offering Abdullah Khadr a job, and helping post bail for the eldest son in the infamous Khadr family, was frequented by individuals with ties to terrorism and extremist activities, according to Crown arguments at a bail review hearing yesterday. Khadr, 27, facing extradition to the U.S, has been in custody at the Toronto West Detention Centre since 2005. The judge at the time denied him bail and said there was a strong case for extraditing him. The U.S is seeking to try him on charges of buying weapons for Al Qaeda. Under the conditions proposed by the defence yesterday, Khadr would be released on $300,000 bail, would live with his grandparents in Scarborough, wear an electronic monitoring device, and work at the Salaheddin Islamic Centre. The centre has raised $50,000 for his bail through community donations, and has offered Khadr an office job. The board of the centre has also agreed to pay for the electronic monitoring device for two years, said Abdul Ibrahim, the manager of the centre. Ibrahim rejected the Crown's attempt to show the centre is an inappropriate workplace for Khadr. The Crown claimed it's a venue often frequented by individuals with links to terrorism. Lead prosecutor Howard Piafsky told the court that the Khadr patriarch Ahmed Said Khadr, who was believed to have close ties to Osama bin Laden and many of those charged in the so-called Toronto 18 terrorist plot, often visited the centre and used its facilities. (Source: The Star-CAN)

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Asia

Just hours before flying to Beijing for the Olympics on Thursday, U.S. President George W. Bush used some of his bluntest language yet in publicly pressing China to improve its human rights record. In a speech in Bangkok on the eve of the Games' opening ceremony, when the eyes of the world will be on Beijing, Bush voiced "firm opposition" to China's detention of dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists. (Source: Reuters)

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BAE’S Barrow arms factory is to share in a new multi-million pound export order for M777 army field guns. An M777 field gun Workers at Barrow, where the world-beating 155m calibre, lightweight gun was conceived and designed, build vital parts.

The revolutionary gun uses titanium for many of its parts instead of steel, making it almost half the weight of rivals and therefore more manoeuvrable. The Barrow plant, in shipyard buildings off Michaelson Road, is working through a massive order for nearly 700 of the guns from the US Marine Corp and US Army, as well as around 38 guns for Canada. Now the Australian government is poised to order 57 of the guns, which can be lifted by helicopters to be in and out of battle situations. Denmark and a number of other countries are also interested in the M777, which has been used in action in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And the US with its massive defence forces could place an order for more guns in October. Around 70 per cent of each M777, including the barrel, is made in the US by sub-contractors, and each weapon is assembled at a BAE factory in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

(Source: North West Evening Mail-UK)

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Europe

Official French reaction to the Rwandan accusation that French leaders, diplomats, and soldiers were complicit in the epic 1994 genocide in Rwanda was muted and curt. "Unacceptable," said both former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé, and a diplomatic spokesman here during a sleepy week when most of Paris has decamped for vacation. Yet some French nongovernmental organizations, media, and intellectuals treated accusations that France aided and abetted Hutu government forces in the 100-day killing spree, which left more than 800,000 dead, as at least a subject for further inquiry. (Source: CSM)

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Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic demanded on Wednesday that former U.S. peace mediator Richard Holbrooke and ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appear at the U.N. war crimes tribunal to back his claims of an immunity offer from the United States. Karadzic, who was transferred to The Hague's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia last week to face war crimes and genocide charges after 11 years on the run, challenged the legality of the case against him, a filing released by the tribunal showed. In the document, Karadzic repeated his claims that in 1996 Holbrooke had offered him immunity from the tribunal if he disappeared from public life. Karadzic argued that when Holbrooke realized he could not persuade the court's chief prosecutor to drop the indictment he decided to "liquidate" him instead. (Source: Reuters)

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Serbia has stepped up its pursuit of fugitive Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic whose arrest is crucial to the country's European Union bid, a senior Serbian official said on Wednesday. The arrest of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic two weeks ago left just two fugitives from the 1990s Balkan wars, Mladic and Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic, on the run. Their arrest is critical for Serbia's progress towards European Union membership, which the current government has set as a main goal. (Source: Reuters)

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Russia and the United States called on Wednesday for a halt to violence in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia where separatists made disputed claims of military success against Tbilisi's forces. But while Moscow's Foreign Ministry urged calm over the deepening conflict, the Russian military accused Georgian military jets of overflying South Ossetia, a charge Tbilisi swiftly denied. Georgia's key Western ally Washington called for talks.

(Source: Reuters)

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Heavy shelling overnight in the Georgian breakaway province of South Ossetia wounded at least 21 people, officials said Thursday. Tensions in the region have soared, stoking fears of full-scale war. Georgian and South Ossetian officials were scheduled to meet Thursday to try to find a resolution, but separatist officials said the meeting was off because of the Georgian shelling. The provincial capital, Tskhinvali, and nearby areas came under heavy artillery and mortar shelling from Georgian-controlled territory, injuring 18 people. (Source: AP)

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Middle East

Following the death of Yasser Arafat there was a struggle for leadership between Ahmed Hilles, leader of the Hilles clan in Gaza, and Mohamed Dahlan. When Hamas mounted a massive operation to control Gaza and expel Fatah last June, the Hilles clan stood by without firing a single round, as Hamas claimed that the operation targeted Dahlan and his group. Despite this, the Sheja'eya neighborhood, the fiefdom of the powerful Gazan family, was not spared by Hamas. Hamas was not able to find a framework of understanding with a well-known clan, refusing to coexist with another power in Gaza where society still recognizes the weight of family aggregations. Hamas forced citizens of its own, fleeing its liquidation attempts, to seek refuge with the enemy.

The Hilles men are not only known for their hatred for Israel, but also for their actual involvement in confronting the Israelis.

(Source: Dar Al-Hayat-Lebanon)

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Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged Wednesday to free more than 150 Palestinian prisoners by the end of August as a goodwill gesture to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Olmert spokesman Mark Regev announced the pledge after a meeting between the two leaders. Saeb Erekat, who took part in the meeting at Olmert's official residence, said Abbas specifically requested the release of Marwan Barghouti, jailed for life by Israel for involvement in deadly attacks on Israelis. Abbas also asked for the release of Ahmed Saadat, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, whose group assassinated Israeli Cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi in 2001. Israel freed 429 Palestinian prisoners in December as a gesture to Abbas. (Source: Ha'aretz)

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Israel freed two senior Hamas officials detained after Hamas abducted an Israeli soldier two years ago. Abli Yaish, the Hamas mayor of Nablus, and Issa al-Ja'abari, a Hamas representative in Hebron, returned home, their families said on Wednesday. Israel freed former Hamas finance minister Omar Abdel Razek on Sunday. (Source: Reuters)

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Lieutenant General Henry Obering III, head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, will recommend helping Israel finance the development of an updated version of the Arrow-3 anti-ballistic missile system, following talks in Israel. The new system, in its initial development stages, should be able to intercept missiles at heights of more than 100 km., reducing the danger of having the warhead land in Israel after interception. (Source: Ynet News)

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In the latest violation of the Gaza truce, a Kassam rocket fired by Palestinians in Gaza landed near a greenhouse on an Israeli kibbutz on Wednesday. (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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Israel is building up its strike capabilities amid growing anxiety over Iran's nuclear ambitions and appears confident that a military attack would cripple Tehran's atomic program, even if it can't destroy it. Such talk could be more threat than reality. However, Iran's refusal to accept Western conditions is worrying Israel as is the perception that Washington now prefers diplomacy over confrontation with Tehran. The Jewish state has purchased 90 F-16I fighter planes that can carry enough fuel to reach Iran, and will receive 11 more by the end of next year. It has bought two new Dolphin submarines from Germany reportedly capable of firing nuclear-armed warheads, in addition to the three it already has. This summer Israel carried out air maneuvers in the Mediterranean that touched off an international debate over whether they were a "dress rehearsal" for an imminent attack, a stern warning to Iran or a just a way to get allies to step up the pressure on Tehran to stop building nukes. According to foreign media reports, Israeli intelligence is active inside Iranian territory. Israel's military censor, who can impose a range of legal sanctions against journalists operating in the country, does not permit publication of details of such information in news reports written from Israel. (Source: AP)

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A top U.N. nuclear watchdog official arrived in Iran on Thursday for talks on cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency over Tehran's disputed nuclear program, Iran's IRNA news agency reported. Diplomats in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, said the visit was a fresh effort to get Iranian clarification about intelligence reports suggesting it is illicitly trying to design atomic bombs. Iran insists its nuclear work is peaceful. "The two parties will assess the trend of cooperation between Iran's Atomic Energy Organization and the IAEA," IRNA said in a report that said Olli Heinonen, the IAEA's deputy director, would hold talks in Tehran on Thursday and Friday. Western capitals have said Iran now faces a new round of U.N. sanctions after it failed to respond positively to an offer made by six world powers aimed at ending the dispute. (Source: Reuters)

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Russia said Wednesday that Iran should be granted more time to respond to a package of incentives that the United States and five other powerful nations have offered Tehran to freeze its uranium enrichment efforts, a stance that may slow U.S. and European efforts to impose U.N. sanctions on Tehran. Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vitaly I. Churkin, said the six nations should continue negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program. He dismissed assertions by the United States, Britain and France that Tehran had missed a deadline this week to respond to the offer, which would make a push for U.N. sanctions inevitable. (Source: Washington Post)

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France joined the U.S. on Wednesday in rejecting Iran's response to an incentives package aimed at defusing a dispute over its nuclear program as insufficient. France regrets that Iran "has again chosen not to provide a clear response," Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said in Paris. (Source: AP/Washington Post)

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Six world powers agreed Wednesday to consider new sanctions on Iran after Tehran gave an ambiguous answer to their latest demand to freeze key nuclear work, the U.S. and Britain said. (Source: AFP)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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An open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

An official says police have killed five Taliban fighters in a gunbattle in southern Afghanistan. Abdullah Khan, who is the deputy police chief of Kandahar province, says the militants ambushed a police patrol in Panjwayi district Monday.

Khan says officers fired back and killed five of the attackers. He said no police were wounded. Southern Afghanistan is a focus for Taliban-led militants who are stepping up their campaign against the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai. (Source: AP)

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Six years after being driven from power, the Taliban are demonstrating a resilience and a ferocity that are raising alarm here, in Washington and in other NATO capitals, and engendering a fresh round of soul-searching over how a relatively ragtag insurgency has managed to keep the world’s most powerful armies at bay. The mounting toll inflicted by the insurgents, including nine American soldiers killed in a single attack last month, has turned Afghanistan into a deadlier battlefield than Iraq and refocused the attention of America’s military commanders and its presidential contenders on the Afghan war. But the objectives of the war have become increasingly uncertain in a conflict where Taliban leaders say they do not feel the need to control territory, at least for now, or to outfight American and NATO forces to defeat them, only to outlast them in a region that is in any case their home. The Taliban’s tenacity, military officials and analysts say, reflects their success in maintaining a cohesive leadership since being driven from power in Afghanistan, their ability to attract a continuous stream of recruits and their advantage in having a haven across the border in Pakistan. The Taliban’s reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, a one-eyed cleric and war veteran, is widely believed by Afghan and Western officials to be based in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province in Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan. He runs a shadow government, complete with military, religious and cultural councils, and has appointed officials and commanders to virtually every Afghan province and district, just as he did when he ruled Afghanistan, the Taliban claim. He oversees his movement through a grand council of 10 people, the Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahed, said in a telephone interview. Mullah Bradar, one of the Taliban’s most senior and ruthless commanders, who has been cited by human rights groups for committing massacres, serves as his first deputy. He passes down Mullah Omar’s commands and makes all military decisions, including how foreign fighters are deployed, according to Waheed Muzhta, a former Taliban Foreign Ministry official who lives in Kabul and follows the progress of the Taliban through his own research. The Taliban even produce their own magazine, Al Somood, published online in Arabic, where details of their leadership structure can be found. But while the Taliban may be united politically, the insurgency remains poorly coordinated at operational and strategic levels, said General David D. McKiernan, commander of the NATO force in Afghanistan. Taliban forces cannot hold territory, and they cannot defeat NATO forces in a direct fight. They also note that scores of senior and midlevel Taliban commanders have been killed over the past year, weakening the insurgents, especially in the south. Three senior members of the grand council were killed in 2007, and others have been detained. The military council has lost 6 of its 29 members in recent years. (Source: New York Times)

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Police locked down Kashgar, cut Internet access in China's westernmost major city and detained journalists after an attack yesterday by members of the Uighur ethnic group killed 16 officers, according to media reports. Web access was shut today in the city, Agence-France Pressereported, citing the staff of Yiquan Hotel, across the road from where yesterday's attack occurred. Two reporters working for Japan's Chunichi newspaper and Nippon Television Network were detained by police for two hours and beaten before being released, Kyodo English News said, citing the journalists' employers.

(Source: Bloomberg.com)

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Mortar shells slammed into a residential area in Somalia's capital, killing at least 10 people, including a mother and her child, witnesses and a hospital official said Tuesday. The bloodshed Monday came as Ethiopian troops backing Somalia's shaky government battled Islamic insurgents who have been fighting an Iraq-style guerrilla war for more than a year. Thousands of civilians have been killed. (Source: Washington Times)

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Iraq

Roadside bombs killed two American soldiers and wounded a third Monday as their patrol drove through eastern Baghdad. The attack occurred at 9:30 a.m. in the mostly Shiite enclave of New Baghdad. Earlier this year, U.S. troops and Shiite militiamen of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fought each other in and around the neighborhood. The U.S. military did not provide further details about Monday's attack.

Last month, five American troops died as a result of combat in Iraq, by far the lowest monthly U.S. death toll since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. At least 4,130 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq in the past five years. In other violence, a roadside bomb on Palestine Street, a busy thoroughfare in eastern Baghdad, killed two Iraqis, including a policeman, and injured 23. In the southeastern enclave of Dora, another roadside bomb targeted a police patrol, injuring two officers. In Diyala province, north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb detonated in the town of Khanaqin, killing two policemen and injuring three others. (Source: Washington Post)

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Gunmen killed a senior leader of a U.S.-allied Sunni group and six of his guards in an ambush south of Baghdad, a group member said Tuesday. Roadside bombings also killed another person and wounded a dozen Tuesday, in a second consecutive day of bombings in the capital. Unknown gunmen attacked the convoy of Sheik Ibrahim al-Karbouli in Youssifiyah on Monday, said the group member who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fears for his own security. The sheik was a senior leader of the so-called awakening council in the town, which is a former Al Qaeda stronghold about 12 miles south of Baghdad. (Source: Seattle Times)

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United States

The Pentagon said Monday it has shut down a secretive counter-intelligence outfit that aroused controversy over tracking the activities of anti-war groups. The so-called Counter-Intelligence Field Activity (CIFA) is being absorbed into a new Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) center that will be in charge of both espionage and counter-intelligence activities, the Pentagon said in a statement. CIFA was created under former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2002 as a separate entity to conduct counter-intelligence efforts against suspected terrorists in the United States. It came under fire in December 2005 following disclosures that it had kept unverified surveillance reports of anti-war activists in a database. CIFA was empowered to conduct counter-intelligence investigations, but most of its operations remain classified. It reportedly grew to employ about 1,000 people. (Source: AFP)

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The Army may begin paying a retention bonus of as much as $150,000 to Arabic speaking soldiers in reflection of how critical it has become for the US military to retain native language and cultural know-how in its ranks. Only one other job in the Army, Special Forces, rates such a super-sized retention bonus. Now, as the military makes a fundamental shift toward rewarding the linguistic expertise it needs the most, it is expanding a program to train and retain native Arabic and other speakers from the same regions in which it is fighting. After the invasion of Iraq and the insurgency that followed, the US military recognized its dearth of linguistic competence in the country it had just toppled, and it scrambled to identify Arabic and other linguists. (Source: CSM)

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Bruce E. Ivins, the government's leading suspect in the 2001 anthrax killings, borrowed from a bioweapons lab that fall freeze-drying equipment that allows scientists to quickly convert wet germ cultures into dry spores, according to sources briefed on the case. Ivins's possession of the drying device, known as a lyopholizer, could help investigators explain how he might have been able to send letters containing deadly anthrax spores to U.S. senators and news organizations. The device was not commonly used by researchers at the Army's sprawling biodefense complex at Fort Detrick, Md., where Ivins worked as a scientist, employees at the base said. Instead, sources said, Ivins had to go through a formal process to check out the lyopholizer, creating a record on which authorities are now relying. He did at least one project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that would have given him reason to use the drying equipment, according to a former colleague in his lab. (Source: Washington Post)

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The evidence amassed by FBI investigators against Bruce Ivins, the army scientist who killed himself last week after learning that he would probably be charged in the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, was largely circumstantial, and a grand jury in Washington was planning to hear several more weeks of testimony before issuing an indictment. While genetic analysis had linked the anthrax letters to a supply of the deadly bacterium in Ivins's laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, at least 10 people had access to the flask containing that anthrax, the source said Sunday. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation also have no evidence proving that Ivins visited New Jersey on the dates in September and October 2001 when investigators believe the letters were sent from a mailbox in Princeton. The source acknowledged that there might be some elements of the evidence of which he was unaware. And while he characterized what he did know about as "damning," he said that instead of irrefutable proof, investigators had an array of indirect evidence that they argue strongly implicates Ivins in the attacks, which killed 5 people and sickened 17. (Source: IHT)

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Secret evidence at the war crimes-trial of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver, showed that Hamdan offered "critical details" to American forces "when it mattered most" in 2001, a defense lawyer said on Monday, during closing arguments at the first war crimes trial here. The defense lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer, suggested but did not explicitly say that Hamdan may have helped in the hunt for bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader, or in some other vital operation during the early days of the war in Afghanistan, at a time when American forces were pursuing bin Laden. (Source: IHT)

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An American-trained Pakistani neuroscientist with ties to operatives of Al Qaeda has been charged with trying to kill American soldiers and F.B.I. agents in a police station in Afghanistan last month, the Justice Department said Monday night. The scientist, Aafia Siddiqui, who studied at Brandeis University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was transferred to New York on Monday, and is to be arraigned Tuesday in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the department said in a statement. Ms. Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi, Pakistan, in March 2003, leading human rights groups and her family to believe she had been secretly detained. But in interviews Monday and in a criminal complaint made public later Monday, American officials said they had no knowledge of Ms. Siddiqui’s location for the past five years until July 17, when Ms. Siddiqui and a teenage boy were detained in Ghazni, Afghanistan, after local authorities became suspicious of their loitering outside the provincial governor’s compound. (Source: New York Times)

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Africa

The African Union said on Monday a move by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for genocide and war crimes in Darfur was pouring "oil on the fire". Africa's top diplomat Jean Ping met Bashir and other officials in Khartoum and urged the U.N. Security Council to suspend the ICC investigation into the president to allow peace efforts to continue. Five years of war have brought humanitarian disaster to the western Sudan region, and campaigners accuse the world of failing to provide helicopters and other vital support for a struggling peacekeeping mission there. Some 9,500 mainly African troops are already deployed in a joint U.N.-AU peacekeeping effort (UNAMID), but U.N. bureaucracy and Sudanese delays have prevented the force from reaching its full strength of 26,000 troops and police. AU Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtane Lamamra said the force could reach 80 percent of its total by the end of 2009 if the international community showed goodwill towards the mission. (Source: Reuters)

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Eight Darfur rebels convicted of terrorism offences for attacking the Sudanese capital have appealed against their death sentences, a member of the defence team said on Tuesday. Lawyer Muez Hadra also told Reuters they had lodged a case at Sudan's highest Constitutional Court asking it to stay the execution orders on the basis that the special courts formed to try them contravened Sudanese laws. According to the rules of the special courts trying the rebels they have one week to make their only appeal against their sentencing before the execution order is signed by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The International Criminal Court last month moved to indict Bashir for genocide and war crimes in Darfur. Last week, three courts sentenced 30 accused rebels to death by hanging. (Source: Reuters)

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Rwanda's government is to reveal details of a report containing allegations of French involvement in the country's 1994 genocide. The report is expected to contain the names of those alleged to be implicated and the accusations against them. Some 800,000 people were killed in just 100 days in the 1994 massacre. Earlier this year France's foreign minister denied French responsibility in connection with the genocide, but said political errors had been made. (Source: BBC)

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Americas

Ottawa is facing an uphill battle to carry out a promised purchase of $17-billion in new military equipment because of stringent U.S. security rules and ballooning costs caused by a series of delays, newly released documents show. According to Foreign Affairs briefing notes, the government is blaming U.S. security measures that limit the export of military technology to Canada, as American authorities fear some Canadian workers will engage in espionage. In addition, documents from National Defence show the government will either have to pay an extra $300-million in "overrun cost" to purchase a fleet of 16 Chinook helicopters, or settle for less equipment. The Harper government announced in 2006 that it was purchasing three new fleets of aircraft, three new ships and hundreds of new trucks for the Canadian Forces. However, only one new fleet of planes, the giant Boeing C-17s, is operational, while another fleet of Hercules C130J cargo planes is on order. In addition, documents released by the Department of Foreign Affairs reveal government fears that the purchase of military equipment "is in jeopardy" because of U.S. regulations called the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Under ITAR, employees from about two dozen countries, including China, Vietnam, Cuba and Haiti, cannot work on U.S. defence contracts in Canadian facilities. The heavily redacted documents show the Canadian government was nervous when a Chinese Canadian was arrested in the United States in 2006 on charges of espionage, and got ready for questions from American officials on the matter. (Source: Globe and Mail)

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Omar Khadr's U.S. military defence lawyer will try this month to have charges against his client tossed out, launching what may be the final legal broadside against the U.S. government before the detained Canadian's trial is expected to start in October.

Lieutenant-Commander Bill Kuebler has filed three motions with the Guantanamo Bay military commission seeking dismissal of charges based on what the military lawyer describes as exertion of “unlawful influence” over the commission. (Source: Globe and Mail)

Asia

Until recently, the sight of a Japanese warship steaming toward Chinese shores or of a Chinese aircraft swooping low over Taiwan would have provoked alarm across Asia.

But when Japan’s navy made its first Chinese port call since World War II and a Chinese charter plane ferried mainland tourists to neighboring Taiwan this summer, they were symbols not of China’s dangerous rivalries, but of the diplomacy that President Hu Jintao has used to defuse them. After two years of intensive and often secretive overtures, Taiwan and Japan, two neighbors long viewed as the most likely to face a military threat from a rising China have been drawn closer into its orbit. Improved relations have not only reduced the chances of a flare-up that could disrupt China’s turn as an Olympic host, but also helped showcase China’s frequent claims to be a new kind of global power that intends to rise on the world stage without engaging in military conflict. (Source: New York Times)

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Cambodia on Tuesday demanded that Thailand pull its troops back from a second temple site along their border, the latest in a series of territorial claims and counterclaims that have prompted armed tensions between the Asian neighbors. The dispute surrounding the 13th century Ta Moan Thom temple started when Cambodian officials said some 70 Thai soldiers started occupying the temple site last week and prevented Cambodian troops from entering. Thai military officials countered that their troops had been in the area for years. (Source: AP)

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Sri Lankan troops killed 27 Tamil Tiger rebels in fresh fighting in the country's far north, the military said on Tuesday, as government forces continued their push against the rebels' northern stronghold. The fighting came days after the military claimed they had entered the rebels' de-facto capital in the north of the island, amid a daily barrage of land, sea and air attacks in rebel-held territories in that area. (Source: Reuters)

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Europe

Kosovo's authorities have named a former guerrilla fighter as defense minister. Officials say Fehmi Mujota, 45, was named Monday to head Kosovo's Security Force. It is a lightly armed force that will have 2,500 active members and 800 reservists. An international plan that paved the way for Kosovo to declare independence from Serbia on Feb. 17 says the yet-to-be-formed force will initially be responsible for crisis response and civil protection. NATO leads around 16,000 peacekeepers and will remain in charge of security in Kosovo. (Source: AP)

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Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is calling for Russia to regain its influence with Cuba, a former Cold War ally of the Soviet Union, Russian news reports said Monday. The statement was made amid persistent speculation about whether Russia was seeking a military presence in a country just 150 kilometers, or 90 miles, from the United States in response to U.S. plans to place parts of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. (Source: IHT)

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NATO said on Tuesday it was not aware of any troop buildup by its ally Georgia in or near the country's breakaway South Ossetia region and called on all parties to reduce tensions. Russia said on Tuesday it would not remain indifferent if violence escalated in South Ossetia, given the presence of Russian citizens there, Interfax news agency reported, quoting a Russian diplomat. NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero said the alliance was closely following the situation. Russian has accused Georgia of using excessive force in South Ossetia, but Romero said NATO was "not aware of any troop concentrations by Georgia in or near South Ossetia". (Source: Reuters)

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Middle East

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The Palestinian Authority has dismissed 1,000 police and security officers suspected of being affiliated with Hamas, on the backdrop of fears that the recent clashes in Gaza would spread to the West Bank. A PA commission of inquiry into Hamas' 2007 takeover in Gaza found that at least one-third of the PA security officers there served as Hamas agents. (Source: Ynet News)

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A smuggling tunnel under the Gaza-Egypt border collapsed on Friday, killing at least five Palestinians and wounding 18, Palestinian officials said Saturday. Since the beginning of the year, 27 Palestinians have been killed in tunnel collapses. (Source: AP/Washington Post)

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A Syrian general shot to death at a beach resort over the weekend was a top overseer of his country's weapons shipments to Hezbollah, according to opposition Web sites and Arab and Israeli news media. Syria by late Monday had issued no reaction to widespread reports of the assassination of Brigadier General Mohammed Suleiman near the Syrian port city of Tartous on Friday night. Maher al-Assad, head of Syria's Republican Guards and a brother of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, attended Suleiman's funeral Sunday, the Reuters news agency said, citing unidentified sources. The Syrian president is on a state visit to Iran. His government enforces rigid secrecy about security matters. (Source: Washington Post)

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Iran warned Monday that it could easily close a critical Persian Gulf waterway to oil shipments and said that it had a new long-range naval weapon that could sink enemy ships nearly 200 miles away. The warning, by the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, followed the weekend expiration of an informal deadline for Iran to respond to an offer of incentives from six world powers to stop enriching uranium. The United States, which has warships deployed in the Persian Gulf, has said new sanctions should be imposed on Iran for failing to respond to the deadline. On Monday, a State Department official said the six powers, the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany, had agreed to pursue new sanctions, but it remained unclear what they might be or which nations would take part. In comments carried by the semiofficial Iranian news agency, Fars, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, the head of the Revolutionary Guards, said Iran was capable of imposing “unlimited controls” at the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, an important oil route. “Closing the Strait of Hormuz for an unlimited period of time would be very easy,” he was quoted as saying. “The Guards have recently tested a naval weapon which I can say with certainty that the enemy’s ships would not be safe within the range of 300 kilometers,” General Jafari was quoted as saying. “Without any doubt we will send them to the depths of the sea.” General Jafari gave no details about the type of weapon tested, but he said it was Iranian-built and “unique in the world.” (Source: New York Times)

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An Iranian journalist convicted and sentenced to death on terrorism charges has been executed, the country's judiciary said Tuesday. Yaghoob Mirnehad was executed Monday in the city of Zahedan after being sentenced to death earlier this year. (Source: AP)

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Iranian Expediency Council Chairman Rafsanjani has announced that Iran is at the beginning of the first stage of nuclear fusion. He said that the West would again confront Iran for using nuclear fusion, but that "since we are still at the early stage they will not confront us (now)." He added that Iran must obtain advanced technologies in order to "break the monopoly of global powers over advanced technology." (Source: MEMRI)

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With a two-week deadline for an Iranian reply having passed over the weekend, senior diplomats of the five permanent UN Security Council member countries and Germany conferred by telephone and renewed their warning of further sanctions against Iran. State Department Spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said, "We agreed in the absence of a clear, positive response from Iran that we have no choice but to pursue further measures against Iran." (Source: VOA News)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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An open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

A Taliban spokesman in Pakistan denied on Saturday a U.S. media report that Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri may have been killed or critically injured in a missile strike.

CBS News reported Friday that it had obtained a copy of an intercepted letter dated July 29 from unnamed sources in Pakistan, which urgently requested a doctor to treat Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant. The letter was purportedly from Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud and said al-Zawahri is in "severe pain" and his "injuries are infected.'' "We deny it categorically," Mehsud spokesman Maulvi Umar told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location inside Pakistan. Pakistan army and intelligence officials said they had no information that al-Zawahri was hit in a missile strike Monday apparently launched by the U.S. in South Waziristan, a volatile tribal region near the Afghan border. Pakistani intelligence say they think Al Qaeda explosives expert Abu Khabab al-Masri was among six people killed in Monday's missile strike but apparently they do not have the body. Al-Masri also was reported killed in the January 2006 strike that targeted al-Zawahri but his body was never found. (Source: AP)

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Al Qaeda confirmed Sunday the death of a top commander accused of training the suicide bombers who killed 17 American sailors on the USS Cole eight years ago. Abu Khabab al-Masri, who had a $5 million bounty on his head from the United States, is believed to have been killed in an airstrike apparently launched by the U.S. in Pakistan last week.

An Al Qaeda statement posted on the Internet said al-Masri and three other top figures were killed and warned of vengeance for their deaths. It did not say when, where or how they died but said some of their children were killed along with them. Pakistani authorities have said they believe al-Masri is one of six people killed in an airstrike on July 28 on a compound in South Waziristan, a lawless tribal region near the Afghan border. The U.S. military has not confirmed it was behind the missile strike. But similar U.S. attacks are periodically launched on militant targets in the tribal border region.

The U.S. Justice Department has accused al-Masri, an Egyptian militant whose real name is Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, of training terrorists to use poisons and explosives.

He is also believed to have helped run Al Qaeda's Darunta training camp in eastern Afghanistan until the camp was abandoned amid the 2001 U.S. invasion of the country. There he is thought to have conducted experiments in chemical and biological weapons, testing materials on dogs. The Al Qaeda statement called al-Masri and the other three slain commanders "a group of heroes" and warned of retaliation. (Source: AP)

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Afghan and NATO troops targeted a group of Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, killing 17 militants and wounding six others, the Defense Ministry said Monday. Four police were killed separately in a militant ambush in central Ghazni province. The joint force clashed Sunday with militants in the Marjah district of Helmand province, the ministry said in a statement. The troops seized weapons and ammunition belonging to the militants and 132 pounds (60 kilograms) of drugs after the clash. Southern Afghanistan is the center of the Taliban-led insurgency that this year has claimed more than 2,700 lives, according to an Associated Press tally of figures provided by Afghan and Western officials. Also Sunday, militants ambushed a two-vehicle police convoy in Ghazni's Zana Khan district, killing four officers and wounding seven, said Sayed Ismail Jahangir, a spokesman for the provincial governor. Separately, the U.S.-led coalition said its troops killed several militants and captured one they had sought in Ghazni's Waghaz district on Sunday. The troops were searching for a militant wanted in connection with planting roadside bombs, it said in a statement Monday. It did not specify the number of militants killed. On Monday morning, a pair of Taliban fighters died when a mine they were planting exploded prematurely in the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province in the country's south, said General Abdul Raziq, a border security commander. (Source: AP)

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Roadside bombs killed five NATO soldiers and a civilian in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, while a coalition of aid groups warned that violence is spreading to once-stable regions and forcing the organizations to scale back humanitarian work. The soldiers' deaths marked a bloody start to the month in what has already been a deadly year for Western forces in Afghanistan, where an insurgency is raging nearly seven years after the Taliban was ousted from power. Four of the NATO soldiers and a civilian died in Konar province and the fifth soldier was killed in Khost, the alliance said in a statement. It did not release the nationalities of the soldiers, but most troops in those eastern areas are American. (Source: AP)

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A bomb exploded at a bridge on Saturday, killing at least nine security forces in a valley where Pakistani troops are battling Islamic militants. Police officer Bashir Khan said the remote-controlled bomb hit a vehicle traveling from police headquarters in Mingora, the main town in the troubled Swat valley, as it carried money to pay the salaries of the staff in the nearby town of Kabal. Khan said the bomb was planted at a bridge between the two towns. Senior police officer Khalid Nasim said the attack killed six police and three paramilitary troops. He said four others were wounded. (Source: AP)

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The United States has accused Pakistan’s main spy agency of deliberately undermining NATO efforts in Afghanistan by helping the Taliban and Al Qaeda militants they are supposed to be fighting. President George W Bush confronted Yusuf Raza Gillani, Pakistan’s prime minister, in Washington last week with evidence of involvement by the ISI, its military intelligence, in a deadly attack on the Afghan capital and warned of retaliation if it continues. The move comes amid growing fears that Pakistan’s tribal areas are turning into a global launch pad for terrorists. Gillani, on his first official US visit since being elected in February, was left in no doubt that the Bush administration had lost patience with the ISI’s alleged double game. Bush warned that if one more attack in Afghanistan or elsewhere were traced back to Pakistan, he would have to take “serious action”. Gillani also met Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, who confronted him with a dossier on ISI support for the Taliban. The key evidence concerned last month’s bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, which killed 54 people, including the military attaché. (Source: The Times-UK)

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Two assailants crashed a dump truck into a paramilitary police station in the restive Xinjiang region Monday and tossed out two grenades, killing 16 policemen and wounding 16 others in an apparent terrorist attack, the official New China News Agency reported. Witnesses said the two explosions boomed out about 8 a.m. in the heart of Kashgar, an oasis town on the route of the ancient Silk Road more than 2,000 miles west of Beijing and near the Chinese borders with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The region's overwhelmingly Muslim ethnic Uighur population has long chafed under Han Chinese rule. According to Chinese security officials, Uighur extremists have plotted to carry out terrorist strikes during the Beijing Olympics, which start Friday. Chinese authorities said they had arrested the assailants but did not specify whether they were Uighurs or explain their motives. The grenade attack was the deadliest single strike against Chinese authorities in some time, although security officials say a spate of separatist bombings in the 1990s killed a number of people. (Source: Washington Post)

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The Philippine Supreme Court, acting on a petition by Christian politicians, on Monday blocked the signing of a key accord granting an expanded southern homeland to minority Muslims as part of a deal to end decades of bloody Islamic rebellion. The Philippine government and the rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front were to sign the agreement Tuesday in Malaysia, which has been brokering the negotiations. The accord, which aims to expand an existing autonomous region to add 712 more villages, sparked protests from Christian residents. Court spokesman Midas Marquez said the Supreme Court issued a temporary stay after Christian politicians from the southern province of North Cotabato objected to the accord because the government failed to publicly disclose its contents. Christian politicians from the southern city of Zamboanga filed a similar petition in court Monday. (Source: AP)

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A bomb hidden under a pile of garbage killed at least 20 people, half of them women who were sweeping the street in Somalia's capital, witnesses and doctors said Sunday. The explosion and overnight attacks on military bases ended a brief period of relative calm that followed the signing of a peace deal between the government and the Islamic insurgency it is fighting. The agreement was already in jeopardy after the moderate cleric who signed it on behalf of the Islamic opposition movement was replaced by a hard-liner.

Several witnesses said the scene of Sunday's explosion was littered with blood and body parts, and described hearing the screams of the wounded as bystanders tried to help. Salah Adde said he counted 15 bodies, including 10 female street cleaners. (Source: AP)

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British Muslims are actively supporting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in attacks on UK soldiers, the former commander of Britain’s forces in Afghanistan said today. Brigadier Ed Butler, 46, claimed his troops also uncovered evidence that militant Islamic groups in Helmand Province are suspected of assisting terrorist plots in the UK. Earlier this year suspicions were raised that the Taliban were recruiting an increasing number of fighters from Britain after RAF experts overheard secret transmissions spoken in broad Midlands and Yorkshire accents. At the end of the week that saw the toll of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan reach 114, Brig Butler said a growing number of British-born Muslims were assisting the Taliban. (Source: The Times-UK)

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Prince Harry is being targeted by an Al Qaeda cell forcing his personal security to be raised to the same level as the Queen’s. Specific intelligence of a threat to the 23-year-old royal has been passed by British spies to Scotland Yard's elite Royal and Diplomatic Protection Department. In response, Harry's armed bodyguards have stepped up his security level to its highest ever degree. The threat is considered so serious that his four-man personal protection team now carry out advance checks of all Harry's destinations, private and public, as well as shadowing his every move. (Source: News of the World-UK)

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The Daily Telegraph has learned that the British National Counter Terrorism Security Office, a specialist police unit, is drawing up guidance for hospitality and entertainment sites as part of a drive to prepare for terrorist attacks on crowded public places. Big hotels will also be covered by the new "protective security guidance" to prepare for attacks including car bombs and suicide bombs. Owners and managers of hospitality and entertainment firms will be told to assess their businesses' likely vulnerabilities to attack and prepare contingency plans for staff in the event of an attack. The police-led security office will this month start running counter-terrorism training exercises for businesses in the "night-time economy" Known as ARGUS courses, the exercises will present staff and managers in restaurants, cinemas, theatres and hotels with a simulated terrorist attack.

There is no specific intelligence pointing to attacks on town centres and the NCTSO says its guidance documents and training exercises are intended to prepare businesses for the worst. (Source: The Telegraph-UK)

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Iraq Roadside bombs killed two U.S. soldiers and at least nine Iraqis Monday in Baghdad and surrounding areas. The Americans died in a blast near a highway in the predominantly Shiite New Baghdad district. The area was the site of fierce clashes between U.S.-Iraqi forces and the Mahdi Army militia before a cease-fire with anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr earlier this year. Another U.S. soldier was wounded in the 10 a.m. attack. It gave no further details on the deaths. At least 4,131 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003. Meanwhile, Iraqi leaders remain deadlocked in talks over a power-sharing dispute that is blocking U.S.-backed provincial elections. The disagreement over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk forced parliamentary officials to delay a planned vote on the provincial elections bill until Tuesday, at the earliest. The deadliest attack Monday was against an Iraqi police patrol vehicle in Mahaweel, about 35 miles (60 kilometers) south of Baghdad that killed four policemen and three civilian bystanders, according to Iraqi police. Another roadside bomb on Palestine Street, a major thoroughfare in Baghdad, killed two Iraqis, a soldier and a civilian, and wounded seven others, said Iraqi officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information. (Source: AP)

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An intensive series of raids by coalition forces has uncovered four sites that have been used to hold some of the five men for over a year. Security officials in Baghdad said evidence was found that some of the five men had been recently moved from at least one of the compounds raided by special forces in the operations. Samples of DNA were retrieved. Up to 30 hiding places were targeted during the raids, many of which took place in the lead up to the first anniversary of their capture in May. The SAS and other elite British units were involved alongside American and Iraqi counterparts in the majority of the rescue attempts. The conditions under which the men were held in Shia districts around Sadr City and New Baghdad were described as spartan but relatively comfortable. The men are believed to have access to satellite television and were allowed to exercise with gym equipment and weights. The group had access to showers and plenty of bedding at all the locations. When they were moved in convoys they were also wrapped in carpets, according to an informant. The five men were seized from Iraq's finance ministry last year by a well-organized squad of up to 40 armed men. (Source: The Telegraph-UK)

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United States

For Navy vessels, operating at sea has taken on a different feel. Some nights, sailors cut the engines and the warship just floats. With fuel prices reaching record heights, the Navy has looked for creative ways to curb costs without compromising missions. Conservation efforts are expected to save the Navy about $325 million this year. But in July, the military bumped up oil prices to $170 per barrel from $127 to reflect true costs. The increase will wipe out the Navy’s entire annual savings in just three months. Fuel costs are an issue for all the service branches. The military is the country’s largest single consumer of energy. It spent $13.6 billion in 2006, almost double the amount since 2003, the start of the Iraq war. Every $10 increase for a barrel of oil costs the Department of Defense $1.3 billion, according to military statistics. The Air Force is the top consumer within the military, and the Navy is second. The Navy expects to spend $3.8 billion to power its ships and aircraft this fiscal year, a 42 percent jump from last year. (Source: PilotOnline.com)

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Federal investigators cinched their case against alleged anthrax mailer Bruce E. Ivins after sophisticated genetic tests by a California firm helped them trace a signature mixture of anthrax spores, the Los Angeles Times has learned. Well before the deadly 2001 anthrax mailings, Ivins, through his work as a government scientist, had combined anthrax spores obtained from at least one outside laboratory, people familiar with the evidence said. With the help of leading outside geneticists and a fresh look at the evidence by a new team of street-savvy investigators, the FBI concluded in recent months that only Ivins could reasonably have perpetrated the crimes. Ivins, 62, a senior microbiologist at the government's elite biodefense research institute at Ft. Detrick, Md., died last Tuesday in an apparent suicide as federal prosecutors prepared to bring murder charges against him. Records reviewed by The Times and interviews with people knowledgeable about the investigation provide new details about the trail of evidence that finally led to Ivins. Since 1980, Ivins had specialized in developing vaccines against anthrax and other biological weapons. He experimented with animals, including monkeys, rabbits and guinea pigs. Ivins had mixed spores shipped to Ft. Detrick from the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, a facility operated by the Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio, a private contractor that performs top- secret work for the CIA and other agencies. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

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The war crimes case against Salim Ahmed Hamdan today goes to a jury of his enemies, hand-selected by the Pentagon official who charged him on behalf of a president who has ordered him imprisoned even if acquitted. "The eyes of the world are on Guantanamo Bay," U.S. District Judge James Robertson said July 17 in declining to halt the first trial by military commission. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

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Americas

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says 24 Sukhoi fighter jets have been delivered to Venezuela and are ready to defend his country from "imperialist" aggressions. Chavez claims the U.S. Navy's Fourth Fleet poses a threat to Venezuela, and he's vowing to push forward with a multibillion-dollar arms buildup aimed at dissuading a possible U.S. military strike. (Source: AP)

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Asia

In a strong booster dose to India's aging underwater combat arm after a long delay, the Navy is finally going to get back the upgraded Kilo-class submarine INS Sindhuvijay , equipped with deadly Klub-S cruise missiles, from Russia this week. INS Sindhuvijay , whose $80-million refit began at Zvyozdochka shipyard near St Petersburg in late-2005 but was marred by malfunctioning missile systems last year, will now set sail for India on Tuesday. India had earlier refused to take delivery of INS Sindhuvijay from Russia after the all-important Klub-S land-attack cruise missiles, with a strike range of almost 300 km, had failed to work in six consecutive test firings at the Barents Sea test range in September-November 2007. (Source: The Times of India)

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Sri Lankan troops repulsed an attempt by Tamil rebels to retake a recently captured guerrilla stronghold in heavy fighting that killed 21 rebels and three soldiers, the military said Monday. Thirteen rebels and three soldiers were killed in other clashes Sunday in the Mannar, Vavuniya and Welioya regions, bordering the rebels' de facto state in the north, said Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara, the military spokesman. The new fighting occurred despite a cease-fire offered by rebels while leaders from eight South Asian countries met over the weekend in the tightly guarded capital, Colombo. The heaviest fighting was reported in Mannar's Vellankulam area, a guerrilla stronghold that was seized by government troops on Saturday, Nanayakkara said. It was the last rebel stronghold in the area. (Source: AP)

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Europe

A former spy chief who has held the most secret role in Britain’s intelligence community has provided a unique insight into life as the director of GCHQ. Sir David Pepper, 60, who retired after five years running the Government’s signals intelligence centre, took the unusual step of describing GCHQ to a local newspaper, admitting that it was a “pretty mysterious” place for people who had never worked there. Its staff are responsible for gathering intelligence from intercepted telecommunications to help in the fight against terrorism and to assist British troops overseas. Musing about his experiences, Sir David recalled how he had to rush to London, “blue lights flashing”, on July 7, 2005, to attend an emergency meeting called by Tony Blair after the London suicide bombings. He told the Gloucestershire Media Group of local newspapers of “flying over Afghanistan in an RAF helicopter that had once belonged to the Soviet Air Force, ducking for cover in Basra and Baghdad as rockets landed not far away”. Sir David revealed that GCHQ staff worked alongside the military in Iraq and Afghanistan “in conditions that are always very uncomfortable and often dangerous”, and said he was proud that so many had volunteered for these assignments. Iain Lobban, formerly head of operations at GCHQ, succeeded Sir David last month. (Source: The Times-UK)

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A number of suspects in last week's deadly bombings in Istanbul that killed 17 people have been arrested, Turkey's interior minister announced Saturday. Besir Atalay said most of the perpetrators of the bombings, which also injured 154, were in custody, but declined to say how many people have been arrested. The two explosions, minutes apart, hit a packed square in a residential area of Istanbul on Sunday, July 25. It was the deadliest attack on civilians in Turkey in five years. (Source: AP)

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Overnight fighting between Georgian forces and separatists in the breakaway South Ossetia region left six people dead and 13 wounded, regional officials said Saturday.

The fighting lasted from Friday evening through Saturday morning and included sniper fire and mortars. It was one of the most serious clashes since in South Ossetia since its violent split from Georgia in the 1990s. South Ossetia government spokeswoman Irina Gagloyeva said six people were killed and 13 wounded in the fighting, but she did not say which side they were on or say if they were civilians, troops or law enforcement.

(Source: AP)

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The Russian military considers the main threat to the country actions by the West and acknowledges “the growing technological and military technology supremacy of the leading overseas countries.” Those conclusions are contained in fragments of the draft “Concept for the Development of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation through 2030,” prepared by the Defense Ministry and published Friday by the Interfax information agency. The authors of the concept suggest that Russia is entering an era of crises at various levels and military threats will not be reduced, but rather grow. It is noted in the draft concept that the most substantial danger in the coming years is that “to provide legitimacy for its unilateral actions, the West will try to obtain international legal recognition of the North Atlantic Alliance as a united organization with the right to use force on the basis of the decisions of its own governing organs.” The document notes that “considering the continuity of Washington’s foreign policy, [and] the content of the long-term programs for military construction, it can be assumed that military supremacy will be seen in the United States as an important condition for the successful realization of its foreign policy… and the American military presence will be preserved in all key regions of the world.” Mikhail Barabanov, lead expert at the Center for the Strategy and Technology Analysis, commented that “The estimation of the military and political state of the world in 2030 made in the new Defense Ministry document shows that Russia will have to live in world where the U.S. will still dominate and will try to preserve its world dominance through aggressive methods.” Head of the Center for Military Prognosis Anatoly Tsyganok thinks that the U.S.’ striving is obvious, but hard to realize in view of worldwide anti-American tendencies. Objectively, Russia’s No. 1 potential opponent is located in a completely different part of the world. China has many more reasons to threaten Russia territorially than NATO or the U.S. However, the increasingly strident opposition between NATO and Russia is pushing our country into China’s embrace. The Russia military will not be sitting on its hands, however. It is noted in the concept that the strategic missile forces will continue to turn out new fixed and mobile missile complexes and to improve tactical management and communications. Simultaneously, the air and naval components of the strategic and offensive forces will be developed as well. In addition, an air and space defense system is planned to counter threats in the air. At present, Russia has 762 carrier missile loaded with 3373 nuclear warheads, and the U.S. has 986 missiles with 4116 warheads. A number of experts say that Russia’s nuclear potential will decline until it restores full-scale production of nuclear arms. The Russian military will not forget the tried and true methods either. The 2030 concept suggests maintaining mandatory military service. It is recommended to leave the draft age (18-27) and service term (12 months) unchanged. The final version of the concept will be submitted to Defense Secretary Anatoly Serdyukov in September. (Source: Kommersant.com-RUS)

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Russia has begun a push to claim a vast chunk of disputed Arctic territory in an aggressive campaign to win control of the region's oil and gas resources. A state-sponsored expedition, led by a Moscow geographical institute, is in the region gathering scientific data in an attempt to prove that vast swathes of the seabed belong to Russia.

In a heavily symbolic gesture, the Russian navy sent vessels from its Northern Fleet, based at Severomorsk, into the Arctic last month for the first time since 1991. An anti-submarine destroyer and the missile cruiser the Marshal Ustinov are now patrolling the area. Moscow claims the ships are there to protect its fishermen, but analysts believe they are Russia’s “foot in the door” in this energy-rich region. (Source: The Times-UK)

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Russia test fired a ballistic missile from a nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea on Friday. The missile was launched from the Ryazan nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea and hit a designated area in the Kura testing ground on the Kamchatka Peninsula on Russia's Pacific coast. "The ballistic missile was launched from the Ryazan nuclear submarine and the warhead reached the Kura firing range in Kamchatka at the planned time," said navy spokesman Igor Dyagalo. He declined to say what sort of missile had been fired. (Source: Reuters)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/gc07/idUKL145644820080801

Russia announced plans on Sunday to revive its once-mighty navy by building several aircraft carriers and upgrading its fleet of nuclear submarines in the coming years. Russia's power at sea is a shadow of the formidable Soviet navy which challenged U.S. military dominance in the Cold War. But, with a strong economy now from booming oil exports, it is seeking to raise its profile on the world stage by modernizing the armed forces. Russia will build five or six aircraft carrier battle groups in the near future, RIA news agency quoted Navy Commander Vladimir Vysotsky as telling Navy Day festivities in St Petersburg, the second city. "We call this a sea-borne aircraft carrier system which will be based on the Northern and Pacific fleets," Vysotsky said. "The creation of such systems will begin after 2012." He said such carrier groups would operate in close contact with Russia's military satellites, air forces and air defenses. Russia now has only one aircraft carrier, the Soviet-built Nikolai Kuznetsov, which was launched in 1985 but did not become fully operational for 10 years due to the turmoil following the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. In fact, it is not even a fully-fledged aircraft-carrier, being officially called an air-capable cruiser. It carries fewer aircraft than U.S. carriers and features a steam-turbine power-plant with turbo-generators and diesel generators, while all modern carriers are nuclear-powered. Vysotsky said that along with designing new aircraft carriers Russia would also modernize its new-generation nuclear submarines of the Borei class (Arctic Wind). The first Borei submarine of the so-called "Project 955", the Yuri Dolgoruky, was launched in February and is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2008. Two other submarines of this class are now being built. "Starting with the fourth submarine, we will begin modernizing this class," Vysotsky said. "The modernized Borei submarines will be the core of Russian naval nuclear forces until 2040." Tests of a new nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile Bulava-M, designed to be mounted on Borei-class submarines, have been a mixture of failure and success. The Kremlin has touted Bulava as a unique weapon able to pierce any air defense. Vysotsky said Bulava would come into service this year. (Source: Reuters)

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Russian Tu-22M3 Backfire strategic bombers will participate in a series of exercises involving live firing drills in central Russia on August 4-8, an Air Force spokesman said on Friday. The Tu-22M3 Backfire-C is a supersonic, swing-wing, long-range strategic bomber that Russia uses mainly to patrol the skies over its southern borders, Central Asia and the Black Sea region. There are at least 141 Tu-22M3 bombers in service with Russian Air Force. The Tu-22M3 has a flight range of 6,800 km (4,300 miles) and can carry a 24,000 kg (52,910 lb) payload, including nuclear bombs and cruise missiles fitted with nuclear or conventional warheads. (Source: RIA NOVOSTI-RUS)

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Middle East

The worst intra-Palestinian violence in more than a year left 11 people dead and 90 injured in Gaza on Saturday as Hamas cracked down on a clan loyal to its rival, Fatah. Israel allowed 180 Fatah men into Israel and is treating two dozen of its wounded. (Source: New York Times)

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Over the weekend, Iran failed to respond to an informal two-week deadline to give an answer on dismantling crucial parts of its nuclear program. On July 19, Iran declined to respond to a proposal backed by the U.S., Europe, Russia and China to begin preliminary talks meant to lead to the eventual dismantling of its uranium enrichment operation. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana gave Iran a two-week deadline to agree to the talks or face a renewed drive by the UN Security Council for a fourth round of economic sanctions. But pressure on Tehran eased after Russia's foreign minister said last week that he opposed "artificial" deadlines. "It is clear that the government of Iran has not complied with the international community's demand to stop enriching uranium and isn't even interested in trying," said Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. mission at the UN. "They leave the Security Council no choice but to increase the sanctions, as called for in the last resolution passed." (Source: Los Angeles Times)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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An open source, around the world tour of international security-related news.

By Professor Joseph B. Varner

Global War on Terror

American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region. The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Concerns about the role played by Pakistani intelligence not only has strained relations between the United States and Pakistan, a longtime ally, but also has fanned tensions between Pakistan and its archrival, India. Within days of the bombings, Indian officials accused the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of helping to orchestrate the attack in Kabul, which killed 54, including an Indian defense attaché. This week, Pakistani troops clashed with Indian forces in the contested region of Kashmir, threatening to fray an uneasy cease-fire that has held since November 2003. The New York Times reported this week that a top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled to Pakistan this month to confront senior Pakistani officials with information about support provided by members of the ISI to militant groups. It had not been known that American intelligence agencies concluded that elements of Pakistani intelligence provided direct support for the attack in Kabul.

American officials said that the communications were intercepted before the July 7 bombing, and that the C.I.A. emissary, Stephen R. Kappes, the agency’s deputy director, had been ordered to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, even before the attack. The intercepts were not detailed enough to warn of any specific attack. The government officials were guarded in describing the new evidence and would not say specifically what kind of assistance the ISI officers provided to the militants. They said that the ISI officers had not been renegades, indicating that their actions might have been authorized by superiors.

American officials say they believe that the embassy attack was probably carried out by members of a network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose alliance with Al Qaeda and its affiliates has allowed the terrorist network to rebuild in the tribal areas. American and Pakistani officials have now acknowledged that President Bush on Monday confronted Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, about the divided loyalties of the ISI. (Source: New York Times)

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Fighting raged Thursday in a scenic valley in Pakistan's troubled northwest, killing at least 17 civilians, including seven members of a family whose home was hit by a mortar shell. The violence, which broke out Tuesday, has been the worst in months in the Swat valley, about 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad. Militants seeking to impose a Taliban-style social code have been burning girls schools, attacking police posts and capturing paramilitary troops. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

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Police say militants have overpowered a security post in northwestern Pakistan and kidnapped two officers. Local police chief Fazal Rabi says about 35 militants kidnapped the policemen on Friday on the outskirts of Khar, a town close to the Afghan border. Rabi said police have launched a search operation for the missing men. Khar is the main town in the Bajaur tribal region, where Taliban militants hold considerable sway. The region is a base for militants attacking government and foreign troops in Afghanistan and has been mentioned as a possible hiding place for Al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri. (Source: AP)

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Iraq

Five American troops died in July as a result of combat in Iraq, by far the lowest monthly U.S. death toll of the five-year war. The number of Iraq-related American troop fatalities in July, a total of 13 when noncombat deaths and the discovered bodies of two missing soldiers are included, is a dramatic drop from just over a year ago, when more than 100 troops a month were confirmed dead for several months in a row. In a brief statement at the White House early Thursday, President Bush suggested that the decreasing violence in Iraq would allow him to withdraw additional U.S. troops before he leaves office. He said that the top American commander in Iraq, General David H. Petraeus, would make recommendations in September for "further reductions in our combat forces, as conditions permit." The last of five additional combat brigades sent to Iraq last year left in July, leaving about 140,000 U.S. troops in the country. About 130,000 were in Iraq before the buildup began. Starting Friday, Bush said, troop deployments in Iraq will shorten from 15 months to 12. The policy, first announced in April, applies to troops heading to Iraq but not those already stationed there. Bush's statement came on the day the U.S. and Iraqi governments had originally set as a deadline for reaching a security agreement governing the future role of U.S. forces in Iraq. The talks, which began in March, became acrimonious and eventually stalled over the concerns of Iraqi leaders that American demands, for unilateral control over U.S. combat and detention operations, and immunity from Iraqi law for American troops and defense personnel, would violate Iraqi sovereignty and establish a permanent occupation. (Source: Washington Post)

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An army spokesman says a roadside bomb attack has killed two Iraqi soldiers and wounded two others in northern city of Kirkuk. Colonel Salam al-Zobaei, the spokesman of the Iraqi army in Kirkuk, says the bomb struck an army patrol near the city on Friday.

A suicide bombing killed 25 people in the oil-rich city during a Kurdish demonstration on Monday. Tensions are running high in the multi-ethnic city where Kurds want the annexation of the regional capital Kirkuk and other areas to the self-ruled Kurdish region over the opposition of Arab and Turkomen residents. (Source: AP)

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United States

A top U.S. biodefence researcher apparently committed suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the country in the weeks following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a published report. The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who worked for the past 18 years at the government's biodefence labs at Fort Detrick, Md., had been told about the impending prosecution, the Los Angeles Times reported for Friday editions. The laboratory has been at the centre of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people. Just last month, the government exonerated another scientist at the Fort Detrick lab, Steven Hatfill, who had been identified by the FBI as a “person of interest” in the anthrax attacks. The government paid Mr. Hatfill more than $5-million to settle a lawsuit he filed against the Justice Department in which he claimed the department violated his privacy rights by speaking with reporters about the case. The Times said federal investigators moved away from Mr. Hatfill and concluded Mr. Ivins was the culprit after FBI Director Robert Mueller changed leadership of the investigation in 2006. The new investigators instructed agents to re-examine leads and reconsider potential suspects. In the meantime, investigators made progress in analyzing anthrax powder recovered from letters addressed to two U.S. senators, according to the report. Besides the five deaths, 17 people were sickened by anthrax that was mailed to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the news media in New York and Florida just weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The victims included postal workers and others who came into contact with the anthrax. (Source: AP)

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The military trial of Osama bin Laden's former driver convened in a rare secret session Thursday to hear testimony from two defense witnesses that the government deemed highly classified. Navy Captain Keith J. Allred, the military judge, cleared the courtroom as the uniformed U.S. Army officers took the stand. Their entire testimony, other than their names and positions, was secret, though a redacted unclassified transcript is expected to be released later. The driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, and his attorneys were in the courtroom at the U.S. detention facility here. The classified testimony adds a new layer of controversy to a military justice system that critics contend is essentially rigged to secure convictions. Hamdan is the defendant in the first U.S. military commission since World War II, and virtually all of the trial had been open until now. Prosecutors, who rested their case Thursday, say the commissions are a fair way to bring accused terrorists to justice. (Source: Washington Post)

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A detainee assaulted the Navy admiral in charge of the Guantanamo Bay detention center with a "cocktail" of bodily fluids on a recent tour inside the razor wire, military officials said Thursday. The inmate used a water bottle to splatter Rear Admiral David Thomas with feces as he walked the cell block in mid-July, said Navy Commander Jeffrey Hayhurst, a senior member of the guard leadership. (Source: AP)

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U.S. federal agents have been given new powers to seize travelers' laptops and other electronic devices at the border and hold then for unspecified periods, the Washington Post reported on Friday. Under recently disclosed Department of Homeland Security policies, such seizures may be carried out without suspicion of wrongdoing, the newspaper said, quoting policies issued on July 16 by two DHS agencies. Agents are empowered to share the contents of seized computers with other agencies and private entities for data decryption and other reasons. DHS officials said the policies applied to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens, and were needed to prevent terrorism. The measures have long been in place but were only disclosed in July, under pressure from civil liberties and business travel groups acting on reports that increasing numbers of international travelers had had their laptops, cellphones and other digital devices removed and examined. The policies cover hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes, as well as books, pamphlets and other written materials. (Source: AP)

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The Bush administration unveiled new operating guidelines for the nation's intelligence community yesterday in a move that boosted the authority of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) while triggering protests from lawmakers who complained that they weren't properly consulted. The changes affirmed the DNI's role as head of the 16 U.S. spy agencies and expanded its power to set priorities and coordinate the sharing of intelligence. The DNI also was given an expanded role in foreign intelligence collection and in the hiring and firing of senior intelligence officials. The changes were part of a long-awaited overhaul of Executive Order 12333, a Reagan-era document that establishes the powers and responsibilities of U.S. intelligence services. Most of the revisions merely reflect changes already in place since the DNI was established by Congress three years ago, partly as a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. (Source: Washington Post)

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Africa

The UN Security Council approved another year of peacekeeping in Sudan's bloodied Darfur region Thursday night, but the U.S. abstained from a vote that reflected sharp divisions over genocide charges against the Sudanese president. The United States, despite support for the struggling peacekeeping mission, did not vote because of its opposition to any delay in efforts to prosecute Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The resolution that was approved 14-0 carried language that noted an African Union request to freeze the International Criminal Court's prosecution of Mr. al-Bashir.

Though the measure does not stop the prosecution, U.S. Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff said that the language “would send the wrong signal” to Mr. al-Bashir and “undermine efforts to bring him and others to justice.” Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the international court, filed 10 charges against Mr. al-Bashir on July 14 related to violence in Darfur that the UN says has claimed 300,000 lives and driven 2.5 million people from their homes. (Source: AP)

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Americas

The former Liberal government could have done more to help a Canadian imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, leader Stephane Dion said yesterday in a three-page letter that nonetheless takes aim at the prime minister over the plight of Omar Khadr. Dion wrote that Stephen Harper is in "an untenable position" in Khadr's case because he hasn't stood up for the Canadian's rights after U.S. courts slammed the type of military commission that will try him this fall. Khadr is accused of killing a U.S. soldier with a grenade in Afghanistan in 2002 when Khadr was 15. Harper hasn't requested his repatriation. (Source: Canoe News-CAN)

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Asia

China's military has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers to safeguard the Olympics from possible terrorist attacks, a senior officer said Friday, saying the gravest danger came from Muslim radicals in western China. However, underscoring China's sometimes contradictory approach to such problems, a Xinjiang vice governor speaking separately downplayed the danger, saying such groups were tiny in number and highly disorganized.

(Source: AP)

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China's defense minister says Taiwan's domestic situation has undergone "positive changes," in a notable softening of rhetoric reflecting satisfaction with the election of Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou. In an address on the eve of Friday's Army Day, Liang Guanglie reiterated Beijing's goal of political unification with the self-governing island that it claims is an integral part of Chinese territory. But his comments were free of the bellicose tone that has sometimes characterized Beijing's pronouncements toward Taiwan, which has refused Beijing's unification advances since splitting from the mainland amid civil war in 1949. (Source: AP)

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Singapore has shown interest in possibly buying up to 100 of the stealthy, multi-role F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft over coming decades, said the general in charge of the programme for the Pentagon. Said Air Force Major-General Charles Davis, the Pentagon's programme chief: "The Israelis have said they'd take up to 100 aircraft. The Singaporeans have said basically the same thing." Embassy spokesmen for the two countries had no immediate comment. The world's most advanced fighter jet, the supersonic F-35 is designed to attack moving targets in any environment. It uses stealth technology to prevent detection by radar or infrared sensors. Development of the super- fighter was co-financed by Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway. Singapore, as a security cooperation participant of the multinational program, has access to proprietary information, including flight simulations. (Source: AP)

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Europe

Purse-lipped and gaunt, Radovan Karadzic appeared before a U.N. war crimes tribunal for the first time Thursday and in sharply worded Serbian vowed to defend himself against genocide and other charges "as I would defend myself against any natural catastrophe." In remarks that were cut short by the judge, the former Bosnian Serb leader suggested he would attempt to expose alleged double-dealing by the West, particularly the United States, in the wake of the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. That could presage the kind of political grandstanding that former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, who also represented himself, used to sidetrack his prosecution before he died in his cell at the tribunal's detention center. (Source: Washington Post)

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Middle East

Hamas forces seized the leaders of Fatah in Gaza early Friday, Fatah officials said, upping the stakes in a week of tit-for-tat arrests between the bitter Palestinian rivals.

Hamas security officers seized around 15 senior Fatah members from their homes in the roundup, the Fatah officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for their safety in Hamas-controlled Gaza. The men arrested Friday included three Fatah-affiliated district governors and the two highest Gaza representatives of the Palestinian president, Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas. (Source: AP)

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About 3,000 Hizb ut-Tahrir supporters calling for a worldwide Islamic state and waving black flags marched through Gaza for the first time Thursday. Hizb ut-Tahrir seeks to establish a caliphate that would govern the world according to Islamic law. The group was founded in Jordan in 1953 and is banned in several countries, including Russia, Germany and some Arab states. The group opposes Hamas, which rules Gaza. (Source: AP/International Herald Tribune)

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Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's chief of staff, Yoram Turbowicz, submitted his resignation Thursday, the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement. Turbowicz, one of the prime minister's representatives in Israel's indirect talks with Syria in Turkey, will stay on in a voluntary capacity as the prime minister's special advisor until he leaves office. On Wednesday, Olmert announced that he will step down to make way for his successor after the Kadima party primary elections next month, in which he will not be a candidate. (Source: Ynet News)

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"Israel and the peace process are awaiting the post-Ehud Olmert era," the London-based Al-Hayat determined Thursday in the wake of the Israeli prime minister's announcement that he would step down. Al-Hayat said Olmert's move was likely to affect the continuation of the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. (Source: Ynet News)

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PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad has asked the World Bank for emergency funding so that he can pay salaries to PA employees, PA officials in Ramallah said Wednesday. The Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction said this week that the PA had received only $900 million of the $7.7b. promised during the December 2007 Paris Donors' Conference. PA officials said, "Most of the Arab countries are now setting conditions for providing us with financial aid. Some are saying that they will give us the money only after we end our differences with Hamas, while others are suddenly talking about the need for reforms and transparency." (Source: Jerusalem Post)

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U.S. diplomat William Burns, who joined envoys from other world powers for a July 19 meeting with Iran, hosted Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz on Thursday for routine bilateral consultations known as the "strategic dialogue." Mofaz's spokeswoman, Talia Somech, said, "He (Mofaz) urged the Americans to set firm conditions, such as a refusal to allow the Iranians to enrich uranium on their turf, and to be clear that the deadline must be preserved. The Iranians are simply looking for cracks to exploit." Mofaz said that "all options against Iran should not only be on the table, but prepared," Somech said. The State Department issued a statement after the meeting saying: "The United States and Israel share deep concern about Iran's nuclear program, and the two delegations discussed steps to strengthen diplomatic efforts and financial measures to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability....We also reaffirmed our strong mutual determination to counter Iran's support for terrorism." (Source: Reuters)

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Iran on Thursday rejected any deadline to give its final response to a package drawn up by world powers seeking to end the nuclear crisis. Meanwhile the U.S. held back on Thursday from insisting on a strict deadline for Iran to give a final answer to the incentives package. "I didn't count the days. It's coming up soon," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack when asked if Saturday was the deadline for Iran to accept or reject the offer. Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili held talks with EU foreign policy envoy Javier Solana on July 19, at a meeting that was also attended by a top U.S. diplomat in a major policy shift by Washington. Solana said then that he expected an answer in a fortnight. (Source: AFP)

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Joe Varner is Assistant Professor and Program Manager for Homeland Security at American Military University

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