WAR 02-06-2016-to-02-12-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

Satellites Show Mystery Construction at Iran’s Top-Secret Military Site
Started by Cyclonemomý, Yesterday 12:38 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...nstruction-at-Iran’s-Top-Secret-Military-Site

Britain to send troops to Jordan in case of a problem with Russia
Started by cornanjý, Yesterday 06:02 AM

2016 Azerbaijan v. Armenia War Thread Updates
Started by JohnGaltflaý, 01-11-2016 06:59 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?482260-2016-Azerbaijan-v.-Armenia-War-Thread-Updates

ETA: UN Fears For Hundreds of Thousands If Syria Troops Encircle Aleppo
Started by Michiana MaJo‎, Today 05:26 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...-of-Thousands-If-Syria-Troops-Encircle-Aleppo

The Four Horsemen - Week of 02/09 to 02/16
Started by Ragnarok‎, Today 07:24 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?484153-The-Four-Horsemen-Week-of-02-09-to-02-16
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Los Zetas Cartel Used Network of Ovens to Hide Mass Extermination in Mexico’s Coahuila
Started by Intestinal Fortitudeý, Yesterday 01:24 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...-Hide-Mass-Extermination-in-Mexico’s-Coahuila
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For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://ramenir.com/2016/02/07/guerrero-a-security-problem-impossible-to-solve/

Guerrero: A Security Problem Impossible to Solve?

Posted on February 7, 2016
by Julio Bustamante

The years 2014 and 2015 have been hard for Guerrero, one of the poorest states in southern Mexico. After the headlines turned to the state following the kidnapping of the 43 Ayotzinapa students in September 2014, and the murder of many others during a protest, it seemed like chaos had engulfed the region. The governor was forced to resign, provisional governments were set up, the mayor of Iguala and his wife were arrested, and a new “special” security operation was announced for the state in which the Federal government would take complete control of the security institutions.

With all these changes and events, it is not surprising that Guerrero is seen as the most unsafe state in Mexico. The murder rate in Guerrero, as of October 2015, was of 41.5 per 100,000 people. Other violent crimes such as armed robbery and organized crime have also increased the levels of insecurity. According to the Index of Peace in Mexico 2015 collected by the Institute of Economics and Peace with 2014 data, Guerrero is the least peaceful state in Mexico. The recent capture of the famous drug lord Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera aka “El Chapo” has been paraded in the Mexican government as “mission accomplished.” But for Guerrero, and the rest of the country, the so-called “Drug War” is far from over and the capture of “El Chapo” will not improve the security environment.

The institutional breakdown of Guerrero in 2014-15 had an impact in the perception of security, but the problem of violence goes beyond the political instability. The latest UNODC World Drug Report shows Mexico as the third biggest producer of opium in the world, after Afghanistan and Myanmar. Most of that production is concentrated in the mountainous areas of Guerrero. Moreover, the consumption of heroin has increased in the US, and the numerous federal security interventions in the state have risen the price of the product in contrast with the price of marijuana. A farmer can expect to earn around $900 per kilo of opium paste in contrast with $17 per kilo of pressed marijuana. With a high demand and high prices, the control of the opium-producing region becomes attractive for any criminal organization.

But despite the size of the prize, the “big cartels” are rarely mentioned in the news reports on Guerrero. Instead, there is constant mentioning of relatively small-armed groups who terrorize the area such as “Los Pelones”, “Guerreros Unidos”, “Los Rojos” etc. These groups are not nearly as big or powerful as the Sinaloa or Gulf cartels. Nevertheless, it does not mean they are absent. These smaller units or gangs do not have the necessary international network to sell the product that grows in the region where they operate. Therefore, these groups are hired by the “big cartels” to control the territory and production areas, while the international drug organizations ship the product to the United States. The armed groups have increased the level of violence and lawlessness in the state. The problem then becomes more complex since these “alliances” are mostly loose and ad-hoc; many armed paramilitary groups (with more direct “oversight” than the current groups operating in Guerrero) have split from the “main” cartels and formed their own criminal organizations. Such is the case of the Beltran Leyva Organization, Los Zetas and others.

This situation, combined with the local political instability and institutional corruption, is not easy to deal with. More intervention and more seizures will only increase the price of opium, making it even more lucrative. There are no signs that the demand of heroin consumption will decline. According to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the use of heroin increased 150% from 2007 to 2013. Allowing these armed groups to operate in the area will strengthen their position vis a vis their rivals and “employers”, which would make them more unpredictable in their use of violence.

Guerrero needs a comprehensive security strategy that also includes economic alternatives for the farmers in the state. These armed groups are able to maintain their business largely through the communication they have with the bigger cartels. If this link is disrupted, their finances will suffer severely. The problem will then be to protect the population from the possible increase in predatory activity that may be undertaken by these groups in order to finance themselves (kidnapping, extortions, etc.). Therefore, a stronger and institutionally consolidated Guerrero police will be needed, along with an economic development plan to provide real employment opportunities and incentivize the cultivation of products other than opium or marijuana. Of course, any solution to the Guerrero problem requires a great amount of effort and resources from all levels of government. But with the recent capture of El Chapo, the Penn-Del Castillo interview, and the decline of the peso versus the dollar reaching a historical low, the headlines have turned away from Guerrero once again without a solution to its ongoing problem.

Julio Bustamante is from Hermosillo, Mexico. He received his M.A. in Security Studies at Georgetown University and his B.A. in International Relations from the Instituto Teconologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey. His research interests have focused on Mexico, organized crime, and intelligence. Currently, he works as a consultant in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...e-after-isis-in-the-middle-east-a6860276.html

Voices

A plan must be made for ‘life after Isis’ in the Middle East

In the Second World War, Allied leaders planned for the post-war world – a ‘United Nations’ – years before the conflict ended. We must do the same for the Middle East.

Robert Fisk |@indyvoices |Sunday 7 February 2016| Comments 168

There are times in the Middle East when nightmares and delusions take the place of the real and growing tragedy which is consuming the Arab lands. More and more earnest are the calls for peace as more and more nations launch more and more air raids, from Kabul to the Mediterranean, and down through Sinai and Yemen and across to Libya. The bloodbath is real, yet no one plans for a future – for “Life after Isis”. By my reckoning, there are now 11 different national air forces bombing five different Muslim countries to “degrade and destroy” their enemies. But what comes afterwards?

History teaches us that for 100 years now, the people of this magnificent, dangerous region have sought justice and received only injustice. Foreign and proxy occupation, corruption and dictatorship – the hands of the torturer – have taken from them the one value which so many millions finally sought in the great Arab awakening of 2011: dignity. Yet what are we doing about this? Why have we never addressed the great historical injustices which have caused this human earthquake?

Instead, we conjure up imaginary armies – as if the real ones aren’t frightening enough. We dream up 35,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Syria when perhaps there are a thousand – and 20,000 Afghan Hazara Shia and hordes of Iraqi Shia militiamen in Syria and another 10,000 Hezbollah – and this is before we even remember David Cameron’s ghost army of 70,000 warriors ready to fight for democracy. The Turks are about to invade Syria, we are told, but they haven’t. Then there are the thousands of Saudi soldiers which our favourite Gulf monarchy is ready to send to Syria to fight Isis – although presumably they’ll have to leave their air-conditioned Mercedes limousines back at the start line. As for the Russians, I’m surprised nobody has yet suggested that they arrived in Syria with snow on their boots.

This is insanity. Europeans react with horror when a million refugees cross their borders – yet while it’s informative to know that Hungary thinks it is the frontier of Christendom, no one has suggested that we need to address the original problems of all these poor people. We obsess about persuading Turkey to stop the refugees and asylum seekers pouring into Europe, but without any long-term planning for a new Middle East which will reduce their numbers.

We blather on about how we are suffering the greatest movement of refugees since the Second World War. But in the Second World War (the real one), Allied leaders were planning for the post-war world – a “United Nations” – years before the end of hostilities. Today, I cannot find in my files any record of a single Arab or world leader who has spoken of what the Middle East might look like in the future. Why can’t we plan ahead now?

At the end of the First World War – the war which destroyed the Ottoman empire and crushed the last caliphate a few years later – many of the American diplomats in the collapsing empire and the NGOs of the time (they were missionaries then, of course) argued for one great Arab nation; one in which Muslims – and Christians and Jews and other minorities – would be citizens of a land which stretched from Morocco to the Mesopotamian-Persian border (the frontier of what is now Iraq and Iran). But of course the US lost its interest in such Wilsonian dreams, while the Brits and French had other plans and moved in to take the “mandates” of their choice.

Thus began the age of humiliation, of Western occupiers and local butchers and hangmen which stripped all these peoples of their honour. And now, 100 years on, we see its frightening apogee in the gruesome “caliphate” which is spreading Ebola-like around the world. But what the poor old Middle East needs now are not more air strikes, but an intellectual search by all those who still live there – and by those who have fled – for what kind of a homeland they want to live in.

What institutions can replace the broken ramparts of the old Middle East? What can replace, for example, the doggerel Arab television preachers who have so much to answer for, many of them encouraged by the Gulf rulers? How did Islam become so weakened by these people? An old friend of mine (a Sunni Muslim, if you want to know) put it very well to me at the weekend. “Islam is afraid of Isis,” he said. “Isis isn’t afraid of Islam.”

So for starters, why not plan for a new Middle East founded not on oil and gas – though they will remain – but on education? Not on dictators’ palaces but on universities; not on torture chambers but on libraries. Islam lay at the heart of the ancient universities of the Middle East. Scholarship was not dominated by Islam – faith and religion were themselves enhanced and enriched by knowledge. From education comes justice. And justice – only justice – will destroy Isis. This may sound preachy but I suspect it would make a lot of sense to the Arabs – and the Jews – who lived in Spain, in Andalusia, 700 years ago (until, of course, we chucked them out).

I have noted before that Abu Dhabi – abjuring the madness of Dubai – has placed a special need on first-class university education for its citizens. And across the Middle East, lack of education – a policy fostered by dictators, of course – lies like a cancer. For lack of education actually is a substance that spreads. Look at the tens of thousands of Syrian refugee children in Lebanon who will one day return to their ruins without even the gift of literacy to pass on to their own future children.

I cannot stand the old clichés about “when the guns fall silent”. But schools and universities are going to be more deadly to Isis than any air-strike. That’s how you deal with nightmares.

 

[Housecarl]

So at a minimum they've "tweeked" the older assembly, either with an improvement to the engines or different ones....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://dailysignal.com/2016/02/08/north-koreas-missile-launch-shows-it-could-target-us-homeland/

Security /Commentary

North Korea’s Missile Launch Shows It Could Target US Homeland

Bruce Klingner / February 08, 2016 / 5 comments

North Korea has again successfully put a satellite into orbit, demonstrating the same technology needed to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and showing that its long-range missile program is becoming increasingly reliable.

In 2015, the U.S. commanders of U.S. Forces Korea, Pacific Command, and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) publicly assessed that North Korea has the ability to hit the United States with a nuclear weapon.

http://dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/DS-north-korea-13000-km-769x1024.jpeg

Preliminary assessments indicate that the satellite was approximately 450 pounds, twice as heavy a payload as the previous successful satellite launch in Dec. 2012, and that the missile may have a range of 13,000 km, an increase from the previous estimated 10,000 km range.

The longer range would put virtually the entire continental United States within range. Even at 10,000 km, approximately 38 percent of the United States, comprising 120 million people, was already within range.

It is clear that North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests are serious, irreparable violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions. This while the North Korean regime remains openly defiant of the international community despite countless attempts to reach a diplomatic resolution.

While the regime claims that the payload is merely a civilian “earth observation satellite,” several U.N. Security Council resolutions specifically preclude “any further launches” from North Korea “that use ballistic missile technology.” Both North Korea’s missile launch and its Jan. 6 nuclear test are unequivocal violations of U.N. resolutions and should be dealt with sternly.

U.S. officials privately commented last month that Washington was going for a “maximalist sanctions approach” in the U.N. but had again been stymied by Chinese obstructionism. Beijing continues to act like North Korea’s lawyer in the U.N. Security Council, trying to deflect additional sanctions and diverting blame onto U.S. “hostile policies.”

Beijing opposes stronger sanctions such as those that the U.N. imposed on Iran and induced Tehran back to the negotiating table. In response to North Korea’s nuclear test last month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi advocated caution so that any new U.N. “resolution should not provoke new tension in the situation or destabilize the Korean Peninsula.” China reportedly rejected proposed sanctions aimed at reducing Chinese oil exports to North Korea and at preventing imports of mineral resources.

In parallel with U.N. Security Council debate, the U.S. Congress is finalizing legislation to impose tougher unilateral measures. The North Korean Sanctions Enforcement Act would expand U.S. authorities for targeted financial measures, impose penalties on secondary violators such as Chinese entities, and make enforcement of some provisions of U.S. law mandatory rather than discretionary.

The congressional action is spurred in part by lawmakers’ frustration over the Obama administration’s timid incrementalism of repeatedly hitting the snooze bar on enforcing U.S. laws and imposing more sanctions on North Korea.

Contrary to President Barack Obama’s assertion that North Korea is the “the most isolated, the most sanctioned, the most cut-off nation on Earth,” there is much more the United States can do to pressure North Korea, as I recommended in my recent congressional testimony.

Following the launch, the U.S. and South Korea jointly announced they would initiate formal discussions to deploy the THAAD ballistic missile defense system to South Korea. THAAD is more capable than any system South Korea has or will have for decades. It would provide more effective interception at greater altitude and distance than South Korea’s Patriot-2/3 systems. Previously, Seoul had been reticent to publicly discuss the deployment due to Chinese pressure and economic blackmail.

Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Liu Zhenmin called in the South Korean ambassador to Beijing to formally lodge a complaint about U.S. and South Korea discussions of THAAD. Russia also opposes the deployment of the defense system, asserting that it would be contrary to “peace and stability in northeast Asia.” Both nations predictably are more critical of defensive allied responses than to the provocative North Korean behavior that triggered them. Contrary to Chinese and Russian claims, THAAD would not impact their security interests. THAAD, while effective against North Korean missiles, could not intercept Chinese or Russian missiles.

South Korea should also sever its involvement in the Kaesong joint economic venture with North Korea. The experiment has failed in its original objectives to curb North Korea’s aggressive behavior and induce economic and political reform. Kim Jong-un has shown himself to be ever more repressive than his predecessors and has embarked on a series of highly provocative and dangerous actions raising the risk of further escalation and military clashes. South Korea’s involvement funnels $100 million to the regime each year, undermining the effectiveness of U.S. and international sanctions.

It is time for the United States and its allies to impose stronger sanctions and to beef up security against the growing North Korean military threat.

Also at: http://www.realcleardefense.com/art...shows_it_could_target_us_homeland_108996.html

 

[Housecarl]

John Batchelor Show
Monday 8 February 2016
Air Date: February 08, 2016
http://johnbatchelorshow.com/schedules/monday-8-february-2016

BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, The Great Voice of the Great Lakes

Hour One
Monday 8 February 2016 / Hour 1, Block A: Tom Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor & FDD, in re: The Iraqi army is deploying thousands of soldiers to a military base near Makhmur District, which lies 70 kilometers (43 miles) southeast of Mosul, The Daily Star reported Feb. 8. Three brigades are currently stationed at the base; with the new reinforcements, their number will reach 4,500 soldiers. The base is ideally positioned to launch operations against Islamic State forces in Hawija, a preliminary step to eventually attempting to retake Mosul from the group. Militants seized Mosul in June 2014, and the group has held the city largely unopposed for more than 18 months as Iraqi security forces have battled jidhadists in other areas. However, U.S. Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the commander of the U.S.-led operation against the Islamic State, has said Iraqi generals do not think they will be able to recapture Mosul until the end of this year or early 2017.
Monday 8 February 2016 / Hour 1, Block B: Tom Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor & FDD, in re: Libyan bo=ig fighter was bombing Derna, in eastern Libya, and Ansar al Sharia (= al Qaeda) shot down the jet. Confirmed. Should the US get involved in going after ISIS in Libya? The real question is: what to do about al Qaeda? Al Q is taking down jets and seizing territory. ISIS is nipping at he heels of al q, but is there because it's been defeated by al Q (under multiple different brand names) elsewhere. Yemen: Houthis are not the only bad actor regionally – Saudi Natl Guard is battling, al Qaeda has seized much of southern Yemen, highly populated. Al Q is advertising hat it's in proto-state condition. Incl in social media. Building their own Islamic state in Yemen. Zinjibar: “Life has returned to normal” – under sharia savagery and sadism. They stoned to death a Muslim accused of committing adultery, but were afraid to show the gruesome murder because they knew that most Muslims deeply disapprove.
.. .. ..
Jihadists reinforce other rebels during key battle in Aleppo province A crucial battle in Syria's Aleppo province pits Bashar al Assad's regime and its allies against jihadists, Islamists, and other rebel factions.
AQAP confirms military commander killed in US airstrike Jalal Bala’idi, a prominent AQAP field commander khow is also known as Hamza al Zinjibari, "was killed in a Crusader strike that targeted him while he was amongst the sons of his tribe in Abyan province," the jihadist organization confirmed.
UN, Malian forces retake police base captured by jihadists Attacks like this continue to show that the security situation inside Mali, especially in the north and increasingly in the south, is still volatile despite a French-led counterterrorism mission and an UN peacekeeping force inside the country.
Shabaab regains ground in southern Somalia Over the past two weeks, African Union forces withdrew from the southern Somali towns of Marka, El Ade, and Badhadhe. Al Qaeda's branch in Somalia quickly reoccupied the towns.
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Monday 8 February 2016 / Hour 1, Block C: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com & Daily Beast; Bruce Bechtol, Angelo State; in re: North Korean missile. Every single aspect of the missile – three stages — launch, trajectory – all is exactly the same as for a mil platform except the payload which is a bulbous thing. For a test, use a dummy warhead, or a real nuke or chem warhead. One thing not yet confirmed: Iran and DPRK collaborating on an 80-ton warhead; if so, means DPRK has launched the heaviest, largest payload of its history. Flew over Japan and Philippines. Japan put Patriot missile batteries in the middle of Tokyo. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense System — South Korea is now unhappily obliged to cooperate with the US and the rest of the international community in this. Washington unwilling to anger Beijing, so will have an ineffective response; a mistaken policy, but clearly what this Administration will do. ROK needs to add SM3missiles to its ships, and we shd be giving the same technology to the Israelis, since Iran will aim its missiles at Israel. The 80-ton rocket booster: Treasury has sanctioned SHIG in Iran, and Iranian individuals for visiting North Korea. Bruce has been a leader in saying that State knew all about Iran-North Korea cooperation, but refused to tell Americans or the world about how bad it actually is. One of the most unfortunate things about Secy Kerry’s dealing with Iran is that he’s pretended that Iran and DPRK aren’t closely working together. Since 2003. Completely excluded from the talks with Iran. Expect to se the cooperation increase a great deal in the near future. It’d be easy for the US to do something effective: start by sanctioning Chinese banks. North Korea: ICBM technology; can they put it on a missiles? It’ll be a KN-08 mobile missile, not the TaePoDong.
.. .. ..
North Korea and Regional Security in the Kim Jong-un Era: A New International Security Dilemma by Bruce E. Bechtol Jr. ; U.N. Security Council condemns North Korea launch - CNN.com ; North Korea claims it has successfully launched a satellite into space, prompting an ... ; North Korea fires long-range rocket despite warnings - BBC News ; US, South Korea to discuss deployment of missile defense system | Fox News ; China's foreign exchange reserves are contracting fast and may already be below generally accepted safe levels. http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonc...eserves-may-already-be-below-imf-safety-line/ ; -- North Korea’s Missile Could Hit U.S. by Gordon G. Chang - The launch on Sunday is another sign of Pyongyang’s growing threat, and the impotence of U.S. and global efforts to stop it.
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Monday 8 February 2016 / Hour 1, Block D: Claudia Rosett, FDD & PJ Media: The Rosett Report; in re: “Strategic patience” - how Pres Obama early announced that he intended to respond to failed states, incl North Korea. Now we have misbehavior to the point of criminality an depravity. What have we learned from strategic patience? It brings us an enormous amount of rule-violating conduct, pronounced “unacceptable” or “deeply deplorable” by the State Dept. Seems to mean “gross passivity.” A fave; soon after Pres Obama took office in 2009, DPRK tested a missile for a nuclear strike on the US; Pres Obama said. “Rules must be binding, . . . violations must be punished.” Ha-ha. The problem, says the UN, is not the we need more sanctions; we just need to enforce the existing ones. What's Amb Power doing about “unprecedented measures.” DPRK [North Korea] carried out a nuclear test in early January – a hydrogen test. Iran for years have been using DPRK for R&D. Everyone worldwide knows this. The Obama Adm has refused to confirm or deny for years. This has now become extremely dangerous. https://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/north-koreas-unacceptable-nuclear-missiles/?singlepage=true

For audio please go to web site......

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://thediplomat.com/2016/02/afghanistan-to-start-peace-talks-with-taliban-by-the-end-of-february/

Afghanistan to Start Peace Talks With Taliban By the End of February

Representatives from four countries expect peace talks with the Taliban to begin by the end of this month.

By Franz-Stefan Gady
February 08, 2016

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High level diplomats from four countries met over the weekend in Islamabad to discuss ending the war in Afghanistan. The meeting, hosted by the Government of Pakistan, was the third time that the so-called Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China convened discussing the Afghan peace and reconciliation process.

According to an Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs press release, the representatives of the QCG countries—Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Khalil Karzai; Foreign Secretary of Pakistan, Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry; U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard G. Olson; and China’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Ambassador Deng Xijun—expect talks between the Afghan government and Taliban groups to take place by the of February 2016.

“[T]he QCG countries agreed to continue joint efforts for setting a date for direct peace talks between the representatives of the Afghan government and Taliban groups expected to take place by the end of February 2016.” However, Ahmad Shekib Mustaghni, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs clarified that merely the date for peace talks will be finalized by the end of February 2016.

“Building on the progress made in the last two meetings, the Group explored ways for holding early direct peace talks between the authorized representatives of the Afghan Government and Taliban groups,” according to the press release. ”In this regard, the Group also adopted a roadmap stipulating the stages and steps in the process.”

Abdul Hakim Mujahid of Kabul’s High Peace Council told the Associated Press: “The first step is to formulate a roadmap, the second is to invite the armed opposition to the negotiating table and the last step is the implementation of the peace plan.” Kabul held peace talks with the Taliban in the summer of 2015, but the dialogue collapsed after the announcement of the death of the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.

The QCG met for the first time on January 12 in Islamabad, followed by a second round of talks on January 18 in Kabul. The Taliban were not represented at either of the two meetings, nor were they present on Saturday. Afghanistan’s Chief Executive, Abdullah Abdullah told Reuters that he expects talks with “groups among the Taliban who might be willing to talk and give up violence” within six months. ”It should be sooner than six months,” he said in an interview on February 4 in New Delhi.

A January 2015 Taliban statement on prospective peace talks notes that no discussions will occur until NATO forces have withdrawn from the country: “The invaders should leave the country and give the Afghan people opportunity to determine their fate themselves.” The statement does list “preliminary steps” that should be taken prior to peace including prisoner releases and the removal of Taliban operatives from “blacklist and prize list” (presumably NATO targeting lists). “Peace is viable only when practical ways of peace are identified and assessed,” it says.

The QCG emphasized that “the outcome of the reconciliation process should be a political settlement that results in the cessation of violence, and durable peace in Afghanistan.” The representatives also agreed to reconvene for a follow-up meeting in Kabul on 23 February 2016. Former Afghan president, Hamid Karzai recently urged in an interview that India, Iran and Russia should be included in the peace process, according to Tolo News.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://thediplomat.com/2016/02/is-india-prepared-to-prevent-sea-borne-terrorist-infiltration/

Is India Prepared to Prevent Sea-Borne Terrorist Infiltration?

David Headley’s testimony should remind Indian policymakers of the urgency of preventing sea-borne infiltrators.

By Ankit Panda
February 09, 2016

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David Headley, Lashkar-e-Taiba’s American-born “scout” ahead of the devastating November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that claimed over 170 lives, testified before an Indian court on Monday via a video conference. Headley’s remarks before the court have received wide coverage in the international media and contained few surprising or new details.

Headley’s testimony included references to the involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) in helping the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists infiltrate India to perpetrate the worst terror attack on Indian soil since the 2006 Mumbai train bombings.

In the investigation into the terror attacks, one of the major revelations was that the 10 terrorists had entered India not by land, but using inflatable speed boats by sea. The first Indians the attackers confronted weren’t Coast Guard or Navy, but gormless fisherman, perplexed by a group of 10 strange Urdu-speaking men who’d just arrived by sea. For the Indian Coast Guard, the events of November 2008 sparked an increased focus on coastal monitoring. The November 2008 attacks had shown that the sea remained a viable vector for terrorist entry into India.

Over the past year, attacks at Gurdaspur and Pathankot, in Punjab, have refocused attention on terrorists crossing the land border with Pakistan, but Headley’s testimony should be a reminder of the sea-based threat from Pakistan-based terror groups. Speaking to the court, Headley emphasized that the November 26, 2008 coastal arrival wasn’t the first attempt by the 10 attackers. In September 2008, Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives had made a failed attempt.

“The boat disintegrated. The men had life jackets on and came to shore. The weapons and explosives were lost in the ocean,” Headley said. While he wasn’t clear on the details of the second attempt, he said that it was made “a month or so later.” “I don’t know exactly where the boat started from, but probably outside Karachi,” he added.

The Indian Coast Guard is currently undergoing a fleet expansion, aiming to field an fleet of 150 ships and 100 twin-engine aircraft by 2020. At the time of the Mumbai attack, the Coast Guard fielded 65 ships. The Coast Guard crossed the 100 ship mark in 2014. In 2014, Indian Coast Guard Director General Anurag G. Thapliyal told reporters that “[the Mumbai attacks] brought in lot of self-awareness. Our coastline was generally considered to be secured. We never anticipated this kind of terror using the sea route. This also brought in awakening.”

Beyond the simple expansion of the fleet, the Indian Coast Guard has undertaken a range of practices since the Mumbai attack to make the detection and prevention of infiltration more feasible. For example, ordinary fishing boats are tagged and color-coded based on their place of origin. Identity cards have become mandatory for fisherman.

Finally, commercial vessels, including fishing boats, have been required to operate transponders (though full compliance is easier said than done). Organizationally, the Indian Coast Guard hasn’t been restructured to contain something like the United States Coast Guard’s Maritime Safety and Security Team, a counter-terrorism team put together after the September 11, 2001 attacks against New York City and Washington DC.

What’s worrisome is that even after the trauma of 2008, the Indian Coast Guard remains under-prepared to stave off a similar attempt at coastal infiltration. Some readers may recall an incident at the end of 2014, where the Coast Guard intercepted a Pakistani fishing boat thought to be carrying terrorists. The boat supposedly blew itself up, killing all four individuals on board. (Though off-the-cuff remarks by a senior Indian Coast Guard official suggest the boat may have been destroyed by Indian authorities.)

Headley’s testimony before the Indian court happened to come shortly after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke at India’s International Fleet Review, emphasizing the “threat of sea borne terror.” India thus recognizes the importance of securing the maritime vector for possible terrorist infiltration, but should bolster its Coast Guard to adequately perform the task. Headley’s testimony is an all-too-timely reminder of the sea-based terror threat.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/...blic-donate-vz-58s-iraq-kurdistan-fight-isis/

Czech Republic To Donate vz. 58s To Iraq, Kurdistan, To Fight ISIS

Posted 4 days ago in AK-47 / AK-74 / Everything AK, AR-15, Daily News, Guns & Gear, News, Other Gear & Gadgets, Rifles by Nathaniel F with 141 Comments
Tags: better than an ak, Czech Republic, Daesh, good guy czech republic, is, ISIS, islamic state, vz 58

The Czech Republic has announced that it will donate obsolete vz. 58 rifles, both new and used, to the Iraqi and Kurdish regional government. The vz. 58 is an unusual assault rifle often confused with the famous Kalashnikov pattern of rifles, but very different from that family. Jane’s reports:

“The Czech government announced on 25 January that it would donate 3,000 new and 3,600 surplus Ceská zbrojovka Model 58 (Vz. 58) assault rifles to Iraq’s central and Kurdish governments, along with 7.2 million rounds of ammunition.

“The Czech Republic will supply assistance to Iraq and the Kurds in the form of assault rifles and ammunition,” Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said on Twitter.

Czech defence minister Martin Stropnický informed media on 25 January that another 3.8 million rounds of 7.62×39 mm ammunition and three million rounds of 7.62×54 mm ammunition would be donated to Jordan.”

While the vz. 58 has been superseded in Czech serviced by the modular 805 Bren and 806 Bren 2 families of weapons, it is still a very capable rifle for modern combat. The Czech weapons that will be donated are all chambered for the Soviet 7.62x39mm intermediate rifle cartridge, and are select-fire with fully automatic capability. The vz. 58 remains popular with both civilian and military users due to its light weight and favorable recoil and handling characteristics relative to the more famous Kalashnikov pattern of assault rifles, although without modification the type does not accept modern optics or accessories. For a local force without the money to buy very many of these luxuries, however, the vz. 58 is still an excellent rifle that is extremely competitive with other weapons of its type. Kurdish and Iraqi government forces are currently embattled fighting Daesh, the Islamic extremist militant organization seeking to establish a worldwide Caliphate based on sharia law. The donated vz. 58s will be used against Daesh forces by the allied governments.

 

[Housecarl]

North Korea restarting plutonium reactor
Started by meandk0610‎, Today 08:46 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?484164-North-Korea-restarting-plutonium-reactor

Lead article posted by Meandk0610 includes other information from the briefing in the second half of the article.....

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-02-09-09-40-50
Feb 9, 11:45 AM EST

Intelligence chief: North Korea restarts plutonium reactor

By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- North Korea has expanded a uranium enrichment facility and restarted a plutonium reactor that could start recovering material for nuclear weapons in weeks or months, the U.S. intelligence chief said Tuesday in delivering the annual assessment by intelligence agencies of the top dangers facing the country.

He also said Islamic militants and those inspired by the Islamic State group will continue to pose a threat to Americans at home and abroad; al-Qaida remains an enemy; and the U.S. will continue to see cyber threats from China, Russia and North Korea.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that Pyongyang announced in 2013 its intention to refurbish and restart nuclear facilities, to include the uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon and its plutonium production reactor, which was shut down in 2007. Clapper said U.S. intelligence had assessed that North Korea has expanded Yongbyon and restarted the plutonium production reactor there.

Clapper also told the Senate Armed Services Committee in his opening statement that North Korea has been operating the reactor long enough that it could begin to recover plutonium "within a matter of weeks to months."

Both findings will deepen concern that North Korea is not only making technical advances in its nuclear weapons program, following its recent underground test explosion and rocket launch, but is working to expand what is thought to be a small nuclear arsenal. U.S.-based experts have estimated that North Korea may have about 10 bombs, but that could grow to between 20 and 100 by 2020.

North Korea on Sunday launched a rocket carrying an Earth observation satellite into space. The launch followed a Jan. 6 underground nuclear explosion that North Korea claimed was the successful test of a "miniaturized" hydrogen bomb. Many outside experts were skeptical and Clapper said the low yield of the test "is not consistent with a successful test of a thermonuclear device."

Clapper said that Pyongyang is also committed to developing a long-range, nuclear-armed missile that is capable of posing a direct threat to the United States, "although the system has not been flight-tested."

Islamic militants, Clapper said, will continue plotting against U.S. interests overseas and homegrown attacks will pose the most significant threat from violent extremists to Americans at home.

"The perceived success of attacks by homegrown violent extremists in Europe and North America, such as those in Chattanooga and San Bernardino, might motivate others to replicate opportunistic attacks with little or no warning, diminishing our ability to detect terrorist operational planning and readiness," he said.

"ISIL involvement in homeland attack activity will probably continue to involve those who draw inspiration from the group's highly sophisticated media without direct guidance from ISIL leadership," he said using an acronym for the militant group.

Clapper said U.S. information systems, controlled by the U.S. government and American industry, are vulnerable to cyberattacks from Russia and China. North Korea "probably remains capable and willing to launch disruptive or destructive cyberattacks to support its political objectives," he said.

Moscow "is assuming a more assertive cyber posture" that is based on its willingness to target critical infrastructure and carry out espionage operations even when those operations have been detected and under increased public scrutiny, Clapper said. Russia's cyber operations are likely to target U.S. interests in part to underpin its intelligence gathering to support Russia's moves in the Ukraine and Syrian crises, he said.

Clapper also said Moscow's incursion in Ukraine and other "aggressive" moves around the globe are being done in part to demonstrate that it is a superpower equal to the United States. He said he's unsure of Russia's end game but is concerned "we could be into another Cold War like-spiral."

"I think the Russians fundamentally are paranoid about NATO," Clapper said. "They're greatly concerned about being contained and are of course very, very concerned about missile defense, which would serve to neuter what is the essence to their claim to great power status, which is their nuclear arsenal."

Clapper said China selectively uses cyberattacks against targets Beijing believes threaten Chinese domestic stability or regime legitimacy.

"We will monitor compliance with China's September 2015 commitment to refrain from conducting or knowingly supporting cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property with the intent of providing competitive advantage to companies or commercial sectors," he said.

On Afghanistan, Clapper said the country is at "serious risk of a political breakdown during 2016." He said waning political cohesion, rising activities by local powerbrokers, financial shortfalls and sustained attacks by the Taliban erode stability.

On Syria, Lt. Col. Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said he does not think the Syrian government of Bashar Assad is likely to collapse or be defeated in the near term because of increased support from Iran and Russia. He said Assad's forces will likely regain key territory in some key areas. "He certainly is in a much stronger negotiating position that he was just six months ago," Stewart said.

He predicted, however, that Iranian and Russian interests in Syria will likely diverge because they won't share the stage there as a regional power. For now, however, Iran wants to maintain its relations with Moscow so it can purchase Russian arms without preconditions.

---

Associated Press writers Richard Lardner and Matthew Pennington contributed to this report.

Note that this article ignores the issue of boosting and the ability to "stretch" available fissile material.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35534995

North Korea nuclear: Plutonium reactor 'restarted'

59 minutes ago
From the section Asia
Video

North Korea has restarted a plutonium production reactor that could provide a stockpile for nuclear weapons, US intelligence chief James Clapper says.

He also said the North had taken steps towards making an intercontinental ballistic missile system.

It comes days after the North launched a long-range rocket, which critics say is a test of banned missile technology.

Last September Pyongyang said its main nuclear facility at Yongbyon had resumed normal operations.

The reactor there has been the source of plutonium for its nuclear weapons programme. The North carried out its fourth nuclear test in January.


North Korea's nuclear tests

How advanced is North Korea's nuclear programme?

"We assess that North Korea has followed through on its announcement by expanding its Yongbyon enrichment facility and restarting the plutonium production reactor," Mr Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"We further assess that North Korea has been operating the reactor long enough so that it could begin to recover plutonium from the reactor's spent fuel within a matter of weeks to months."

Mr Clapper said that Pyongyang was also committed to developing a long-range, nuclear-armed missile "capable of posing a direct threat to the United States".

He said it had publicly displayed a mobile intercontinental ballistic missile system and had taken "initial steps toward fielding this system, although the system has not been flight-tested".

Experts have said that, when fully operational, the Yongbyon reactor could make one nuclear bomb's worth of plutonium per year. About 4kg of plutonium is needed in order to make a bomb that would explode with a force of 20 kilotons.

Pyongyang has pledged several times to stop operations at Yongbyon and even destroyed the cooling tower in 2008 as part of a disarmament-for-aid deal.

However, in March 2013, following a row with the US and with new UN sanctions over a third nuclear test, it vowed to restart all facilities at Yongbyon.

Six-nation talks involving South Korea, the US, China, Japan and Russia aimed at ending the North's nuclear programme have been stalled since 2009.

Pyongyang says it has made a device small enough to fit a nuclear warhead on to a missile, which it could launch at its enemies. However, US officials have cast doubt on the claim.


More on this story:

North Korea's nuclear tests
6 January 2016

North Korea's nuclear programme: How advanced is it?
6 January 2016

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-02-09-11-20-28

Feb 9, 11:20 AM EST

Irish deploy military-style checkpoints to suppress gang war

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
Associated Press

DUBLIN (AP) -- Ireland's police force deployed military-style road checkpoints Tuesday as the government announced toughened measures to try to prevent a gang war in Dublin from claiming more lives.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald said a 55-member armed police unit would be created for Dublin in hopes of suppressing what she called an "evil and sinister cycle of gangland violence."

The move is significant in a country where police typically patrol unarmed. It was announced at an emergency meeting with police chiefs following Monday night's killing of a brother of Gerry "The Monk" Hutch, a gang chieftain credited with directing many of Ireland's most famous bank heists.

Taxi driver Eddie Hutch, 59, was shot several times in the hallway of his home. He was targeted in apparent retaliation for Friday's gun attack on a boxing weigh-in being attended by senior figures from a rival gang led by Irish fugitive Christy Kinahan, the other key figure in the underworld bloodletting.

In Friday's attack, five gunmen allegedly from the Hutch camp targeted Kinahan loyalists arriving at the hotel for the boxing event. The gunmen, including three armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and disguised as an elite police unit, shot three men, killing one, in front of scores of civilians including young children.

The violence focuses on the international drug-trafficking business of Kinahan, a Dubliner who following prison sentences in Ireland and the Netherlands runs his empire from a villa in Spain's Costa del Sol. Police in Ireland, Britain and Spain opened a probe into his operations in 2008, the same year Kinahan jumped bail in Belgium over money-laundering charges.

Since 2014, the Kinahan cartel has been blamed for killing a string of former members accused of pilfering vast sums from drug deals, and this has brought him into collision with Hutch's crew, who previously cooperated with Kinahan drug traffickers. A nephew, Gary Hutch, was gunned down in Spain in September 2015 after reportedly rebuffing the demands of Kinahan henchmen for a six-figure payment.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, leader of Dublin's 1 million Catholics, rejected some politicians' calls Tuesday to serve as mediator between the Hutch and Kinahan camps. He appealed to the killers' own partners, mothers and other loved ones to apply moral pressure on them in the home and for neighbors of gangsters "to remind them they are not untouchable" by tipping off police about their activities.

"These are turf wars about pumping drugs into our children," Martin said. "The danger of negotiating with them is to give them status. They are criminals."

Police found the getaway car used by Eddie Hutch's killers abandoned about a mile (2 kilometers) away with balaclava masks and a container of fuel still inside, a sign that the attackers didn't have enough time to torch the car and destroy forensic evidence.

Fitzgerald said police were staking out the residences of the most likely targets in Dublin's gangland feud and would "saturate" high-crime areas with road checkpoints designed to make it harder for any killers to operate. She said gang associates "who have fears for their safety" should tell police directly.

Friday's boxing event in Dublin attracted many figures from Spain associated with Kinahan, presenting a juicy target for those seeking retribution for the Gary Hutch slaying. Among those present was Kinahan's son Daniel, but he wasn't hit.

Witnesses said they heard one of the gunmen - a man in a blonde wig disguised as a woman and displaying a handgun - declare in frustration that they couldn't find Daniel Kinahan amid the melee.

Police say they have identified most of those involved in Friday's attack but have made no arrests, in part because they suspect the gunmen have fled Ireland.

Eddie Hutch was described by police and politicians as a "soft target" because, unlike his high-profile brother, he was not considered an important gangland figure. However, Ireland's Criminal Assets Bureau several years ago did seize a bank account in Eddie Hutch's name containing 160,000 euros ($180,000) believed to contain proceeds from his brother's robberies.

Another of Hutch's relatives currently behind bars, Derek "Del Boy" Hutch, has been moved to a secure wing of prison to deter assassins. He was convicted in 2010 of stabbing a man to death at a party and of attempting to rob a cash-filled armored car.

Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency says Kinahan's operation provides money-laundering services for other gangs across Europe and has assets exceeding 200 million euros ($225 million).

Muddying the picture, an Irish Republican Army faction with links to Dublin organized crime claimed responsibility for Friday's hotel attack. But that group, the Continuity IRA, issued a second statement Monday night saying it was not involved.

Police say IRA factions are involved in supplying weapons to, and demanding protection money from, their criminal rivals. The Dublin leader of the Real IRA splinter group was killed in 2012 in alleged retaliation for his efforts to extort money from Kinahan gang members.


Latest News:

Irish deploy military-style checkpoints to suppress gang war
IRA faction says it attacked Dublin boxing event, killed man

Irish face Feb. 26 election; premier lauds economic rebound

Irish unemployment falls to 7-year low of 8.6 percent

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-02-09-10-57-38

Feb 9, 10:57 AM EST

Israeli military says top mission is countering Gaza tunnels

By ARON HELLER
Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel's top general said Tuesday that the military's number one mission for the coming year is to counter the renewed threat posed by militant attack tunnels from Gaza.

Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot said Gaza's Hamas rulers have been rebuilding the sophisticated network of underground tunnels that Israel targeted during the 2014 war. He said destroying this network is the military's top priority for 2016, adding that it's not deceived by the current relative calm along the Israel-Gaza border.

"Hamas is diverting great resources to restore what it considers a pattern that allows it to enter Israel discreetly and carry out attacks," Eisenkot said at an event at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, a college north of Tel Aviv. "We have the most advanced abilities in the world and still this is a major challenge."

Israel launched its 2014 offensive in Gaza to stop years of frequent rocket attacks. But as the campaign intensified, and Israel became increasingly adept at shooting down incoming projectiles with its Iron Dome system, the tunnels emerged as an even greater threat. Israel then sent in troops that destroyed more than 30 tunnels Hamas had built to infiltrate and carry out attacks against soldiers and civilians.

More than 2,200 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them civilians, were killed in the 50-day summer war. In Israel, 66 soldiers and seven civilians were killed.

The border area has since remained largely quiet, but Hamas has publicly boasted that it has rebuilt its tunnel network. The Islamic militant group says at least 13 of its men have died over the past month in accidents while working on the tunnels.

Hamas announced the latest death on Tuesday, saying Khan Younis resident Marwan Marouf, 27, died when a tunnel collapsed on him.

Israelis living near the border have also reported hearing tunneling sounds under their homes recently and have been pressing the government to do something about it.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel would retaliate with "greater force" than in 2014 if cross-border tunnels were used to attack Israelis. But he angrily rejected a leaked report Monday from a closed Cabinet meeting in which Naftali Bennett, head of the nationalist Jewish Home party, was said to have suggested a pre-emptive attack against the tunnels. Netanyahu called the leak irresponsible and said he would not divulge any operational plans.

Atai Shelach, a retired colonel and former commander of the elite combat engineering unit in charge of dismantling tunnels, said the tunnels have supplanted rocket fire as the most urgent challenge for Israel to overcome. He said the 2014 war was a "watershed moment" and Israel has since directed considerable attention to the tunnels, but that the threat was likely to persist for decades.

"The underground frontier is the refuge of the weak and allows it to come closer to a superior adversary," he told The Associated Press. "It's no less complicated than the rocket threat and we need a similar type of systematic solution."

He said that another round of fighting with Hamas was "not a question of if, but when."

Concerns over a new front with Gaza come amid five months of near-daily Palestinian assaults, mainly stabbings, against Israeli civilians and security personnel across Israel and the West Bank that have killed 27 Israelis. Some 155 Palestinians, 110 of whom Israel says were attackers, were killed by Israeli fire during that time. The rest died in clashes with Israeli security forces.

Israel says the violence is fueled by a campaign of Palestinian incitement. Palestinians say it stems from frustration over decades of occupation.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu toured a newly built section of a fence Israel is erecting on its eastern frontier with Jordan.

"In the end in Israel, as I see it, there will be a fence like this that surrounds the whole country," he said. "In the environment where we live we must defend ourselves from the predators."


Latest News:

Israeli military says top mission is countering Gaza tunnels
Palestinian doctor aims to boost West Bank medical services

Israeli parliament suspends Arab MPs who met attackers' kin

Islamic authority rejects new Jerusalem Jewish prayer area

Anger at Arab Israeli MPs who met relatives of attackers

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/south-korea-considers-going-nuclear-to-counter-north-korea/

South Korea Considers Going Nuclear To Counter North Korea

Guest Post
February 9, 2016
Headline News, War & Peace
by Russ Read

South Korean officials are mulling the idea of obtaining nuclear weapons in response to recent provocations from neighboring North Korea.

North Korea¡¯s successful launch of a long-range rocket Saturday, in conjunction with other recent provocations, has brought the nuclear question to the top of the South Korean political agenda, and both conservative and liberal elements seem to be warming to the idea.

¡°If South Korea has nuclear weapons, we can more positively lead the dialogue with confidence in our security. This will help us to attract North Korea to open its door,¡± said Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute to NK news Wednesday. ¡°North Korea has ignored South Korea, arguing to exclusively talk with the U.S. With nuclear capability, South Korea can form an equal relationship with North Korea.¡±

Cheong is generally known as a promoter of dialogue with North Korea, but he claims a nuclear South Korea could help spur more productive diplomacy with the reclusive nation.

North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in early January, prompting a response from South Korean politician Won Yoo-cheol, who proclaimed a day later that ¡°it is time to possess a peaceful nuclear program for the right of self-defense.¡±

Won¡¯s center-right Saenuri party, which currently controls South Korea, called for new sanctions and a closer security relationship with the U.S in response to the nuclear test.

On Tuesday, prominent South Korean columnist Kim Dae-jung wrote an op-ed in the Chosun Ilbo newspaper taking the idea of going nuclear a step further, calling for South Korea to remove itself from the non-proliferation treaty.

South Korea is not the only country that has recently expressed grave concerns over North Korean provocation. In late January, U.S. officials warned Japan may shoot down North Korea¡¯s rocket. However, North Korean media stated Sunday that the launch of the rocket was successful in putting a satellite into space. Neither U.S. nor South Korean intelligence agencies have confirmed the claim.

While the nuclear question remains unanswered, the U.S. and South Korea formally acknowledged Sunday they are engaging in talks to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missile defense system in South Korea in response to the rocket launch. The weapons system has the capability of targeting and shooting down ballistic missiles of various ranges.

In addition, the U.N. announced Sunday the security council will adopt new sanctions against North Korea for breaching resolutions via its test Saturday.

__

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.nknews.org/2016/02/conservatives-progressives-make-case-for-s-korean-nukes/

Conservatives, progressives make case for S.Korean nukes

South Koreans torn between interest in greater independence, desire to uphold U.S.-ROK alliance

Ha-young Choi
February 3rd, 2016
Share 13
Comments 0

¡°It is time to possess a peaceful nuclear program for the right of self-defense.¡±

This declaration came not from North Korean state media, but South Korean lawmaker Won Yoo-cheol of the ruling Saenuri Party on January 7, the day after Pyongyang¡¯s fourth nuclear test.

More politicians from the ruling party have echoed this argument, saying ¡°only South Korea is isolated from nuclear (power) in Northeast Asia.¡± This is far from the first time that South Korean politicians have spoken in favor of nuclear arms: Former ruling party presidential candidate Cheong Mong-joon openly called for independent nuclear development in 2012, saying South Korea could ¡°achieve peace without the ¡®balance of fear.¡¯¡±

Well-known columnist Kim Dae-jung of South Korea¡¯s most influential newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo, also spoke in favor of starting a conversation on the nuclear possession on February 2, saying that withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty may be necessary.

CONTROVERSY

A certain segment of academia in Seoul has also spoken in favor of nuclear development. Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute, generally an engagement-inclined expert, has recently been asserting the necessity of nuclear arms, even as he argues for the need to talk with North Korea following most inter-Korean incidents.

Interestingly, he argues that for Seoul to have nuclear weapons would facilitate inter-Korean exchanges and unification.

¡°If South Korea has nuclear weapons, we can more positively lead the dialogue with confidence in our security. This will help us to attract North Korea to open its door,¡± Cheong told NK News. Furthermore, he said the South Korea can take the initiative on North Korean issues. ¡°North Korea has ignored South Korea, arguing to exclusively talk with the U.S. With nuclear capability, South Korea can form an equal relationship with North Korea.¡±

Cheong¡¯s argument is also different from conservative politicians in that it includes more considerations for South Korea¡¯s defense and welfare financing, the expense of the U.S. nuclear umbrella and the South Korean youth¡¯s compulsory military service.

¡°It is inevitable to sacrifice welfare if North Korea possesses the fearful power of a hydrogen bomb, and South Korea continues to depend on the U.S.¡¯s nuclear umbrella and conventional weapons, as significant defense finance is being used to purchase overseas weaponry,¡± he said on January 12. Last year, South Korea was ranked as the world¡¯s top weapons importer in 2014, at $7.8 billion worth, and 90 percent of weapons were made in the U.S.

He is concerned over South Korea¡¯s potential economic collapse in an arms race with North Korea, which is growing its capacity in areas such as such as SLBMs.

However, opponents rebut this argument based on other economic concerns.

¡°South Korea depends on foreign trade for about 60 percent of its exports,¡± said Hong Hyun-ik, chief of the security strategy research team at the Sejong Institute told NK News. Should the South leave the NPT and start building nuclear weapons, the resulting sanctions originating at the UN level could have an enormous effect, Hong said.

Hong acknowledged that nuclear arms could give the South more leverage in negotiations, but also noted the effect on the U.S.-ROK alliance.

¡°As soon as the South Korean government officially develops nuclear weapons, the U.S. will break the U.S.-ROK alliance,¡± Hong said.

Cheong, however, backed up his argument by suggesting the examples of India and Israel, nothing that the U.S. excused India¡¯s nuclear possession because of India¡¯s democratic beliefs. He also suggested practical routes such as withdrawing from the NPT and coordinating with Japan. As both countries are democratic, they are likely to receive special treatment, he argued.

The U.S. has already noted the potential for cooperation between the two countries on this front.

¡°The recent negotiation of a nuclear cooperation agreement between Washington and Seoul managed to avoid approval of South Korean uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing, but the question may arise in the next decade ¡*. In particular, South Korea looks to its neighbor Japan as a model of nuclear development. Japan is widely regarded as having achieved nuclear latency,¡± the recently published report submitted to the U.S. Department of Defense from Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reads.

John Grisafi, NK News director of intelligence echoed this point.

¡°(South Korean nuclear development) could also potentially trigger more arms development and proliferation in the region, including possibly the adoption of nuclear weapons by Japan, who already possess just about all of necessary technology and material to do so,¡± he said.

Park Sun-won, Ph.D former secretary to President Roh Moo-hyun in National Security Strategy, touched on precisely this point from the CSIS report, arguing to obtain nuclear substances within the framework of the NPT, like Japan.

¡°Negotiating with interested countries, South Korea needs to possess enriched uranium, the basic technology to make a nuclear weapon,¡± Park told NK News. ¡°To achieve this, the Joint Declaration on Denuclearization to the Korean Peninsula and the nuclear cooperation agreement (signed last year) need to be revised.¡±

Cheong expects this debate to pick up should Pyongyang test a fifth nuclear weapon, this time with a fully developed hydrogen bomb.

¡°Then there must be nationwide agreement to possess nuclear weapons or not, by plebiscite,¡± he told NK News.

He suggested persuading the U.S. by saying Seoul¡¯s nuclear possession could be helpful for Washington¡¯s security.

¡°If South Korea has a nuclear weapon, North Korea will take more care regarding South Korea, and the U.S. will be safer, relatively speaking,¡± Cheong said.

SOUTH KOREA¡¯S PAST NUCLEAR DESIRE

South Korea actually has experience in developing nuclear capacity in the 1970s, during President Park Chung-hee¡¯s rule. Park, current President Park Geun-hye¡¯s father, actively pursued nuclear development from 1972 on.

Regarding the reason for the project, former ambassador Donald Gregg told the Hankyoreh in 2011 that it was because ¡°(Park) didn¡¯t trust us. He felt this was ¡* the way North Koreans do things. You have nuclear weapons and nobody dares to attack you.¡±

Gregg said Park didn¡¯t trust the U.S. because he saw it losing in Vietnam.

According to this interview, the U.S. learned of the nuclear program in 1973. The U.S. tried to persuade Park by reaffirming to him that the U.S. was reliable and would protect South Korea from any attacks, including from North Korea¡¯s.

The recent arguments are not completely same as in the 1970s, when the U.S. was partially withdrawing from Asia after the Vietnam War.

¡°The U.S. military has been maintaining and even in some ways increasing its presence and activity in East Asia in recent years, including exercises with Japan and South Korea and rotational deployments of more U.S. Army units to South Korea,¡± said Grisafi.

THE ALLIANCE

However, the current situation shares similarities with the Park Chung-hee era. Facing the new phase of the nuclear threat from North Korea, South Koreans do not appear fully satisfied with the nuclear umbrella of the U.S.

South Koreans¡¯ opinions on the ROK-U.S. alliance and Seoul¡¯s own nuclear possession are very complicated. According to the poll conducted by the Asan Institute in 2014, 93.3 percent of South Koreans supported an ongoing alliance between the U.S. and South Korea, compared to 87.2 percent in 2010. 82.6 percent of South Koreans argued the necessity of the alliance despite the economic burden. Also, 64.9 percent of Koreans think that the relationship between the U.S. and South Korea is ¡°unfair.¡±

At the same time, a majority ¨C though a shrinking one ¨C of South Koreans are hoping for its own nuclear development, at 66.8 percent in 2011, 64 percent in 2013 and 54 percent this year, right after the fourth nuclear test. As seen by the polls, the South Korean public seems torn between two options: the existing stability of the U.S.-ROK alliance and the more provocative move of nuclear possession.

This complicated situation indicates why some conservative politicians and journalists, who are primarily in favor of U.S.-ROK alliance, and some liberal experts, who usually prefer peaceful solutions, are arguing for nuclear possession at the same time. Security and defense in South Korea, based on the U.S.-ROK alliance, is an anti-DPRK conservative agenda but independent defensive capability like what the progressives have favored. As closely as the U.S. and the South have worked together, they may see nuclear development as the South taking greater control of its own destiny.

¡°No matter what the U.S. says, Seoul can never be 100 percent certain the U.S. would counter North Korean nuclear force against South Korea with its own nuclear force,¡± said Grisafi.

__

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Posted for fair use.....
http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2016/02/01/2016020103631.html
Google/Microsoft translation....

Input: 2016.02.02 03:20

alleged North Korean assistance and peace ' adult ', when you mentioned ' fighter ' pushing nuclear obscurantism peace North Korean nuclear-armed Ron ...

Only security forces reinforcement, ribseobiseu Naka flippers unusual needs action, should also discard the prepared Declaration of denuclearization [source] this article is an article written in Korean dot com

The Defense & Security (insurance) you mentioned being belligerent (s war) who becomes a pacifist when you highlight a conversation. When you talk about peace and security and should be mentioned in the conversation by the hardliners ongeonpaga. North Korea's provocative members of comparable for different response to ' let ' alleged war? ' Extreme logic when people brought up the North Korea provocation emerged with fear, condemning the election strategy backlash. We have to have the claimed nuclear weapons while China and the United States say the stimulus is not doing. In short, North Korea's willingness to talk peace, dialogue and support adults and military balance, when you mentioned ' such as nuclear armed fighter gravitate to that time we lived '. This is the most dangerous in the world, a country with nuclear weapons, gunpowder and directly threatened the country's distorted phenomenon.

In the meantime North Korea accepts the South's ' support ' to the South, and North Korea in a peace obscurantism autocratic power cannot meet some leadership on our side are eager for the ' get ' to break the bottle (²¡) North Korea nuclear weapons development, and the fourth nuclear test. Now it's up to me means empowering (missile) equipped nuclear powerhouses. Besides, now that North Korea's nuclear weapons cannot be where and when the button is pressed over a hearty young blood deception should probably in the hands of a dictator. When we get a nuclear bomb because of what is at all be dealt with unpredictable back pretending to be two.

North Korea is not the only problem. We took the President three Ron (rock the world) also took the ball around looking for People's Republic of China is North Korea's fourth nuclear test crisis threw the flippers. We got up left-wing forces to brain and dialogue and peace. The United States also has a lip service. The President's new year's speech to Congress is ' nuclear ' did not even comment on. The United States nuclear umbrella behind the higher authority also remarks on Korean exports Saad (?) Even the smell of the above you want to. Japan is moving quickly and the foot a chance to nohcilsera. So far, all of the elements of nuclear weapons (enriched uranium from nuclear test simulation, Port Sudan) has broken down (min tone), but once you have, you just need to combine the ' stage ' need in Japan is the next door neighbor's bad luck (not carried out) and kill hitchhiking in the back, smiling.

If we have reasonable just nowhere else political, as well as knowledge of the jeonjeongeunggeung floor, elite all relax and hit the band now also in contention three (ISE) of turning ggis sack knowing not rotting. General election tomorrow moraine we discuss about the security situation or explanations are totally missing. The National Assembly has virtually paralyzed the State and President of the National Assembly bypassed the nation ' public politics '. The ruling party a look of hot non-Pro and nights out, and the opposition was retiring blows Veterans (ÀÏ ±ø) calling them my rejuvenation (fortunate spring) play. Mating between ourselves, the politicians who pull the harness, the local Abu, spent the past bets, horsetail, catching bargain Bill, directing the mess with the nomination being a melee as well as core (ºË), nucleus (×Ö) seems interested in.

This situation makes the surrounding powers to see a us badly or shallow. ' Gee I wonder whether it is worth to help the country? ' ' That are neither more nor less a proxy war in the us or to give reasons why and what? ' is an awesome thing to rely on their own security, South Korea and the South without anything expect what the concept will not dismiss it as a country. In the village of naval base in Jeju-do cretins one construction takes a whopping 10 years to all kinds of shame while watching the situation surrounding melee, have any idea?

Korea is known as the world's top 10 a few hit the country more confident economic powerhouse for its consideration, with the support of other countries, international organizations for security to remote control address out as I'm probably called Korea. The economy is sustaining a magnetism and the lowest power and North Korea that nuclear weapons, even in spite of the warnings of the world without them not to make the determination. China and Japan see reason to poke fun at us will not be independent of it. One of the nation's security diplomacy well, well, stand up for anyone who give back and forth and bargain well accomplished. Of course, such a diplomatic dexterity and opportunities this pointless, but in essence we are raising the power from within the powers that do not properly used as a ship can be obtained from.

On the common ground of social leadership demonstrates security people gladly elicit can't expect work on the spot. However, you can also give up. First of all to the hilt-fisted regime only reinforce the power of our security or our willingness to take action and demonstrate unusual danseong. Getting a look at the. Let's start with a discussion on nuclear armed. It's inevitable if the denuclearization of the nuclear non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Declaration of withdrawal is also prepared. And he said that any disadvantage is also willing to let people in the home. Let's formulate the introduction of Saad. Even a couple of times on any of the local North Korea provoking retaliation that attitude professing counterattack. If the international community help themselves we understand and can help. Should be prepared for war in the conventional sense, but you can get peace.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/2...ion-to-disclose-links-between-north-korea-and

GOP senator wants North Korea links to Iran disclosed

By Kristina Wong - 02/09/16 08:52 AM EST
Comments 1

Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) late Monday filed an amendment to a North Korea sanctions bill that would require the administration to disclose to Congress any cooperation between the rogue Asian nation and Iran on nuclear weapon and ballistic missile development.

A House-passed version of the bill has a similar provision, but it was stripped out of the Senate version. The Senate is slated to take up the bill, called the North Korea Enforcement Sanctions Act, on Wednesday.

Congress took up the issue after North Korea said it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb last month. On Saturday, the country conducted a missile launch that it claimed was to put a satellite into space for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. and allies suspect was a long-range missile test in violation of international law.
Perdue and other members of Congress suspect that North Korea and Iran are cooperating and that the administration has been reluctant to disclose to Congress what it knows.

“It’s undeniable that Iran and North Korea have been cooperating on nuclear weapon and ballistic missile development for years now," said Perdue, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a statement.

"Iranians have reportedly been present for at least three of North Korea’s nuclear tests," he said.

Perdue's amendment would require the administration to submit a semiannual report to Congress on North Korea's cooperation with Iran on nuclear weapon and ballistic missile testing, development and research.

It would also require the administration to disclose to Congress the identity of individuals who have knowingly engaged in or directed material support or exchanged information between governments of Iran and North Korea for their nuclear programs.

"This amendment forces the Obama administration to disclose to Congress what it knows about this cooperation between rogue nations, instead of denying the linkages. The sooner we acknowledge this illicit cooperation, the sooner we can work to put it to a halt," Perdue said.

The House bill passed last month requires the administration to sanction anyone involved with North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Penalties would include freezing assets under U.S. jurisdiction, banning individuals from traveling to the United States or blocking government contracts.

The bill passed out of the Foreign Relations Committee by a voice vote after lawmakers merged legislation from Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) with a bill from Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.).

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ori...ime-retake-sheikh-miskin-jordan-concerns.html

Why the fall of this Syrian city raises red flags in Jordan

Jordan is carefully watching the military developments in the southern Syrian province of Daraa following the recapture of the strategic town of Sheikh Miskin on Jan. 26 by government forces in a Russian-backed offensive that began at the end of December.

Author: Osama Al Sharif
Posted: February 8, 2016
Comments 50

The fall of the town, not far from the Jordanian border, was preceded by the retaking of the Brigade 82 military base from the Free Syrian Army and its allies, which include Jabhat al-Nusra. The loss is a major setback for the so-called Southern Front, which has been trying to kick the Syrian regime's forces out of the city of Daraa and other towns in the province’s countryside.

The fall of Sheikh Miskin will cut supply routes to the rebels and enable government forces, backed by Hezbollah fighters and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, to control the main highway linking Damascus in the south to Quneitra in the Golan Heights.

Jordan maintains close links with the FSA and the command of the Southern Front, which controls the Nasib border crossing on the Syrian side. Al-Monitor tried to contact Southern Front spokesman Issam al-Rayyes in Amman for his reaction to the latest events, but received no response.

Since the Russian intervention in Syria started at the end of September, the regime forces have been making important gains in the north and south of the country. Advances in Daraa province have sent tens of thousands of refugees fleeing, and many will be heading toward Jordan.

In addition to benefiting from Russian air support, regime forces were reportedly able to break through rebel defenses because of infighting among opposition groups such as the FSA and Jabhat al-Nusra in southern Syria.

For Jordan — which views stability in southern Syria as an important component of its national security — the shift in the military balance north of its borders raises many red flags. While it was never publicly confirmed, Jordan and Russia reportedly reached an understanding in October to ensure Russian bombing in southern Syria does not target the Southern Front. That understanding was apparently reiterated during a meeting between King Abdullah II and President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Nov. 24.

Now Jordan believes that Russia has violated that understanding. On condition of anonymity, a Jordanian official told UAE-based website 24.ae on Feb. 3 that Russia has broken a cease-fire agreement in southern Syria by providing air cover for the attack on Sheikh Miskin.

Jordanian concerns were presented to the Russians during a surprise visit by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mashal al-Zaben to Moscow on Jan. 28, but there were no signs that the two sides had agreed on steps to reduce tensions in southern Syria.

Zaben’s visit coincided with the presence of Syria’s Defense Minister Fahed Jassem al-Freij in Moscow, but there were no reports that the two men had met. Syrian officials repeated in earlier statements that “Daraa terror is a Jordanian problem,” in reference to accusations that Jordan was backing what Damascus views as terrorist groups.

Jordan is particularly worried about the possibility of Hezbollah and IRGC fighters deploying close to Jordan's borders. In addition, it is bracing itself to deal with a new wave of Syrian refugees. Jordan is already home to over 1.3 million Syrians and has asked the international community for immediate help in covering the cost of hosting them.

A Russian diplomat in Amman who asked not to be named told Al-Monitor that Moscow will continue to back government forces in southern Syria until they gain control of all border crossings with Jordan. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said during a Feb. 6 press conference in Damascus that a cease-fire will not be achieved until Syria's borders with Jordan and Turkey are secured.

Jordan’s military has stepped up security on its borders with Syria. It has foiled a number of attempts to illegally cross from Syria to Jordan, mostly by smugglers. But the change in the military balance in southern Syria raises questions about the ability of Jordan and its regional and Western allies to back the FSA, especially in providing it with arms.

Syrian National Coalition chief Khaled Khoja told al-Araby al-Jadid that the US-led coalition has halted delivery of military supplies to FSA groups, enabling regime forces assisted by Russian air cover to make substantial gains in northern and southern Syria.

Jordan also fears that the Syrian regime forces’ advance in southern Syria will drive rebel fighters, including members of Jabhat al-Nusra, to flee toward Jordanian territory. But Mohammad al-Alawneh, a retired general, told Al-Monitor that in spite of recent reverses on Syria’s southern front, Jordan and Russia continue to maintain close coordination.

The two countries agreed in October to set up a “special working mechanism” based in Amman following Russia’s military intervention in Syria. The objective was to coordinate military operations, especially in southern Syria.

“Jordan will step up its security measures to prevent violation of its borders, but it will also seek to create a buffer zone inside Syria to contain the flow of refugees,” said Alawneh. He added that Jordan has informed Russia of its rejection of any Iranian or Hezbollah presence close to its borders. “Such a presence will force Jordan to change its current policy toward Russia’s involvement in Syria,” he added.

But political analyst Fahd al-Khitan disagreed. He told Al-Monitor that the fall of Sheikh Miskin has shocked Jordan, especially as both Amman and Moscow “had a solid understanding over keeping southern Syria out of the military calculations of the regime in Damascus.” He went on, “Jordan is worried about Hezbollah and Iran’s presence in southern Syria and a new wave of refugees, which Jordan can’t afford to receive. More than that, Jordan is concerned about the reaction of terrorist groups, and while Amman has no problem with regime forces moving forward in Daraa, this has angered opposition groups, including the FSA, that have close ties to Jordan and the US.”

Jordan has not reacted publicly to the latest military developments in southern Syria. But it is certain that it has expressed its concerns to the Russians while tightening security along its northern borders. As regime forces make important gains in the north and south of Syria, Amman will be forced to review what Khitan called a policy of “positive neutrality” toward the Syrian regime, along with its controversial ties with the Syrian opposition. There also are indications that Washington, too, is altering its policy on Syria by abandoning the so-called moderate opposition.



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Meet one of Hezbollah's teen fighters
Mona Alami

 

[Housecarl]

Merde.....Begs the question if correct of how much this is a reboot of the earlier reports when the Saudis claimed that Pakistan was on board and they were "corrected"......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://peakoil.com/publicpolicy/91427

Page added on February 9, 2016

Saudi Arabia Prepares to Invade Syria

Comments 138

CNN’s Arabic division in Dubai reports Saudi Arabia is planning to invade Syria and has mobilized 150,000 troops in the kingdom.

Two sources cited by CNN say “trainees” preparing for the effort are from Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Turkey. Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei will also participate.

The invasion scheduled for March will be led by the Saudis and Turks and will originate in Turkey, according to CNN.

Last week the US Defense boss Ash Carter said he welcomed a Saudi offer to participate in ground operations. “That kind of news is very welcome,” he told reporters while on a visit to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

Carter will meet in Brussels this week with the Saudis. The Saudis confirmed they will also be in Brussels to discuss details of the invasion.

Last week Saudi Brig. Gen. Ahmad Asiri told the United States his country is willing to send troops into Syria. On Friday Saudi officials announced the formation of the Sunni coalition and said military exercises will be held in preparation for an invasion.

Iran mocked the Saudi plan. “They claim they will send troops (to Syria), but I don’t think they will dare do so,” Maj. Gen. Ali Jafari told reporters in Tehran, according to Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency. “They have a classic army and history tells us such armies stand no chance in fighting irregular resistance forces.”

Middle East experts believe the move by Saudi Arabia is not about defeating the Islamic State but confronting Iran.

Iranian security and intelligence services are advising and assisting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in his fight against US and Gulf Emirate proxies. In addition to sending the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and Quds Force to fight on the ground in Syria, Lebanese Hezbollah has taken on a direct combat role. Iraqi Shi‘a brigades are also involved in the fighting.

“Saudi Arabia’s strategic goals in Syria are very different from ours. And any new introduction of foreign ground troops into Syria would be greatly complicating efforts to focus attention on ISIS as the threat,” Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, told US News & World Report. “The Saudis know what their goal is. They want to overthrow Assad. Period.”

“I would consider any introduction of foreign ground troops [into Syria] to be destabilizing. You’re pushing Saudi Arabian power closer and closer to Iran,” Kinzer added. “That kind of ground deployment would certainly undermine the already weak efforts toward peaceful resolution of this conflict.”

Last week UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura postponed Syria peace talks brokered by the internationalist organization. The State Department has blamed Russia “in part” for the failure of the talks.

The proxy forces have refused to participate in talks unless the al-Assad government stops attempting to regain territory overtaken by al-Nusra, IS and other jihadist groups.

 

[Housecarl]

Well that was quick....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/02/10/iran-to-purchase-sukhoi-30-fighter-jets-from-russia.html

Europe

Iran to purchase Sukhoi-30 fighter jets from Russia

Published February 10, 2016 · Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's Defense Minister says his country will sign a contract with Russia for the purchase of Sukhoi-30 fighter jets.

In comments published Wednesday, Gen. Hossein Dehghan did not specify how many fighter planes Iran will buy, or give a timeline for the signing of the deal.

He says that under the agreement Iran would also be involved in the production of the aircraft.

Russia has already started delivering S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran. The advanced defensive weapons system deal was frozen in 2010 due to U.N sanctions.

Iran's air force still heavily depends on domestically modified versions of long-outdated warplanes, including former Soviet MiGs and American F14A Tomcats from the 1970s.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-arms-russia-idUSKCN0VJ0MN

Business | Wed Feb 10, 2016 4:29am EST
Related: World, United Nations, Aerospace & Defense

Iran to upgrade missiles, get Russian defense system: minister

DUBAI | By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

Iran will unveil an upgrade of its Emad ballistic missiles this year, the defense minister was quoted as saying, advancing a program that has drawn criticism from the United Nations and sanctions from the United States.

The Islamic Republic would also start taking delivery of an advanced Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile defense system in the next two months, Hossein Dehghan added - a system that was blocked before a landmark nuclear deal with world powers.

Tehran agreed the deal on curbing its nuclear work in July last year and international sanctions were lifted in January. But tensions with Washington have remained high as Tehran continues to develop its military capabilities.

Iran first tested the Emad missile in October. With improved accuracy over its existing arsenal, Iran says the new missile will be an important part of its conventional deterrent.

But the United States says the Emad is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and the test therefore violated a U.N. resolution. Washington imposed fresh sanctions last month against Iranian individuals and businesses linked to the missile program.

"We will unveil the next generation of Emad with improved precision in the next (Iranian) year (starting from March 20)," Dehghan was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency late on Tuesday.

"The Emad missile is not a violation of the nuclear deal or any U.N. resolution since we will never use a nuclear warhead (on it). It's an allegation," he said, adding that mass production would begin in the near future.

Iran is also due to start taking delivery of the S-300 missiles system from Russia in the next two months, Dehghan said, and the order would be completed by the end of the year.

Russia canceled a contract to deliver the advanced anti-missile rocket system to Iran in 2010 under pressure from the West following U.N. sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program.

Tehran and Moscow have also started talks on the supply of the Russian-made Sukhoi-30 fighter jets to Iran, Dehghan said.

"We have even decided on the number of Sukhoi-30 fighter jets that we want to buy," Dehghan said.


(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Sam Wilkin and Andrew Heavens)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-talks-idUSKCN0VJ0WZ

World | Wed Feb 10, 2016 5:27am EST
Related: World, Russia, United Nations, Germany

Scant hope of Syria peace breakthrough as Russia pounds rebels

PARIS/UNITED NATIONS | By John Irish and Louis Charbonneau

Major powers meeting in Germany on Thursday aim to revive Syria peace efforts, but with Russia backing a government push for a military victory, opposition delegates and Western officials see little hope of a diplomatic breakthrough.

United Nations Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura halted the first attempt to negotiate an end to Syria's war in two years after an unprecedented offensive by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against Western-backed rebels supported by Russian air strikes.

In an attempt to prevent a collapse of diplomatic efforts to end Syria's five-year-old civil war, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is pushing for a ceasefire and increased humanitarian aid access ahead of a meeting of the so-called International Syria Support Group (ISSG) in Munich this week.

But one U.N. diplomatic source said Russia was "stringing Kerry along" in order to provide diplomatic cover for Moscow's real goal - to help Assad win on the battlefield instead of compromising at the negotiating table.

"It's clear to everyone now that Russia really doesn't want a negotiated solution but for Assad to win," said the diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A senior adviser to Assad, Bouthaina Shaaban, told Reuters in Damascus on Tuesday that there would be no let-up in the army advance, which aimed to recapture the city of Aleppo from rebels and secure Syria's border with Turkey.

TARGET DATE

De Mistura set a target date of Feb. 25 to reconvene talks between the Syrian government and opposition in Geneva.

But in less than two weeks, the offensive by Syrian forces, Hezbollah and Shiite militias directed by Iran - all backed by Russian bombing raids - have reversed opposition gains on the ground and encircled rebels inside Aleppo, a strategic prize now divided between government and opposition control.

This has caused alarm among U.N. and Western officials, who believe the goal of the Russian-Syrian-Iranian campaign is to destroy the opposition's negotiating power in Geneva, kill them on the ground, and secure the first major military victory since Moscow began bombing opposition forces in Syria in September.

"It'll be easy to get a ceasefire soon because the opposition will all be dead," a Western diplomat told Reuters. "That's a very effective ceasefire."

The latest fighting around Aleppo has killed about 500 people on all sides, a monitoring group said.

Rebel groups say that while Washington put pressure on them to attend peace talks, there is less commitment to helping them on the battlefield. Appeals for anti-aircraft missiles to counter the latest offensive are falling on deaf ears.

Related Coverage
› Fighting kills at least 500 in Aleppo province since Syrian army offensive began: monitor

Other Western officials said Kerry overestimated his influence and ability to bring the Russians around. They said he appeared to believe that since he achieved what some saw as unachievable by getting a nuclear deal with Iran he could do the same with Syria.

They noted that the two cases were different. With Iran, Russia wanted a political agreement whereas in Syria it is pushing for a military victory by the Syrian government.

"The Russians are playing cat and mouse with Kerry," said a senior European diplomat.

While it will not be difficult to get Russia to agree on an increase in aid deliveries, Western officials said, Moscow is clearly not committed to a comprehensive ceasefire that would halt what it seems as military momentum that favors the Syrian army and its Iranian-backed supporters.

FALSE ASSUMPTIONS

"U.S. policy was always based on a series of false assumptions. The main false assumption was that there is no military solution to the Syria crisis," said Christopher Harmer, an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War.

"The Assad regime has no interest in a political solution," he said. "The Russians have no interest in a political solution. Iran has no interest in a political solution. Hezbollah has no interest in a political solution."

Russia says its air strikes have been targeting Islamic State, a militant Islamist group that has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, and not Western-backed opposition groups. But U.S. and European officials say that is not the case.

Fewer than 30 percent of Russia's air strikes are targeting Islamic State, a group that a U.S.-led coalition conducts bombing sorties against on a daily basis, Western officials say.

From the beginning, ISSG, which includes the United States and Russia, as well as key regional powers such as rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran and European nations, has been struggling to find common ground within its disparate ranks on ending the Syrian war.

After agreeing in November a road map for a ceasefire, U.N.-brokered talks between the government and opposition, and eventual elections, the ISSG has been unable to move ahead with peace talks. Some officials predict that the talks, like the opposition, could die a slow death in the coming months.

Related Coverage
› Moscow rejects U.S. criticism Russian bombings behind Syria's humanitarian crisis

BICKERING BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

A December meeting of the group was largely characterized by closed-door bickering about which groups in Syria should or should not be labeled a terrorist organization, which would bar them from the negotiating table.

Jordan had been assigned the task of drawing up the list and collected proposals from members of the group. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was infuriated when he saw that someone had proposed putting the Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, which is actively supporting Assad, on the list of terrorist groups.

"Zarif suggested that Iran might propose including the CIA as well," a Western diplomat said. After that, Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who were chairing the meeting, briefly discussed the idea of having the CIA included.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar have not hidden their view that there is little holding international negotiations when the Russian air strikes and Syrian government advance continue.

On the other side, Iran has made clear that it believes the Saudis - not Iran, Russia or Assad - are the major obstacle to peace. "There are some countries that it seems don't want peace to be restored in Syria," a senior official involved in the Syria talks said.

He also predicted there would be no breakthrough in Munich.

Meanwhile, Western-backed opposition figures have become increasingly exasperated by what they see as a failure of the Americans to put sufficient pressure on Russia to stop bombing them. They say it is it is impossible to negotiate when they are being bombed.

"One cannot expect the opposition to negotiate with a gun to their heads," French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre said in New York.

Advised by Western officials, notably France and Britain, and backed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey in particular, the disparate opposition groups representing political and armed factions in the talks are demanding concrete measures before returning to Geneva.

The Kremlin rejects claims that it has abandoned diplomacy in pursuit of a military solution, saying it would continue to providing military aid to Assad to fight "terrorist groups" and accusing Syria's opposition of walking away from the talks.

Diplomats said Kerry was taken aback by the sudden shift in the Russian position from apparently supporting efforts to replace Assad to throwing its military might behind him.

"You couldn't sabotage the process more than what the Russians have already done," said a senior Western official. "I don't see any hope today."


(Additional reporting Parisa Hafezi in Ankara, Jonathan Landay in Washington and Michelle Nichols in New York; Editing by Giles Elgood)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-india-usa-idUSKCN0VJ0AA

World | Wed Feb 10, 2016 12:33am EST
Related: World, China, United Nations, South China Sea

Exclusive: U.S. & India consider joint patrols in South China Sea - U.S. official

NEW DELHI | By Sanjeev Miglani

The United States and India have held talks about conducting joint naval patrols that a U.S. defense official said could include the disputed South China Sea, a move that would likely anger Beijing, which claims most of the waterway.

Washington wants its regional allies and other Asian nations to take a more united stance against China over the South China Sea, where tensions have spiked in the wake of Beijing's construction of seven man-made islands in the Spratly archipelago.

India and the United States have ramped up military ties in recent years, holding naval exercises in the Indian Ocean that last year involved the Japanese navy.

But the Indian navy has never carried out joint patrols with another country and a naval spokesman told Reuters there was no change in the government's policy of only joining an international military effort under the United Nations flag.

He pointed to India's refusal to be part of anti-piracy missions involving dozens of countries in the Gulf of Aden and instead carrying out its own operations there since 2008.

The U.S. defense official said the two sides had discussed joint patrols, adding that both were hopeful of launching them within the year. The patrols would likely be in the Indian Ocean where the Indian navy is a major player as well as the South China Sea, the official told Reuters in New Delhi on condition of anonymity.

The official gave no details on the scale of the proposed patrols.

There was no immediate comment from China, which is on a week-long holiday for Chinese New Year.

China accused Washington this month of seeking maritime hegemony in the name of freedom of navigation after a U.S. Navy destroyer sailed within 12 nautical miles of a disputed island in the Paracel chain of the South China Sea in late January.

The U.S. Navy conducted a similar exercise in October near one of China's artificial islands in the Spratlys.

MARITIME COOPERATION

Neither India nor the United States has claims to the South China Sea, but both said they backed freedom of navigation and overflight in the waterway when U.S. President Barack Obama visited New Delhi in January 2015.

Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also agreed at the time to "identify specific areas for expanding maritime cooperation".

More than $5 trillion in world trade moves through the South China Sea each year. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan also claim parts of the waterway.

In December, the issue of joint patrols came up when Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar visited the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii, an Indian government source said.

"It was a broad discussion, it was about the potential for joint patrols," said the source, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

India has a long-running land border dispute with China and has been careful not to antagonize its more powerful neighbor, instead focusing on building economic ties.

But it has stepped up its naval presence far beyond the Indian Ocean, deploying a ship to the South China Sea almost constantly, an Indian navy commander said, noting this wasn't the practice a few years ago.

The commander added that the largest number of Indian naval ship visits in the South China Sea region was to Vietnam, a country rapidly building military muscle for potential conflict with China over the waterway.

Still, the idea of joining the United States in patrols in the region was a long shot, the officer added.

The Philippines has asked the United States to do joint naval patrols in the South China Sea, something a U.S. diplomat said this month was a possibility.


(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in Washington; and Megha Rajagopalan in Beijing; Editing by Dean Yates)

 

[Housecarl]

Hummmm.............

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-execution-idUSKCN0VJ0TW

World | Wed Feb 10, 2016 4:59am EST
Related: World, South Korea, North Korea

North Korea executes army chief of staff: South Korean media

SEOUL

North Korea has executed its army chief of staff, Ri Yong Gil, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported on Wednesday, which, if true, would be the latest in a series of executions, purges and disappearances under its young leader.

The news comes amid heightened tension surrounding isolated North Korea after its Sunday launch of a long-range rocket, which came about a month after it drew international condemnation for conducting its fourth nuclear test.

A source familiar with North Korean affairs also told Reuters that Ri had been executed. The source declined to be identified, given the sensitivity of the matter.

Ri, who was chief of the Korean People's Army (KPA) General Staff, was executed this month for corruption and factional conspiracy, Yonhap and other South Korean media reported.

Yonhap did not identify its sources. The source who told Reuters the news declined to comment on how the information about the execution had been obtained.

South Korea's National Intelligence Service declined to comment and it was not possible to independently verify the report.

The North rarely issues public announcement related to purges or executions of high-level officials.

A rare official confirmation of a high-profile execution came after Jang Song Thaek, leader Kim Jong Un's uncle and the man who was once considered the second most powerful figure in the country, was executed for corruption in 2013.

In May last year, the North executed its defense chief by anti-aircraft gun at a firing range, the South's spy agency said in a report to members of parliament.

The North's military leadership has been in a state of perpetual reshuffle since Kim Jong Un took power after the death of his father in 2011. He has changed his armed forces chief several times since then.

Some other high-ranking officials in the North have been absent from public view for extended periods, fuelling speculation they may have been purged or removed, only to resurface.


(Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Tony Munroe Robert Birsel)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Eco.../Beijing-begins-to-fear-the-price-of-inaction

February 10, 2016 7:00 pm JST
North Korea

Beijing begins to fear the price of inaction

OKI NAGAI, Nikkei staff writer

BEIJING -- China faces a dilemma over how to respond to North Korea's nuclear test in early January and its long-range rocket launch on Sunday. On one hand, Beijing does not want to destabilize the Kim Jong Un regime. On the other, it worries that tensions on the Korean Peninsula are cementing bonds between the U.S., South Korea and Japan.

The Chinese government remains reluctant to slap tougher sanctions on North Korea. Yet a growing chorus in China is urging at least some sort of screw-tightening.

Zhang Liangui, a professor and expert on Korean Peninsula affairs at the Party School of the Communist Party's Central Committee, called for taking a harder line in a recent interview with The Nikkei. "North Korea continues to challenge international law," he said, "so China should impose tougher sanctions." The Party School is a training ground for future senior officials.

The professor argued that Beijing should introduce a trade embargo on minerals from North Korea and, every six months, review whether to crack down further. Zhang is known for advocating a strict approach toward Pyongyang, but he is not the only Chinese pundit proposing more pressure.

Another expert -- an individual who occasionally advises North Korean officials on relations with China -- has also stressed the need for new trade restrictions, such as a coal embargo.

China imports more than $860 million worth of coal from North Korea annually. Reducing these shipments would dent North Korea's already feeble economy, potentially delaying the country's nuclear weapons program.

The administration of Chinese President Xi Jinping has not given up on dialogue with the North and opposes penalties that would push Kim into a corner -- say, halting crude oil exports. Beijing is concerned that if sanctions begin to affect North Koreans' everyday lives, it could trigger a refugee crisis.

But the Chinese government, which has long supported Pyongyang, is increasingly frustrated with the Kim regime's rogue attitude. There appears to be a growing willingness on the part of Chinese officials to coordinate with the U.S., at least to an extent.

Bothersome neighbor

In Beijing, many citizens criticized North Korea's latest rocket launch -- widely seen as a test of ballistic missile technology. Some took offense to the launch coming on the eve of the Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, when Chinese people gather with their families. To them, it seemed like nothing but a provocation.

A few hours after the launch, state-run China Central Television aired a two-minute news segment about it. The evening news did not cover it at all, and instead focused on stories about the Spring Festival.

North Korea has a history of drawing attention to itself at this time of year. In February 2013, during the Lunar New Year period, it conducted its third nuclear test. Some Chinese took to the streets in protest.

The scant news coverage of Sunday's launch suggests the Xi government is seriously concerned about the potential ramifications.

China's Foreign Ministry has also changed its tone. When North Korea fired off missiles in the past, the ministry went along with Pyongyang's description: "satellite launches." This time, the ministry said the North launched a satellite using ballistic missile technology.

Closer cooperation

What really has China worried is how North Korea's moves are encouraging cooperation between the U.S., South Korea and Japan. The Xi government has been working to bring South Korea to its side, driving a wedge between Seoul and the Tokyo-Washington alliance.

Seoul and Beijing do not see eye to eye over how to respond to Pyongyang. So South Korean President Park Guen-hye has turned to the U.S. for support.

The U.S. and South Korea have started talking about deploying a Terminal High Altitude Air Defense anti-missile system on the peninsula. Meanwhile, there is growing talk of Japan and South Korea concluding a General Security of Military Information Agreement, which would facilitate the sharing of classified information.

Leaving North Korea unchecked, China fears, would only strengthen those trilateral ties.

At an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Sunday, China remained cautious and insisted that sanctions be targeted only at North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. But it has been more than a month since the North tested a nuclear device on Jan. 6, and China is under pressure to meet other council members halfway.

"Although it still holds its own," a senior Japanese government official said, "China has started paying more attention to the opinions of the international community."

Related stories
North Korea: Rocket design similar, but with improved payload
North Korea: South threatens more penalties in joint industrial zone
North Korea: Containment falls short as nuclear threat grows
North Korea executes army chief of staff - South Korean media

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20160210000418

[Steve Andreasen] Nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran

Published : 2016-02-10 18:14
Updated : 2016-02-10 18:14

North Korea’s latest underground nuclear test -- punctuated over the weekend by the rocket launch of a satellite that most experts believe is tied to the development of a long-range ballistic missile -- has set off an avalanche of analysis regarding the severity of the threat and the ineffectiveness of U.S. policy. Some say our failure to remove Pyongyang‘s nuclear threat through two decades of diplomacy should now guide our policy with respect to Iran. They argue that just as North Korea agreed to eliminate its nuclear program in the 1994 “Agreed Framework” and then covertly developed a nuclear bomb, Iran will do the same -- as unfettered by agreements and the international community as was Pyongyang. But Iran and North Korea should not be mixed and matched, at the risk of getting both wrong at a very high price.

Both countries have, over years, taken actions in violation of their obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions. Both states threaten U.S. interests and our friends and allies. Both have reportedly cooperated on their missile and perhaps nuclear programs. So there are similarities and dangerous interactions between these two regimes, but the differences are also real and more significant in terms of informing U.S. policy.

First, the North Korean nuclear threat is here and now -- and unconstrained. Pyongyang is estimated to have a small number of nuclear warheads that threaten U.S. allies South Korea and Japan as well as U.S. forces in the region today, and its ongoing nuclear and missile programs will, if unchecked, expand this threat, both in terms of numbers and geographic reach. Moreover, there is no agreement in place today to roll back or even check North Korea’s nuclear program.

By comparison, Iran today has no nuclear weapons -- and has reached an agreement to keep it that way. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, now in force will preclude Tehran from building a nuclear bomb without violating the agreement in ways that we could detect -- and with time (at least 12 months) to take effective action before Iran acquires a bomb.

Second, the U.S. has limited leverage over North Korea. The primary reason is not because the Obama administration or its three predecessors are or were inept. Rather, the North Korean regime and its people remain largely “air-gapped” from the U.S. and the rest of the world -- with China being the major exception -- limiting the effectiveness of political and economic tools to influence Pyongyang. To make matters more complex, North Korea increasingly sees its small nuclear arsenal as its only leverage with the outside world -- and even as essential for the survival of the regime.

In contrast, there are elements of the Iranian regime -- and, more important, its people -- who seek to reintegrate with the world. Whereas the North Korean people scarcely notice the impact of sanctions on their threadbare existence and have no way of voicing dissent within a brutal police state, Iranians have suffered a real drop in their living standards. And the Iranian people have expressed their dissent with their ballots, electing candidates (albeit chosen by the regime) who promised negotiations over Iran‘s nuclear program and an end to sanctions. To what extent hard-liners in Iran will now permit reformist candidates to appear on the ballot in elections this month remains uncertain, as does the impact of reformists on a regime whose key leaders and institutions remain conservative at best. But no matter how Iranian politics develop, under the JCPOA and its provisions for “snapback” sanctions, the U.S. and the international community retain significant leverage.

What do these distinctions mean for U.S. policy? Both North Korea and Iran will be at the top of the next administration’s foreign policy “to do” list. The question is what to do -- and the answer in each case is different.

Our policy with respect to North Korea should be threefold. First, we must strengthen the international coalition confronting Pyongyang (as was crucial in the case of Iran). The key is to get Beijing and Washington on the same page -- beginning with a new U.N. resolution with tough penalties for Pyongyang‘s latest transgressions. This will not be easy given our understandably different perspectives on the North and current tensions in our bilateral relationship. Second, we must devise a new framework for diplomacy, as the current “six-party talks” have run their course. Third, we must have an agreed goal in Washington and with our partners for diplomacy (that is, is the objective to freeze or roll back the North’s nuclear capabilities?), and then make clear to Pyongyang what can be gained through engagement, along with the penalties for staying on the current course.

Iran presents a different policy challenge, with an international coalition and an agreement already in place. The focus must be on strictly implementing the JCPOA, making clear to Tehran that effective action will be taken by the international community if Iran were ever to sprint toward a bomb. This will require extraordinarily close consultation and cooperation with Congress, as well as all parties to the JCPOA, including Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union.

Most important, we must avoid a situation in which the next U.S. administration equates the nuclear challenge presented by North Korea with Iran, projects our past failures to halt Pyongyang‘s nuclear program through the 1994 Agreed Framework on future prospects for successful implementation of the JCPOA, and thus acts to renegotiate and replace the JCPOA. In short: Mixing and matching won’t do.

By Steve Andreasen
(Tribune Content Agency)

Steve Andreasen, the director for defense policy and arms control on the White House National Security Council staff from 1993 to 2001, is a consultant to the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington, D.C., and teaches at the University of Minnesota‘s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. He wrote this for the Star Tribune. -- Ed.

 

[CnMO]

HC, your post this morning about Saudi Arabia going into Syria, I saw that yesterday,,, and did you see where Putin said if Saudi does move in, Russia will consider it an Act of war and will make a declaration, and Turkey making threats.

 

[Housecarl]

HC, your post this morning about Saudi Arabia going into Syria, I saw that yesterday,,, and did you see where Putin said if Saudi does move in, Russia will consider it an Act of war and will make a declaration, and Turkey making threats.

Yeah, I just hadn't seen the list of "fellow travelers" the Saudis were looking at joining in on this escapade.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.realcleardefense.com/art...s_the_tables_on_the_united_states_109006.html

February 10, 2016

Saudi Offer to Deploy Troops to Syria 'Turns the Tables' on the United States

By Ashish Kumar Sen

Saudi Arabia’s offer to deploy ground troops to fight the Islamic State in Syria is seen as putting pressure on the Obama administration—which has been urging its Arab Gulf partners to ramp up their efforts—to itself take on a greater military role in Syria.

“[US Secretary of State John] Kerry has been going around saying, ‘Everybody has to do more. Our Arab allies have to do more,’” said David Ottaway, a Middle East Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “They’re saying, ‘OK, we’ll do more, but you have to do more.’ And they know the US is not going to do more, so they’re not going to have to do more.”

“As a diplomatic ploy, I think it is a wonderful way of taking the heat off them and putting it on the United States,” he added.

Frederic C. Hof, a Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, agreed. “It does turn the tables” on the Obama administration, he said.

Hof and Ottaway were part of a panel hosted by the Atlantic Council’s Future of Iran Initiative on February 9. The other panelists were Amir Handjani, President of PG International Commodity Trading Services, and Sara Vakhshouri​, a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Council’s Global Energy Center. Barbara Slavin, Acting Director of the Future of Iran Initiative, moderated the discussion.

Saudi Arabia’s offer to deploy ground troops in Syria comes with a caveat: that it is supported by the US-led coalition currently fighting Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.

Contending that solutions to problems in the Middle East should come from the Middle East, Handjani said he did not think it would be in the United States’ national interests to deploy ground troops in Syria. To support his assertion, Handjani cited as an example the US experience in Iraq following the 2003 invasion.

Hof responded: “The sum total of the American experience abroad does not come down to Iraq 2003 or Libya 2011. It is not beyond the wit of American planners to put together a reasonable, rational, and executable civil-military stabilization plan” for Syria.

NATO Defense Ministers will discuss the Saudi proposal and the war on the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, at a meeting in Brussels on February 10.

If the Saudi plan materializes, it will put the Sunni kingdom’s troops in a potential confrontation with Iran. Tehran provides military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime through its Revolutionary Guards and proxy Lebanese militia group Hezbollah.

Iran and the Assad regime have reacted strongly to the Saudi offer: Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said Saudi troops would leave Syria in “wooden boxes,” while Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said the deployment of Saudi troops in Syria would “be the end of Saudi Arabia.”

Saudi Arabia has succeeded in provoking Syria and Iran to make “over-the-top negative statements that demonstrate that those entities want ISIS in Syria, in business, indefinitely,” said Hof.

“In Syria, ISIS is of unsurpassed value to the Russians, to the Iranians, and to the Assad regime,” he added.

The Saudi-Iran feud

Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic ties with Iran in January after an Iranian mob, angry over the execution of a Shia cleric, attacked the Saudi Embassy.

The Sunni kingdom and the Shia Islamic Republic have advanced their competing strategic interests through their proxies in Syria. Iran and Saudi Arabia are also on opposing sides in the war in Yemen where a Saudi-led coalition is bombarding Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels.

While such proxy wars continue to play out, Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister, Mohammad bin Salman, ruled out a direct military confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

“[W]hoever is pushing towards that is somebody who is not in their right mind. Because a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran is the beginning of a major catastrophe in the region, and it will reflect very strongly on the rest of the world,” Salman said in an interview with the Economist in January.

“For sure we will not allow any such thing,” he added.

Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran have been heightened following the nuclear deal Tehran struck with the P5+1—the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, France, and Germany—in July of last year. The deal removes sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program in return for Iran shelving its nuclear ambitions. Saudi Arabia has, in response, ramped up itslobbying efforts in Washington in an effort to counter Iran.

Russia tips the balance

The picture in Syria became further complicated when Russia deployed its military assets on the side of the Assad regime last September. Russian support has, in part, helped tip the balance in Assad’s favor. The regime today stands on the verge of capturing the northwestern city of Aleppo—a development that is expected to exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in a war that has already left more than 250,000 people dead and forced eleven million people to flee their homes.

Kerry has probably been disabused of the belief that ISIS is a common enemy for Washington, Tehran, and Moscow, said Hof. “For Moscow, Tehran, and the Assad regime, ISIS is a gift that just keeps on giving,” he said. “The so-called caliph [of the Islamic State], Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, serves as a wonderful foil for Bashar al-Assad... Baghdadi, in many respects, is his potential ticket back to polite society.”

Hof contended that the Russian and Iranian objective in Syria is to eliminate all alternatives to Assad and ISIS thereby leaving the West with a “horrific binary choice between the two.”

“The thesis of a common enemy in terms of [the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham] has been destroyed totally, and now, unfortunately, the United States is left with picking up the pieces diplomatically,” said Hof.

What do the Iranians think?

Tehran, which has close ties with Assad’s regime and sees it as a bulwark against groups like ISIS, considers what is happening in Syria not just as an existential issue, but also as a threat to Western civilization, said Handjani. ISIS was behind the November 13 attacks in Paris last year that left 130 people dead.

In the context of Saudi links to terrorism—from the fact that fifteen of the hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis to the inspiration that the Wahhabi ideology provides to Syria-based groups like ISIS and Nusra Front, and Boko Haram in Nigeria—Iran finds US policy “quite unbelievable,” said Handjani. “Iran views US policy as somewhat talking from both sides of their mouth: they want to confront ISIS, but they don’t want to deal with the root of this ideology, which comes from Riyadh.”

What do the Saudis think?

The Saudis, on the other hand, believe Iran first ratcheted up tensions when it called for the overthrow of the al-Saud family during the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, said Ottaway. “From their point of view, it is Iran that has looked for trouble and pushed them into a corner,” he added.

As a consequence, there is a feeling of what Ottaway described as being a “national necessity” inside Saudi Arabia to stand up militarily to Iran. The Saudi offer to deploy troops to Syria should be seen in this context, he said.

“Saudi Arabia has no military throw-weight. They have never been able to show that they can stand up and deal with Iran or Syria,” said Ottaway. “For them, with this feeling that the United States is slowly withdrawing from the Middle East, they realize that they have got to stand up with their allies and fend for themselves.”

Such an approach has led Saudi Arabia to become mired in Yemen. Some analysts doubt that Saudi troops can have much of an impact in Syria.

The Saudis “export money to fundamentalist groups around the world to go about and fight for them; that’s what they are good at. They’re not good at putting boots on the ground and fighting for themselves,” said Handjani.

Ashish Kumar Sen is a staff writer at the Atlantic Council.


This article originally appeared at Atlantic Council.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://thediplomat.com/2016/02/north-koreas-nuclear-test-satellite-launch-and-byungjin/

North Korea's Nuclear Test, Satellite Launch, and Byungjin

Is North Korea’s recent spate of provocation leading up to a pivot toward economic reform?

By Ankit Panda
February 10, 2016

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What does North Korea’s decision to stage a nuclear test and the launch of a space launch vehicle (SLV) a month apart in early 2016 tell us about where things stand domestically inside the country? To be sure, both events are intended to test technologies the regime attaches great importance to, but, in North Korea, nothing of this sort is scheduled without consideration of the broader political effects. “Politics” in the North Korean context, of course, means something very specific: it refers primarily to Kim Jong-un’s agenda of still-ongoing power consolidation and implementation of the byungjin policy of simultaneously pursuing economic development and a nuclear deterrent.

It’s notable that in this year’s New Year’s address, Kim placed a special emphasis on improving the economic lot of ordinary North Koreans. In fact, he managed to explicitly avoid any direct reference to the country’s nuclear program. I found that surprising at the time, given suggestions in 2015 that the United States and China had come to some sort of understanding on North Korea’s byungjin stance—surely Kim couldn’t have missed an opportunity to underline his signature policy on the occasion of the new year? It was, after all, his response to his father’s songun, or military-first, policy that caused untold economic damage to the country, persisting to this day.

Of course, not a week passed before Pyongyang claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb, emphasizing that rhetoric aside, North Korea remained committed to its nuclear program. The SLV launch this past weekend underlined continued progress on long-range rockets. Both actions elicited strong calls from the United States, South Korea, and Japan for additional sanctions—a result that should have been entirely unsurprising for the North Korean government. How then do these events in early 2016 dovetail with Kim’s broader byungjin approach?

Answering this question necessitates an attempt at guesswork (as is often the case in analyzing North Korean behavior). I’m tempted to see the decision to begin the year with these grand shows of still-progressing military force as the first act in what will likely be an important year for the byungjin idea in North Korea. In May, in a rare event, the Korean Workers’ Party will hold its first top-level party congress in 35 years. Party congresses are a regular occurrence in other states carrying the banner of Marxist-Leninism (or some variation thereof), but not in North Korea.

Informed speculation on the purpose of the party congress suggests that this could be the moment for Kim to unveil specifics about how he plans to deliver on his economic promises. Kim didn’t exactly highlight how his vision for creating a “turnaround in economic development” would work during his new year’s address. The party congress may present the right opportunity. North Korea’s fourth nuclear test and fourth satellite launch (and, indeed, even last year’s submarine-launched ballistic missile tests) give Kim opportunities to point at areas where the right hand of byungjin—military strength—is at work. The left hand—economic development—hasn’t quite taken off, but this could be in the offing at the party congress itself.

With suggestions that we may see a fifth nuclear test sometime soon, Kim might be attempting to seal-in the case that North Korea’s military progress is suitably advanced to turn to the side of the byungjin policy that hasn’t received much attention. Of course, there are strong counter-arguments to this suggestion: nothing in Kim’s behavior since he took over has suggested that he’s looking to enter the history books as North Korea’s Deng Xiaoping, and, indeed, with the international community paralyzed in its inability to respond in a coordinated matter, perhaps the incentives don’t exist just yet for the country to alter course.

We won’t know for sure until May, but if byungjin is really what Kim Jong-un is about, there’s a good chance that the recent spate of provocations will be followed by heretofore unseen economic reform.

 

[Housecarl]

Germans-Turks Ambush NATO Meeting With Refugee Issue
Started by Plain Janeý, Today 05:45 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...-Turks-Ambush-NATO-Meeting-With-Refugee-Issue

____

Note that the author is using the old range estimate....HC

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2016/02/10/after_north_koreas_launch_whos_mad_now_111699.html

February 10, 2016

After North Korea's Launch, Who's M.A.D Now?

By Daniel McGroarty

As TV ratings roll in for Super Bowl 50, a globally-minded NFL boasts that the game was broadcast to viewers in more than 170 countries. North Korean ballistic missile technicians were apparently not among them. They were busy with a Super Sunday of their own, preparing a long-range missile launch with a satellite in the payload bay -- just the place a nuclear weapon might someday sit.

The North Korean missile launch took place roughly one hour before kickoff. In fact, the satellite itself passed directly over Levi's Stadium, the site of the Super Bowl, about an hour after the game ended. Whatever else may be said about Kim Jong Un, you have to acknowledge the North Korean leader's flair for the dramatic.

With an estimated range of 9,000 kilometers, North Korea's newest missile brings Alaska, half of Canada and a swath of the United States from Southern California to Minnesota under its bullseye. And the launch comes just one month after North Korea's underground detonation of what Pyongyang claimed was its first test of a hydrogen bomb -- a doubly-dangerous advance, as H-bombs are both magnitudes more powerful than atomic bombs, and far more easily miniaturized.

In the United States, the tests have triggered calls for new and tighter sanctions, perhaps another U.N. resolution, and increased moral suasion on China -- North Korea's only ally -- to rein in "Respected Comrade Kim."

In North Korea's neighborhood, key U.S. allies are looking for something a bit more robust than a U.N. pronouncement to protect them from Kim's nuclear arsenal.

The United States and South Korea announced immediate discussions on deploying the U.S.-built Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, on U.S. military bases in and around Seoul. Japan deployed an American Patriot PAC-3 missile defense system in downtown Tokyo days before the North Korean launch. Japan already deploys ship-based Aegis systems -- again, U.S.-made -- to provide first-line upper-atmosphere defense.

America's Asian allies aren't alone in their interest in missile defense. In the Middle East, the United States has contributed upwards of $1.5 billion to help Israel develop and field Iron Dome for terminal defense, with additional funds for David's Sling and Arrow, providing mid-range and high-altitude protection.

The game theory of missile defense

Ironically, the United States itself relies less on the very defense systems its allies seek than on a theory that holds missile defense itself to be the true danger. Aside from a handful of THAAD batteries, including installations in Hawaii and Guam, plus a total of 30 Ground-Based-Interceptor missiles split between Fort Greely, Alaska, and California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, the U.S. missile defense effort is largely an RDT&E project.

It wasn't always this way. Long before Nike was a shoe, it was a site -- 265 anti-missile Nike Sites, as they were dubbed, dotted the American landscape in the early 1960s, arrayed to engage Soviet nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles on their Arctic flight path toward American targets. The means was brute force: The original Nike was itself nuclear-armed, exploding in the exo-atmosphere to vaporize incoming Soviet missiles by thermal flux.

As the need to detonate a nuclear missile to defeat a nuclear attack attests, the desire to defend was greater than the technology itself. The challenge of "hitting a bullet with a bullet" also ran headlong into a theoretical objection to missile defense, rooted in game theory: Missile defense wasn't just ineffective, it was downright dangerous.

Missile defense was linked to an offensive counter-force strategy -- U.S missiles would strike Soviet missile sites, depleting the counter-strike, which would make the task of missile defense exponentially easier. The notion of missile defense, therefore, came to be provocative -- it raised the prospect of the real use of nuclear weapons. Perhaps it was better to be defenseless -- naked against nuclear attack -- which would give both sides, the U.S. and the Soviet, the best of existential reasons to never initiate an attack. Such was the logic of M.A.D. -- Mutual Assured Destruction.

As the Americans and Soviets entered the arms control era, missile defense came to be seen as trade-bait -- a questionable capability to be swapped for the main prize, nuclear weapons reductions -- culminating in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Under the treaty's terms, both sides were allowed two missile defense sites, one each around the capitals of Moscow and Washington, D.C., and the other at a site hosting intercontinental ballistic missiles. The United States never built its system to protect the capital; it maintained a rudimentary system around a missile installation in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and in a few years abandoned even that. The Kremlin's leaders, meanwhile, built their treaty-permitted anti-ballistic missile system around the capital -- an insurance policy against any U.S. president mad enough to abandon M.A.D.

Star Wars and slogans

Then along came Ronald Reagan. His SDI -- the Strategic Defense Initiative -- was meant to defend against Soviet nuclear attack, but the first anti-SDI salvo came from Senator Ted Kennedy, who denounced the "reckless Star Wars scheme," a brilliant pop-culture riposte playing on Reagan's Hollywood past and the mass mania of sci-fi fans then awaiting the release of George Lucas's "Return of the Jedi."

Fast behind Kennedy's first strike came a withering pre-emptive launch of counter-criticisms. The Soviets will overwhelm an imperfect system with a nuclear barrage. They'll deploy sophisticated missiles with multiple warheads. They'll deploy real missiles among fakes filled with chaff to spoof any missile defense.

Even a single missile slipping through would wreak damage beyond our imagining. As the bumper stickers of the day proclaimed, "One Nuclear Bomb Can Ruin Your Whole Day." In the closed-loop logic of M.A.D adherents, if a missile system wasn't perfect, it would be provocative. As no system could promise perfection, none should be deployed.

Fast forward to this first fifth of the 21st Century, and the question is who's M.A.D now?

Chaff, MIRVs, a massive barrage: The objections launched against the old "Star Wars" SDI don't pertain. A nuclear North Korea or Iran will have none of these.

But they may be armed with something we now know the Soviets lacked: a life-affirming fear of nuclear annihilation. Unmoored from institutional instincts of self-preservation, North Korea's dictator and Iran's mullahs could do more damage with a single nuclear weapon -- or several -- than the Soviets and Americans bristling with tens of thousands of the devices. Turns out that old Cold War bumper sticker was right after all: "One Nuclear Weapon Can Ruin Your Whole Day."

Which brings us back to the present. North Korea tested its bomb and launched its missile, and word now is that yet another nuclear test may be in the offing. As for Iran, last year's grand nuclear deal notwithstanding, we're now told by U.S. officials that should Tehran choose to break out, its sprint to a bomb would take 12 months at most.

The choice is ours: We can rest our security on the power of our intelligence agencies to predict the next breakout, or to discern when the next test launch is really a surprise attack. Or we can get serious about deploying the missile defenses our allies understand are essential in our world of nuclear rogue nations. There's nothing M.A.D about that.


Daniel McGroarty, principal of Carmot Strategic Group, a Washington, D.C.-based issues management consultancy, served in senior positions in the White House and at the Department of Defense. The views expressed here are the author's own.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://news.yahoo.com/nato-agree-russian-deterrent-avoid-cold-war-footing-140744050.html

NATO to agree new Russian deterrent but avoid Cold War footing

Reuters
By Robin Emmott and Phil Stewart
1 hour ago

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO is ready to agree on Wednesday its boldest steps yet to deter Russia from any attack in the Baltics or eastern Europe, setting out ways to rapidly deploy air, naval and ground forces without resorting to Cold War-era military bases.

In an effort to dissuade Moscow after its 2014 annexation of Crimea, NATO defense ministers are setting up a network of new alliance outposts, forces on rotation, warehoused equipment and regular war games, all backed by a rapid-reaction force.

"We need to deploy troops and ships to deter the aggression, the threats that we have seen," British Defence Minister Michael Fallon said as he arrived for the meeting in Brussels. "NATO means what it says, that we are ready to deter any kind of pressure."

Troop numbers, spending plans and logistics are still to be decided, but NATO officials say the decision to go ahead with such a substantial military presence on NATO's eastern borders will be one of the biggest for the alliance in decades.

That has been cemented by the United States' decision to seek a $3.4 billion budget for European reassurance initiatives in 2017. The four-fold increase in Washington's spending in the region will go to rotate more troops through the region and provide more tanks, armored vehicles and other support.

It reinforces the message from U.S. President Barack Obama in 2014 that NATO will help ensure the independence of the three Baltic states, which for decades were part of the Soviet Union.

U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter, speaking to reporters traveling with him to Brussels, said it was important for all NATO allies to increase military spending. "I'll be looking for others in NATO to echo (us) in our investment," Carter said.

NOT THE COLD WAR

Carter said the plan aimed to move NATO to a "full deterrence posture" to thwart any aggression.

"It's not going to look like it did back in Cold War days, but it will constitute, in today's terms, a strong deterrent," Carter said. In the past, the United States stationed some 300,000 troops in Europe.

Eventually, NATO could have up to 1,000 troops in each of the six countries the alliance is looking to reinforce: Lithuanian, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania. They will be backed by a rapid-reaction force that includes air, naval and special operations units of up to 40,000 personnel.

The crisis in Ukraine, where the West accuses Russia of fomenting a separatist rebellion, and the Western economic sanctions on Moscow have raised concerns about a new Cold War.

Few European NATO allies openly describe Russia as a threat, for fear of antagonizing the continent's main energy supplier. But one senior NATO official says the new deployments in Europe were driven by a consensus that the alliance had entered a new era of tension with Russia.

"This is not a thunderstorm that's going to blow over," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "This is climate change, and we have to prepare for the long haul."

That view was echoed by non-NATO member Georgia, which fought a five-day war with Russia in 2008 that left two of its regions occupied by Russian military. "With the Kremlin, nothing can be excluded," Tinatin Khidasheli, Georgia's defense minister, told Reuters. "They cannot show weakness."

Russia denies it has acted aggressively. Moscow blames the West for stirring anti-Russian feeling across the east, particularly in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, which it considers its historic sphere of influence.

(Writing by Robin Emmott, editing by Larry King)

View Comments (9)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/02/10/latest-turkey-seizes-suicide-vests-at-syria-border.html

The Latest: Turkey seizes suicide vests at Syria border

Published February 10, 2016 · Associated Press

BEIRUT – The Latest developments on the war in Syria and the tens of thousands (all times local):

12:50 p.m.

Turkey's state-run agency says military officials have stopped a group of 34 people at the border with Syria and seized luggage containing four suicide vests and explosives.

Anadolu Agency, citing unnamed security sources Wednesday, said four men, 10 women and 20 children were stopped near the town of Oguzeli, in Gaziantep province. It wasn't clear when they were detained, but Anadolu said that security forces had acted on a tip about plans to smuggle explosives across the border.

The luggage contained up to 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of explosives.

There was no information on the nationalities of those detained. The report didn't say whether authorities believe the group may be linked to the Islamic State group.

Anadolu said an investigation was underway.

___

11:20 a.m.

Syria's state news agency SANA says opposition gunmen have opened fire on aid vehicles in the besieged rebel-held town of Madaya, near the capital Damascus, but no casualties were reported.

A SARQ official said on Wednesday that the convoy, which included vehicles from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, was evacuating sick people from Madaya when it came under fire by unknown gunmen.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said the operation had been completed and people successfully evacuated.

Madaya, which has been besieged by government and allied militiamen for months, gained international attention after harrowing pictures emerged showing emaciated children and starving residents.

SANA said the shooting occurred late Tuesday night delaying operations for several hours.

 

[vestige]

Saudi Arabia Prepares to Invade Syria

CNN’s Arabic division in Dubai reports Saudi Arabia is planning to invade Syria and has mobilized 150,000 troops in the kingdom.

Two sources cited by CNN say “trainees” preparing for the effort are from Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Turkey. Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei will also participate.

Pucker factor multiplier.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-turkey-explosives-idUSKCN0VJ0S1

World | Wed Feb 10, 2016 4:35am EST
Related: World

Turkey detains 34 people with explosives, suicide vests at Syrian border: media

ISTANBUL

The Turkish military detained 34 people and seized up to 15 kg of explosives and four suicide-bomber vests as they tried to enter Turkey from Syria, Turkish media reported the army as saying on Wednesday.

The private Dogan news agency and other media outlets said the group, consisting of four men, 10 women and 20 children, was detained on Tuesday night in the Oguzeli district of southeastern Gaziantep province, across the border from an area controlled by Islamic State militants.


(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-poland-nato-idUSKCN0VJ2AU

World | Wed Feb 10, 2016 2:09pm EST
Related: World, Russia

Poland to join fight versus Islamic State in return for NATO help in east

WARSAW | By Wiktor Szary


Poland will join the fight against Islamic State, its defense minister said on Wednesday, though he signaled that the scale of its involvement would depend on NATO's response to Russia's renewed assertiveness on the alliance's eastern flank.

The announcement, made by Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz after a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter in Brussels, confirmed an earlier Reuters report that Poland would boost its Middle East involvement in an attempt to convince its allies to shift NATO forces eastwards.

"Poland has joined the actions, which are now so crucial, on NATO's southern flank," Macierewicz told reporters.

"When it comes to details ... we will continue to discuss it, particularly as we consider it in the broad context of NATO's situation, hoping that both the U.S. and NATO as a whole will back Poland and other countries on the eastern flank with their ... permanent presence."

Alarmed by Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in 2014 and its support for armed separatists in eastern Ukraine, Poland hopes NATO will agree at a summit in Warsaw in July to send more troops to former communist eastern Europe.

NATO agreed on Wednesday its boldest steps yet to deter Russia from any attack in the Baltics or elsewhere in eastern Europe, setting out ways to rapidly deploy air, naval and ground forces without resorting to Cold War-era military bases.

The United States and its allies are bombing Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq, where the militant group occupies swathes of territory.

Poland's contribution to the campaign against Islamic State could involve reconnaissance and training, Macierewicz said.

NATO defense ministers are meeting in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday in preparation for the Warsaw summit.


(Reporting by Wiktor Szary; Editing by Gareth Jones)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-usa-strategy-idUSKCN0VJ2PP

World | Wed Feb 10, 2016 6:25pm EST
Related: World, Afghanistan

With fewer U.S. troops in Afghanistan, pressure grows for more air strikes

KABUL | By James Mackenzie


Pressure is growing on the U.S. military to do more to help Afghan forces repel the threat posed by Taliban militants, and commanders in Washington and Kabul agree that enhanced air power may be where it can make the most difference.

With fewer American soldiers on the ground and their rules of engagement limited, the outgoing commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John Campbell, believes broader authorization of force is the best way of supporting stretched local troops.

That includes attacks from the air, which dropped sharply in 2015 after NATO, whose presence in Afghanistan is dominated by U.S. armed forces, formally ended combat operations to switch to training and assisting local troops.

Some senior Afghan officers are worried.

"Only air support and air strikes break the Taliban," said General Daud Shah Wafadar, commander of the Afghan army's 205th Corps, based in the southern city of Kandahar close to some of the fiercest fighting in recent months.

His calls for more bombing raids are not new, but the debate has gained urgency since Taliban insurgents made significant territorial gains, particularly in Kunduz in the north and swathes of the southern province of Helmand.

"I think we've seen this year that they (the Taliban) have taken advantage of the reduction of the number of coalition aircraft," Campbell told the House Armed Services Committee last week.

The United States carried out around 400 air strikes last year from some 1,100 in 2014, when it was in full combat mode.

U.S. aircraft did conduct 12 air strikes in two days in Helmand last month in an unusually heavy engagement. The strikes were used to help relieve a dozen U.S. special forces soldiers serving on the ground on a mission with Afghan counterparts.

"That's quite a bit in terms of what we've used down there recently," said Brigadier General Wilson Shoffner, U.S. army spokesman in Kabul, referring to the battle in which one Green Beret was killed. "That's the kind of thing that's happening down there."


REINFORCEMENTS TO HELMAND

In a sign of alarm over events in Helmand, hundreds more American troops are heading there, although the U.S. army specified their role would be to train, advise and assist, and "not to participate in combat operations".

U.S. forces' rules of engagement limit them to defending U.S. troops from attack, although they may take action "in extremis" to avoid "detrimental strategic effects to the campaign", according to a Pentagon report to Congress.

"If the Taliban are attacking coalition forces, then I have everything I need to do that," Campbell said. "To attack the Taliban, just because they're Taliban, I do not have that authority."

"Realistically, the thing that I can make a difference on is authorities as we go forward," he said.

U.S. troops were recently given broader authority to hit Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan.

The withdrawal of most NATO troops by the end of 2014 has been keenly felt on the ground.

More than 140,000 foreign soldiers once fought the Taliban, a hardline Islamist militant movement attempting to regain power in Kabul. U.S. forces are set to be cut from 9,800 to 5,500 by the end of 2016.

"There used to be dozens of foreign military advisers who played a key role and helped us with all issues, but now there is only one with me," said General Wafadar. He added that local forces were, however, largely coping without their allies.

With no immediate prospect of adding "boots on the ground", others have joined Campbell in suggesting looser terms of engagement and stressing the importance of air operations.

In a recent editorial in the Washington Post, one of Campbell's predecessors, David Petraeus, said Washington should "unleash our air power in support of our Afghan partners".

James Dobbins, a senior fellow to the RAND Corporation and a former Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said combat air support, casualty evacuations and intelligence and surveillance were among the priorities.

"Those are all air assets essentially. And at least some of them don't need to be based in the country."

For graphic on areas under Taliban Control - reut.rs/1PDMrxm

For graphic on NATO troops levels in Afghanistan - reut.rs/1PDMAAX


(Editing by Mike Collett-White)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nigeria-violence-idUSKCN0VJ265

World | Wed Feb 10, 2016 2:49pm EST
Related: World, Africa

Female suicide bombers kill over 60 people in northeast Nigeria: officials

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria

Two female suicide bombers killed more than 60 people at a camp for people displaced by an insurgency of the jihadist Boko Haram group in the northeast Nigerian town of Dikwa, military and emergency officials said on Wednesday.

The attack occurred 85 km (50 miles) outside the capital of Borno state, centre of the seven-year insurgency, they said. It took place on Tuesday, but a breakdown in the telephone system prevented the incident being made public earlier.

The two female suicide bombers sneaked into an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp and detonated themselves in the middle of it, emergency officials and the military source said.

The chairman of the State Emergency Management Agency, Satomi Ahmad, added that 78 people were injured.

No group claimed responsibility but the attack bore the hallmarks of Boko Haram, which has frequently used female bombers and even children to hit targets.

The militant group has recently increased the frequency and deadliness of attacks with three at the end of January. At least 65 people were killed outside Borno state capital Maiduguri on Jan. 31.

Since it lost territory to a government counter-offensive last year, Boko Haram has reverted to hit-and-run attacks on villages and suicide bombings at places of worship or markets.

Boko Haram has only rarely targeted camps housing people displaced by the conflict and Tuesday's attack was the first one to kill victims in Borno state.

The military said militants made one abortive attempt on a camp on the outskirts of Maiduguri on Jan. 31. Boko Haram hit a Nigerian IDP camp for the first time last September, in the Adamawa state capital of Yola.


(Reporting by Lanre Ola; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-minister-idUSKCN0VJ2BO

World | Wed Feb 10, 2016 5:20pm EST
Related: World, United Nations, Syria

Damascus expects tough but short battle for Aleppo

DAMASCUS | By Laila Bassam and Tom Perry


The Syrian government expects a tough battle for Aleppo, the city that has become the focal point of the country's long civil war, but is confident of victory and says it won't be a long fight.

Damascus aims to seal the border with Turkey, a major sponsor of the insurgents fighting President Bashar al-Assad, and to retake rebel-held areas of what was Syria's biggest city and industrial hub before the conflict began in 2011.

"These battles are not easy, but the day will come, God willing, when all Aleppo - its rural areas and the occupied part of the city - will return to state authority," Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said in an interview on Wednesday.

He declined to predict how long the campaign would last, but added: "I do not expect the battle of Aleppo to go on long."

The Syrian government has made significant gains against rebels north of the city in the last week, in a dramatic advance backed by Russian air strikes and allies on the ground including Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iranian fighters.

The government assault helped to derail already struggling Geneva peace talks this month. Russia's intervention has tipped the war Assad's way, reversing gains rebels made last year.

PRIZE

Aleppo would be the biggest strategic prize in years for Assad's government in a conflict that has killed at least 250,000 people and driven 11 million from their homes.

The offensive has already cut vital rebel supply lines into opposition-held areas of the city from Turkey. Tens of thousands of people have fled toward the border.

Zoubi said the insurgents were well-financed and armed, naming groups that have received U.S.-made TOW anti-armor missiles, as well as the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, and other jihadists such as the Turkistan Islamic Party.

"They have TOW, they have tanks, they have armored cars, they have bombs, they have many weapons," Zoubi said.

Since Russia began its air campaign on Sept. 30, the Syrian army and its allies have launched major ground offensives in the northwestern province of Latakia bordering Turkey and in Deraa province neighboring Jordan.

While rebel forces are under pressure in both Latakia and Aleppo, government forces have yet to launch a major attack against them in Idlib province, which also borders Turkey and is a stronghold of groups including the Nusra Front.

Zoubi indicated Idlib might not be attacked imminently. "Idlib is within the goals of ... the overall military operation, but when its time comes, it will have its own plan," he said.

FOOD SUPPLIES

The United Nations said on Tuesday supplies of food to hundreds of thousands of civilians could be cut off if government forces encircle rebel-held parts of Aleppo.

Zoubi said one goal was to open the main highway south to Damascus and "break the siege" imposed by insurgents.

Since the state lost control of the highway, supplies to government-held parts of Aleppo have been sent via a longer road that passes close to areas held by Islamic State to the east where it is being bombed by a U.S.-led alliance.

Damascus describes all the groups fighting it as terrorists controlled by regional enemies including Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Saudi Arabia, one of the states that wants to see Assad gone from power, said last week it would be ready to send troops to Syria as part of any ground operation by the U.S.-led alliance.

"Even thinking about this is a big adventure and gamble, the results of which I don't believe Saudi can bear, neither for its army or its internal situation," Zoubi said.

He also said increasing military pressure on insurgents could lead to more attacks like the suicide car bombing in Damascus on Tuesday - the first of its type in the capital in two years. The attack, which killed at least three people, was claimed by Islamic State.


(Editing by Andrew Roche)

 

[Housecarl]

J. Kerry Makes Last Ditch Effort To Avert WWIII, Saudis & Turks Prepare For Syria Invasion
Started by Possible Impact‎, Today 11:12 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...I-Saudis-amp-Turks-Prepare-For-Syria-Invasion
____

Hummm.......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.newsweek.com/erdogans-choice-whether-back-assad-or-kurds-425107

Opinion

Erdogan’s Choice: Whether to Back Assad or the Kurds

By Amberin Zaman On 2/10/16 at 1:04 PM

This article first appeared on the Wilson Center site.

The siege of Aleppo by Russian-backed Syrian regime forces is in full swing. Tens of thousands of Syrians are stranded at the Bab al Salam (Oncupinar) border crossing with Turkey.

The country is already home to some 2.5 million Syrian refugees and it says it cannot handle any more. Instead, Turkey’s Red Crescent and disaster relief agency, AFAD, are scrambling to provide them with food and shelter from across the border. Turkish President Recep Tay yip Erdogan declared that the Syrians would be allowed in “only if necessary.”

What would it take? More money from the European Union, which has already offered Turkey $3.3 billion in exchange for Turkish pledges to hold back the droves of Syrian refugees seeking to cross illegally into Europe?

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, flew to Ankara on February 8, 2016, to meet with Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish prime minister, fueling speculation that more cash might indeed be on the table.

There may be another explanation for Ankara’s reticence: to exert moral pressure (some would call it blackmail) on the United States to create a safe-haven for opposition rebels and refugees. Turkey and its Gulf allies, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have been clamoring for one since the start of the Syrian conflict, saying it’s the only way to eject Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power. The Obama administration hasn’t budged, nor will it.

On top of the usual arguments about not wanting to replicate the mess in Iraq, U.S. officials warn of a real risk of confrontation with Russia whose Su-34 tactical bombers command the skies west of Aleppo. None of this cuts any ice with Ankara, which is already in a lather over U.S. support for the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian Kurdish militia which is the Islamic State militant group’s (ISIS) most formidable foe on the ground.

Turkey calls the YPG “terrorists” because of their close ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the armed group that is fighting for self-rule inside Turkey. Images of President Obama’s special envoy to the Global Coalition against ISIS, Brett McGurk, exchanging pleasantries with YPG commanders during a lightning trip to the Kurdish-controlled town of Kobane proved one slight too many. “Who’s your partner the terrorist PYD [the YPG’s political arm] or Turkey,” thundered Erdogan on a flight home from Latin America.

On February 2, the Syrian army and its allies cut off the critical supply route between the city of Aleppo and Turkey that is known as the Azaz corridor. On February 8, they recaptured the village of Kfeen bringing them to within 18 miles of the Turkish border.

Fabrice Balanche, research director at the University of Lyon and a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argues that this may be a turning point in the conflict. “The development could put the entire Turkey-Syria border under the control of pro-Assad forces within a matter of months, or spur Kurdish forces there to choose co-existence with Assad,” Balanche observed in a recent piece.

Although the Kurds have resisted Turkish pressure to join the rebel campaign against Assad—opting instead to consolidate their self-rule—the Kurds don’t want to co-exist with Assad any more than the Turks do. The horrors inflicted on the Kurds by Assad and his late father, Hafez al-Assad, are well documented. Should his forces reassert control over the Turkish Syrian border as Balanche suggests, this would bring Kurdish dreams of autonomy in northern Syria crashing down. The Kurds may end up fighting Assad after all.

Pick Your Poison: Assad or the Kurds

The catch is that the return of the regime may prove a less bitter pill for Turkey to swallow. Indeed, it is perfectly plausible that maneuvering Turkey into just such a choice—to either ditch its support for the rebels or digest the emergence of a PKK-dominated Kurdish statelet—was just what Assad intended when he ceded control of large chunks of the border to the Kurds in 2012.

YPG officials say they are ready to help the rebels—and Turkey—to fend off further Russian-backed advances and preserve their links to Aleppo. They claim they could do so by pushing eastward from the areas they control in and around the town of Afrin or by closing in from the Tishreen Dam to the west. In both cases, ISIS would get rolled back as well.

The payback for the YPG would be to achieve its strategic goal of linking up the Kurdish-run zones to the west of the Euphrates with that of Afrin. But should Assad’s forces continue their advance, the Kurds stand to lose everything. This, in turn, means that they will be open to compromises, not only with Turkey, but with the rebels as well.

In short, circumstances have never been this ripe for a Turkish-Kurdish deal. Will Turkey muster the courage to seize it?

Assad and his Russian friends are betting it won’t. Either way Turkey’s Syria policy is in ruins.

Amberin Zaman is a public policy fellow, Middle East Program, Global Europe Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center. The opinions do not reflect those of the Wilson Center.

 

[Housecarl]

North Korea's army chief of staff executed
Started by Pinecone‎, Yesterday 09:38 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?484237-North-Korea-s-army-chief-of-staff-executed

North Korea to Shut Industrial Park, Freeze South Korean Assets
Started by Shacknasty Shagrat‎, Today 12:37 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...ut-Industrial-Park-Freeze-South-Korean-Assets

__

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://time.com/4216937/north-korea...ustrial-complex-south-korea-china-xi-jinping/

North Korea Isn’t Going to Stop Provoking Its Ally China Anytime Soon

Charlie Campbell / Beijing @charliecamp6ell
1:55 AM ET

Pyongyang keeps testing the patience of Beijing, its only friend on the international stage, because it can afford to

More:

North Korea Orders Military Takeover of Border Factories
U.S. Says North Korea Restarted Plutonium Reactor

Super Bowl 50 had plenty of fireworks — most supplied by Beyoncé’s halftime performance, not by the rather sludgy game — but one part of the light show was unplanned. An hour after the Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers on Sunday evening, North Korea’s Shining Star satellite was spotted some 300 miles above the Bay Area’s Levi’s Stadium, hurtling across the California sky.

It was either the second or fourth successful satellite launch by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), depending on whether one believes Western observers or Pyongyang’s own pronouncements, respectively. North Korean state media says the satellite will monitor weather patterns, forests, natural resources and collect agricultural data.

However, no signal has been detected so far, and U.S. officials initially said the craft appears to be tumbling through orbit, rendering it useless for science (though it now appears to have stabilized). But few experts believe the satellite was launched for peaceful purposes alone. It was just a month ago that North Korea detonated what it claimed was a miniaturized hydrogen bomb. “This nuclear testing coupled with the testing of ballistic-missile technology is a concern,” says Ben Goodlad, principal weapons analyst at IHS Aerospace, Defence and Security.

On Wednesday, South Korea responded by shuttering the joint Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), which has operated just across the border in North Korea since 2004. This is a significant step — although Pyongyang has suspended its participation several times, Seoul maintained operations even when North Korea sank the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan and killed civilians during the shelling of Yeonpyong Island in 2010. South Korean Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo said in a statement that move was to counter the “catastrophic disaster” of leaving North Korea’s nuclear expansion unchecked.

Video

All this has Washington worried, especially after Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress on Feb. 9 that North Korea had restarted a plutonium reactor that could provide fuel for more nuclear weapons. Pyongyang, Clapper said, was committed to developing a long-range nuclear-armed missile “capable of posing a direct threat to the United States.”

Yet if Shining Star was intended to be used against the U.S. and its regional allies like Japan, its launch also represented a hostile act toward North Korea’s chief and only ally, China. Beijing had dispatched veteran diplomat Wu Dawei on Feb. 2 to convince Pyongyang to postpone the launch. Yet not only was Wu unsuccessful, the launch was even brought forward by a day to coincide with Chinese New Year’s Eve — the country’s major holiday. This was “a slap in the face for Beijing,” says Steven Weber, an international-relations specialist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is unaccustomed to slaps. Since taking China’s top job in 2013, he has launched an unprecedented anticorruption drive within the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) — targeting both top-tier “tigers” along with low-level “flies” — and riled Asian neighbors by embarking on military expansion in the East and South China Seas. The Chinese security dragnet has also been expanded overseas to covertly target dissidents and other Chinese that Beijing regards as wayward. Xi is arguably the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.

So why does he put up with the defiance shown by North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, much less fund it? China is impoverished North Korea’s top trading partner — amounting to an estimated $6.39 billion in 2014 — and its principal source of cash, food, arms and energy. If China turned its back on North Korea, the Kim regime would almost certainly collapse.

Historically, there have been two reasons why that support has continued. Despite embracing free-market economics, China is still an essentially autocratic, one-party state — even more so under Xi — and extremely wary of having a unified, democratic, U.S.-allied Korea next door. Secondly, the collapse of the DPRK would send millions of refugees over the 880-mile border into China, bringing with them social and economic anguish. As a result, Beijing has often thwarted international attempts to ramp up economic sanctions, or clamp down on the shadowy businessmen propping up the regime by smuggling counterfeit goods, cash, and even narcotics.

Beijing has its own problems. Growth in China is forecast to shrink from 6.9% last year to 6.3% in 2016, according to the International Monetary Fund, with the domestic stock market in chaos and the national currency under attack from capital outflows. Beijing has no desire to jeopardize its unchallenged access to cheap North Korean minerals, such as gold, zinc, copper, nickel and rare-earth metals. “The North Korean regime is fully aware that it has the Chinese leadership over a barrel,” says Weber.

That’s fortunate for Kim, but not for North Korea’s 25 million people, victims of a regime that commits what a 2014 U.N. report called “crimes against humanity.” It also complicates U.S. goals to prevent this rogue state from becoming a full-fledged nuclear power. Shortly after Sunday’s launch, Washington and Seoul jointly announced talks on rapidly deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile-defense system in South Korea, which is designed to intercept longer-range nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. Beijing remains opposed, though, and there are technical doubts about the system. “THAAD interceptors deployed in South Korea do not have the speed or range needed to intercept a rocket such as the one North Korea just launched,” says George Lewis, a visiting scholar at Cornell University’s Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Nevertheless, the deployment of THAAD on China’s doorstep would be yet another DPRK-induced headache for Beijing. Ordinary Chinese are also growing increasingly exasperated by their government’s support of the Kim clan, expressing their distaste in hastily censored social-media posts.

What’s clear is that there is little love lost between these labored confederates. China historically resents being dragged into the Korean War, a conflict that claimed hundreds of thousands of the Chinese lives, including that of Mao’s own son, Anying. During the six-party nuclear nonproliferation negotiations, which ran 2003–09, insiders say the Chinese delegates could frequently be heard screaming at their North Korean counterparts. Chinese tourists on day trips to North Korea stoke enmity by gawking mockingly the Stalinist iconography and wanton deprivation, which smacks of their own much maligned Cultural Revolution.

“North Koreans hate China more than the U.S.,” says Daniel Pinkston, a Korea expert formerly with the International Crisis Group and now based at Troy University in Seoul. North Korea’s nuclear program “is as much aimed at Beijing as it is at Washington,” he adds, “because the Chinese don’t respect the North Koreans and treat them with contempt.”

The trick for Washington will be turning Chinese irritation into the will to tackle the DPRK before its nuclear ambitions are realized. Nothing else would seem to work. Even shuttering of the KIC, which to date has funneled $560 million to the DPRK, is simply an “emotional response,” says William Choong, senior fellow International Institute for Strategic Studies. “It won’t have that much effect as [Pyongyang] can pretty much send those same workers to China to recoup that revenue.”

However, convincing Xi to act will be an uphill battle, says Pinkston, as “Beijing fears the collapse of the Kim regime could give Chinese people subversive ideas.” Unlike the Super Bowl, we’re not likely to see victory celebrations anytime soon.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.voanews.com/content/clapper-south-china-sea-militarization/3186121.html

US Intel Chief Concerned About Beijing's South China Sea Militarization

Yang Chen, Li Bao
Last updated on: February 11, 2016 1:43 PM


U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper has told a Senate committee that he expects China to continue building on artificial islands to sustain its "exorbitant" territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea.

Addressing the Senate Intelligence Committee's worldwide threats hearing Tuesday, the top U.S. intelligence official implied that China is militarizing those land features, despite an assurance by Chinese President Xi Jinping during a visit to Washington last year that China did not intend to do so.

“Apparently President Xi may have a different definition than we do ... [putting] in runways, hangars and ... installing radars, doing port calls with Chinese navy, and Chinese coast guard ships," Clapper said. “I think it’s very clear they will try to exert as much as possessiveness, if you will, over this area and South China Sea in general.”

‘Expansive territorial claims’

Republican Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said China has now reclaimed 1,300 hectares of land in the Spratly Island chain, where Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also claim territory.

“China continues its rapid military modernization while taking coercive actions to assert expansive territorial claims," he said. "At the time of this hearing last year, China had reclaimed a total of 400 acres [160 hectares] in the Spratly Islands. Today that figure is a staggering 3,200 acres [1,300 hectares] with extensive infrastructural construction under way or already completed.”

China claims 80 percent of the waters and islands of the South China Sea and has been involved in island reclamation projects in recent years.

The United States recently carried out several “freedom of navigation" activities in the region, triggering Chinese protests.

Clapper said U.S. allies in the region fully understand and support American policy on this issue.

“I think they welcome our freedom of navigation operations," said the top U.S. spy. "I think they are a bit reticent about speaking publicly as supportively as they do in private.”

Clapper also said China prioritized the deployment of regional ballistic and cruise missiles to expand its conventional strike capability against U.S. forces and bases throughout the region.

“They continue to field an anti-ship ballistic missile, which provides the capability to attack U.S. aircraft carriers in the Western Pacific Ocean," Clapper said. "China also displayed a new intermediate-range ballistic missile, capable of striking Guam, during its September 2015 military parade in Beijing.”

Pentagon's China, Russia focus

Pentagon officials on Tuesday said after years of fighting terrorism, they are shifting focus to dealing with near-peer competitors such as Russia and China, and that that intention is reflected in the fiscal 2017 defense budget.

At a press conference at the Pentagon on Tuesday, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said the U.S. military must focus more on building the capacity, capability and readiness to deal with the ever-more aggressive Russia and China.

The new budget calls for $582.7 billion for the nation’s defense, which is roughly the same as the current spending level.

Work also said the U.S. simply can’t sustain its deterrence by outspending competitors and called for investing more in new technology to offset the competitors’ advantages in military power.

General Paul Selva, a deputy chief of staff, said all branches of the armed forces are pursuing high-end combat capabilities to meet growing challenges from Russia and China.

China denies its military modernization has any aggressive intentions, and accused the United States of using China's military threat as an excuse for continuous military development.

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA's Mandarin service.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://thebulletin.org/anti-ship-missiles-dangerous-gateway9154

Anti-ship missiles: a dangerous gateway

9 February 2016
Nolan Fahrenkopf

With the Iranian nuclear deal complete, attention has shifted from Iran’s nuclear program to its ballistic missile program. Despite the deal, Iran has actively maintained its long-range ballistic missile program, and its leaders clearly recognize the program’s strategic value. Yet for all the attention that the high-profile ballistic missile programs of Iran and North Korea have received from the nonproliferation community, an equally important aspect of missile proliferation has quietly been changing the way weaker countries respond to the military capabilities of great powers—and providing these weaker countries with a gateway to more advanced missile capabilities.

I am referring to the sale of advanced conventional missile technologies that fall below the Missile Technology Control Regime’s thresholds and do not involve sanctioned pariah states or illicit arms transactions. Anti-ship missiles—guided missiles that typically carry conventional warheads and can be launched from ships, submarines, aircraft, or shore with the purpose of sinking naval or commercial vessels at sea—are the most glaring example of how great powers such as the United States, France, and Russia have proactively sought to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in numerous high-profile cases but are also actively contributing to proliferation with their conventional arms sales. Some security experts have expressed worries about anti-ship cruise missiles that are propelled by air-breathing jet engines, but simpler anti-ship missiles that rely on solid- or liquid-fueled rockets as their only source of propulsion should also be cause for concern.

Anti-ship missiles pose two significant problems for proliferation and international security. First is their equalizing potential: These missiles give states an anti-access and area-denial capability that is disproportionate to their cost and technical requirements. This means that weak states with a large supply of anti-ship missiles can easily disrupt important sea-lanes used by significantly more powerful navies. Put another way, these missiles cheaply magnify the difficulty of moving and supporting armed forces across oceans—“the stopping power of water,” as University of Chicago political scientist John J. Mearsheimer called it—which limits even a powerful navy’s ability to engage in combat and to build up offshore operations.

An even bigger concern regarding the unchecked proliferation of anti-ship missiles and other advanced conventional weapon technologies is their building-block nature. These weapons, which are either wholly unregulated or fall below established non-proliferation regimes such as the Missile Technology Control Regime, can be stepping stones to more advanced weapons. States that seek more advanced missile systems need to start somewhere, and reverse engineering anti-ship missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, and other easily available conventional missiles makes a perfect starting point.

Anti-ship missiles in action. The French Exocet is one of the most popular anti-ship missiles in the world, and France is happy to sell it to almost any state that can afford it. This is still a sore spot between France and the United Kingdom, because Argentina used French Exocet missiles to sink British ships during the Falklands War. With only five air-launched Exocets, Argentina was able to do serious damage to the significantly more powerful British Navy. The Exocet increased the anti-access capabilities of Argentina and was the only chance the Argentines had to prevent British naval supremacy.

At the onset of the Falklands War, NATO and the common-market nations agreed to an arms embargo that left Argentina with only five Étendards (the fighter plane that launched the Exocet missiles) and five Exocets. Despite this lack of firepower, Argentina was able to sink the HMS Sheffield, a British destroyer, and the supply ship MV Atlantic Conveyor. Although France observed the arms embargo, specialists who worked for Dassault (the producer of the Étendard fighters and 51 percent owned by the French government) provided technical support in Argentina during the war. Had Argentina acquired more Exocets, this would have made the reclaiming of the Falklands significantly more difficult for the British, despite their overwhelming naval superiority.

Despite the capabilities of anti-ship missiles, their strategic implications have been overshadowed in the academic and policy literature by more traditional concepts of proliferation. While the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and advanced ballistic missiles is a major strategic concern, numerous difficulties in their acquisition make them a less common threat. Anti-ship missiles and other inexpensive equalizing weapons have benefited from increasingly globalized arms production, making them cheaper and more available than ever.

Six decades of development. Their equalizing capability is why anti-ship missiles were developed in the first place. These missiles, as we know them today, originated in the Soviet Union during the 1950s. The Soviet Union was greatly outmatched at sea by the massive US surface fleet. Knowing that they could not compete with the United States in the way that Japan had attempted to in World War II, the Soviets focused on developing stand-off weapons that would challenge the dominance of US aircraft carriers, which remains unmatched by any other navy.

One of the first steps toward modern anti-ship missiles was the P-15 Termit, better known as the Styx missile. This class of missiles has been widely exported and saw its first combat in the sinking of an Israeli warship, the INS Eilat, by two Egyptian missile boats in 1967. Richard Fieldhouse and Shunji Taoka argued in their 1989 book Superpowers at Sea that the sinking of the Eilat demonstrated that the Soviet Union’s focus on anti-ship missiles was a revolutionary event in naval history. Anti-ship missiles might also be seen as a counter-revolution of sorts: a response to the revolutionary military power of aircraft carriers, as University of Pennsylvania political scientist Michael C. Horowitz explains in his 2010 book The Diffusion of Military Power. The success of these weapons when used against more powerful naval fleets, and their wide proliferation, helped to reinforce this point.

More than 80 states now possess these weapons, according to an unpublished dataset that I am developing—along with Bryan Early, an associate professor of political science at SUNY Albany, and James Igoe Walsh, a professor of political science at UNC Charlotte—as part of my dissertation work. There are 22 states that build their own anti-ship missile systems, five of which developed these weapons through indigenous means, while 17 had previously imported other versions of the technology. The most common missiles on the market are the US Harpoon, the Russian Styx and its multiple variants, Chinese Silkworm variants, and the French Exocet.

Reverse engineering. A strong export market and high profit margins stimulate the production and proliferation of these weapons. The generally lax attitude toward anti-ship missiles poses serious problems, because, as W. Seth Carus of the National Defense University points out in his 1992 book Cruise Missile Proliferation in the 1990s, most states that seek land-attack cruise missiles start by reverse engineering anti-ship missiles. Dennis M. Gormley of the University of Pittsburgh, in his 2008 book Missile Contagion, echoes this important point, while also highlighting the ease with which states can hide the development of long-range land-attack cruise missiles. Anti-ship missiles are easily converted into land-attack cruise missiles, which are hard to detect and intercept and can be used to accurately deliver conventional or nuclear munitions from a long distance (keeping the delivery platform out of combat).

Direct purchases of highly advanced, long-range missile systems have been rare—Saudi Arabia’s purchase of 36 Chinese Dongfeng-3 intermediate range ballistic missiles and the US Trident missiles leased by the United Kingdom being exceptions. Instead, missile proliferators typically start from the ground up. The North Korean missile program is an excellent example: Its now-quite-advanced missile program began by reverse engineering several types of Soviet and Chinese missile systems, such as coastal defense anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and the 50-to-70-kilometer-range Soviet FROG missiles—all systems that are readily available from multiple sources. After reverse engineering, these missiles were domestically produced, and this, according to Dinshaw Mistry’s 2003 book Containing Missile Proliferation, paved the way for the development of larger, more sophisticated weapons. This made North Korea not only self-sufficient, but also a new competitor in the international arms market and a source of missile systems and technology for future “pariah” proliferators.

The path to proliferation. The reverse engineering of increasingly sophisticated anti-ship missiles such as the supersonic Chinese CX-1 (which can carry a 260-kilogram payload as far as 280 kilometers) or the US Harpoon Block II (with a payload capacity of 224 kilograms at 124 kilometers)—along with the technical help, equipment, and parts that come with these sales—lays the framework for creating the all-important scientific and technical capital that future proliferators need. The path to strategic proliferation—whether it involves long-range ballistic missiles, advanced land-attack cruise missiles, or advanced anti-ship missiles—relies on the scientific and technical capital, tacit knowledge, and organizational competence that importing and reverse engineering any of these lower-level conventional weapons can bring.

The equalizing and enabling characteristics of advanced anti-ship missiles are in dire need of attention from the nonproliferation community. These weapons are cheap, uncontrolled, and readily available. They have a power to destroy and deter that is disproportionate to their cost and technical requirements, and represent perfect starter kits for future proliferators. If the United States is concerned about its ability to project power, or to confront future missile proliferators like Iran, it first needs to address the unfettered sale of advanced anti-ship missiles throughout the world.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/09...oting-hollande-valls-isis-state-of-emergency/

Paris Is on Wartime Footing

Three months after the Islamic State attacks, France is on the verge of declaring a state of emergency, forever.

By Leela Jacinto
February 9, 2016
Comments 1

What a difference a year makes. Just 12 little months and the spirit of solidarity after the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks — which drew millions to the streets across France — is dead.

The first anniversary of the three-day terrorism spree came and went with a clutch of senior officials and invited guests gathering at Place de la République in the heart of Paris while aging French rocker Johnny Hallyday crooned, “One Sunday in January.” While residents going about their daily business maneuvered around security blocks, the press picked desultory quotes from the handful of people at the square about “mixed feelings,” with one 54-year-old museum technician noting, “It is terrible to attack journalists, but it’s scary to live under a state of emergency.”

Weeks later, thousands of demonstrators gathered at Place de la République to protest the proposed extension of France’s new wartime footing. Braving the pelting rain, protesters chanted, “Stop the state of emergency!” and “State of emergency — police state!”

But there’s no stopping French President François Hollande’s government now, and everyone at the square on that cold, wet Saturday in January knew that well.

A 1955 legal provision instituted during the brutal Algerian war of independence, the state of emergency was introduced for an initial 12-day period in the immediate aftermath of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, which killed 130 people. Barely a week later, the French Parliament voted to extend the law for another three months to Feb. 26.

The state of emergency looks set for a further extension, giving the government time to raise its “tough on terrorism” fever to new heights.

On Feb. 8, the National Assembly approved the first article of a draft constitutional amendment that would see the state of emergency measure — which exists as a separate law — enshrined in the French Constitution. The late Monday night vote, by an overwhelming 103 to 26 votes, was the first in a series of steps before the constitution is finally amended, a process that should take weeks as the package of measures moves from the lower to the upper houses of Parliament. The procedure may be complicated, but the implication is clear: Enshrining the state of emergency provision in the constitution gives the executive branch extraordinary powers — at the cost of the judiciary — since it protects the measure from legal challenges.

A constitutional amendment — fancy that! At the Davos summit last month, when French Prime Minister Manuel Valls was asked how long he proposed extending the state of emergency, he replied, “as long as the threat is there.” Given that the jihadi threat is not going anywhere anytime soon, this effectively means … forever. At this rate, France is beginning to make the likes of George W. Bush and his infamous legal advisor Alberto Gonzales seem like a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

Another major amendment will see French-born nationals stripped of their citizenship if they are convicted in terrorism cases. The controversial nationality-stripping provision has sparked a season of French political high drama, complete with the resignation of Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, who opposed the measure.

France has a history of terrorist attacks followed by tightened anti-terrorism laws dating back to the mid-1990s, when Algerian Islamist militants, incensed at Paris’s perceived support of the Algerian military junta, conducted a series of attacks on French soil.

Following the 2012 Toulouse shootings, when lone gunman Mohamed Merah killed seven people in southern France, a new anti-terrorism law cracking down on French nationals training in overseas terrorist camps was passed. The law provided authorities sweeping powers to monitor telephone and Internet data, but it did nothing to stem the tide of Frenchmen traveling to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and the new jihadi badlands of Syria. Shortly after the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks, Parliament rushed through a new round of tough anti-terrorism laws — dubbed “the French Patriot Act” — which included travel bans on anyone suspected of planning a jihadi trip abroad.

They failed miserably, of course. On Nov. 13, 2015, 130 people were killed in and around Paris in the first terrorist attacks in a Western country to be officially claimed by the Islamic State. The Paris ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was a well-known jihadi who “starred” in a number of grisly video clips, including one featuring him driving an SUV towing corpses through the Syrian desert. The Belgium-born jihadi frequently boasted about how he could blithely cross European borders and that Belgian and French authorities were useless.

He was right. Abaaoud had managed to re-enter France, participate in the Nov. 13 terrorism spree, and remain parked under the noses of the French intelligence services in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, where he was finally found and killed days after the attacks following a tipoff from Moroccan intelligence. The drumbeat of French security failures has been steady and has at times risen to almost farcical levels, as I noted back in 2014, when three dangerous suspects returning from Islamic State-controlled parts of Syria “got lost” in the French countryside.

After a year bookended by deadly terrorist attacks conducted by familiar jihadi figures, no official heads have rolled, no one has been sacked, and not a single senior official or minister has been hauled over the coals.

Instead, the Hollande administration has been pushing new anti-terrorism measures, despite howls of condemnation from U.N. special rapporteurs and the European Council secretary-general, as well as French and international human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

They’re pissing in the wind, this civil liberties crowd. The horse has already bolted while French lawmakers in the coming weeks tinker with the stable hinges. Even before the Charlie Hebdo attacks, French anti-terrorism laws were so tight, they didn’t need further tightening — they simply had to be put to better use. Under the controversial 1996 anti-terrorism statute known as association de malfaiteurs terroriste, or “terrorist criminal association,” thousands have been arrested and hundreds convicted. Prosecutors have sought and won convictions not by proving the existence of a terrorist plot, but by simply showing “participation in a grouping or an agreement established with a view to the preparation” of a terrorist act.

Defense lawyers complain their clients have been declared guilty of “address book” crimes. Worse, this paint-by-numbers scheme only accelerated the flow of young, mostly Muslim, men into notorious French prisons such as Fleury-Mérogis, where, ironically, they have associated with hardened criminals-turned-jihadis, emerging from the system more dangerous than they were before they entered. It’s a recurring pattern in French jihadis’ profiles, one that has created radicalized networks that have included the Charlie Hebdo gunmen, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, and their friend Amedy Coulibaly, who attacked a Paris kosher supermarket.

The latest post-attack security rethink takes police powers to new heights. Since the state of emergency was declared in November, police have conducted more than 3,200 house searches without warrants, imposed some 400 assigned residence (a form of house arrest) orders, and closed numerous mosques and businesses. That’s a heck of a lot of French lives — overwhelmingly Muslim lives — disrupted. These include people who now say they have been fired from jobs due to the stigma of a house search or arrest, though that was never cited as the reason for dismissal. Those placed on assigned residency have to report to a police station as often as three times a day and require special permission to travel beyond a certain area. All these house searches and arrests have resulted in the launch of only 25 criminal investigations, of which 21 were under an “apology of terrorism” offense — which is actually a poor apology of a law.

A Feb. 4 Amnesty International report, titled “Upturned Lives: The Disproportionate Impact of France’s State of Emergency,” provides damning insight into the recent excesses and violations committed by the authorities. The 40-page report cites a number of cases, including a jaw-dropping police search of a women’s shelter on Dec. 8. The only official at the shelter that night was a young woman, identified as Virginie, who “did not understand why the shelter had been searched,” the report dryly notes. Neither can I, for that matter.

What’s the purpose of conducting an intrusive, terrifying night search on a shelter housing abused women? To figure out if they were associated with the suspicious males they are now trying to flee? Media reports quoted French officials as saying the shelter, run by an association called Baytouna, houses women whose husbands went to fight in Syria. Baytouna, which means “our house” in Arabic, denies the charges. But the police seem willing to play the spin game — in one case, the media duly reported that firearms were found in a mosque in the Parisian suburb of Lagny-sur-Marne, which was then shut down. The official police report, however, said nothing was found at the mosque and no criminal investigation was launched. Even if the accusations against the Baytouna shelter were true, women abandoned by husbands fighting in Syria do not constitute an immediate security threat to France.

The state of emergency has raised widespread concerns of further stigmatization and discrimination of France’s already marginalized Muslims. This, as security and human rights experts note, is not helpful. “Practices that discriminate against Muslims are counterproductive as well as reprehensible and unlawful, alienating French Muslims and undermining cooperation between Muslim communities and law enforcement efforts that could assist in identifying local terrorism threats based on radical Islam,” said a Human Rights Watch statement. Focusing on mosques and Muslim community associations makes little sense: Islamic State ideologues exhort young people to avoid mosques and community centers where Muslim community elders have little sympathy for its nihilist brand of Islamism. The new pattern of individualized radicalization has also been well established with leading French Islamic studies expert Olivier Roy noting that “radicalisation is a youth revolt against society.… It is not the uprising of a Muslim community victim of poverty and racism.”

Every single French official and policy expert I have spoken to is aware of Roy’s research findings and has carefully read his Nov. 24 Le Monde column, “Jihadism is a generational and nihilistic revolt.” But they can’t seem to translate that into policy. Or they don’t want to. And there’s a simple reason for this.

It’s political high season in France, and all eyes are on the 2017 presidential election. Political party pundits are reading from the same hymnal, which maintains there’s a “droitisation” — or rightward lurch — in the public mood. Party bosses are straining so far right, they’re starting to topple over.

When Nicolas Sarkozy was president, he proposed a “déchéance de nationalité” — or stripping of French nationality — in terrorism cases, which was greeted by howls of protest and petitions signed by leftist intellectuals and politicians such as Hollande and Valls. The most public proponent of the measure in government today? Monsieur Valls.

Droitisation has a way of pushing ideals to the winds. The déchéance de nationalité drama is so juicy, it threatens to overshadow the deeper issues at play. With schisms in the ruling Socialist Party, high-profile resignations, political backtracking, and even a confusion over whether the measure applies only to dual nationals or all French nationals and how that upholds under international law, the press has its plate full.

Buried in this deluge is the fundamental principle of executive power overriding judicial checks and balances. One of the more troubling developments over the past few months has been a steady stream of appeals against the state of emergency that have been overruled by the Conseil d’État, or Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court. These include an appeal by environmental activists during the U.N. conference on climate change (COP21) in Paris against the assigned residence of some activists under the state of emergency provisions. The Conseil d’État ruled in favor of the Interior Ministry’s argument that environmental protests could disturb the public order — even though the house arrests and protest bans were not aimed at “preventing the commission of further acts of terrorism.” Then, on Jan. 27, the Conseil d’État rejected an appeal by the Paris-based Human Rights League to suspend the state of emergency.

These are just some of the more high-profile cases that have made the news. The cases of ordinary French Muslims losing their appeals against assigned residency orders rarely make headlines. But they have been systematic enough for Amnesty International to warn that “[a]dministrative courts and the Council of State have very rarely challenged the information included in the notes collected by the intelligence services” and that “courts had tended to show strong deference to the arguments put forward by the Ministry of Interior.”

The Hollande administration’s move to declare a state of emergency may have been justifiable in the immediate aftermath of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks. Three months later, it’s time to sit back and assess which measures are necessary and which ones are a distraction, hogging time and resources while the real business of improving intelligence, implementing existing laws, and addressing the social malaise underlying youth radicalization is being ignored. But that’s not going to happen, of course. In France, as in too many other countries, high political drama always trumps substantive policy rethinks. Let the political games begin.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-idUSKCN0VK0E8

World | Thu Feb 11, 2016 10:23am EST
Related: World, Russia, Turkey, Syria

Kurdish forces said to take air base near Turkish border

BEIRUT | By Suleiman Al-Khalidi


Kurdish fighters backed by Russian bombing raids have driven Syrian rebels from a former military air base near the border with Turkey, a group that monitors the war said on Thursday.

Rebel groups have been distracted by a major offensive in the area by the Syrian army and its Russian and other allies, allowing the Kurds to capture the base and expand their foothold in the north.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the war through a network of sources on the ground, reported heavy fighting between Kurds and Syrian rebels around Menagh air base, a former Syrian air force facility that had fallen into rebel hands.

Russian warplanes staged at least 30 raids against rebels at the base before the Kurdish fighters were able to seize it.

One rebel commander, Zekeriya Karsli from the Levant Front, said: "The fall of Menagh airport has made the situation on the ground pretty grim."

Kurds in northern Syria have established a degree of autonomy since the start of the war in some areas bordering Turkey, which is struggling to end a three-decade insurgency on its own territory by Kurdish militants who want more self-rule.

Both Syrian and Turkish Kurds, however, stop short of a declared bid for independent statehood, unlike Iraqi Kurdistan, which is already an autonomous region and is moving toward a referendum to declare full independence from Baghdad.

The Russians are happy to help the Kurds in this instance as it means further problems for the Syrian rebels they are trying to destroy.

Kurdish YPG militias have taken advantage of the rebels' preoccupation with fending off the Russian-backed Syrian army offensive launched last week in the northern Aleppo countryside to gain ground near an important border crossing with Turkey, the Syrian insurgents say.


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Kurdish fighters based in the city of Afrin, south of rebel-held Azaz, have taken a series of villages, including Deir Jameal and al-Qamiya, which rebels have been forced to evacuate as Syrian troops advance from the south.

MAJOR OFFENSIVE

The intensive Russian bombing of rebel towns in northern Aleppo province, while avoiding the Kurds in Afrin, allowed the Kurds to move on Menagh airport, which the rebels had held since August 2013.

"The Kurds have gained from the major offensive in Aleppo to widen their areas of control," Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Observatory, said.

The loss of the air base, which lies near the road between Aleppo and the Turkish city of Gaziantep, reflects the dramatic change in the balance of forces since Russia began its military intervention on Sept. 30 on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad.

Other rebel fighters trapped by Kurdish forces to the west and Syrian army and allied militias advancing from the south, are now seeking to defend Tal Rifaat, heavily hit by Russian bombers in the last two days, the Observatory and a rebel source confirmed.

Syrian troops are only a few kilometers from the town.

Russian bombing had allowed Syrian troops supported by Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias to advance to almost 25 km (15 miles) from the Turkish border, the closest they have come in more than two-and-a-half years.


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The Bab al Salam border crossing with Turkey was a main trucking gateway from Europe via Syria to the Gulf before the war. Moscow and Damascus say it is a conduit for arms to the rebels supplied by Turkey.

The Syrian army advance has cut a rebel supply line between the border and the parts of the city of Aleppo which the insurgents control. The army is now seeking to regain full control of what was once the country's most populous city.

The Kurdish campaign to expand in rural areas in northern Aleppo province it considers as ethnically Kurdish has aroused suspicion among mainstream Arab rebels.

"They are trying to advance by exploiting our concentration on fighting the regime to win more territory," Abu Mustapha al-Saleh, a commander from al-Jabha al Shamiya group, said from Azaz.

"On the ground it looks as though they are waging one operation and of course the selectiveness of the Russian bombing confirms this," he added.

The heavy bombing has forced tens of thousands of Syrians to flee to the safety of the border areas around Azaz town. Prevented from entering Turkey, many have also gone to safer areas in the mainly rebel-held north-west province of Idlib.

A spokesman for Turkey's IHH aid organization, Burak Karacaoglu, said: "The Russian strikes are still the single biggest threat to our humanitarian aid work inside Syria."


(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Giles Elgood)