WAR 03-28-2015-to-04-03-2015_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...-storms-Kenyan-university-147-reported-killed

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/04/02/kenya-security-college-idINKBN0MT0CI20150402

Top | Thu Apr 2, 2015 6:23pm IST

Al Shabaab storms Kenyan university, 14 reported killed

NAIROBI | By Drazen Jorgic

(Reuters) - At least 14 people were reported killed on Thursday when Islamist militant group al Shabaab stormed a Kenyan university campus, taking Christians hostage and exchanging gunfire with security forces over several hours.

With scores of students wounded and hundreds unaccounted for, police and soldiers surrounded Garissa University College. They sealed off the compound and were trying to flush out the gunmen, the head of Kenya's police force, Joseph Boinet, said.

Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the pre-dawn attack near the Somali border. The group has links to al Qaeda and a track record of raids on Kenyan soil in retaliation for Nairobi sending troops to fight it in its home state of Somalia.

Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, its military operations spokesman, said it was holding many Christian hostages inside.

"We sorted people out and released the Muslims," he told Reuters. "Fighting still goes on inside the college."

Boinet said in a statement that the attackers had "shot indiscriminately" while inside the university compound, adding police had been guarding the university's four hostels at the time.

At least 14 people had been killed, including two security personnel, a policeman at the scene said, while the Red Cross said 50 students had been freed.

Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery said 280 of the 815 students at the university had been accounted for and efforts were under way to track down the others, according to the Twitter feed of Kenya's national disaster agency.

The agency did not give an estimate of how many students remained trapped on the campus.

Some had managed to escape unaided.

"We heard some gunshots and we were sleeping so it was around five and guys started jumping up and down running for their lives," an unnamed student told Reuters TV.

Sixty-five people were wounded, the disaster agency said. Four had been airlifted to Nairobi for treatment.

"We have 49 casualties so far, all with bullet and (shrapnel) wounds," said a doctor at Garissa hospital.


TOURISM AND RELIGION

Al Shabaab, which seeks to impose its own harsh variant of sharia law, has separated Muslims from Christians in some of its previous raids in Kenya, notably late last year in attacks on a bus and at a quarry.

Its repeated raids, together with attacks on churches by home-grown Islamist groups, have in recent years strained the historically cordial relations between Kenya's Muslim and Christian communities.

Having killed more than 200 people in Kenya over the past two years, Al Shabaab has also brought the country's tourism industry to its knees.

Thursday's attack, which the U.S. embassy in Nairobi said in a Twitter post it was "saddened and angered" by, undermined a renewed drive by President Uhuru Kenyatta to persuade foreigners the country is now safe to visit.

On Wednesday, he urged Kenyans abroad to help attract tourists back despite the wave of militant violence, criticising a warning from Australia of a possible attack in Nairobi and an advisory from Britain urging its citizens to avoid most coastal resorts.

Kenyatta was due to address the nation later on Thursday about the attack on Garissa, a town some 200 kilometres (120 miles) from the porous Somali border that al Shabaab has previously raided.

Grace Kai, a student at the Garissa Teachers Training College near the university, said there had been warnings that an attack in the town could be imminent.

"Some strangers had been spotted in Garissa town and were suspected to be terrorists," she told Reuters.

"Then on Monday our college principal told us ...that strangers had been spotted in our college... On Tuesday we were released to go home, and our college closed, but the campus remained in session, and now they have been attacked."

Many Kenyans living in the crime-ridden frontier regions blame the government for not doing enough to protect its citizens from the militants.

Having declared it would punish Kenya for sending troops into Somalia to fight it alongside African Union peacekeepers, Al Shabaab was also responsible for a deadly attack in 2013 on the upscale Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi.


(Additional reporting by Joseph Akwiri, Edith Honan and Humphrey Malalo and Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by John Stonestreet; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

 

[vestige]

Bump

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.newsweek.com/china-reveals-new-long-range-bombers-318829

China Reveals New Long-Range Bombers

By Luke Hurst
4/1/15 at 1:33 PM

China has released pictures of an unnamed “new-type of bomber”, along with an announcement that it has carried out its first military drills in the airspace above the Western Pacific Ocean.

According to a statement on the Chinese Ministry of Defence website, the drills took place over the Bashi Canal, which is between a Taiwanese island and a Philippines island.

The release of the pictures of the warplanes suggests the exercise was a test of China’s long-range bombing capabilities. According to Want China Times, the photos indicate the aircraft taking part in the drill were H-6K long-range strategic bombers, which have “a combat radius of 2,000 kilometers” meaning they could be used to launch attacks against U.S. military facilities on Guam.

A spokesman for the Chinese Air Force, Colonel Shen Jinke has said: “Training in the airspace far from China is an effective way for the PLA Air Force to temper its combat capability and also a common practice of world powers' air forces.”

The bombers, described on the website as “new-type bombers”, can be seen here lined up at an undisclosed airfield.

According to The Diplomat - an Asia-Pacific news website - the exercise was “a step in realising a robust expeditionary capability.”

The exercise comes amid China’s ongoing land dispute in the South China Sea with a number of its neighbours including the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan. China was accused yesterday by a top U.S. Commander of building a “great wall of sand”.

The BBC reports that U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Harry Harris said in a speech in Australia that China was creating artificial landmasses in the disputed region on which to place equipment or facilities which could be for military use.

Colonel Shen added that the training is in line with “relevant international laws and practices” and “is not aimed at any country or target and poses no threat to any country or region”.

The Chinese government announced this year that China’s military budget, although second in the world in size to the U.S., would increase by 10% this year to $145 billion.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/7607/previous-references-to-1987-ida-report#more-5369

References to 1987 IDA Report

By Jeffrey | 30 March 2015 | 12 Comments

I have a new column at ForeignPolicy.com about the 1987 Institute for Defense Analyses report, IDA Memorandum, Report M-317 Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations.

The report is now widely available online, but copies have been floating around for years. The picture atop the post is my copy. (You can tell the provenance of any copy by the upper right hand corner which notes ¡°Copy 2 of 5 copies¡± and so on.)

In the column, I didn¡¯t have space to point out how many times this document has already been mentioned in the press. I do here.

The document is hardly secret. I am pretty sure IDA announced it¡¯s publication in the Technical Reports Awareness Circular so people could order it. (Although I need to find the right volume.) No matter. Here you go:

And, since that is hard to read, here is the entry for six IDA reports covered by this volume of TRAC, including IDA MR-M-317 Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations.

One thing I wanted to point out is how often the report has been referenced publicly. After all, I tracked down a copy because I had heard about it and seen it cited many times. Here is a short list.

The first instance I can find is a 1989 article by Michael Gordon in the New York Times. Gordon wrote:

A 1987 Pentagon-commissioned report, which was disclosed this week, asserts that there is close cooperation between the Israeli universities and Rafael, a military research and development institute, and SOREQ, a scientific center that does research in advanced physics, which the report asserts can be applied in the development of nuclear weapons.

The Pentagon-commissioned report was published by the Institute for Defense Analyses, a Government-financed research center. Information in the report was gathered by a group of American consultants who visited Israel. The material on Israel¡¯s program of nuclear research, for example, was prepared by R. Norris Keeler, a head of physics at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1971 to 1975. Collaboration Seen as Worrisome

The report asserts that Israel is ¡±roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapon field in about 1955 to 1960¡± and adds that SOREQ is developing computer codes that could be useful in ¡±in studying the implosion of nuclear devices.¡± The report also states that Rafael and Technion have collaborated ¡±on the development and simulation of ballistic missile re-entry vehicles.¡±

See: Michael R. Gordon, ¡°U.S. Sees Israeli Help in Pretoria¡¯s Missile Work,¡± New York Times, October 27, 1989.

The second instance is W. Seth Carus¡¯s Cruise Missile Proliferation in the 1990s. Carus wasn¡¯t interested in nuclear weapons, but noted the report contained ¡°the first description of the Delilah¡± cruise missile.

The third instance is a book by William Burrows and Robert Windrem entitled, Critical Mass: The Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World (Simon and Schuster, 1994). I think they had a copy, although it isn¡¯t exactly clear to me from the text.

That¡¯s just for starters. There are now plenty of copies floating around. I am not certain, but I suspect there might be a copy in the Paul Leventhal files at UT-Austin. Someone should take a peek there, as well as with our friends at the National Security Archive.

But that¡¯s what the comments are for!


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¡û ¡°Background on False Lavizan-3 Story¡± (Previous)


12 Responses to ¡°References to 1987 IDA Report¡±

weaponeer | March 30, 2015

Easy to find.

Try http://cryptome.org/2015/03/ida-ctaiiann.pdf

Reply

DDP | March 31, 2015

Is this it?

http://cryptome.org/2015/03/ida-ctaiiann.pdf

Reply

Jeffrey | March 31, 2015

Sorry ¡ª I ommitted the context. An anti-Israel group posted the document online after gaining access through a lawsuit, leading to a flurry of terrible stories misrepresenting the document. My point was it has been available for a long time. Will update the post for clarity.

Jonah Speaks | April 1, 2015

The wonk blog first got wind of this here: http://krepon.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/4473/u-s-national-security-strategy#comments based on a tip from Bradley Laing on February 12, 2015.

The breaking Courthouse News report was here: http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/02/12/dod-report-details-israels-quest-for-hydrogen-bomb.htm

An alternate link for the same FOIA¡¯d document is here: http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/02/12/nuc report.pdf The report was not declassified, because it was never classified. It was simply restricted in its initial distribution, but (as Jeffrey notes) the 1987 IDA report has been in the public domain for several years already. The report was prepared for DOD under contract, but its publication does not indicate official endorsement by DOD.

The Courthouse News report was poorly written. Nothing in the news report or the FOIA¡¯d document demonstrates ¡°the U.S. government¡¯s extensive help to Israel in that nation¡¯s development of a nuclear bomb.¡± That would be a clear violation of the NPT and BIG news if it were true, but it¡¯s not true.

CC | March 31, 2015

Is this document protected by copyright? If not, why don¡¯t you post an unredacted scan?

Reply

Jeffrey | March 31, 2015

I¡¯d have to scan the damn thing, that¡¯s why. I might scan the summary relating to other NATO countries, but I swear its super freaking boring.


Hass | March 31, 2015

The point is that the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 as amended by the Symington Amendment of 1976 and the Glenn Amendment of 1977 prohibit US military assistance to countries that acquire or transfer nuclear reprocessing technology outside of international nonproliferation regimes. Israel, unlike Iran, is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. If Congress wishes to provide US taxpayer funded foreign aid to Israel in compliance with US law, it may do so only under a special waiver from the office of the President as in the case for Pakistan.

Reply

Matt | March 31, 2015

Is your copy complete or censored like the Cryptome version? I can¡¯t tell if the text in the PDF copy linked above was hidden before or after scanning.

Reply

Jeffrey | March 31, 2015

I have the summary (including the summary of all the NATO states) and stage Israel section. There are no redactions.


nukeman | March 31, 2015

As far as I know I was the first person to notify Steven Aftergood of the non-classification status of the IDA document, and the current distribution status of the document. His return email acknowledges that my analysis concerning the IDA document was correct.

For anyone interested you can see a bibliography of mine on Israeli nuclear related research on the FAS website. I can provide further information on this topic to anyone interested.

Reply


Yossi | April 1, 2015

Long time no see¡*

Wikipedia has a relevant entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symington_Amendment

that contains the following paragraph:

¡°The President of the United States has violated the law to ease sanctions on India and Pakistan, and by granting an informal exception for Israel.¡±

However the reference for the last part seems to be:

Chomsky, Noam (1992).
What Uncle Sam Really Wants.
Odonian Press. pp. 22¨C25.
ISBN 1-878825-01-1

which is not readily available and may be unsatisfactory.

Is there some better source on this issue?

Reply

Yossi | April 2, 2015

Sorry, my Chomsky reference above included wrong page numbers. I found the book online and yes, it¡¯s not a satisfactory source. I guess I was naive to think it would be that easy.

 

[Doomer Doug]

Housecarl, I expect the US Navy and NATO, along with the Sunni Ten, to be heavily involved in combat trying to clear those islands of Houthi OFFENSIVE MISSILE BATTERIES within the next 24 to 72 hours. If they do not, I fully expect all ships to steer clear of the Suez Canal within the same time frame.

After all, there is just something about putting a missile battery in the middle of the strait entrance to the Red Sea leading to the Suez Canal that requires the West to ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Yep, Barbary Pirates, the 2015 version.

 

[Housecarl]

Housecarl, I expect the US Navy and NATO, along with the Sunni Ten, to be heavily involved in combat trying to clear those islands of Houthi OFFENSIVE MISSILE BATTERIES within the next 24 to 72 hours. If they do not, I fully expect all ships to steer clear of the Suez Canal within the same time frame.

After all, there is just something about putting a missile battery in the middle of the strait entrance to the Red Sea leading to the Suez Canal that requires the West to ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Yep, Barbary Pirates, the 2015 version.

Yeah, pretty much. This is the sort of thing that a mix of CBUs and LGB/JDAMs are meant for. But to do it right means a brigade worth of troops, ideally Saudi, so they can get some experience.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.stratfor.com/image/falklands-dispute-simmers

The Falklands Dispute Simmers On

Media Center, Image
April 2, 2015 | 20:04 GMT
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The Falklands Dispute Simmers On Click to Enlarge

On the April 2 anniversary of the invasion of the Falkland Islands, the relationship between Argentina and the United Kingdom is predictably tense again. For the next several years, the United Kingdom's capability to respond to potential threats to the Falklands will be limited by its lack of deployable aircraft carriers. Consequently, U.K. military planners will have to consider defensive contingencies. Military posturing between Argentina and the United Kingdom will increase ahead of the 2020 deployment of the Royal Navy's new Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, which will increase the United Kingdom's capacity to project power and to respond to threats. Still, Argentina's economic challenges and the British military's ability to mount a significant response will prevent any actual conflict from occurring over the islands in the next five years.

The Falkland Islands have long been a point of contention between Argentina and the United Kingdom, and Buenos Aires has maintained its claim to the so-called Malvinas since its failed war to take the islands by force in 1982. Both governments can use the dispute for political purposes, especially ahead of U.K. general elections in May and Argentine general elections in October. Buenos Aires in particular has used the issue to rally nationalist sentiment, taking symbolic actions ¡X such as introducing a new 50-peso bill emblazoned with the image of the islands ¡X to keep the claim alive in the public's mind. For years, Argentina pursued diplomatic efforts at the United Nations to open talks on the status of the islands, lodging protests with the U.N. Special Committee on Decolonization.

Though Argentina's claim on the islands has been peaceful in the wake of the failed 1982 campaign, Argentina's possible acquisition of new aircraft could alter the dynamic in the minds of U.K. military strategists. Argentina signed defense agreements with China in February for joint development of JF-17 Thunder fighter aircraft and reportedly sent an air force delegation to China in March with plans to buy dozens of the planes. Argentina was also rumored to have pursued leasing 12 Sukhoi Su-24 from Russia. On March 27, Russia denied having such talks but said it would be ready to do so.

In response, the United Kingdom has announced an increase to its defensive capabilities on the islands. British Minister of Defense Michael Fallon reported to Parliament last week that the United Kingdom will deploy two Chinook helicopters in 2016, upgrade the command facility at Mount Pleasant and begin work on new surface-to-air missile systems to replace the existing Rapier batteries. The United Kingdom is expected to allocate more than $250 million to upgrades in Falklands defense over the next 10 years.

Although Argentina will continue to claim the Falkland Islands, it is unlikely to intervene militarily. Tensions will rise periodically, and the United Kingdom could increase its military presence to ward off any threat. However, the economic and political costs of war for Argentina will restrain military action in the near future.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150402/ml--yemen-ae95084a88.html

Al-Qaida in Yemen captures a southern city, frees inmates

Apr 2, 5:45 PM (ET)
By AHMED AL-HAJ

(AP) A Houthi Shiite rebel carries his weapon as he joins others to protest against...
Full Image

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Al-Qaida militants traveling in convoys flying black banners captured a major port city in southern Yemen on Thursday, seizing government buildings and freeing inmates from a prison, including a top Saudi-born leader, security officials said.

The fall of Mukalla — the capital of Yemen's largest province, Hadramawt — highlighted how al-Qaida is expanding its foothold in Yemen, taking advantage of the turmoil as a Saudi-led coalition backing the country's beleaguered president tries to fend off a takeover by Shiite rebels.

Mukalla's fall came as the rebels, known as Houthis, made dramatic advances in one of the main strongholds of the president's loyalists, the southern city of Aden. The rebels broke into the center of Aden and briefly captured a presidential palace in the city.

The rebels withdrew from the palace after raising the Yemeni flag, but the move showed their continued strength despite more than a week of heavy airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition. If the Houthis succeed in capturing Aden, it would be a significant blow to the coalition, which has been planning to land ground troops in the city to allow the return of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who fled the country last week.

(AP) Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, chant slogans to protest against Saudi-led...
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At least 519 people have been killed, many of them civilians and 90 of them children, in the past two weeks of violence in Yemen, as well as 1,700 wounded, the U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said. She said tens of thousands have also fled their homes.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, as the terror network's branch in Yemen is named, has been benefiting from the turmoil ever since the Houthis first surged from their northern strongholds last year to take over the capital, Sanaa, and much of the north. The rebels are backed in the campaign by military and police forces loyal to Hadi's predecessor, ousted autocrat Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Around the country, some Sunni tribal fighters have been making alliances with al-Qaida to fight the rebels, who adhere to the Zaydi branch of Shia Islam.

But the capture of Mukalla was a startling advance. The city lies 300 miles northeast of Aden along the Arabian Sea coast in large but sparsely populated Hadramawt.

The militants fanned out along major roads leading into Mukalla on Thursday and took over the city's presidential palace, government agencies and the local Central Bank branch. They tried to break open the bank's vault with hand grenades but failed, according to witnesses. The witnesses spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

(AP) Shiite rebels known as Houthis hold up their weapons to protest against Saudi-led...
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Militants on pickup trucks set up checkpoints across the city, sealing off entrances and exits, while residents were seen entering the offices and looting electronic devices and files, the witnesses said.

The al-Qaida fighters also freed about 300 inmates from the city's main prison, including scores of militants, according to security officials.

Among those freed was Saudi-born Khaled Batrafi, a senior al-Qaida operative believed to have masterminded past attacks, the officials said.

Also freed were 90 death row inmates convicted for a host of criminal offences, according to activists in the city.

After the noon prayers, a top al-Qaida leader stood up in the middle of the worshippers in the city's al-Sharag mosque, telling them that he and fellow militants were there only to defend the city from the Houthis.

(AP) Shiite rebels known as Houthis gather to protest against Saudi-led airstrikes,...
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"People are terrified," said Ali al-Katheri, an activist in Mukalla. "They never expected that the city falls so easy in hands of al-Qaida."

Police commandos in the city were loyal to Saleh, the former president, and did not resist the al-Qaida advance. Army units loyal to Hadi are stationed in bases on the city's outskirts but also did not move against the militants, apparently too weak to fight back. At one point, a military helicopter opened fire on the militants but withdrew after hitting residential homes, al-Katheri said.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is seen by Washington as the terror network's most dangerous branch ever since its attempt in 2009 to bomb a commercial carrier over the United States. It claimed responsibility for January's deadly attack in Paris on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

The rebels' power grab, combined with nationwide chaos, has forced the United States to pull out military advisers who were backing the Yemeni military against al-Qaida, undermining U.S. counter-terrorism operations and drone strikes.

The air campaign by Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies has been pounding Houthi and pro-Saleh forces in Sanaa and multiple provinces around the country. In recent days, the warplanes have been hitting hard in Aden, trying to fend off the rebels and Saleh's troops amid fierce fighting with Hadi's loyalists on the ground.

(AP) A boy holds a weapon while Shiite rebels known as Houthis protest against Saudi-led...
Full Image

Airstrikes in Aden on Thursday hit a base of pro-Saleh police commandos and a hotel being used by Houthi fighters, killing at least 20 people, Yemeni security officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the press.

Hadi's loyalists have held the city's center, located on a peninsula jutting into the Arabian Sea, while their opponents held the airport at the base of the peninsula and some neighborhoods to the north.

But on Thursday, Houthi fighters were able to break into the city center, driving through the commercial district, seizing several neighborhoods and capturing the presidential palace at the peninsula's tip. They held the palace as a "show of strength" before withdrawing for fear of airstrikes, the security officials said.

Fighting still raged in the evening as Hadi's forces and loyalists held onto scattered parts of the city, and airstrikes battered the airport.

Warplanes also struck an island in the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait, the southern entrance to the Red Sea, after Houthis took over the island earlier Thursday, officials said.

Saudi and Egyptian warships deployed to Bab al-Mandab which gives the only access to Egypt's Suez Canal from the Arabian Sea and is a vital passage for shipping between Europe and Asia.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, said one of its guards along the border with Yemen was killed Wednesday night. It was the first known Saudi casualty since the airstrikes started.

A border post in the Asir region came under heavy fire from a mountainous area inside Yemen, followed by cross-border skirmishes, according to the official Saudi Press Agency. Along with the Saudi guard who was killed, 10 other border guards were wounded, SPA said.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150402/ml-egypt-b3adb7b3a9.html

Militants strike Egypt's Sinai, kill 15 troops, 3 civilians

Apr 2, 4:31 PM (ET)
By ASHRAF SWEILAM

CAIRO (AP) — Islamic militants unleashed a wave of attacks in Egypt's northern Sinai on Thursday, hitting a military checkpoint and killing 15 soldiers there while near-simultaneous attacks elsewhere in the volatile stretch of the peninsula left three civilians dead, officials said.

The attacks were the latest in a series of complex assaults and ambushes in recent months despite a large-scale military campaign that has tried to suppress the growing insurgency in northern Sinai, which borders Israel and the Gaza Strip. The deadliest of Thursday's attacks mirrored past ones, suggesting careful planning by the militants.

The attack on the military checkpoint south of the town of Sheikh Zuweid killed 15 troops and wounded at least 19, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

In four other attacks, also near the same town, three civilians were killed and 13 were wounded. The other attacks appeared to have been aimed at diverting attention from the main assault on the checkpoint, they said.

The military's casualty toll could be higher, however, since the attackers also seized two armored vehicles at the checkpoint, possibly taking hostage an unknown number of soldiers inside the vehicles. Later, a helicopter gunship caught up with the two vehicles, rocketing one of them. The vehicle was destroyed and everyone inside it was killed, but the second one got away, the officials said.

The attackers, however, failed to capture a U.S.-made Abrams tank because its crew drove it to another army checkpoint as the attack was underway, they said.

Attacks mainly targeting Egyptian security forces have spiked since the 2013 military overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi following massive protests against his divisive rule. Most of the large-scale attacks have been claimed by a Sinai-based group that last year pledged allegiance to the extremist Islamic State group, which controls large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.

In Washington, the State Department condemned Thursday's terrorist attack in Sinai and expressed condolences to the victims' families and Egypt.

"The United States remains steadfast in its support of Egypt's efforts to combat terrorism in the Sinai and throughout the country, and we will continue to work closely together to address shared threats to regional security,' said spokeswoman Marie Harf.

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama released military aid to Egypt suspended after Morsi's 2013 ouster, in an effort to boost Cairo's ability to combat the extremist threat in the region.

---

Associated Press Writer Bradley Klapper in Washington contributed to this report.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.dw.de/kenya-university-attack-kenya-has-learned-nothing/a-18359496

Terrorism

Kenya university attack: 'Kenya has learned nothing'

Al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for a deadly attack at Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya. Security experts say the country still lacks an effective terror response mechanism.

Date 02.04.2015
Author Asumpta Lattus

It is now 18 months since al-Shabab attacked the Westgate shopping mall in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, killing more than 60 people. This was followed by a series of attacks in other towns and cities, considered to be carried out in revenge for the Kenyan army presence in Somalia, where it is part of an AU force fighting al-Shabab. On Thursday (02.04.2015) al-Shabab claimed responsibility for an attack on Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya, near the border with Somalia. At least 15 people are reported to have been killed. For an assessment of Kenya's response to the terror threat, DW spoke to Peter Aling'o, office head and senior researcher with the Institute for Security Studies in Nairobi.

DW: Has Kenya learnt from Westgate how to respond to terror attacks?

Peter Aling'o: I think Kenya hasn't learnt anything at all in terms of how to respond to terror attacks. What we are seeing is a knee-jerk reaction that sends in security personnel in a manner that suggests they are not completely aware of what they are responding to. We need a closure in terms of lessons learnt but that has not been done. An effective response should also include the civilian component in terms of how civilians respond and react. Kenya has yet to learn, in my view, how to respond effectively to attacks of the magnitude that we have seen in the country since Westgate.

Reports say there was a warning issued some weeks ago that al-Shabab was planning to attack major universities. Why didn't the Kenyan authorities step up security? Why couldn't they hinder this attack?

This is the question that we ask. In the last month or so there has been quite a lot of information around in terms of the targets that are at high risk. These have included universities, with a number of them sending out [warning] notices to the university community and citizens at large about impending attacks. But you see, in Kenya, we never take things seriously. This is the reason why I think Kenya and the security agencies have been caught with their pants down once again. It's about planning and effectively deploying personnel. It's not just about numbers. It's also about effective utilization of available intelligence. This is not happening in the country and these are the gaps that al-Shabab is taking advantage of.

Is it true that Kenyan security agencies are not reacting to intelligence provided by Western nations?

We have asked this question a number of times including during the Westgate attack and also the attacks that happened in Mombasa, in Lamu. There were indications, and indeed this has been verified, that intelligence was available but nobody acted on it. And this is the question that we ask: Where is the coordination in terms of intelligence gathering and response? That has been the missing link and it is the link that is making Kenya extremely vulnerable.

How much international support is Kenya getting in the fight against al-Shabab?

I think there is a lot of support that Kenya gets. The question is: How effectively is Kenya utilizing this support? For example, there is a partnership with a number of foreign governments, including Canada and the US who conduct a lot of training of Kenyan security personnel in counter-terrorism measures. This happens all the time. We know the Americans and the British invest quite a lot of money in terms of helping Kenya to do this. We also must acknowledge that there are a number of problems in Kenya that hamper effective support and this issue is linked to corruption.

Is this attack likely to have an impact on the policies of the Kenyan government?

I think we will see some cosmetic changes but not in how Kenya addresses the real structural issues that make the country vulnerable to extremism and attacks. We heard the president address the nation and give assurances but he only spoke of increasing the numbers of security personnel. We need to have a proper policy dialogue that looks at the structural weaknesses within the security system in Kenya and within Kenyan society at large. This needs to include citizens so that there is an ongoing solution that is also owned by the Kenyan citizens.

Peter Aling'o is the office head and senior researcher with the Institute for Security Studies in Nairobi

Interview: Asumpta Lattus


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Uganda prosecutor in 2010 al-Shabab bombings case shot dead

The chief prosecutor in the trial of the 2010 al-Shabab bombings in Uganda has been shot dead. Joan Kagezi was attacked as she drove home. (31.03.2015)


Al-Shabab militants attack luxury hotel in Mogadishu

Al Qaeda affiliated Somali Islamist group Al-Shabab stormed the Maka Al-Mukarramah hotel on Friday, killing at least nine people and wounding dozens of others. Security forces attempted to gain control of the premises. (27.03.2015)

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm........

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http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/04/02/uk-mideast-crisis-iraq-usa-idUKKBN0MT2MM20150402

World | Fri Apr 3, 2015 12:22am BST
Related: World, Iraq, Middle East

After Tikrit, Iraqi forces may turn back to Baiji - U.S. official

WASHINGTON

(Reuters) - After declaring victory in the city of Tikrit, the next significant operation for Iraqi forces will likely be clearing out Islamic State fighters from the refinery city of Baiji, a U.S. military official said on Thursday.

"I just happen to think that's really the next significant military manoeuvre," the senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to a small group of reporters.

Last November, Iraqi security forces backed by Shi’ite paramilitary groups managed to break a months-long siege of the Baiji refinery that had forced it to shut down operations.

But parts of the city and surrounding area remain contested, the official said, and Iraqi forces were diverted from Baiji to bolster the battle in nearby Tikrit.

"In order to do the Tikrit operation, the (Iraqi security forces) ... thinned the defence of Baiji and ISIL took advantage of that and has been pressuring them. But they're holding," the official said, using an acronym for Islamic State.

The Iraqi government claimed victory over Islamic State insurgents in Tikrit on Wednesday after a month-long battle for the city supported by Shi'ite militiamen and U.S.-led air strikes, saying that only small pockets of resistance remained.

The militants captured the city, about 140 km (90 miles) north of Baghdad, last June as they swept through most of Iraq's Sunni Muslim territories.

The U.S. official also acknowledged "that there are pockets (of Islamic State fighters in Tikrit) that still have to be eliminated and they are working their way through those pockets."

Recapturing Tikrit could give Baghdad momentum for a pivotal stage of the campaign: recapturing Mosul, the largest city in the north.

Still, the official renewed U.S. doubts that the battle for Mosul could happen before the fall, given the mid-June start of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, and the extreme summer heat.

"Given the pace of events as I see them now, and the environmental factors of Ramadan and the summer (heat), I think it’s probably going to be a little longer than we thought," the official said.


(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/0...ft-from-fighting-alongside-ukraine-rebels-to/

Ukraine

Russian military forces shift from fighting alongside Ukraine rebels to training them

Published April 03, 2015 · Associated Press

YENAKIEVE, Ukraine – On a recent spring morning, an important visitor watched Russian-backed rebels conduct infantry maneuvers on the sunlit training grounds outside this town in eastern Ukraine.

"The general is very pleased," rebel battalion commander Ostap Cherny told his troops, referring to the figure in camouflage encircled by five armed guards.

The man -- almost certainly a Russian military officer -- became alarmed when he saw two journalists approach. His entourage shielded him from all sides, warning that photos were forbidden, and the group soon sped off in a four-car motorcade, with the "general" safely inside a black Toyota SUV with no license plates.

Nearly a year into the conflict in Ukraine, the extent of Moscow's direct involvement has become clear: They may wear camouflage, but the Russians' presence in eastern Ukraine is hardly invisible.

At the same time, there has been a recent shift in tactics that appears aimed at minimizing Russia's military presence as part of an effort to persuade the West to lift its punishing economic sanctions.

Visits by The Associated Press to training grounds like those near Yenakiyeve and interviews with dozens of rebels reveal that Russian armed forces spearheaded some of the major separatist offensives, then withdrew quickly before they could be widely noticed.

More recently, as a shaky cease-fire has taken hold, Russia has kept fewer troops in Ukraine but has increased its training of rebels to make sure they are capable of operating sophisticated Russian weaponry and defending the territory they control. NATO and an independent London-based Russian scholar estimate that Russia has several hundred military trainers in eastern Ukraine.

Since hostilities began around mid-April of last year, the Ukrainian government and the West have accused Moscow of waging an undeclared war in Ukraine by sending thousands of Russian troops to fight on the side of the separatists and providing the weapons to drive back the Ukrainian military. At least 6,000 people have been killed on both sides.

While the Kremlin acknowledges that many Russians have fought in Ukraine as volunteers, and such volunteers are regularly seen at checkpoints in rebel-held areas, Russia firmly denies sending its troops across the border or arming the rebels.

Throughout the conflict and often a few days before a new flashpoint of fighting would erupt, AP reporters would see as many as 80 armored vehicles a day, mostly coming from the direction of the Russian border, carrying troops and towing artillery. Their ultimate origin was impossible to establish, and the rebels strongly discouraged reporters from photographing such convoys or following them.

While rebel commanders avoid talking to journalists about Russia's role in the conflict, separatist fighters routinely confirm that clothing and ammunition are among supplies they receive from Russia.

"Yes, our brothers are supplying us -- you know who," one fighter who goes by the nom de guerre Taicha said in November at a checkpoint in the crossroads town of Krasny Luch. Most rebels won't reveal their full names for fear of retaliation against their families.

Months later, on the front line west of Donetsk, a sniper who goes by the name of Kvadrat, or "Square," showed off his new rifle from Russia. "Uncle Vovka is helping us,"¥ he said, using a nickname for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Rebel fighters often casually thank Russia for the weapons they use, and two of them expressed gratitude to Russian troops for joining them in battles that they said they would not have been won without Russia's help.

When the town of Debaltseve finally fell to the separatists on Feb. 19 after weeks of fighting over the strategic railroad hub, the true victors were long gone.

"Our friends helped us," Andrei, a fighter who fought in Debaltseve and is based outside Luhansk, said with a shy smile. Unlike his platoon, which had nothing newer than a T-72 tank, he said the Russians had modern T-90s.

"They had everything, of course," said Andrei, who like other rebels would not give his last name because his family lives in an area controlled by Ukraine's government. "If they hadn't gone in (to Debaltseve), I don't know what we would have done."

Andrei and another fighter, Alexei, said Russian troops specifically stormed a fortified area outside Debaltseve that the rebels had been trying to capture for weeks.

Alexei, who was still based in Debaltseve in March, also saw fighting last summer in Ilovaysk, another major battle where the involvement of Russian troops was strongly suspected.

He was flippant about the Russian presence in Ilovaysk, saying "just a couple of tanks pushed through." But when asked about Russians in the battle for Debaltseve, he became animated: "I'm not going to hide it: Russians were here. They went in and left quickly."

In March, the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta published a rare interview with a Russian soldier who said he fought outside Debaltseve. Dorji Batomunkuyev, who was wounded Feb. 9, said his brigade of 120 troops and 31 tanks crossed into Ukraine in February, wearing no insignia and leaving behind all documents identifying them as Russians.

He recalled how the rebels were often reluctant to attack, while he and his fellow Russian soldiers had no choice but to obey orders and advance. Batomunkuyev, a native of the Siberian city of Ulan-Ude near the Mongolian border, could not be reached by the AP.

Igor Sutyagin, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, has spent months collecting evidence of the Russian presence in Ukraine, coming up with an exhaustive list of combat formations that were sent in.

The presence of large numbers of Russian troops has been a "permanent feature of the conflict" since August, Sutyagin said, with the number peaking at about 9,000 troops in late February at the end of the battle for Debaltseve.

His estimate stems from calculations based of sightings of weaponry on the ground as well as information that soldiers routinely post on social media.

Sutyagin corroborated the rebel fighters' descriptions of Russian troops entering Ukraine and leaving promptly after a battle is won. By his calculations, several hundred Russian servicemen are still in Ukraine, training local troops and coordinating rebel forces.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to numerous calls and faxes seeking comment for this story. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that Russia "firmly denies" reports of a Russian military presence in Ukraine.

NATO insists Russian troops continue to operate in eastern Ukraine despite the cease-fire, but it is unable to give exact figures. In recent months, according to Lt.-Col. Jay Janzen at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Russia has transferred more than 1,000 heavy weapons to the separatists, including tanks, armored vehicles, rocket systems, surface-to-air missiles and artillery.

NATO and the Ukrainian government in Kiev are convinced that Russian military personnel in rebel-held territories are providing training to a proxy force.

Gen. Philip Breedlove, commander of NATO forces in Europe, said the alliance's intelligence indicates that trainers from Russia's special forces have been instructing fighters in eastern Ukraine about sophisticated weaponry that the Russian military has supplied. Breedlove estimated 250-300 advisers are supervising the training.

One evening in November, a rebel garrison on the outskirts of Donetsk was on the move. Fighters busied themselves hauling their belongings into the back of pristine military transport trucks. One middle-aged rebel fighter, who identified himself only by the nom de guerre Kesha, said he and his comrades were leaving for training.

The instructors, Kesha let slip, were Russian nationals. Asked what his combat-hardened battalion still had to learn, Kesha said with a chuckle: "All kinds of things."

In visits to three training grounds in eastern Ukraine in March, AP reporters saw coal miners, drivers and handymen taking part in military drills involving hundreds of people and dozens of armored vehicles.

At the grounds outside Yenakiyeve, where the man referred to as the "general" observed maneuvers, the lack of formal military training among the rebels was obvious.

As infantry vehicles rolled toward a hill and opened fire, Cherny, their commander, started to shout into a walkie-talkie: "Why did you open fire? I didn't give you an order to open fire!"

Cherny told the rebels afterward that the "general" was happy: "He said you did fine. But I actually think it was not fine. There's still a lot of work to do."

The officer, whose camouflaged uniform bore no insignia, never approached the fighters and left with his entourage of protective guards after a brief word with the man in charge of the training grounds.

His black Toyota was seen later in the day parked outside a well-guarded hotel in Luhansk, less than 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Russian border.

The hotel appeared largely empty, although potential guests were told there was no vacancy. Its restaurant was frequented almost exclusively by middle-aged men, some in camouflage with epaulets. They didn't say a word in the presence of strangers.

Every corner of the hotel was guarded by armed men with the deportment of professional soldiers. Some slouched in chairs in the lobby for days, watching Russian TV. The glittering ammunition belts of their machine guns rested on the floor. One morning, a military truck arrived at the hotel with 12 men carrying large-caliber machine guns and sniper rifles.

Although hostilities in the region have subsided since a truce was reached in mid-February, continuing skirmishes in some areas feed anxieties that the conflict could flare up again across the entire 450-kilometer (280-mile) front line.

None of the rebel fighters interviewed said they believed the war was over, adding that they are preparing for battles.

Sutyagin said Russia has created a regular force of sorts that is "more or less" capable of defending the rebels' self-proclaimed republics in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

"One of the most important tasks now is to keep these republics as possible leverage on Ukraine," he said. "So they need to preserve these republics, make them combat-ready, and at the same time, make sure that the sanctions against Russia are lifted."

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/02/w...ts-norways-air-defenses-into-action.html?_r=0

Europe

Norway Reverts to Cold War Mode as Russian Air Patrols Spike

By ANDREW HIGGINS
APRIL 1, 2015

BODO, Norway — From his command post burrowed deep into a mountain of quartz and slate north of the Arctic Circle, the 54-year-old commander of the Norwegian military’s operations headquarters watches time flowing backward, pushed into reverse by surging Russian military activity redolent of East-West sparring during the Cold War.

“I am what you could call a seasoned Cold Warrior,” the commander, Lt. Gen. Morten Haga Lunde, said, speaking in an underground complex built to withstand a nuclear blast. As a result, he added, he is not too alarmed by increased Russian military activity along NATO’s northern flank.

“It is more or less the same as when I started,” said General Lunde, who began his career tracking Soviet warplanes as a Norwegian Air Force navigator in the early 1980s.

Continue reading the main story

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After a long hiatus following the December 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, when Moscow grounded its strategic bombers for lack of fuel, spare parts and will to project power, President Vladimir V. Putin’s newly assertive Russia “is back to normal behavior,” General Lunde said.

Last year, Norway intercepted 74 Russian warplanes off its coast, 27 percent more than in 2013, scrambling F-16 fighters from a military air base in Bodo to monitor and photograph them. This is far fewer than the hundreds of Soviet planes Norway tracked off its coast at the height of the Cold War. However, last year’s total was a drastic increase from the 11 Russian warplanes Norway spotted 10 years earlier.

In Norway, a country that takes pride in championing peace — witnessed in its brokering of pacts between Israelis and Palestinians and its awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize — what General Lunde called the “new old normal” has come as a jolt. It has set off debate over military spending and highlighted how quickly Mr. Putin has shredded the certainties of the post-Cold War era.

“Russia has created uncertainty about its intentions, so there is, of course, unpredictability,” Norway’s defense minister, Ine Eriksen Soreide, said in an interview in Oslo, adding that the military was being restructured to deal better with new risks, particularly in the Arctic.

Nobody expects Russia to invade. So far, its warplanes have taken care not to stray into Norwegian airspace, unlike in the Baltics, where they regularly violate borders.

But the spike in Russian military activity along Norway’s coast has added an unexpected measure of verisimilitude to a new television thriller called “Occupied,” which, based on an idea by Norway’s pre-eminent crime writer, Jo Nesbo, explores how the country would respond to conquest by Russia. The multipart series is scheduled to air in September. When Mr. Nesbo first proposed the idea years ago, he was told it was much too far-fetched.

Russia has itself fed the scaremongering with bursts of belligerent language, like the recent comment by Moscow’s ambassador to Copenhagen that Danish warships “will be targets for Russia’s nuclear weapons” if Denmark contributes radar to a Europe-based missile defense system planned by NATO. Denmark’s foreign minister, Martin Lidegaard, dismissed the threat as “unacceptable.”

Continue reading the main story

Russia’s muscle-flexing is due in part simply to the fact that the country is spending more on its military and has re-established abilities eroded during the post-Soviet chaos of the 1990s. When Mr. Putin first became president in 2000, Russia spent $9.2 billion on its military, but this has since risen 10 times and will increase again this year despite a slumping economy, hammered by a collapse in the price of oil and also by Western sanctions.

“The signal they are sending is that the situation in the 1990s was an exception,” General Lunde said.

Jens Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister who became NATO’s secretary general late last year, said that Russia’s new assertiveness was not just a result of increased funding and revived ability. He said it was also “part of a broader picture where we see that Russia is willing to use force,” most notably in Georgia in 2008 and, more recently, in Ukraine.

“It is this total picture that gives us reason for concern,” Mr. Stoltenberg said.

Ukraine, he added, is very different from Norway, which is a member of NATO. Ukraine is outside the alliance and has no prospect of joining any time soon. However, Mr. Stoltenberg said, Norway and other NATO countries that share a border with Russia also have to deal with Russian efforts to “intimidate its neighbors,” no matter what their status.

Russian air activity along the borders of NATO, the northern parts of which are patrolled by fighters based in Bodo, increased 50 percent from 2013 to last year, according to the alliance. At the same time, Russia sharply increased so-called snap military exercises, training maneuvers that, in violation of established procedure, were either announced at the last minute or kept secret.

One such exercise was used to cover Russia’s furtive seizure of Crimea in March 2014, but most seem aimed simply at showing NATO that Russia is back as a serious power. Among those was an exercise held last month across from Norway’s northern border with Russia — just a week after Norwegian forces held their own, much smaller exercise, Joint Viking, which was announced two years in advance.

Katarzyna Zysk, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Defense Studies, said Mr. Putin had emphasized strengthening Russia’s military presence in the Arctic; equipping the Northern Fleet, based in Murmansk, with new nuclear submarines; setting up a string of bases along the vast northern coast; and reopening abandoned Soviet-era military facilities like the base at Alakurtti, close to Finland.

Norway, she said, “does not count for Russia as Norway, but only as a member of NATO.”

“For them, it is the door to NATO,” she continued.

This link, she said, has made Russia particularly suspicious of Svalbard, a demilitarized cluster of Norwegian-controlled islands in the high Arctic that Moscow believes serves as a platform for eavesdropping and other covert activities by NATO.

While neither Russia nor Norway officially views the other as a direct threat, “the potential for inadvertent escalation is very serious,” Ms. Zysk said.

On at least one occasion, a Russian warplane has come dangerously close to hitting a Norwegian aircraft in what some see as a pattern of reckless flying. In January, two Russian Tu-95 bombers flew down the Norwegian coast and then, their transponders turned off, crossed into the English Channel, playing havoc with civilian air traffic and prompting the Royal Air Force to scramble.

If anything, however, Russia’s behavior has undermined its one clear and constant long-term objective: the weakening of NATO, which the Kremlin’s chief propagandist, Dmitry K. Kiselyov, described last year as a “cancerous tumor” that must be removed.

Norway, along with all but three other European members of NATO, still spends less than 2 percent of its gross domestic product on its military, the target that all 28 members of the alliance are supposed to meet.

But Ms. Soreide, the defense minister, said Norway had stopped cutting and would increase military spending this year by 3.3 percent, despite economic troubles caused by the collapse in the price of oil, Norway’s principal export.

Russia is “not viewed as a military threat,” she said, but it has changed the rules of the game by creating so much uncertainty about its intentions. “Until a threat arrives at your doorstep, you don’t know what will happen,” she added.

Finland, traditionally nonaligned and outside the alliance, has grown so concerned by Russia’s new approach that it has in recent months floated the idea of joining NATO, previously a taboo topic. Prime Minister Alexander Stubb has said he would like Finland to join the alliance one day, and this has growing, but still minority, support from a once deeply hostile public, according to opinion polls.

Russia’s assertiveness has also prodded NATO to strengthen its presence in the Baltics, where new alliance members like Estonia have no air force of their own but now host regular rotations of warplanes from other members, including Poland and Britain, to patrol the skies.

NATO’s tightening bonds are on display daily at the Bodo air base, where Norwegian fighter pilots, idled for years by the absence of Russian planes to follow, once again have a sense of purpose. A busy NATO outpost during the Cold War, Bodo served as a hub for U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union. Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot imprisoned in Moscow in 1960, was on his way to Bodo when his plane was shot down.

But once the Soviet Union unraveled, Bodo fell into the doldrums, leaving Norwegian fighter pilots with nothing much to do.

“After the Berlin Wall came down, everything was very quiet,” said the veteran commander of the 331st Air Squadron, whose F-16 fighters are on round-the-clock alert as part of NATO’s air defense network. “Now it is a lot more interesting.”

Linked by secure telephone to the Combined Air Operations Center of NATO in Uedem, Germany, his squadron gets a call whenever Russian planes appear off the Norwegian coast and then has only 15 minutes to get airborne.

“It is like doing extreme sports,” the commander said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of military rules. He described a special thrill in being able to get close to and photograph new Russian aircraft, adding that he had been the first to take a picture of Russia’s Su-34, a new fighter bomber. “That was very exciting,” he said.

“We are now getting back to the normal way of thinking,” the squadron commander added.

But he questioned whether public opinion had caught up with the fact that a predictable post-Cold War era of East-West comity was now over. “The problem in Norway is that we are so rich, fat and happy that we are not worried enough,” he said.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-02/u-s-misses-real-threat-of-china-s-fake-islands

Declassified
U.S. Misses Real Threat of China's Fake Islands

Josh Rogin
comments i156 Apr 2, 2015 6:00 AM EDT
By Josh Rogin

The Barack Obama administration has been very busy dealing with nuclear negotiations with Iran, a war against the Islamic State, a new conflict in Yemen and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Yet the understandable focus on these other crises has obscured China's efforts to speed up its militarization of the South China Sea. Now, Chinese progress has reached the point that senior Pentagon officials and Congressional leaders are demanding the administration do something about it.

Quicktake Territorial Disputes

There is no shortage of evidence of China’s rapid buildup of infrastructure and armaments in disputed territory far from its physical borders. Satellite photos released last month show that in the past year, China has built several entirely new islands in disputed waters using land-reclamation technology, and then constructed military-friendly facilities on them. In the Spratly Islands, new Chinese land masses have been equipped with helipads and anti-aircraft towers, raising regional concerns that Beijing is using thinly veiled military coercion to establish control in an area where six Asian nations have claims.

Admiral Harry Harris, commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, sounded the alarm in a speech in Australia on Wednesday, calling the Chinese project “unprecedented” and saying that the construction is part of a larger campaign of provocative actions against smaller Asian states.

"China is creating a 'Great Wall of Sand' with dredges and bulldozers over the course of months,” he warned, adding that it raised "serious questions about Chinese intentions."

For example, satellite photos taken by Airbus Defence and Space and published by Jane's in February, show that over the past year China has built an 800,000-square-foot island on top of Hughes Reef in the Spratly Islands, where no island existed before. China also began a reclamation and construction project at nearby Gavin’s Reef. Both islands now have helipads and anti-aircraft towers.

China has also expanded its already created islands on the Spratlys' Johnson South Reef, Cuarteron Reef, Gaven Reef and Fiery Cross Reef -- the last of which can accommodate an airstrip, according to the U.S. military. Harris said China has created more than 1.5 square miles of “artificial landmass” in the South China Sea. China’s claims are based on what’s known as the nine-dash line, which if implemented would grant China 90 percent of the entire Sea.

Top Asia watchers in Congress have been asking the Obama administration to confront China on the issue and devote more attention to the increasingly tense situation in the region. In the late hours of the debate over the Senate budget last weekend, three senators added two amendments aimed at pushing the Obama administration to reinvigorate its so-called Pivot to Asia.

The first of those amendments, sponsored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee members Robert Menendez, Cory Gardner and Ben Cardin, calls on the administration to develop and make public a comprehensive strategy to ensure freedom of navigation in the Pacific. It would also allow Congress to fund more training and exercises by the U.S. military and its Asian partners.

A second amendment, authored by Gardner, the new chairman of the Asia subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calls for an independent agency such as the Government Accountability Office to review what the administration is actually spending on the Asia pivot and to make recommendations on how it might be better managed.

“It’s important that the American people have a full accounting of the resources that have been devoted to this important policy and whether they have been prioritized effectively,” Gardner told me in a statement.

These pieces of legislation are the latest effort by Congress to find out exactly what the administration is doing to counter China’s moves. On March 19, all four leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees wrote a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter calling on the administration to wake up to the graveness of the situation in the South China Sea. “Without a comprehensive strategy for addressing the PRC’s broader policy and conduct," the senators wrote, "longstanding interests of the United States, as well as our allies and partners, stand at considerable risk."

The letter points out that $5 trillion in global trade transits through the South China Sea each year. They assert that China stands in violation of 2002 agreement it signed with the ASEAN countries in which all parties pledged self-restraint and avoid actions that could complicate the situation or escalate tensions.

Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told me that the Chinese are taking advantage of the Obama administration’s focus on the Middle East: “China understands that where this administration is, it’s a place where they can in fact move ahead in the world.”

Asked about the congressional letter, State Department spokesman Jeff Radke insisted that the U.S. is increasing its coordination with countries affected by China’s moves and confronting the Chinese leadership privately. “We have consistently and frequently raised with China our concerns over its large-scale land reclamation, which undermines peace and stability in the South China Sea, and more broadly in the Asia Pacific region,” he said.

But James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, testified to Congress last month that the Chinese don’t seem to be getting the message. He called their actions “aggressive” and said Chinese claims in the South China Sea are “exorbitant.”

“Although China is looking for stable ties with the United States, it’s more willing to accept bilateral and regional tensions in pursuit of its interests, particularly on maritime sovereignty issues,” Clapper said.

The Beijing government has stated clearly that it believes its expansion in the South China Sea is both legal and non-threatening, refusing to address the region’s concerns in any substantive way. It complained loudly when the U.S. and India took the relatively innocuous step of issuing a joint statement referring to their desire to address the issue.

No matter the state of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, the Obama administration's lack of response to China’s maritime aggression is worrisome. China is testing how far it can push the status quo before Washington does something. The Pentagon and Congress are clearly telling Obama that the response needs to come before China’s military takeover of the South China Sea is complete.

To contact the author on this story:
Josh Rogin at joshrogin@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor on this story:
Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net

 

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://www.realclearworld.com/blog/...g_competitiveness_on_arms_markets_111092.html

Is Russia Losing Competitiveness on Arms Markets?

Posted by Samuel Bendett on April 2, 2015
Comments 3

Despite recent reports that Russia, along with the United States and China, is a top military exporter, "Russian military equipment manufacturers are becoming less competitive in the global arms market and have been forced to withdraw from key sectors."

That at least is the view of Alexander Brindikov, chairman of the advisory group to the general director of Rosoboronexport, Russia's main arms export entity. Global competition from countries using technologies analogous to Russia's, such as Ukrainian and Chinese exports, challenges Russia in arms markets that are increasingly crowded. Prior to the fighting in Eastern Ukraine and the conflict over Crimea, Ukraine used to deliver technical components and technology to its Russian counterparts, maintaining the relationship established in the Soviet era, when certain key military industries were based in Ukraine. According to Brindikov, there are "internal problems" with specific Russian industries, such as electronics and high-tech equipment. Russian daily Svobpodnaya Pressa (SV) decided to verify these conclusions and investigate the outlook for Russia's military exports in 2015. "For example," continued Brindikov, "Russian armored vehicles face increasing competition from Germany, China, and even Ukraine. We have become uncompetitive, we had problems with the industry, with the delivery of the equipment. Among the industries where Russian arms manufacturers are facing difficulties to compete are artillery systems. We are in a bad position there."

Despite such pessimism, there is little reason to think that Russian arms exports are going to suffer. Alexander Fomin, head of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC), recently said that over the past 11 years, the supply of Russian arms abroad tripled. Russia's arms exports in 2014 exceeded $15.5 billion. The current portfolio of military orders amounts to $48 billion, according to Fomin. Responding to global instability and the proliferation of conflict, Russia has re-established military-technical cooperation and concluded contracts with Nigeria, Namibia, and Rwanda. "Our Asian portfolio accounts for about 60 percent, Africa for more than 30 percent," said Fomin. Russia is also keen on expanding military exports to Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, and Brazil.

However, this year, according to Fomin, exporting weapons will be more difficult, due both to sanctions and to violations of industrial integration, primarily with Ukrainian enterprises, and the resultant scarcity of parts. Svobodnaya Pressa asked several military experts whether Brindikov's statements are reason for real concern; whether Russian industry is indeed becoming less competitive; and whether Ukrainian and Chinese technology could in fact oust Russia from global arms markets.

Vladimir Shvarev, deputy director of the Center for Analysis of World Arms Trade (TSAMTO), told Svobodnaya Pressa that he believes Brindikov exaggerated - Russia was already uncompetitive in certain arms markets. "When it comes to unmanned aerial vehicles, various types of electronic equipment, communications, etcetera, we have been traditionally poorly represented in these markets. However, recently the situation concerning domestic UAVs is quietly changing. For example, we entered into several contracts for light drones, including with Vietnam. When it comes to field artillery systems, Sweden was and remains the traditional leader, as well as the US and UK, although we are not conceding our small market share."

Shvarev further noted that Russia has to address gaps in precision electronic equipment and indigenous production. "Our country has actively pursued a program of import substitution. In particular, the domestic VK-2500 helicopter engine will replace its Ukrainian counterpart in all helicopters. Of course, such a transformation is not possible without certain delays."

Competition and quality

Addressing Chinese competition, Shvarev noted that Beijing actively competes with Russia in the market segments where Russian exports are most competitive. "China strengthens its presence in certain markets due low cost of their equipment, and by providing easy loans for the purchase of this equipment," he said. "This is the power of China, and I consider them our main global competitors."

Viktor Murakhovski, chief editor of Arsenal of the Fatherland and a member of the Expert Council to the Chairman of Russia's Military-Industrial Commission, disagreed with Brindikov. "Russian naval artillery ammunition of the 130mm, 100mm and 76mm calibers is popular in the global markets," Murakhovski said. "India alone purchased an extra batch of our ammunition for their T-90S tanks. We are quite confident when it comes to international markets that have traditionally used Russian ammo and supplies."

Murakhovsi added that Ukrainian situation had almost no effect on Russian exports.

SV further asked whether Ukraine really offers serious competition to Russian arms exports. "I strongly doubt that," said Murakhovski. "Now everyone prefers to break all contacts with the Ukrainians. Judge for yourself - Kiev recently decided to terminate a contract with the Democratic Republic of Congo for the delivery of 50 modernized T-64BM1M tanks. As I understand it, their contract with Thailand for the delivery of the Oplot main battle tank is on the rocks - the Thai army was supposed to replace its outdated M41 American tanks with Ukrainian machines. Then there is the story of the 42 armored personnel carriers which Iraq sent back to Ukraine, refusing even to unload military equipment from the vessel."

Murakhovski said Ukraine's military industry has dried up. Clearly it has indeed suffered considerably since the start of hostilities with Russia-backed rebels, although there is still hope that Kiev can rebuild its domestic and export capacity following the cessation of hostilities. Military industry accounts for a good percentage of Ukrainian gross domestic product and involves large segments of the country's economy.

To be fair, Russia's defense industry has had its own issues securing sales on the global market. A few years back, Algeria refused delivery of Mig-29 Russian fighter jets due to the poor quality of the aircraft. In fact, such quality issues were severe enough that the Russian government began purchases of these aircraft in order to keep Mig manufacturers from going bankrupt. Russia also faced difficulties with its long-term client India when it came to the sale and modernization of an old Soviet aircraft carrier for Indian use.

Murakhovski further commented on China: "Despite the fact that Beijing came in third place in the export of arms and military equipment, by our own indicators they are still very far behind. We are close competitors, but mainly in those markets where buyers have limited budgets. Yes, Beijing is actively dumping and refuses to enter into a variety of offset agreements. But I must say that China agrees to the terms to which Russia will never agree. We are working with foreign customers for real money."

 

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Nuke deal: World powers, Iran seal breakthrough framework

Apr 3, 1:11 AM (ET)
By GEORGE JAHN and MATTHEW LEE

(AP) Iranians celebrate on a street in northern Tehran, Iran, Thursday, April 2, 2015,...
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LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — Capping exhausting and contentious talks, Iran and world powers sealed a breakthrough agreement Thursday outlining limits on Iran's nuclear program to keep it from being able to produce atomic weapons. The Islamic Republic was promised an end to years of crippling economic sanctions, but only if negotiators transform the plan into a comprehensive pact.

They will try to do that in the next three months.

The United States and Iran, long-time adversaries who hashed out much of the agreement, each hailed the efforts of their diplomats over days of sleepless nights in Switzerland. Speaking at the White House, President Barack Obama called it a "good deal" that would address concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called it a "win-win outcome."

Those involved have spent 18 months in broader negotiations that were extended twice since an interim accord was reached shortly after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani entered office. That deal itself was the product of more than a year of secret negotiations between the Obama administration and Iran, a country the U.S. still considers the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.

(AP) From left, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica...
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Opponents of the emerging accord, including Israel and Republican leaders in Congress, reacted with skepticism. They criticized the outline for failing to do enough to curb Iran's potential to produce nuclear weapons or to mandate intrusive enough inspections. Obama disagreed.

"This framework would cut off every pathway that Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon," he declared. "This deal is not based on trust. It's based on unprecedented verification."

If implemented, the understandings reached Thursday would mark the first time in more than a decade of diplomatic efforts that Iran's nuclear efforts would be rolled back.

It commits Tehran to significant cuts in centrifuges, the machines that can spin uranium gas to levels used in nuclear warheads. Of the nearly 20,000 centrifuges Iran now has installed or running at its main enrichment site, the country would be allowed to operate just over 5,000. Much of its enriched stockpiles would be neutralized. A planned reactor would be reconstructed so it produced no weapons-grade plutonium. Monitoring and inspections by the U.N. nuclear agency would be enhanced.

America's negotiating partners in Europe strongly backed the result. President Francois Hollande of France, which had pushed the U.S. for a tougher stance, endorsed the accord while warning that "sanctions lifted can be re-established if the agreement is not applied."

(AP) President Barack Obama speaks the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington,...
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Obama sought to frame the deal as a salve that reduces the chances of the combustible Middle East becoming even more unstable with the introduction of a nuclear-armed Iran. Many fear that would spark an arms race that could spiral out of control in a region rife with sectarian rivalry, terrorist threats and weak or failed states.

Obama said he had spoken with Saudi Arabia's King Salman and that he'd invite him and other Arab leaders to Camp David this spring to discuss security strategy. The Sunni majority Saudis have made veiled threats about creating their own nuclear program to counter Shia-led Iran.

The American leader also spoke by telephone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, perhaps the sharpest critic of the diplomacy with Iran. Netanyahu told Obama a deal based on the agreement "would threaten the survival of Israel." The White House said Obama assured Netanyahu that the agreement would not diminish U.S. concerns about Iran's sponsorship of terrorism and threats toward Israel.

Obama saved his sharpest words for members of Congress who have threatened to either try to kill the agreement or approve new sanctions against Iran. Appearing in the Rose Garden, Obama said the issues at stake are "bigger than politics."

"These are matters of war and peace," he said, and if Congress kills the agreement "international unity will collapse, and the path to conflict will widen."

(AP) President Barack Obama boards Air Force One, Thursday, April 2, 2015, at Andrews Air...
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Hawks on Capitol Hill reacted slowly to the news from the Swiss city of Lausanne, perhaps because the framework was far more detailed than many diplomats had predicted over a topsy-turvy week of negotiation.

House Speaker John Boehner said it would be "naive to suggest the Iranian regime will not continue to use its nuclear program, and any economic relief, to further destabilize the region."

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said his panel would vote this month on legislation giving Congress the right to vote on a final deal. Freshman Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who penned a letter that many GOP senators signed last month to Iran's leaders, said he would work "to protect America from this very dangerous proposal."

Many of the nuclear limits on Iran would be in place for a decade, while others would last 15 or 20 years. Sanctions related to Iran's nuclear programs would be suspended by the U.S., the United Nations and the European Union after the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Iran's compliance.

In a joint statement, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Iran's Zarif called the agreement a "decisive step." Highlighting Iran's effort to show a new face of its government, Zarif then held a news conference, answering many questions in English, and Obama's statement was carried live and uncensored on Iranian state TV.

(AP) President Barack Obama walks to the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington,...
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Still, all sides spoke with a sense of caution.

"We have taken a major step, but are still some way away from where we want to be," Zarif told reporters, even as he voiced hope that a final agreement might ease suspicion between the U.S. and Iran, which haven't had diplomatic relations since the 1979 overthrow of the shah and the subsequent U.S. Embassy hostage crisis in Tehran.

Zarif said the agreement would show "our program is exclusively peaceful, has always been and always will remain exclusively peaceful." But he also said it would not hinder the country's pursuit of atomic energy for civilian purposes. "We will continue enriching," he said. "We will continue research and development." He said the heavy water reactor would be "modernized."

In India, Syed Akbaruddin, a spokesman for the External Affairs Ministry, said Friday his country welcomed the deal.

"The announcement yesterday underlines the success of diplomacy and dialogue, which India has always supported and which we hope would lead to a comprehensive agreement by June 30," he said.

(AP) Graphic locates known sites related to nuclear research and production in Iran; 3c x...
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Kerry lashed out at critics who have demanded that Iran halt all uranium enrichment and completely close a deeply buried underground facility that may be impervious to an air attack.

"Simply demanding that Iran capitulate makes a nice sound bite, but it is not a policy, it is not a realistic plan," Kerry said.

The final breakthrough came a day after a flurry of overnight sessions between Kerry and Zarif, and meetings involving the six powers at a luxury hotel in Lausanne.

As late as Thursday afternoon, it still appeared an agreement might be beyond reach as the U.S. pushed to spell out concrete commitments and Iran adamantly demanded that only a vague statement be presented. In an apparent compromise, some details were noted in the general statement and others were saved for a more detailed position paper issued by the White House and State Department.

Some of that tension remained.

"There is no need to spin using 'fact sheets' so early on," Zarif tweeted. He also questioned some of the assertions contained in the document, such as the speed of a U.S. sanctions drawdown.

---

Associated Press writers Julie Pace and Bradley Klapper contributed to this report from Washington.

 

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Zhou Yongkang indictment latest in China's political purges

Apr 3, 5:49 AM (ET)
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN

BEIJING (AP) — The indictment of China's former security boss Zhou Yongkang marks the latest chapter in the Communist Party's history of purging itself of leaders who've fallen out of favor politically or whose alleged crimes appear too serious to go unnoticed.

Zhou is charged with corruption and the leaking of state secrets. As a former member of the party's all-power Politburo Standing Committee, he would be the highest-ranking Chinese official, sitting or retired, to go before a court since the 1980-1981 treason trial of Mao Zedong's wife and other members of the "Gang of Four" who persecuted political opponents during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

Many other purged officials have been pushed out without trial, sometimes with fatal consequences.

---

LIU SHAOQI _- Once considered the anointed successor to communist leader Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi was swept from power at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Formerly upheld as the model of a proper communist, Liu was vilified as a traitor and the party's chief enemy, leading to his death in detention in 1969 following years of physical mistreatment, medical neglect and constant interrogation. He was later formally vindicated.

LIN BIAO _- Another putative heir-apparent to Mao, former star general Lin Biao died in a plane crash following his last-minute flight from China in 1971 after allegedly plotting a coup against the party leadership. Lin emerged after Liu's downfall, but fell out of favor amid the constant infighting and swirling intrigues of the Cultural Revolution.

JIANG QING _- Mao's third wife and leader of the radical Gang of Four that guided the Cultural Revolution, Jiang Qing was arrested after attempting to seize power in the inner-party struggle that followed Mao's death in 1976. Jiang was accused of persecuting political enemies and causing the suffering of millions, but claimed at her 1980 trial that she had only been doing Mao's bidding. Sentenced to life in prison, she committed suicide while on medical release in 1991.

HU YAOBANG _- Hu was credited with overseeing market-oriented economic reforms as party leader in the 1980s, but was also attacked by opponents for being too liberal and inspiring calls for greater political openness. Demoted in 1987, his death two years later provided the initial spark for the student-led pro-democracy protests crushed in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

ZHAO ZIYANG _- After succeeding Hu as party general secretary, Zhao Ziyang continued to advance popular economic reforms along with greater political transparency. After opposing the use of force against the 1989 student protests, Zhao disappeared from view and remained under house arrest in Beijing until his death in 2005. Despite his political exile and loss of freedom, Zhao was never charged with a crime or expelled from the party.

BO XILAI _- The son of a powerful Communist Party elder, Bo Xilai rose swiftly through the party ranks, despite making numerous enemies among the top leadership. His ultimate downfall came in 2012 in the midst of a scandal over his wife's alleged murder of a British business associate. Bo was subsequently ejected from the party and put on trial for corruption, although he vigorously denied the charges in a trial that was broadcast on television and publicized in court documents in a rare show of judicial openness.

 

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Russia: Korean THAAD Deployment Is a Security Threat

Russia joins China in voicing strong objections to the U.S. missile defense system.

By John Power
April 02, 2015

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On Thursday, the Russian ambassador to South Korea called the proposed deployment of a U.S. missile defense system on the peninsula a security threat to the region, the third time in as many weeks that he has weighed in on the issue.

In an interview with Yonhap News Agency, Alexander Timonin, who served as the ambassador to North Korea until last year, said the deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) on the Korean Peninsula would constitute a security threat to both Russia and the wider region.

“What concerns us is that a U.S. missile defense system could be placed in areas not far from Russia, adding to worries over THAAD’s radar system or technology,” he told Yonhap.

U.S. officials have continually insisted that THAAD would be aimed at guarding against North Korea’s growing ballistic missile capabilities.

Timonin’s comments were a continuation of strong lobbying against THAAD by the ambassador in recent weeks. China has also strongly objected to any deployment near its territory, leaving Seoul struggling to balance relations between the U.S. and two of its regional neighbors.

Until recently, the question of whether South Korea would join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in the face of U.S. opposition had been another ambiguity challenging its diplomatic balancing act.

But while Seoul ended speculation on the AIIB last month by announcing it would join the bank, the THAAD issue has become a controversy that refuses to go away. While the administration of President Park Geun-hye has sought to avoid addressing the issue directly, in line with a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” senior members of her own party have openly expressed their support for the missile defense system. Other domestic political figures, especially on the liberal side of the aisle, have voiced opposition, citing the potential strain on regional relations.

Russia’s objections to THAAD relate to its range, which extends far beyond the Korean Peninsula, according to Alexander Vorontsov, a Korea specialist at the Moscow-based Russian Academy of Sciences.

“Of course it has multi-purpose tasks. One of the tasks, of course, is North Korea,” Vorontsov told The Diplomat on Thursday. “But, additionally, the capability of this system allows this equipment to intercept missiles, Russian… missiles for example. So, yes, unfortunately, there are grounds for concern vis-a-vis [the] security situation of Russia… and the Chinese.”

But some Koreans have received the Russian and Chinese objections coldly.

Song Dae-sung, a professor of political science and former brigadier general with the South Korean Air Force, said that Russia and China preventing THAAD would be the same as South Korea demanding the removal of Russian and Chinese missile placements that could target the Korean Peninsula.

“If China and Russia really hate the placement of THAAD in South Korea, they can take resolute action to ensure the destruction of weapons of mass destruction held by North Korea and a halt to their development,” the Konkuk University professor told The Diplomat late last month. “The insistence that we only consider the South Korea-China and South Korea-Russia relationships and not deploy THAAD, which is opposed by China and Russia, is an insistence that neglects the absolute value of national security.”

 

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April 2 2015 8:00 PM

An Old Threat Made New

Why nuclear weapons suddenly matter more than ever.

By Anne Applebaum
Comments 42

One friend of mine laughs when he remembers the nuclear “drills” of his childhood that involved crouching under the desks in his school classroom. Another friend has a vivid memory of a lesson featuring photographs of mushroom clouds. On older buildings in some U.S. cities, one can still see faded yellow-and-black “fallout shelter” signs. Nowadays they look almost quaint, adding character to a street the way an old-fashioned gas lamp would.

In politics, the discussion of nuclear weapons has for the most part faded into the world of high theory. We do talk about “nuclear proliferation” as a bad thing, and periodically U.S. presidents offer utopian visions of a world free of nukes altogether. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, most of the time we in the West—not just the United States but Germany, France, and Britain, too—act as if nuclear weapons don’t exist and aren’t important. Except, of course, that they do and they are. They also continue to shape international politics in fundamental ways we don’t often acknowledge.

The current Russian war in Ukraine is an excellent example. On the surface, it does seem perplexing that NATO, the largest, most powerful military alliance in the world, with access to all of the most advanced U.S. technology, cannot aid Ukraine, a country in NATO’s backyard—by which I mean that it is unable even to lend a few anti-tank weapons to a would-be democracy that is defending itself against a kleptocratic authoritarian state.

But even though we have helped other countries defend themselves in the past, we can’t seem to help Ukraine. None of the excuses quite makes sense. The German chancellor keeps repeating that there is “no military solution” to this conflict, when there most evidently is. The American president keeps trying to downplay the Russian-Ukrainian war as a minor “regional” problem, when it most evidently is not.

No one wants to acknowledge the truth: We won’t sell even defensive weapons to Ukraine because Russia is a nuclear power, and because Russia keeps reminding us of that fact. Last month, the Russian government declared it had put nuclear-capable missiles near the city of Kaliningrad, in striking range of Warsaw, Stockholm, and possibly Berlin. To underline the point, they also put a few more missiles in Crimea. During the last NATO summit, Russia suddenly decided to get out its nuclear weapons and “practice” loading them. During its 2009 military exercises, Russia also “practiced” a nuclear strike on Warsaw. Of course these are bluffs and threats, designed to make everyone nervous. But because there is a sliver of a chance that Putin is crazy enough to kill millions of people, they work.

Bluffs and threats have also worked well for Iran, which hasn’t acquired nuclear weapons yet but keeps threatening to do so. In truth, the Iranian regime poses multiple, critical dangers to its own citizens, one of whom was recently sentenced to death for “insulting the prophet,” as well as to its neighbors. Without Iranian support for Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian crisis might have been resolved long before ISIS ever appeared; Iranian support has long kept Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations in business, and by some accounts, Iraq will soon be an Iranian satellite state, too. Nevertheless, Western diplomacy toward Iran has for a long time been sharply and almost exclusively focused on—one might even say distorted by—nuclear weapons. Because there is a sliver of a chance the Islamic republic is crazy enough not only to acquire nukes but also to use them to kill millions of people, this tactic works.

It’s a curious reversal of roles: In the 1980s, the Soviet leadership was terrified that a cowboy in the White House—someone who was so nutty he made jokes about signing “legislation that will outlaw Russia forever”—might just flip a switch and send a missile. Nowadays, it’s we who fear the madmen in foreign capitals, while our own large nuclear arsenal goes unmentioned and unacknowledged by a Western political class that is frankly embarrassed that it still exists.

And this, paradoxically, is extremely dangerous. If we truly want ourselves and our allies to be safe, we might occasionally have to drop a mention of NATO’s nuclear weapons into the conversation. There is no need to resurrect the Cold War, but the resurrection of the word deterrence might not be such a bad idea, if only to make the madmen think twice before they carry out nuclear exercises or secretly enrich some plutonium. Ninety-nine percent of nuclear strategy is a stupid psychological game, which no one plays with enthusiasm. But if you refuse to play it at all, then you lose.

 

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N. Korea fires short-range projectiles for 2nd straight day

Apr 3, 7:48 AM (ET)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired short-range projectiles into the sea for a second consecutive day Friday in an apparent protest against ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills, South Korean officials said.

Four projectiles with a range of 140 kilometers (87 miles) were fired into waters off North Korea's west coast on Friday, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. It said North Korea also fired the same type of short-range projectile on Thursday.

It said the projectiles were seen as a protest against the military drills, which North Korea says are a rehearsal for an invasion.

South Korea and the U.S. have repeatedly said the drills are defensive in nature. The drills began early last month and are to end on April 24.

North Korea usually responds to South Korea-U.S. drills with its own military training involving missile and rocket launches. South Korean officials said North Korea fired missiles into the sea at least two times last month.

Earlier this year, North Korea said it was willing to impose a temporary moratorium on its nuclear tests if Washington canceled the drills. The U.S. rejected the offer.

The U.S. stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea in a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

 

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China sends new anti-piracy mission to Gulf of Aden

Apr 3, 7:16 AM (ET)

BEIJING (AP) — China dispatched a naval squadron to conduct anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia on Friday after diverting other ships to help evacuate citizens from war-torn Yemen.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the three ships with their 800 sailors and a team of special forces soldiers left the eastern port of Zhoushan bound for the Gulf of Aden.

Since 2008, China has contributed ships to multinational anti-piracy patrols that escort commercial ships and respond to piracy threats.

Earlier this week, China dispatched three navy ships to rescue Chinese citizens and other foreign nationals from fighting in Yemen. They included 176 Pakistanis who were flown home after being evacuated to Djibouti on Thursday.

China first carried out such a mission in 2011, when one of its most sophisticated warships and military transport aircraft helped in the evacuation of about 35,000 Chinese citizens from Libya.

No Chinese have been reported killed or injured in the fighting in Yemen, which now threatens a potentially dangerous clash between U.S.-allied Arab states and Iran.

 

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Roadside bomb kills 7 Afghans east of Kabul

Apr 3, 9:40 AM (ET)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan official says a roadside bombing has killed seven people in a province east of Kabul.

Din Mohammad Darwish, spokesman for the Logar provincial governor, says the attack happened on Friday morning in Baraki Barak district when a vehicle that two families were riding in struck a roadside bomb.

Darwish blamed the Taliban for planting the bomb. He says four women, two children and a man were among the dead.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but roadside bombs have been a weapon of choice for Taliban insurgents for many years. They are often used to target officials and members of the security forces but also kill many civilians.

 

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Explosive detonates in Mali's capital, killing 2

Apr 3, 11:49 AM (ET)
By BABA AHMED

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — An explosive went off, apparently by accident, Friday in a house on the outskirts of Mali's capital, killing two people, an army spokesman said.

The explosive detonated while a man was handling it, said Commander Modibo Nama Traore. The man and a woman were killed. An Associated Press reporter saw another woman at the scene who was wounded, with bandages on her foot and head.

Malian and U.N. troops have surrounded the house, which is close to a mosque. Burn marks could be seen on its walls from afar.

This is the second violent incident in Bamako in recent weeks. In March, masked gunmen killed opened fire on a restaurant popular with foreigners, killing five people.

Officials had long feared an attack in the capital, which is in Mali's south. But most of the violence is concentrated in the north, which was overrun by Islamic militants following a 2012 coup.

French forces led a military operation in 2013 that largely expelled the al-Qaida-linked extremists, but clashes and attacks continue there. U.N. peacekeepers are trying to stabilize the north, but have often come under attack themselves.

 

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Analysis: Iran deal's missing details spell trouble

Oren Dorell, USA TODAY 7:56 a.m. EDT April 3, 2015

The landmark nuclear deal reached Thursday between world powers and Iran is being touted as a victory by both Iran and President Obama. But missing details could spell trouble ahead.

According to a four-page fact sheet released by the White House, the framework agreement would curtail Iran's nuclear program enough so that the White House can make sure it doesn't produce a bomb.

"Iran will never be permitted to develop a nuclear weapon," Obama said after the arrangement was announced.


USA TODAY
U.S., Iran reach historic nuclear framework agreement


The fact sheet goes into great detail on how Iran's nuclear program would be restricted over a decade to make sure Obama achieves his goal of a minimum one-year "breakout" period — the time it would take for Iran to produce enough fuel for a bomb should it renege on the deal. Obama says that would give the international community enough time to detect Iran's cheating and respond.

Here are five major issues at the center of Iran's nuclear deal. VPC

Missing, however, are details on when sanctions would be lifted based on Iran's compliance with the deal. That is important because the sanctions have strangled Iran's economy and brought the government to the negotiating table. Yet international leverage to enforce compliance dissipates as the sanctions are lifted.

A determined Iran, desperate to sell its oil on the open market again, could meet the terms necessary to gain significant sanctions relief in just two or three years, says Jofi Joseph, a former director for non-proliferation in Obama's National Security Council.


USA TODAY
Iran nuclear agreement means more wrangling ahead


"The Iranians certainly want sanctions removed as fast as possible," Joseph said. Once the international sanctions are suspended, they become very difficult to restore, he said. Russia, China and many European Union countries are keen on resuming trade with oil-rich Iran, whose 81 million people are hungry for Western and Chinese products.

Omri Ceren, an analyst at The Israel Project, a strong critic of the agreement, said the lack of specificity on when the sanctions would be lifted already is creating conflicting statements between the White House and Iran on the timing.

Another problematic omission, Joseph and others say, is how Iran will explain evidence uncovered by U.N. inspectors that it worked toward developing nuclear weapons in the past, something it has consistently denied.

The evidence was a key rationale for U.N. sanctions, but the framework agreement does not say whether the sanctions would be lifted before Iran addresses the issue. It's also unclear how the IAEA inspectors will look for any remaining covert nuclear facilities without such an accounting, Joseph said.

The White House description doesn't clearly address whether Iran's military sites would be included in inspections, something the Iranian government has flatly ruled out. "If there's a covert program" at those sites, "the (U.N. inspectors) won't be able to inspect them," said Michael Rubin, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

Congress, which has been skeptical of a deal with Iran, is sure to raise questions about these missing details. Obama has promised to give lawmakers a full account of the terms, many of which may not have been disclosed.

Despite its shortcomings, Joseph, who participated in Iran planning before he left government work, said the deal as described by the White House could still accomplish its goals:

• Iran must reduce its installed centrifuges by two-thirds and its 11-ton stockpile of enriched uranium fuel by 98%, modify its heavy water reactor at Arak so it cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium, and stop producing uranium fuel at its underground facility at Fordow.

• Iran will give the United Nations inspectors access to its nuclear supply chain, with continuous surveillance of certain facilities and access to suspicious sites.

• A "snap back" provision restores sanctions if Iran is caught cheating.

• Restrictions range from 10 to 25 years, longer than expected.

That amounts to "a definite victory" for Obama, Joseph said, "a much stronger agreement than what any of us thought we'd get."

 

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Odierno: Readiness at historically low levels

By Kathleen Curthoys , Staff writer 9:20 a.m. EDT April 2, 2015

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Army is "only generating enough readiness for immediate consumption" while grappling with cuts that have left only a third of the service's brigades ready, the chief of staff said Wednesday.

"It's incumbent on all of us to understand that further reductions simply will put us into a place we simply cannot go," Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno said at the AUSA Institute of Land Warfare Global Force Symposium and Exposition here.

He amplified the dangers he sees now and ahead, particularly with the effects of sequestration.

"Today our nation is facing enormous challenges. I believe we are at a strategic inflection point," Odierno said. "Our nation is facing determined enemies across the globe that have the desire, the capabilities and with increasing capacity to threaten not only our security, but the security of our allies. We continue to witness change in velocity of instability, unforeseen just a few years ago."

Digital Show Daily: Complete coverage of the AUSA Global Defense Symposium and Exposition

He issued a challenge for the Army community to continue focusing on the importance of a strong national defense.

The enemy is diverse and evolving rapidly, he said. Complex threats come through a combination of transnational extremism and the organizations associated with them.

"In the Middle East we're seeing the expansion of sectarian conflict that we have not seen before. Extremist organizations are aligning with ISIL and attempting to proliferate themselves not only across the Middle East but North Africa," he said.

ISIL is attempting to establish a caliphate centered in Iraq and Syria. Iran's aggression across the Middle East is raising tensions in places such as Yemen, where order has collapsed, provoking a renewed regional military response, he said.

Anarchy, extremism and terrorism are running rampant in Libya, and parts of north and central Africa. In Europe continued Russian aggression and its intervention in Ukraine is challenging the status quo as well as the resolve of the European union and NATO, Odierno said.

"China's modernization efforts alarm our allies and challenge our regional interests while North Korean belligerance continues. We also continue to face directly every day a threat to our homeland. The unfortunate part is … we continue to divest of our military capacity, and therefore our risk continues to grow," Odierno said.

The Army has cut 80,000 soldiers out of the active force, reorganized and cut 13 brigade combat teams and three aviation brigades from the active component. Investment in modernization is down by 25 percent, Odierno said, sidelining "much-needed" infantry fighting vehicle modernization and a scout helicopter development program.

"The unrelenting budget impasse has compelled us to degrade readiness to historically low levels," Odierno said.

"Even today we only have 33 percent of our brigades ready, when our sustained rate should be closer to 70 percent. We are unable to generate readiness for unknown contingencies, and under our current budget Army readiness will at best flatline over the next three to four years."

The ability to deter and compel more than one adversary at a time is in doubt.

The situation "requires us to hope that we can predict the future accurately, something we've never been able to do," Odierno said.

He outlined a new Army operating concept designed to meet future strategic challenges.

The operating concept, "Win in a Complex World," is intended to develop capabilities while focusing on 20 warfighting challenges, Odierno said.

"The assessment of the Army's warfighting challenges identifies what are the first-order capabilities we're going to need," he said. The soldier and squads will remain the centerpiece of our formations and a heart of this strategy.

Objectives to achieve the strategy include:

• Enhance the soldier by improving lethality, protection and situational awareness.

• Increase the lethality, deployability, mobility and survivability of maneuver formations.

• Enable mission command by investing in the network and agile and expeditionary tactical command posts and remain prepared for joint combined arms maneuver with tailorable and scalable resource.

The Army will use combat centers and test centers to adapt and evolve concepts and solutions, Odierno said, calling for breaking new ground in training centers by rebuilding combined arms capability.

The Army must make some improvements, Odierno said.

"We must invest in mobile protective firepower and develop combat vehicles that provide land forces with the appropriate combination of mobility, lethality and protection," he said.

The Army must invest in light reconnaissance and security capabilities, and the lethality of missiles, interceptors and sensors. The Army should also innovate with directed energy, a new infantry fighting vehicle and a future tank with autonomous capabilities.

The Army must also reduce the size of its command and control footprint, but also needs reliable and protected flow of information while on the move.

"It is imperative that we adapt new technologies to warfighting concepts better than anybody else," Odierno said.

But he underscored that while overmatch is important, war is a contest of wills, and people win wars.

Soldiers need to be better prepared through education, realistic training and sustained operations in complex and chaotic situations, Odierno said.

Soldiers and leaders need to understand the cultural, ideological and socioeconomic characteristics of people they're dealing with at national and local levels.

"We must develop leaders who are mentally and physically tough, able to inspire others to accomplish the unthinkable and most importantly, leaders of great character," he said.

They should not only understand the population where they operate, but create "multiple dilemmas for our enemies."

"Never before has America asked so much over such a sustained period" from its soldiers," Odierno said. "They have delivered time after time in a decisive and professional manner. … They are proud of what they're doing.

"It is incumbent on us that we provide them the training and resources so they are able to do the things we ask them to do."

 

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Poles, Baltics and Scandinavia Rally Troops as Russia Growls

Agence France-Presse 12:52 p.m. EDT April 3, 2015

WARSAW — Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and its subsequent meddling in eastern Ukraine have triggered vigilance in nearby Poland, the Baltic states and Scandinavia.

Within Moscow's orbit during Soviet times, Poland and the Baltic three — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — are raising military spending and have asked NATO allies, particularly the US, to step up their presence.

NATO already runs air policing missions in its formerly Soviet-ruled Baltic members bordering Russia.

To counter increased Russian military drills in the Baltic and Black Sea regions, the alliance is strengthening defenses on its eastern flank with a spearhead force of 5,000 troops and command centers in places like Bulgaria, Poland and Romania.

Poland

Central European heavyweight Poland has kicked off an unprecedented military spending spree worth some €33.6 billion ($42 billion) to overhaul its forces over a decade.

Its long shopping list includes an anti-missile shield and anti-aircraft systems, armored personnel carriers and submarines as well as combat drones.

The plans bring Warsaw in line with NATO's recommended defense spending level of two percent of gross domestic product. The country of 38 million has around 100,000 professional soldiers and 20,000 reservists.

Lithuania

One of three Baltic republics that were under Soviet rule from the end of World War II to 1990-91, Lithuania has 8,000 professional military personnel and 4,500 reservists.

Amid heightened tensions with Russia, it recently revived its pre-WWII Riflemen's Union in an effort to deter attacks. Also, since mid-2014 the citizens' militia has grown to 8,000 volunteers in the country of three million.

Vilnius is upping military spending, from 0.89 percent of GDP in 2014 to 1.11 percent or €425 million this year.

Lacking sufficient air power, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have relied on larger NATO allies to police Baltic airspace bordering Russia since they joined the alliance in 2004.

Latvia

Riga wants to grow its military to 6,600 members by 2018 from the current 4,600. Plans also call for boosting the number of reservists to 12,000 by 2020 from the 8,000 it has now.

Last November Latvia bought anti-tank weaponry, heavy trucks and all-terrain armoured vehicles from Norway.

A country of two million, Latvia intends to raise military spending to the NATO recommended two percent of GDP by 2020, up from one percent this year.

Estonia

There are 3,000 professional soldiers in this Baltic nation of 1.3 million, though an additional 3,000 conscripts and 1,100 civilians can be put into service.

A voluntary reserve force has swollen to 15,000 since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis.

Estonia already meets NATO's recommended level of military spending, totalling €412 million this year. It recently acquired US-made portable Javelin anti-tank missiles, and 44 tracked CV90 type infantry vehicles.

Norway

In 2013, the native land of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spent 1.4 percent of its GDP on the military under his watch as prime minister.

Sharing an Arctic border with Russia, Norway held "Joint Viking" exercise in March 2015 as Moscow mounted massive drills near the border area.

Finland and Sweden

Neither Scandinavian county is a member of NATO but both have raised the possibility of joining.

Amid a spike in Russian military activity in the Baltic, Stockholm deployed troops to the strategically located Gotland island.

It also vowed to boost its submarine fleet after its armed forces failed to find a suspected Russian mini-sub in the Stockholm archipelago.

In 2013, defense spending accounted for 1.1 percent of Sweden's GDP.

Sharing a long border with Russia, Finland's 2015 military spending accounted for 1.29 percent of its GDP, totaling €2.7 billion .

 

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Polish, Dutch Defense Ministers Targeted By Bugging

By Jaroslaw Adamowski 2:24 p.m. EDT April 3, 2015

WARSAW — Poland's Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak and his Dutch counterpart Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert have been targeted by unknown perpetrators who bugged a restaurant in Warsaw where the two officials met for talks April 1, reported local broadcaster TVN 24.

The bug "was found by the Military Counter-Intelligence Service as part of a routine, thorough search. And the important part of the talks took place earlier at the MoD," Siemoniak tweeted.

A bugging device was found at the restaurant prior to Siemoniak's meeting with Hennis-Plasschaert who was on an official visit to Warsaw. The Polish prosecutor's office has launched an investigation to determine who installed the device in the VIP room.

The Dutch minister's visit was focused on NATO policy, the alliance's Readiness Action Plan (RAP) and plans related to establishing a Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), the Polish Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Sources close to the investigation told the broadcaster that the device was "professional, miniaturized and enabled to record in a high quality".

The incident will also be discussed at next week's meeting of the Intelligence Affairs Committee of the Polish parliament.

 

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North Korea Nuclear Deal Unlikely to Follow Iran Agreement

Brian Padden
April 03, 2015 5:45 AM

SEOUL— Prospects for a new North Korean nuclear agreement have seemingly not improved following the tentative multiparty deal to limit Iran's nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions. The agreement with Tehran is similar to past deals with Pyongyang that ultimately failed, and neither the U.S. nor the Koreans seem motivated or interested in trying again.

When asked for South Korea’s reaction to the Iran nuclear agreement and how it might affect the current impasse about North Korea’s nuclear program, Unification Ministry spokesman Lim Byung-chul said Seoul’s position is firm: there is no change in their basic stance that North Korea’s nuclear issue must be solved through a complete and verifiable approach, and in their view multilateral talks such as six-party talks are useful to resolve North Korea’s nuclear issue.

He urged North Korea to immediately return to six-party talks that include the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia. Pyongyang walked out on these negotiations in 2009 after restarting its nuclear program and barring inspections. After North Korea conducted its third nuclear test in 2013, the U.N. Security Council, led by China and the United States, passed severe sanctions on North Korean banking, travel and trade.

But Pyongyang has balked at Washington’s demand that North Korea must first take action to restrict its nuclear weapons program based on the past agreements before any new talks can take place.

Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University, said the success with Iran could point the way to a new diplomatic effort focusing on North Korea.

He said the agreement can be a "green light" for both the United States and North Korea to actively try to solve the issue.

Iran's nuclear framework is similar to ones entered into with Pyongyang in the past and is a likely blueprint for any future nuclear agreement on the Korean Peninsula.

Iran will agree to restrictions on its nuclear facilities, laboratories, mines and mills, and to allow for inspections from the U.N.'s atomic agency. In return U.S., U.N. and European Union economic sanctions will be suspended.

Professor Kim said the U.S. and its allies can achieve the same results with North Korea if it takes the same less rigid approach.

He said the overall approach to Iran’s nuclear issue, including the reduction of uranium enrichment facilities and the process of resolving Iran’s nuclear issue by June, has been flexible and gradual. While the international community is stern in dealing with North Korea’s nuclear issue, he noted, it has taken a more flexible position with Iran’s nuclear issue.

On the other hand, President Barack Obama is already being criticized by many Republican opponents in the U.S. Congress and in Israel for compromising too much to gain the agreement with Iran.

George Perkovich with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said this type of agreement, which provides economic incentives to repressive regimes in exchange for complying with existing international treaties, is politically polarizing and controversial.

“The framework of a negotiation rather than one of a strict compliance frame rewards bad behavior, and that makes it very difficult for people here and elsewhere to support it,” said Perkovich.

Washington’s diplomatic focus will likely remain on finalizing the framework agreement with Iran in the coming months. There is no indication the U.S. is ready change its position on North Korea, especially since past agreements with Pyongyang have fallen apart and repeated missile launches and other provocative incidents continue to escalate tensions in the region.

VOA Seoul Producer Youmi Kim contributed to this report.

 

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2015...-iraq-tikrit-special-re-idUSKBN0MU1DP20150403

World | Fri Apr 3, 2015 7:06pm EDT
Related: World, Egypt, Special Reports

Special Report: After Iraqi forces take Tikrit, a wave of looting and lynching

TIKRIT, Iraq


(Reuters) - On April 1, the city of Tikrit was liberated from the extremist group Islamic State. The Shi'ite-led central government and allied militias, after a month-long battle, had expelled the barbarous Sunni radicals.

Then, some of the liberators took revenge.

Near the charred, bullet-scarred government headquarters, two federal policemen flanked a suspected Islamic State fighter. Urged on by a furious mob, the two officers took out knives and repeatedly stabbed the man in the neck and slit his throat. The killing was witnessed by two Reuters correspondents.

The incident is now under investigation, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan told Reuters.

Since its recapture two days ago, the Sunni city of Tikrit has been the scene of violence and looting. In addition to the killing of the extremist combatant, Reuters correspondents also saw a convoy of Shi'ite paramilitary fighters – the government's partners in liberating the city – drag a corpse through the streets behind their car.

Local officials said the mayhem continues. Two security officers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Friday that dozens of homes had been torched in the city. They added that they had witnessed the looting of stores by Shi'ite militiamen.

Later Friday, Ahmed al-Kraim, head of the Salahuddin Provincial Council, told Reuters that mobs had burned down "hundreds of houses" and looted shops over the past two days. Government security forces, he said, were afraid to confront the mobs. Kraim said he left the city late Friday afternoon because the situation was spinning out of control.

"Our city was burnt in front of our eyes. We can't control what is going on," Kraim said.

Those reports could not be immediately confirmed.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Islamic State, an Al Qaeda offshoot that arose from the chaos in Iraq and Syria, slaughtered thousands and seized much of northern and central Iraq last year. The government offensive was meant not only to dislodge the group but also to transcend the fundamental divide in fractured Iraq: the enmity between the now-ruling Shi'ite majority and the country's formerly dominant Sunni minority.

Officials close to Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, a moderate Shi'ite, had described the Tikrit campaign as a chance to demonstrate his government's independence from one source of its power: Iraqi Shi'ite militias backed by Shi'ite Iran and advised by Iranian military officers. Sunnis deeply mistrust and fear these paramilitaries, accusing them of summary executions and vandalism. But Abadi has had to rely on the Shi'ite militias on the battlefield, as Iraq's regular military deserted en masse last summer in the Islamic State onslaught.

The militia groups spearheaded the start of the Tikrit assault in early March. But after two weeks of fighting, Abadi enforced a pause. Asserting his power over the Shi'ite militias, he called in U.S. airstrikes.

Now, the looting and violence in Tikrit threaten to tarnish Abadi's victory. It risks signaling to Sunni Iraqis that the central government is weak and not trustworthy enough to recapture other territory held by Islamic State, including the much larger city of Mosul. Tikrit, hometown of the late dictator Saddam Hussein, is in the Sunni heartland of Iraq.

At stake is much more than future votes: Islamic State's rapid conquests in 2014 were made possible by support from Sunni tribal forces and ordinary citizens. They were convinced that the government – under Abadi's predecessor, Nuri al-Maliki – viewed their community as terrorists. If Sunnis dislike what they see in Tikrit, they may not back the government's efforts against Islamic State.


DEFENDING LIVES AND PROPERTY

On Friday, the government sought to assure all sides that it will enforce order. Abadi issued a statement calling on the security forces to arrest anyone breaking the law.

Asked to comment on the scenes witnessed by Reuters, his spokesman Rafid Jaboori said he would not address individual incidents but said: "People's lives and property are priorities, whether in this operation or in the overall military effort to liberate the rest of Iraq."

Sunni lawmakers who visited Tikrit complained that events have spun out of control since the security forces and militias retook the city.

Parliamentarian Mutashar al-Samarrai credited the government with orchestrating a smooth entrance into Tikrit. But he said that some Shi'ite paramilitary factions had exploited the situation. "I believe this happened on purpose to disrupt the government's achievement in Tikrit," Samarrai said. "This is a struggle between the (paramilitaries) and the government for control."

Neighborhoods entered by the Iraqi forces and Shi'ite paramilitaries have been burnt, including parts of neighboring Dour and Auja, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein.

Security forces blame Islamic State for rigging houses with explosives, while Sunnis suspect the Shi'ite militias and the army and police of deliberately torching their homes.

Looting has also been a problem. Shi'ite paramilitary fighters in pickup trucks raced through the city carrying goods that appeared to have been looted from homes and government offices.

The vehicles were crammed with refrigerators, air conditioners, computer printers, and furniture. A young militia fighter rode on a red bicycle, gleefully shouting: "I always dreamed of having a bike like this as a kid."

Brigadier General Maan, the main spokesman for the government forces, said police were stopping vehicles that appeared to have stolen items. "We are doing our best to impose the law."


IRAN'S FINGERPRINTS

Passions were running high among the Shi'ite militia groups before the assault. Islamic State beheaded people and carried out other atrocities in the lands it conquered. In particular, the militias wanted revenge for Islamic State's killing in June of hundreds of Iraqi soldiers captured from Camp Speicher, a base near Tikrit. It was an event that came to symbolize the Sunni jihadists' barbarism.

Despite Baghdad's efforts to rein in the paramilitaries, the fingerprints of the Shi'ite militias – and of Iran itself – were all over the operation's final hours.

On Wednesday, as Tikrit fell, militiamen were racing to stencil their names on houses in order to take credit for the victory.

An Iranian fighter, with a Kalashnikov rifle slung over his shoulder and a picture of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pinned to his chest, bragging about Tehran's role in the campaign.

"I am proud to participate in the battle to liberate Tikrit," said the man, who called himself Sheik Dawood. "Iran and Iraq are one state now."

On the edge of Tikrit in the hours after the city's fall, a Shi'ite paramilitary group drove in a convoy past several police cars. The militiamen had strung the corpse of a suspected Islamic State fighter from the back of a white Toyota pickup truck. The cable dragging the man snapped, and the vehicle stopped.

The men got out to retie the bullet-riddled corpse. As they fastened the cable tighter to the body, a song about their victory over Islamic State played on the truck's stereo. Then they sped off, the corpse kicking up a cloud of dust.

The policemen standing nearby did nothing.

On Wednesday afternoon, Reuters saw two suspected Islamic State detainees – identified as an Egyptian and a Sudanese national – in a room in a government building. The Egyptian and the Sudanese were then taken outside by police intelligence.

Word spread that the two suspected Islamic State prisoners were being escorted out. Federal policemen, who had lost an officer named Colonel Imad the previous day in a bombing, flocked around the detainees.

The interior ministry spokesman, Brigadier Maan, said the Egyptian had stabbed an Iraqi police officer, which explains the anger against him. Reuters couldn't verify that claim.


"WE WANT TO AVENGE OUR COLONEL"

The two prisoners were put in the back of a pickup truck. As the vehicle tried to leave, the crowd blocked it.

The federal policemen started shouting to the intelligence officers: Hand over the men. The intelligence officers tried to shield the prisoners. One pulled a sidearm as the federal police began swinging their fists.

The mob was screaming: "We want to avenge our Lieutenant Colonel."

Shi'ite paramilitary men swarmed the area. The street filled with more than 20 federal police. Gunfire erupted. Bullets ricocheted. At least one of the Shi'ite fighters was wounded, and began bleeding from the leg.

The pickup truck tried to back up. People in the mob grabbed one of the prisoners from the truck, the Egyptian, and pulled him out.

The Egyptian sat silently at the feet of two big policemen in their twenties. His eyes filled with fear. He was surrounded by a few dozen people, a mix of federal police and Shi'ite militiamen.

"He is Daesh, and we should take revenge for Colonel Imad," the two federal police officers yelled, using a derogatory Arabic term for Islamic State.

One of the policemen held a black-handled knife with a four-to-five-inch blade. The other gripped a folding knife, with a three-inch blade and a brown handle.

They waved their knives in the air, to cheers from the crowd, and chanted: "We will slaughter him. We will take revenge for Colonel Imad. We will slaughter him."

The policemen laid the Egyptian's head over the curb. Then one of the police pushed the other out of the way and he swung his whole body down, landing the knife into the Egyptian's neck.

The cop lifted the knife and thrust the blade in the Egyptian's neck a second time. Blood gushed out, staining the boots of the cheering onlookers.

The killer started to saw through the neck, but it was slow-going. He lifted the blade again and slammed it into the Egyptian's neck another four times. Then he sawed back and forth.


"BRING ME A CABLE"

Their fellow policemen chanted: "We took revenge for Colonel Imad."

The killer lifted himself up the street pole next to the dying man so he could address his comrades: "Colonel Imad was a brave man. Colonel Imad didn't deserve to die at the hands of dirty Daesh. This is a message to Colonel Imad's family don't be sad, raise your heads."

Then he shouted: "Let's tie the body to the pole so everyone can see. Bring a cable. Bring a cable."

His friend with the folding knife kept trying to stab the Egyptian, with no success. He cried out: "I need a sharp knife. I want to behead this dirty Daesh."

Finally the men found a cable, fastened it to the dead man's feet and dangled him from the pole.

One policeman grew upset at the spectacle and shouted: "There are dozens of media here. This is not the suitable time. Why do you want to embarrass us?"

The mob ignored him and continued trying to hoist the body. White bone stuck out from his slashed neck, his head flopped from side to side, and the blood continued to gush forth.


(Reported by Reuters correspondents in Tikrit whose names have been withheld for security reasons, and by Ned Parker in Baghdad. Written by Ned Parker. Edited by Michael Williams.)

 

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http://blogs.reuters.com/great-deba...ormation-is-the-worlds-best-chance-for-peace/

Analysis & Opinion | The Great Debate

An Islamic Reformation is the world’s best chance for peace

By John Lloyd
April 2, 2015

If a young woman, before her marriage or after it, is found to have had sexual relations with another man not her betrothed, she is sentenced to be stoned to death. By contrast, a man who rapes or seduces a young girl usually must pay a fine to her father, and offer to marry her himself.

This punishment, ordained by God, is not confined to the ideologues of Islamic State. It is to be found in the holiest books of Jews and Christians: in a part of the Jewish Torah, known to Christians as Old Testament’s book of Deuteronomy.

The Jewish literary critic Adam Kirsch writes that “in Deuteronomy, we find the same kind of panic about female sexuality, the same need to control women’s feelings and behavior…(while) under Talmudic law, (a woman) is not a legally competent individual, but the responsibility of a man.”

The Talmud is a compendium of centuries of Jewish thought and commentary on the Torah.

Why, then, should those born within the cultures of the two older monotheistic faiths — Judaism, the oldest, and Christianity — recoil in horror from the obedience of some Muslims to these commands of God, since our cultures contain the same observances and our cultures’ holy figures approved them?

Because both Christianity and Judaism were profoundly changed by the Reformation and the European Enlightenment. The Enlightenment’s apostles included large figures from the Christian tradition — David Hume, Immanuel Kant and Rene Descartes; and from the Jewish, in Baruch Spinoza and Moses Mendelsohn. They, and a legion of others, thought “freedom and toleration were … essential to the pursuit of enquiry, both religious and secular.” Their belief became, especially in France, a cause, a militant proclamation of freedom of thought and of publication, a definition of the rights of man.

“Man” to a degree meant also “woman” — but far from completely. The idea of male supremacy continues worldwide. Only under the influence of liberal and socialist reformers, emancipatory movements and feminism did (some) cultures recognize real, substantial equality of the sexes — rarely completely.

Islam did not join the renaissance, the rebirth, of Judaic and Christian cultures that began at the end of the 1500s and then evolved over centuries. Islam has within it millions of devotees who are liberal in their thoughts and actions, and who believe that nations should be secular, tolerating all religions and those with none. But the religion and the commentators on it do not lend them support: the religion still, in theory and in much of its practice, aspires to be the spine to a nation’s politics, the guide for its judiciary.


Last month, two powerful voices — one Jewish, one a Muslim breakaway — have been raised to give voice to the same belief: that until Islam undergoes its own rebirth, in which its divine commands are generally allowed to give way to secular, enlightenment practices, the majority of Muslim moderates will be held hostage by the minority of Muslim extremists.

Benny Morris is professor of history at the University of the Negev: he is the most prominent member of the revisionist historians of the 1980s who broke with Zionist orthodoxy and who wrote a searing, detailed book about the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. An ardent leftist, he became a much more conservative figure, seeing in the failure of the negotiations in the early 2000s between Israel and the Palestinian leadership proof that the Palestinians would never agree to accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.

At a talk in London, Morris poured scorn on those Western leaders – As President Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron — who argued the attacks on the magazine Charlie Hebdo in January had “nothing to do with the true religion of Islam.”

Islamist violence, Morris said, is perpetrated in the name of Islam. Denying it doesn’t promote good community relations. It obscures a real problem that must be faced.

Morris’ other view — that all Muslims, militant or moderate, “hated” the West — seems to me to be wrong. I asked him if he thought the Palestinian Israelis were biding their time before turning on their Jewish fellow citizens? He replied that the Israeli government’s demonizing of them was wrong. Instead, the government must do all in its powers to bring Israeli Arabs into full citizenship.

Yet if they are suffused with hatred, how would that help?

The “renegade” Muslim I spoke of earlier is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Her journey began with escape a forced marriage in Somalia, through the Netherlands and to the United States, where she now lives. She has also traveled from being a devout Muslim to a challenger of Islam’s basic precepts. She has been the subject of powerful memoirs, such as The Caged Virgin and Nomad and has been forced to live behind armed protection. Last month, she wrote that “the theological warrant for intolerance and violence is embedded in (Muslims’) own religious texts. It simply will not do for Moslems to claim that their religion has been ‘hijacked’ by extremists. The killers of Islamic state and Nigeria’s Boko Haram cite the same religious texts that every other Muslim in the world considers sacrosanct.”

Judaism and Christianity, she writes “gradually consigned the violent passages of their own sacred texts to the past” so that extremism in both is confined to the fringes. “Regrettably in Islam it is the other way around: it is those seeking religious reform who are the fringe element.”

Hirsi Ali is a woman of notable bravery; one who cares deeply about the religion she felt forced to leave. She ardently wishes to engage those whom she calls “Mecca Muslims” — devout and peaceful men and women, “the majority from Casablanca to Jakarta” in “a dialogue about the meaning and practice of their faith.” The reformation of Islam, she writes, would benefit not only the faithful: Westerners, too, “have an enormous stake in how the struggle over Islam plays out.”

An Islamic reformation would be painful, surely internally violent — as reformation’s various phases were in Christianity. It would mean the sharp diminution of the power of the Imams; frontal challenges to the moral framework of millions, and to the power of religiously based dynasties, like the House of Saud. But if reform, and opening a space for free, unafraid debate, is to move from the fringes to the center and allow the majority to encompass both secular citizenship and devout practice, this hard transition is necessary — especially for Muslims themselves, the first and most numerous victims of extremism.