WAR 04-03-2021-to-04-09-2021___THEWINDSofWAR

Housecarl · Apr 3, 2021

(463) WAR 03-13-2021-to-03-19-2021___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(464) WAR 03-20-2021-to-03-26-2021___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
WAR - 03-20-2021-to-03-26-2021___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(465) 03-27-2021-to-04-02-2021___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

WAR - 03-27-2021-to-04-02-2021___THEWINDSofWAR

(462) WAR - 03-06-2021-to-03-12-2021___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR**** (463) WAR 03-13-2021-to-03-19-2021___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR**** (464) WAR 03-20-2021-to-03-26-2021___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****...

www.timebomb2000.com

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Security analyst warns Mozambique insurgency a threat to southern Africa region

Marauding militants took control of the coastal town of Palma last week. One South African was killed in the attack while 50 others were accounted for following the attacks.

ewn.co.za

SECURITY ANALYST WARNS MOZAMBIQUE INSURGENCY A THREAT TO SOUTHERN AFRICA REGION
Marauding militants took control of the coastal towns of Pemba and Palma last week. One South African was killed in the attack while 50 others were accounted for following the attacks.

Mia Spies | about 7 hours ago

CAPE TOWN - More than a week after an attack by militants in northern Mozambique, South Africans who were in the region are returning home.

The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) confirmed that it was assisting the country's high commission in Maputo to repatriate citizens wanting to return.

Marauding militants took control of the coastal towns of Pemba and Palma last week.

READ:
• SANDF limiting Mozambique involvement to logistical support
• SA govt expresses willingness to assist Mozambique amid insurgencies
• 43 S.Africans accounted for following Mozambique attacks – SA High Commission
• AU calls for urgent action after Mozambique jihadist attack

One South African was killed in the attack while 50 others were accounted for following the attacks.

Deadly terror attacks in neighbouring Mozambique have shaken the region.

The defence force's Siphiwe Dlamini: "South Africa is concerned about the security situation in Cabo Delgado, in the northern part of Mozambique. We remain seized with the safety of South Africans in that province."

Security analyst, Jasmine Opperman, said that the entire region should be worried.

"On the question of should the region be concerned, they should have been concerned long ago, to be quite frank, but we need to understand that Mozambique is a sovereign state and hence they will not get engaged unless there is some kind of approval by Maputo. Maputo, at this point, favours bilateral engagements."

Opperman said that thousands remained vulnerable.

"What has happened in Mozambique is merely another indication on how sophisticated the insurgents have become, how brazen they have become to move so close to the Afungi site. It is an insurgency that cannot be viewed, and must not be regarded and underplayed, as not only a risk to Mozambique but also the region."

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has called a meeting on Tuesday.

Housecarl · Apr 3, 2021

Hummm.....

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Mexican Drug Cartels Use TikTok to Smuggle Migrants, Recruit Them for Crimes, Abbott Says

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Mexican drug cartels are using social media apps, such as TikTok, to recruit more people to work in their smuggling operations.

www.latinpost.com

Mexican Drug Cartels Use TikTok to Smuggle Migrants, Recruit Them for Crimes, Abbott Says
By Mary Anne Webber (staff@latinpost.com)
First Posted: Apr 03, 2021 02:18 AM EDT

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Mexican drug cartels are using social media apps, such as TikTok, to smuggle migrants and recruit them to work in their illegal operations.

Abbott showed two TikTok videos to support his claims during a press conference on Thursday, according to a KLKNTV report.

Mexican drug cartels are trying to allure people with money, parties, boats, and fun but downplay the organizations' criminal side, such as the murder. Greg Abbott noted that the cartels are not only smuggling drugs into Texas but also of people.

"These are two pictures from TikTok. And these are ads or videos and things being run by cartels on TikTok, trying to recruit people in Texas to assist them to commit their crimes with the promise of money and other things," Abbott said.

Greg Abbott further noted that these tactics result from the Mexican drug cartels feeling invigorated by the Biden administration's border policies.

Experts said there is nothing new with Mexican drug cartels using social media platforms. Andy Shuttleworth, who spent more than 30 years working in the federal government, told Fox San Antonio that these posts have been happening long before President Joe Biden took office.

But with the availability of more cell phones and more internet service globally, Shuttleworth, who also worked at the Department of Homeland Security, noted that the scheme is becoming more prevalent, and it's not only happening on TikTok.

A father from Honduras said he saw an ad on Facebook, promising him a chance at the American dream and reunite with his daughters.

"I observed this back in 2008, all the way up through the 2014 crisis, it's always been there," Shuttleworth said.

RELATED STORY: Who Is Los Viagras' Cartel La Cholita? 'Busty Assassin' Flaunts How She Torments Victims on Social Media

Organized Crime Groups Enticing People
Howard Campbell, an anthropologist and drug expert at the University of Texas at El Paso, said that Mexican drug cartels have long used social media for their scheme and operations, including intimidating their enemies.
Campbell noted that it has proven to be an effective strategy, adding that TikTok is just the latest phase of this tactic, Courier-Journal reported.

David Saucedo, a Mexico City-based security analyst, said that TikTok is being used mainly by cartels to promote a lifestyle and generate a picture of luxury and glamour, including the "benefits" of joining criminal activities.

Saucedo noted that he has already seen a few criminal messages and videos that encourage people to join the cartel by showing images of unlimited cash, parties, and military-grade firearms.

According to a UNICEF survey, cartels were also reported to practice forced recruitment, which drives families in Central America to flee their homes and seek asylum in other countries.

Criminal gangs in Mexico have already recruited about 35,000 children and adolescents, the Child Rights Network in Mexico noted.

Derek Maltz, a former agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency's Special Operations Division, said the use of social media is an attractive recruitment tool for the young culture since they widely used it, especially TikTok.

With only one like on one of these videos, experts said people would end up in the # CartelTikTok's world due to the algorithm.

A search of the #CartelTikTok community and its related accounts shows some people are responding, and millions of TikTok users could be seen glorifying the Mexican drug cartels culture by liking, watching, and promoting this content.

READ MORE: Video Shows Jalisco Cartel Parading 'Narco-Tank' in Mexico's Street
WATCH: Gov. Greg Abbott Launches' Operation Lone Star' to Address Issues at the Texas Border - From WFAA

jward · Apr 4, 2021

Arab World, U.S. Rally Behind Jordan’s King Abdullah After Alleged Coup Attempt
Former Crown Prince Hamza bin Hussein and some other unidentified individuals were detained and told to halt actions used to target Jordan's 'security and stability'

Former Jordanian Crown Price Hamzah bin Hussein and his half-brother King Abdullah II in 2012Credit: Yousef Allan / Petra / AFP

Reuters
Apr. 4, 2021 9:32 AM

Jordanian King Abdullah's half-brother and former Crown Prince Hamza bin Hussein was told to halt actions used to target the country's "security and stability," the military said on Saturday.

In a statement published by the state news agency, it said the action was part of a broader security investigation in which a former minister, a member of the royal family and some other unidentified individuals were detained.

Here are responses from different countries and groups:

Former Crown Prince of Jordan Hamza bin Hussein recorded a video message in which he said he was placed under house arrest amid criticism of the government's actions. pic.twitter.com/0H1Us24TgA
— spriters (@neccamc1) April 3, 2021

Credit: spriters / BBC

United States

"We are closely following the reports and in touch with Jordanian officials. King Abdullah is a key partner of the United States, and he has our full support," U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said in an email.

Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in JanuaryCredit: Russian Foreign Ministry / Handout / Reuters

We are closely following the reports out of Jordan, and we have been in touch with Jordanian officials. King Abdullah is a key partner of the United States, and he has our full support.
— Ned Price (@StateDeptSpox) April 3, 2021

Credit: Ned Price
Saudi Arabia

"The kingdom affirms its full support, with all its capabilities, to all decisions and measures taken by King Abdullah and His Highness Prince Al Hussein bin Abdullah II, the Crown Prince, to maintain security and stability," the Saudi royal court said in a statement.

In a separate statement, Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said Jordan's stability and prosperity was the "basis for the stability and prosperity of the whole region" and vowed "firm and lasting" support for it.

United Arab Emirates

The Ministry of Presidential Affairs stressed the UAE's full support for all decisions and measures taken by King Abdullah and his crown prince to maintain Jordan's security and stability and "to defuse any attempt to impact them."

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Senior Emirati official Anwar Gargash said on Twitter Jordan's "wise policy to build bridges in a turbulent region was not an easy choice but was, and remains, the necessary direction."

Egypt

Egypt voiced support for King Abdullah and his efforts "to maintain the security and stability of the kingdom against any attempts to undermine it," its presidency spokesman wrote on Facebook.

Bahrain's King Hamed bin Isa Al Khalifa in 2012Credit: Hasan Jamali / AP Photo
Bahrain

"His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa affirmed full support to the decisions and measures taken by HM King Abdulla II Ibn Al Hussein of Jordan to maintain his country's security and stability and defuse all disruptive attempts," state news agency BNA said.

Gulf Cooperation Council

In a statement, GCC Secretary General Nayef Falah Mubarak al-Hajraf said the bloc affirmed its full support for all decisions and measures taken by King Abdullah to preserve the security and stability of Jordan.

Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri in FebruaryCredit: Dalati Nohra / Handout via Reuters
Lebanon

"Jordan's security and safety is a fundamental basis for the security and safety of the Arab world," Lebanese Prime Minister designate Saad al-Hariri said on Twitter. "All the solidarity with the Jordanian leadership and King Abdullah in defending the gains of the Jordanian people, protecting their stability, and refusing interference in their affairs."

Kuwait

Kuwait's foreign ministry expressed its support to all measures taken by King Abdullah and his crown prince to maintain the security and stability of Jordan, adding "the security and stability of the kingdom are that of Kuwait."

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fouad Hussein (C) with his counterparts from Jordan and Egypt, in Baghdad, last month Credit: Sabah ARAR / AFP
Iraq

"The Iraqi government affirms that it stands with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, under the leadership of His Majesty King Abdullah II, in any steps taken to preserve the security and stability of the country and take care of the interests of the brotherly people of Jordan, in a way that boosts their presence, by relying on measures that aim to extend the respect of the state," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Qatar

Qatar expressed its full solidarity with Jordan and its full support to the decisions and measures issued by King Abdullah to preserve security and stability, and boost the process of progress and prosperity, state news agency QNA said.

It said strategic bilateral relations "will remain an honest and strong guard against any attempts to undermine the security and stability in the two countries and the region."

Yemen

Jordanian Former Crown Prince Hamzah bin Hussein in 2012Credit: Khalil Mazraawi / AFP
Yemen's internationally recognized government "affirms its absolute support and totally stands with all decisions and measures taken by His Majesty King Abdullah aimed at maintaining security and ending any attempts to destabilize the sisterly Kingdom of Jordan," state news agency Saba said.

Palestinian Authority

"Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that we stand by the sisterly Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the king, the government, and the people," official Palestinian news agency WAFA said in a statement.

"We support the decisions taken by King Abdullah II to preserve Jordan's security and ensure its stability and unity.

"We support the steps taken by King Abdullah to maintain Jordanian national security, stressing that Jordan's security and stability is a supreme Palestinian interest."

An Arab League delegates meeting in Cairo, Egypt, 2017Credit: Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters
Arab League

"The secretary-general of the Arab League expressed full solidarity with the measures taken by the Jordanian leadership to maintain the security of the kingdom and maintain the stability," the Arab League said in a statement on its Facebook page, citing Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

"He also stressed his confidence in the leadership's wisdom and its keenness to secure the country's stability in parallel with the respect for the constitution and the law.

"Ahmed Aboul Gheit added that King Abdullah II has a high and appreciated position, whether among the Jordanian people or on the Arab level in general, and that everyone knows his sincerity and his great role in serving Arab causes."
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“Desert Agriculture Can Be The Answe

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Arab world, U.S. rally behind Jordan’s King Abdullah after alleged coup attempt

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www.haaretz.com

jward · Apr 4, 2021

Ethiopia says Eritrean troops have started withdrawing from Tigray
By Reuters Staff
2 Min Read

Slideshow ( 2 images )
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Eritrean forces have started withdrawing from Ethiopia’s Tigray region in the north, the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry said.

The United States, Germany, France and other G7 countries called on Friday for a swift, unconditional and verifiable withdrawal of the Eritrean soldiers, followed by a political process that is acceptable to all Ethiopians.

In a rejoinder issued late on Saturday through the Foreign Ministry, Ethiopia said that the G7 foreign ministers’ statement had not acknowledged key steps being taken to address the needs of the region.

“The Eritrean troops who had crossed the border when provoked by the TPLF have now started to evacuate and the Ethiopian National Defense Force has taken over guarding the national border,” it said in a statement.

Fighting erupted in Tigray in early November after forces loyal to the then-governing party there - the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) - attacked army bases across the region. In late November, federal troops ousted the TPLF from the capital Mekelle and the Ethiopian government declared victory.

Thousands of people died in the conflict, hundreds of thousands have been forced from their homes and there are shortages of food, water and medicine in the region. The government says most fighting has ceased but there are still isolated incidents of shooting.

Full access to the region has now been granted to humanitarian organisations, the Foreign Ministry said, adding that a joint investigation with external experts into alleged human rights violations will start soon.

“Whilst the government... honesty appreciates the concerns being expressed, it has already been too apparent that the supply of food and medicinal aid must be the crux of expressions of concerns,” the ministry said.

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Ethiopia says Eritrean troops have started withdrawing from Tigray

Eritrean forces have started withdrawing from the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry said, following mounting reports blaming the Eritreans for human rights abuses including rape, looting and killings of civilians.

www.reuters.com

jward · Apr 4, 2021

Maoist rebels kill 22 Indian security forces in gun battle: police

Twenty-two Indian security forces were killed and 30 others wounded in a gun battle with Maoist rebels, in the deadliest ambush of its kind in four years
Sun, April 4, 2021, 2:42 AM·2 min read

Twenty-two Indian police and paramilitary forces were killed and 30 others wounded in a gun battle with Maoist rebels in a central Indian state, police said Sunday, in the deadliest ambush of its kind in four years.
Some 2,000 security personnel were on the hunt for a Maoist rebel leader in Bijapur district in Chhattisgarh state on Saturday when they were ambushed, a police officer told AFP.
"So far it is confirmed that 22 security personnel were killed," Chhattisgarh police's Additional Director General Ashok Juneja said of the almost three-hour battle in the Maoist rebel stronghold.

"The search operation is still underway and the exact figure will be known... late Sunday evening."
The injured personnel were admitted to two government-run hospitals in Bijapur and Chhattisgarh's capital city Raipur.
More than a dozen others remained missing, he said, adding that an unknown number of Maoists were also killed in the encounter.

Juneja said the rebels looted weapons, ammunition, uniforms and shoes from the security forces who were killed.
The death toll could rise further, another senior police officer in Bijapur district told AFP.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that the "sacrifices of the brave martyrs will never be forgotten", while Home Minister Amit Shah wrote on Twitter that India would "continue our fight against these enemies of peace & progress".
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel wrote on Facebook Sunday that Shah had assured him of "all the necessary help" from the national government against the militants.

The toll was the worst for Indian security forces battling the far-left guerillas since 2017, when 25 police commandos were killed in an attack.
Seventeen police from a commando patrol were killed in an attack by more than 300 armed rebels in Chhattisgarh in March last year.
Sixteen commandos were also killed in the western state of Maharashtra in the lead-up to India's election in 2019, in a bomb attack that was blamed on the Maoists.

The militants -- who say they are fighting for rural people and the poor -- have battled government forces across eastern India since the 1960s.
Thousands have been killed in the fighting.
str-ash-grk/oho

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Maoist rebels kill 22 Indian security forces in gun battle: police

Twenty-two Indian police and paramilitary forces were killed and 30 others wounded in a gun battle with Maoist rebels in a central Indian state, police said Sunday, in the deadliest ambush of its kind in four years.

news.yahoo.com

jward · Apr 4, 2021

Putin Nukes Biden
By Mark B. Schneider
April 03, 2021

Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP/File

Russia believes it can introduce nuclear weapons into a conventional war without taking nuclear fire in return and that such action will result in a Russian military victory. This strategy is what the Russians call “de-escalation” of a war although a more accurate description would be “escalate to win.” In 2012, the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reiterated the "de-escalation" concept involving "a limited use of weapons, including precision weapons, in order to deescalate sources of tension and resolve the conflict situation on conditions favorable to Russia.” In 2017, then-DIA Director Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart stated, Russia is “the only country that I know of that has this concept of escalate to terminate or escalate to deescalate, but they do have that built into their operational concept, we've seen them exercise that idea and it's really kind of a dangerous idea…"[1] He also said that he had seen no evidence that this policy was changing.[2]

All Russian nuclear exercises have several functions: training the troops, exercising command and control, and making implicit nuclear threats or “nuclear saber-rattling [which] is unjustified, destabilizing and dangerous," as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg put it. The threats are part of Russian information warfare, which can turn on a dime. For example, the profile given to the December 2020 large strategic nuclear exercise was limited since no high-level official was involved in briefing the press. However, the information released by the Russian MoD if compared to previous MoD large nuclear exercise announcements, involved a record number of live launches of strategic ballistic missiles (ICBMs and SLBMs). The SLBMs included an unprecedented large strategic exercise salvo launch of four missiles. Significantly, all of the missiles launched were “modern” ICBMs and SLBMs (i.e., post-Cold War developments).

In contrast, the October 2019 large strategic nuclear exercise involved the release of an unprecedented amount of information on the Russian forces involved. About half of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces participated in the exercise and, according to noted Russian journalist Pavel Felgenhauer, at the end of the exercise, there was a simulated launch of most of the forces involved. The May 2014 large strategic nuclear exercise, in addition to the strategic missiles launched, also featured the involvement of non-strategic missiles and artillery.[3] This was apparently motivated by the desire to threaten NATO in the midst of the Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine. The information released in Russian exercises is clearly linked to their information warfare goals.

The March 2021 Russian naval exercise (Umka-21), the first major Russian nuclear exercise during the Biden administration, involved both President Putin and the Commander of the Russian Navy Admiral Nikolai Semenov, who told Putin that in the Umka-21 naval exercise:
The following tasks have been fulfilled for the first time in the history of the Navy: three atomic missile carriers arrived on schedule within a region with a radius of 300 meters after breaking through 1.5 meter thick ice under an integrated plan; …
President Putin added that this had never happened in Soviet times. Noteworthy, the nuclear phase of the Umka-21 came soon after the December 2020 Russian large strategic nuclear exercise, which, as noted above, had a record number of announced live launches of strategic ballistic missiles and ended with a live salvo launch of four of the new Bulava-30 SLBMs.

One journalist noted concerning Umka-21, “The unprecedented exercise served as a bold statement of Russia's presence and capabilities in the increasingly tense Arctic region.” (Emphasis in the original). The only reason for three nuclear ballistic missile submarines (reportedly two Delta-IV and one Borei or Borei-A submarines) to break through the Arctic ice simultaneously is to launch nuclear ballistic missiles, with the obvious targets being in the U.S. The involvement of three nuclear ballistic missile submarines (a quarter of their force) suggests this was a simulation of a massive nuclear strike. It makes no sense to have three nuclear ballistic missile submarines involved in a limited nuclear strike (e.g., a few missiles). Not only would this be unnecessary, but it would also be counter-productive since each launch would give away the location of the submarine. This type of exercise is unprecedented, appeared on the Kremlin and Defense Ministry websites, and clearly was message sending. The only issue is whether the message was received.

Large Russian strategic nuclear exercises typically end with a simulated massive nuclear strike.
However, while this was a nuclear naval exercise, it was not a large strategic nuclear exercise that employs the full Russian Triad and sometimes non-strategic nuclear weapons. While nuclear escalation is a feature of almost all Russian large theater exercises, such blatant strategic nuclear escalation signaling is unusual in a theater exercise. The ground forces involved in the Umka-21 naval exercise were only a brigade. Even recognizing that Russia plans first use of nuclear weapons in any major war, this type of nuclear escalation appears completely inappropriate for the war game as it was described to President Putin.

The nuclear phase that Putin was briefed on was part of an Arctic exercise called Umka-21, which is described by the Barents Observer as “…Russia’s most complex military drill in the high Arctic, involving fighter jets, torpedo shootings and Arctic brigade soldiers training warfare on Franz Josef Land.” The Russian MoD indicated that the exercise “…involved more than 600 military and civilian personnel and about 200 pieces of weapons, military and special equipment.” This does not exactly suggest a conflict that any rational leader would escalate to a general nuclear war.

Concurrent with the exercise, the Russian MoD reported an Arctic flight by two Tu-160 heavy bombers over the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea. These flights are intended to be provocations. Two days later, the Russian MoD reported the involvement of an unspecified number of Su-34 fighter bombers in attacks on Naval ships in the Arctic. The next day it announced an Arctic air defense exercise involving a Russian frigate. Two Russian Tu-142 ASW bombers entered the Alaska air-defense identification zone. These actions were not identified as part of the Umka-21 exercise, but they could have been. On March 30, NATO said, “NATO fighter jets scrambled 10 times on Monday, March 29, 2021, to shadow Russian bombers and fighters during an unusual peak of flights over the North Atlantic, North Sea, Black Sea, and Baltic Sea. In all, NATO aircraft intercepted six different groups of Russian military aircraft near Alliance airspace in less than six hours.”

On March 31, Air Force General Glen VanHerck, the Commander of U.S. Northern Command, said, “Within the last week or so, there's been significant activity in the Arctic.” He went on, “These Russian military operations include multiple flights of heavy bombers, anti-submarine aircraft, and intelligence collection platforms near Alaska. These efforts show both Russia’s military reach and how they rehearse potential strikes on our homeland. Last summer, the Russian Navy focused its annual OCEAN SHIELD exercise on the defense of Russia’s maritime approaches in the Arctic and Pacific.” Even so, this does not suggest a battle that should have any rational leader escalating to general nuclear war.

One is reminded of a statement made by noted Russian journalist Pavel Felgenhauer over a decade ago: “…our superiors are potentially ready to burn all of us in nuclear fire because of disputes over ice, rocks or South Ossetia [a province of Georgia occupied by Russia.]” However, there is probably more to Putin’s madness. Dr. Maxim Starchak, in an excellent Atlantic Council report, documented Russian development of the submarine tactics used in the exercise in 2019 and noted that "This [the 2019 events] is especially important as exercises with weapons from under the ice have not been held for a long time.” Umka-21 used all these tactics and procedures in a simulated multi-submarine “integrated” strategic nuclear strike.

While Putin and his generals have made numerous nuclear threats, this is something new. Just when you think that Putin’s nuclear policy can’t get any worse, it does. It may be that the whole purpose of the nuclear signaling in the Umka-21 exercise was not related to a real naval war scenario but rather to threaten the Biden administration with general nuclear war. Putin and his generals believe that nuclear threats enhance Russian power and leverage.

Putin began using Russian heavy bombers for nuclear signaling in 2007 when he announced that, “Combat alert has begun today. Twenty strategic missile carriers are taking part in it. The planes that have scrambled will be in the air for 20 hours with refueling and in interaction with the Navy.” Russian bomber patrols dramatically increased in 2019 and 2020. According to state-run Sputnik News, the intent of the bomber flights is to “…survey the skies around Russian borders reminding everyone that Russia is a power to be reckoned with.”

The nuclear ballistic missile submarine phase of Umka-21 may be nuclear signaling relating to renewed Russian aggression against Ukraine. In late March, CBS News reported a buildup of Russian forces along the Ukraine border. On March 31, there were reports that "Trains loaded with large amounts of Russian military hardware, including tanks and other heavy armored vehicles, as well as heavy artillery, appear to be streaming toward the country’s borders with Ukraine.” Serious Russian-supported fighting resumed in Eastern Ukraine. The New York Times reports, “The [four Ukrainian soldiers] deaths, along with a buildup of Russian forces on the border, has seized the attention of senior American officials in Europe and Washington.” U.S. troops in Europe and Ukrainian troops were put on highest alert.

On March 11, Pavel Felgenhauer predicted that "Maybe six to eight weeks remain before belligerent rhetoric and sporadic bombardments in Donbas might truly transform into something much more ominous.” Umka-21 may be related to this. This would not be the first time nuclear threat posturing has been used by Russia to deter NATO support for Ukraine, but this is perhaps the most dangerous nuclear threat posturing yet. The threat of general nuclear war, a throw-back to Soviet days, could be related to the deterrence of a NATO response to a serious Russian incursion into Ukraine.
Dr. Mark B. Schneider is a Senior Analyst with the National Institute for Public Policy. Before his retirement from the Department of Defense Senior Executive Service, Dr. Schneider served in a number of senior positions within the Office of Secretary of Defense for Policy including Principal Director for Forces Policy, Principal Director for Strategic Defense, Space and Verification Policy, Director for Strategic Arms Control Policy and Representative of the Secretary of Defense to the Nuclear Arms Control Implementation Commissions. He also served in the senior Foreign Service as a Member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff.
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Putin Nukes Biden

Russia believes it can introduce nuclear weapons into a conventional war without taking nuclear fire in return and that such action will result in a Russian military victory. This strategy is what the

www.realcleardefense.com

jward · Apr 5, 2021

A Future Chinese Indian Ocean Fleet?
Christopher Colley

April 2, 2021

The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is now the largest navy in the world. This development, announced in the U.S. Department of Defense’s 2020 annual report on the Chinese military, appears to demonstrate a determined strategy in Beijing to develop a powerful blue water fleet. Both Chinese and outside naval experts speculate that the PLAN may have an Indian Ocean fleet in the near future. Supporting this possibility, multiple Chinese sources have started to articulate an emerging Indian Ocean strategy for the PLAN. These writings are useful to understand evolving Chinese grand strategy.

Furthermore, Beijing is actively laying the groundwork for such a fleet both in terms of potential bases and logistical centers, as well as naval hardware. However, beyond its anti-piracy missions and naval presence, for political and technical reasons, the PLAN is currently unable (and possibly unwilling) to officially establish an Indian Ocean fleet that could supposedly dominate the region.

In order to understand the emerging Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean, I examine three key areas. First, I provide an analysis of what the Chinese are saying about Chinese ambitions in the Indian Ocean. For example, what do Chinese strategists say about a possible two-ocean PLAN, and how does this align with Chinese strategy? Second, I examine the Chinese aircraft carrier program and argue that any significant PLAN presence in the Indian Ocean region would likely require multiple Chinese aircraft carrier battle groups. Finally, I discuss the major political impediments and consequences to the PLAN playing a leading role in the Indian Ocean.

A Two-Ocean Fleet?
Over the past two decades China’s interests in the Indian Ocean have rapidly expanded. Roughly 80 percent of China’s imported oil transits through the Indian Ocean and Malacca Strait. Chinese strategist Zeng Xinkai correctly notes that China’s energy imports transit sea lanes controlled by other states. In addition, 95 percent of China’s trade with the Middle East, Africa, and Europe passes through the Indian Ocean. More importantly from Beijing’s perspective, this region is controlled by Chinese rivals: the United States and India. Since 2000, the PLAN’s port visits to regional states have also significantly increased. In 1999 there was not a single PLAN port visit in the Indian Ocean region, however, since 2010 the PLAN has averaged close to 20 port visits a year. Furthermore, China is the only country to set up embassies in all six island nations in the Indian Ocean.

The overwhelming strategic objective of PLAN modernization over the past quarter century has been to achieve a force level capable of defending Chinese interests in East Asia and keeping the Americans out of a Taiwan contingency, or at least keeping them at an arm’s length before the rest of the Chinese military can fulfill its mission. Now armed with over 100 advanced destroyers, frigates, and corvettes, Chinese strategists are starting to develop long-term plans for the Indian Ocean.

Hu Bo, the director of Beijing University’s Center for Maritime Strategy Studies, argues that in the future the main zones for the PLAN are first the western Pacific, followed by the northern Indian Ocean stretching from the Middle East and African coasts to the Malacca Strait. Of greater significance, professor Hu writes that “in order to achieve an effective military presence in both oceans, China should consider deploying two oceangoing fleets, centered around aircraft carriers- [sic] the Pacific fleet and the Indian Ocean Fleet.” The proposed Indian Ocean fleet would be based on key islands in the South China Sea and in friendly countries around the northern Indian Ocean. While the primary mission of such a fleet would be to work with the American and Indian navies to protect sea lines of communication and deter piracy, Hu asserts that the United States and China have marked each other as each other’s greatest strategic rival. Professor Li Zhang of the South Asian Research Institute at Sichuan University is less ambiguous in his assessment of the American presence in the Indian Ocean region, which he sees as a strategic attempt to establish a political and military alliance targeted at China.

The prospect of a two-ocean approach to maritime security is in line with forward edge defense, which envisions China establishing an “arc-shaped strategic zone that covers the western Pacific Ocean and northern Indian Ocean.” The Chinese Science of Military Strategy states, “Because our at-sea sovereignty and interests have frequently come under intrusions … we need to form into a powerful and strong two oceans layout in order to face the crises that may possibly erupt.”

Bases
For more than a decade and a half there has been discussion of a string of pearls in the Indian Ocean. This concept is based on the perception that China is strategically building ports in bordering countries to contain India. While the drivers of such infrastructure are debatable, many Chinese analysts have commented extensively on this issue. Liang Meng argued that the Belt and Road Initiative can help break the strategic containment of China by the United States and India. Discussing the importance of the Indian Ocean to China, Shi Hongyan points out that India’s Andaman-Nicobar Command serves as an iron curtain effectively blocking China’s entry into the Indian Ocean. Directly addressing China’s need for bases in the Indian Ocean, three researchers from the Naval Academy of Military Science write that the development of the Indian Ocean is the only way for China to expand its sea power. Specifically, they write that the lack of bases is a form of malnutrition that lags far behind the expansion of China’s national interests.

They believe China needs to develop strategic fulcrums in the region, but must be careful in selecting these. Such bases can serve as supply and support points, which can serve strategic roles in China’s maritime power. They list Gwadar in Pakistan, but also mention Dar es Salaam, the Seychelles, Djibouti, and Hambantota in Sri Lanka. Cognizant of the concerns such activities may generate, they call for slow penetration to reduce Indian and American maritime hegemony. These potential bases would be in addition to the strategic strongpoint that China has already set up in Djibouti as well as the recently signed agreement that gives the PLAN access to a Cambodian naval base on the Gulf of Thailand.

Trial Balloons?
The above discussion highlights various Chinese government documents and informed scholarly analysis of Chinese perceptions of the Indian Ocean region. A key question is whether these are simply trial balloons, or whether they constitute a clear and sustained approach to the region. The Chinese facility in Djibouti and the small but constant presence of the PLAN in the northern Indian Ocean are empirical evidence that the PLAN does have clear Indian Ocean ambitions. Interestingly, one of the six berths at the Doraleh Multipurpose Port in Djibouti (close to the Chinese base) is reserved for the PLAN. However, these alone demonstrate only a limited engagement and do not constitute a clear strategic objective.

This is best found in various Belt and Road projects around the rim of the Indian Ocean. The construction of ports in multiple states in the region is one indicator, but these ports may be primarily about economics and connectivity projects and less about permanent bases. A better measurement is the sheer size of the Chinese fleet and the necessary steps being taken to facilitate blue water capability. The PLAN has eight 903/A supply ships, which have been used in the Gulf of Aden, and has built two Type 901 fast combat support ships for its carriers.

Beijing is unlikely to formally declare an Indian Ocean fleet before one is operational, and even then, for political reasons, it may not call it a fleet. What we can infer, based on the available evidence ranging from official government publications, Belt and Road port projects, and most importantly, a sustained and increasing effort to commission blue water capable warships, is that the PLAN is acquiring all of the requisites that would support such a fleet. These three factors provide the political, logistical, and security foundations for such ambition. For a China that increasingly perceives the United States as a rival that is determined to thwart China’s rise, such a fleet and potential base structure provides a form of deterrence against real or perceived American hegemony in the region.

Carrier Battle Groups with Chinese Characteristics
For China to have an effective naval strategy for the region, some Chinese analysts believe the PLAN would have to field multiple fully operational aircraft carriers. One Chinese analyst argues the PLAN must be equipped with at least three carriers if it is to send one into the Indian Ocean. Other sources argue that China is seeking up to six carriers by the mid-2030s to better carry out blue water operations and that two carriers may be deployed to the Indian Ocean. The absence of a fully operational aircraft carrier must not be understated. With 36 destroyers equipped with Dragon Eye combat systems similar to the American Aegis system, and 30 modern frigates, along with an emerging nuclear powered submarine fleet, the PLAN has arrived as a force to be reckoned with in East Asia. However, Chinese missions conducted in East Asia will likely have the benefit of some form of air support from land-based fighter aircraft. China’s first carrier, the Liaoning, and to a lesser extent the indigenously produced Shandong, are primarily experimental carriers that are used for training purposes.

China faces significant technological challenges to carrier aviation. Even though the Liaoning took to sea in 2012, it was not until 2018 that the PLAN announced the first nighttime landings of jets on the flattop. Furthermore, the PLAN is looking to replace the J-15 fighter jet, which is experiencing severe technical difficulties ranging from thrust to being the heaviest carrier based fighter in the world at 33 tons. By comparison the American F-18, the workhorse of the U.S. Navy’s fighter aircraft, weighs around 20 tons. Of greater importance, the F-18 is launched by catapults, while the J-15 is launched without a catapult off a ski jump with no assisted propulsion. Because of the excess weight, Chinese naval fighters must take off without adequate fuel and are likely not carrying ordnance. Recently the PLAN has sought to alleviate this challenge by conducting buddy refueling where one J-15 equipped with extra fuel pods refuels another J-15 in midair. While carriers may be the bling of international status, if not operating in a coordinated manner with effective, layered protection from escort ships, they are a massive liability. Properly integrating support ships and submarines into a viable carrier battle group is an extremely complicated task in a combat zone where an enemy can launch attacks from over the horizon and from below the surface. The PLAN is also developing the KJ-600, which is a carrier based early warning aircraft. If operational, such an aircraft will add an important level of sophistication and subsequent protection to a Chinese carrier battle group.

jward · Apr 5, 2021

continued

The Utility of a Carrier in the Indian Ocean Region
Professor Hu from Beijing University clearly acknowledges the challenges of developing combat-ready carriers and warns that the Liaoning will not rapidly change the PLAN’s capabilities. Importantly, he writes that carriers that are not ready for combat may be taken hostage and vulnerable carriers can easily be tracked and attacked from the air, surface, and undersea. Given such challenges, he argues, “these aircraft carriers will likely become a liability for the PLAN rather than a tool for victory.”

The concerns voiced by some Chinese analysts on the vulnerability of carriers raises the question of why the PLAN would need or want a carrier in the Indian Ocean. Over the past several decades China has amassed an arsenal of increasingly sophisticated anti-ship missiles that are both land-based and mounted on Chinese surface vessels and submarines. In the event of a hostile interdiction on the high seas, the ability of the PLAN to strike an enemy combatant with an over-the-horizon missile likely constitutes a greater threat than does a hulking aircraft carrier that constantly needs to be protected. American Adm. Stansfield Turner (and former CIA director) highlighted these concerns 15 years ago when he argued that because of advanced anti-ship missiles, carriers are becoming superfluous. In fact, China has yet to operate a carrier in the Indian Ocean. The well regarded Type 54A Jiangkai II guided missile frigate makes up 40 percent of escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and requires far less maintenance than does a carrier. In discussions with multiple Chinese maritime security experts, they pointed out that one thing a carrier and its accompanying battle group can offer is visible evidence that China is a great power. Many of them are aware of the liabilities inherent in maintaining a carrier, but they emphasized the mianzi (“face” or “prestige”) aspect of carriers.

The enormous surface area of the Indian Ocean also calls into question the utility of a carrier. In the event of hostilities, a carrier may find itself thousands of miles from the conflict zone, and it could be days or even weeks before it would be available at the scene. Smaller, stealthier vessels such as frigates and destroyers, if detached from a carrier battle group, can offer a wider net of protection for Chinese interests. According to the U.S. Naval War College, China has over 100 warships and submarines that are capable of operating in the Indian Ocean. If coupled with bases in the region, they may offer a viable deterrent to would-be enemies.

The PLAN is rapidly expanding its presence in the region. According to the Indian Navy, at any given time there are between six and eight PLAN warships in the northern Indian Ocean. Most of these vessels are providing public goods in the form of anti-piracy patrols. These exercises provide the PLAN with extremely valuable lessons on how to operate in the blue water, ranging from managing the logistics of operations far from home ports, to understanding ocean currents in this part of the world. However, in the absence of effective air cover, any PLAN flotilla in the region will not be able to engage in any meaningful combat with a state that has either its own naval aviation, or nearby land-based fighter jets. Furthermore, these deployments are still small compared to the American and Indian naval forces in the region. The absence of air cover cannot be underestimated, and this is a severe impediment to the PLAN’s ability to effectively project power beyond the symbolic showing of the flag. While the PLAN will eventually master the art of carrier-based aviation, until this is realized, it will not be able to engage in combat operations beyond dealing with pirates or other relatively low-risk missions such as evacuations.

The Politics of an Indian Ocean Fleet
As a sovereign state with substantial interests in the Indian Ocean region, China has a right and lawful interest in developing some sort of Indian Ocean fleet/naval presence. Just as the Americans protect their interests in the region, Beijing is concerned with its ability to protect its expanding interests. Apart from the technical hurdles involving carrier battle groups, China faces the crucial political challenge in the region, how to deal with India.

India’s concerns about Chinese activities in the Indian Ocean on their own do not generate major concern in Beijing. As Ye Hailin, the vice president of the Institute of Asia-Pacific and Global Strategy in the Chinese Academy of Social Science, stated, “In layman’s terms, China has never regarded India as a main concern, whether it is a partner or an opponent, it is a secondary level.” However, Indian leaders’ fears of China potentially containing India have driven New Delhi to reach out to Washington. This situation is inimical to Chinese interests.

Over the past seven years, India and the United States have signed three foundational defense agreements covering areas ranging from logistics to intelligence sharing. Furthermore, the U.S. military routinely assists its Indian counterpart in security issues such as help with catapults on India’s aircraft carriers, or tracking Chinese naval movements in the Indian Ocean. Simply put, increases in Chinese military activities in South Asia and, in particular, the Indian Ocean directly cause an increase in security and political ties between New Delhi and Washington. This plays to the hand of anti-China hawks in both capitals who seek to counter and constrict China in the region.

A Free Rider?
Oddly enough, as Beijing takes steps to protect its sea lines of communication in the region, Chinese scholars acknowledge China is, to a certain degree, free riding off the American military presence in the Indian Ocean. Xu Ruike and Sun Degang, both China-based scholars, admit China is an economic heavyweight in the Middle East, but is a military featherweight in the region, and will remain so for the coming decades. They further state that China will continue to be a free rider on the American-led protection of oil sea lines of communication for years.

Conclusion
Overall, China’s increasing ties to the Indian Ocean and beyond have expanded enormously over the past two decades, and in a future post-COVID-19 world, this will continue. Chinese analysts and government entities are increasingly calling for some form of Indian Ocean fleet/force that can protect and project China’s interests. Crucially, based on the available evidence consisting of port infrastructure projects, various statements from the government and China-based scholars/analysts, as well as new naval hardware, it appears that China does intend to develop some sort of Indian Ocean force. While China will never establish full sea control in the Indian Ocean, it will likely possess the ability to provide a credible deterrent to other states that may threaten Chinese sea lines of communication or entities.

However, while China increasingly has the surface combatants to conduct meaningful power projection in the Indian Ocean and has even carried out live-fire exercises in the northern Indian Ocean, critically the PLAN lacks the requisite protection of air power. Beijing will eventually solve the hardware component of its “Indian Ocean Dilemma.” However, the political dilemma of what to do about bases and, of greater strategic importance, what to do about the growing security relationship between India and the United States, which is driven by Chinese activities, may prove to be the biggest obstacle to China’s long-term Indian Ocean ambitions.

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Christopher K. Colley is a non-resident China fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the National Defense College, or the United Arab Emirates government.
Posted For Fair Use

A Future Chinese Indian Ocean Fleet? - War on the Rocks

The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is now the largest navy in the world. This development, announced in the U.S. Department of Defense’s 2020 annual

warontherocks.com

Housecarl · Apr 5, 2021

Posted for fair use.....

Why Biden won't likely leave Afghanistan - Asia Times

When US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made an unexpected stopover last month to Afghanistan, the announced trip underscored the unsettled state of

asiatimes.com

AFGHANISTAN
Why Biden won’t likely leave Afghanistan
Biden administration expected to renege on May 1 troop withdrawal commitment as China and Russia build ties to the Taliban

By SALMAN RAFI SHEIKH
APRIL 4, 2021

When US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made an unexpected stopover last month to Afghanistan, the announced trip underscored the unsettled state of American policy in the war-torn nation.

The US is obliged to withdraw by May 1 all of its remaining Afghanistan-based troops – estimated at around 4,500 according to recent revelatory reports – as per an agreement the Donald Trump administration reached with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, in February 2020.

The Joe Biden administration is now mulling whether or not to uphold that agreement, which both sides claim the other has breached on various fronts, or extend America’s troop presence to prop President Ashraf Ghani’s elected and embattled government.

Recent US intelligence assessments predict the Taliban will walk over Ghani’s national forces soon after a US troop withdrawal, a scenario that would abruptly end ongoing peace talks between the two sides and realign the region’s geopolitics in favor of American adversaries.

The Biden administration has pressed both sides to urgently for a “peace government” that would lead to constitutional reform and ultimately new democratic elections, a power-sharing proposal Ghani has so far resisted.

The US currently spends an estimated $4 billion per year to sustain Afghanistan’s National Security Forces against the Taliban and to uproot remnant al Qaeda terror cells in the country. The US has spent over $1 trillion in the country since first invading in the wake of al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks on the US.

America’s two-decade-old presence in the heart of Central Asia has long figured as a key determinant in the strategies of the region’s other main actors, including not least Russia, China, Pakistan and India.

Russia is already advancing plans to integrate a Taliban-led Afghanistan with its Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), an economic union of states located in Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and Central Asia.

John Sopko, the Pentagon’s special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, recently told a US House Representative committee that Ghani’s government “would probably lose the capability of flying any of its aircraft within a few months and, to be quite blunt, would probably face collapse” if the US withdrawals on May 1.

Spoko’s testimony is likely to embolden the Biden administration’s plans-in-the-making to keep US troops in Afghanistan until at least November, or until Kabul and the Taliban reach some sort of power-sharing political settlement that leads to eventual democratic elections.

Significantly, too, the Biden administration is showing signs of skepticism about its own recently pitched formula for intra-Afghan negotiations involving Afghanistan and a host of regional countries including Russia and China.

While America’s various options – stay, go, or indefinite delay – all carry their own dangers and risks for the US as well as Afghanistan, the Biden administration clearly does not want a settlement or scenario that disproportionately favors the Taliban over Ghani’s government.

Ultimately, the US seeks a settlement that allows for the inclusion of enough empowered political actors who will align with US policy, particularly vis-à-vis Russia, China and to a lesser degree Pakistan. The US must also consider the Afghan interests of its budding ally India and its concerns of China’s growing influence in its regional neighborhood.

The recent surge in tensions between the US and China on the one hand, and the US and Russia on the other, has intensified the Biden administration’s Afghan quandary.

US policymakers seem to understand that beating a retreat from Afghanistan, in the name of ending America’s “endless war”, would leave Afghanistan open to the creation of a Russian and/or Chinese proxy state with the extremist and terrorism-prone Taliban on top.

Keeping Afghanistan in its axis through a political formula that includes pro-US political forces is thus immensely important for the US, particularly in the context of Biden’s drive to win “like-minded” Asian allies to counter and contain China’s ever-rising regional influence

China and Russia clearly have their post-US withdrawal designs ready for Afghanistan. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently spoke of plans to integrate the China-led Belt and Road Initiative with the Russia-led EEU.

That would potentially benefit nations like Afghanistan that geographically intersect both infrastructure-building, trade-promoting projects. A China and Russia-aligned Afghanistan would provide a useful direct territorial link connecting south, west and central Asia.

Both are already making overtures to Afghanistan, seen in both countries’ “vaccine diplomacy” towards Kabul.

Like Russia, China has also developed direct ties with the Taliban. In September last year, Beijing reportedly offered the Taliban sizeable investments in energy and infrastructure projects following a US withdrawal and a political settlement with Ghani’s government.

A Pakistani intelligence official confirmed in an interview with the Financial Times that while China is keen to help to develop Afghanistan, it also seeks Taliban protection from anti-China Islamists known to be based in the country, including those with known links to its restive ethnic Uighur minority.

The fact that both Russia and China now accuse the US of violating the terms of its Doha pact with the Taliban shows how both are coming together to uproot America’s military presence in Afghanistan.

Commentators in Washington are sounding alarm bells about this confluence of anti-US interests and calling loudly on Biden to review and at the least delay Trump’s May 1 withdrawal obligation.

If the US decides to prolong its military presence, as seems increasingly likely, it will push the Taliban to rethink its commitment to a deal that has resulted in a near cessation of attacks on US troops.

The Taliban has already warned the US that it will face consequences if it doesn’t honor its agreed withdrawal deadline.

More significantly, US backtracking on its promised troop withdrawal could also motivate Russia and China to extend more diplomatic and possible military support to the Taliban – right when an end to America’s “endless war” was in sight.

danielboon · Apr 5, 2021

Taiwan's Air Force constructing hangars, storage facilities for new F-16V fighters
Construction project to cost NT$3.32 billion, scheduled for completion by 2026
11596

By Kelvin Chen, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2021/04/03 15:37

Taiwanese F-16V. (CNA photo)

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Ahead of the delivery of 66 new F-16 fighter jets purchased from the U.S., the Taiwan Air Force is spending more than NT$3.3 billion (US$115.6 million) on new hangars, missile storage facilities, and other related installations at the Chihhang Air Base in Taitung.
Taiwan and the U.S. finalized the sale of 66 F-16V jets last August, with the first two expected to arrive in 2023. All 66 fighters will be delivered and ready for combat missions by 2026.
The aircraft will be flown to Taiwan by a team of American and Taiwanese pilots, Liberty Times cited a military official as saying.
According to the latest Ministry of National Defense budget report, the new construction project at Chihhang Air Base will meet the needs of future aircraft and their missions. The project includes a plan to build a double-span hangar to repair jets from the Air Force’s 7th Wing.
The project will cost approximately NT$3.32 billion (US$116.42 million) and is scheduled for completion by 2026.
The F-16V fighter is equipped with an active electronically scanned array radar, which helps pilots “detect, track, and identify a greater number of targets, faster and at longer ranges,” according to Northrop Grumman. The new variant’s Link 16 network lets it coordinate with ground forces, allowing it to contend with China’s Chengdu J-20 fighters, which have a smaller radar cross-section.

Taiwans Air Force constructing hangars, storage facilities for new F-16V fighters | Taiwan News | Apr. 3, 2021 15:37

www.taiwannews.com.tw

Housecarl · Apr 5, 2021

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What the United States Military Can Learn from the Nagorno-Karabakh War | Small Wars Journal

On September 27, 2020, intense fighting erupted between Azerbaijan and Armenia when the Azeri military went on the offensive. The Azeris’ objective was to recapture the territories lost to Armenia in 1994. But to understand the underlying reasons for the current conflict, one must look back to...

smallwarsjournal.com

Sun, 04/04/2021 - 6:34pm

What the United States Military Can Learn from the Nagorno-Karabakh War
By Nicole Thomas, LTC Matt Jamison, CAPT(P) Kendall Gamber, and Derek Walton
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or
position of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
Background
On September 27, 2020, intense fighting erupted between Azerbaijan and Armenia when the Azeri military went on the offensive. The Azeris’ objective was to recapture the territories lost to Armenia in 1994. But to understand the underlying reasons for the current conflict, one must look back to the root of hostilities and to the role of other powers in the region.

Figure 1: New map of the Nagorno-Karabakh region as of
December 1, 2020.
Source: Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty

In the 1920’s the Soviet Union established the Nagorno-Karabakh as an autonomous region within the borders of Azerbaijan. Though the land was within Azerbaijan, it was home to nearly 95% ethnic Armenians.[1] The region remained relatively stable until the collapse of the Soviet Union, which opened the door for the inhabitants of the enclave to declare independence. This move resulted in a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia with Russia initially playing a role by providing weaponry and mercenaries to both sides.[2] Russia ultimately brokered a 1994 cease-fire to reduce instability in the region. This cease-fire allowed the Nagorno-Karabakh to achieve military and political independence despite being constrained within Azerbaijan’s borders. But after two decades of little movement toward reconciliation, Azerbaijan and Armenia would remain in a battle over the region, killing more than 20,000 people, displacing millions, and solidifying the ethnic Armenians’ hold within Azerbaijan.

Despite the 1994 cease-fire agreement, there have been 7,000 breaches. But it would be the April 2016, “Four Day War” along the “line of contact” that would mark one of the region’s deadliest. After decades as a frozen conflict, the “Four Day War” demonstrated to the Azeris that their strategic objectives could be achieved by force. And it would be this lesson, along with new military capability and a powerful ally, that would set the conditions for the September 2020 conflict.

This latest war lasted 44 days and left Azerbaijan in control of nearly one-third of the territory in the Nagorno-Karabakh. Unlike previous skirmishes and cease-fire violations, the warfare that erupted in September 2020 included post-modern characteristics and multi-domain combat operations. At only six days into the conflict, Azerbaijan already claimed to have destroyed 250 armored vehicles, a similar number of artillery pieces, and 39 air-defense systems, including a Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile system.[3] Armenian forces faced a persistent threat of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) that could attrite traditional defenses and minimize their overall defensive capability.

One Nation, Two States: The Impact of the Turkey-Azerbaijan Relationship
A long, but simmering, territorial dispute set the conditions for the September 27 offensive, but it was the outsized role Turkey played in Azerbaijan that would ultimately tip the scales in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Independently, cultural similarities, military alliances, or economic interests can create a strong bond between countries, but in the case of Turkey and Azerbaijan, these two countries share all three—making it one the most strategic partnerships in the region.

Underpinned by a shared language and culture, the sizeable Azeri diaspora within Turkey creates the sense that they are “one nation, two states.”[4] During the early years of Azerbaijan’s independence from the Soviet Union, the country’s foreign policy pursued a pan-Turkism agenda.[5] This ideological approach strengthened the connection between the two countries and ushered in a new phase in Azerbaijan’s political, economic, and military future.[6]

Azerbaijan’s new independence created the need for it to have allies in the region early in its independence, which would do two very important things. First, it would enter into a 1992 agreement with Turkey that provided military aid, training, and participation in joint exercises; and second, in 1999, the two nations would further cement the Ankara-Baku alliance with the development of shared economic goals. Together, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Georgia established the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, which connects the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. This economic alliance provided Azerbaijan with an economic advantage over its neighbors as its per capita income reached its peak of $7,190 in 2011, compared to Armenia’s $3,526 and Georgia’s $4,022.[7] The new revenue stream enabled Azerbaijan to increase investment in its military. Between 2006 and 2019, Azerbaijan invested nearly $29 billion in its military compared to Armenia’s roughly $6 billion during that same period.[8] In the end, it would be a combination of Azerbaijan’s alliance with Turkey and its nearly fifteen years of economic growth as a result of the BTC pipeline, that would give it an advantage vis-à-vis Armenia by rapidly improving military training, readiness, and capability.
Systems Employed
Azerbaijan leveraged the economic windfall to field several different types of UAS in the conflict. Among the deadliest and most effective was the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 which carries four MAM (Smart Micro Munition) laser-guided missiles.[9] The Azeris developed an imposing UAS arsenal composed of Israeli loitering munitions, also known as “suicide” or “kamikaze” drones that included the Harop and SkyStriker. They also deployed a locally-made version of the Israeli Orbiter-1K small kamikaze drone and converted a number of their old Russian AN-2 biplanes into ISR or suicide UAS. By contrast, Armenia’s UAS fleet consisted of smaller, indigenous systems focused on reconnaissance missions and is generally recognized as less capable than Azerbaijan’s fleet of foreign UAS.

Tactics
The armed conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia highlighted the continued use and effectiveness of unmanned platforms in low-intensity conflict and its ability to transform smaller, less-funded militaries into more lethal warfighting organizations. The use of UAS, particularly by Azerbaijan, included a range of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations, as well as unmanned aerial attack operations involving a variety of different platforms and munitions. The resounding success of UAS in the Nagorno-Karabakh War marks what many consider to be a turning point in modern warfare. For the first time in recorded history, nearly all battle damage was inflicted by unmanned platforms. The attrition of forces and equipment by UAS led to a decisive Azeri victory.

Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD)
At the onset of the conflict, Azerbaijan leveraged Soviet-era AN-2 biplanes to deceive and expose Armenian air defenses. Though decades old and intended to serve as traditional manned aircraft, the biplanes’ conversion to unmanned decoys allowed Azerbaijan to conduct low altitude flights into the highly contested environment—and more importantly—into the weapons engagement zone (WEZ) of Armenian air defenses. These improvised UAS were repurposed as decoys and flown to the front lines to force air defenses to give away their location and enable targeting by TB2s.[10] When the Armenian air defenses targeted, engaged, and destroyed the perceived threats, they inadvertently broadcasted their positions to Azeri unmanned aerial attack platforms that flew at higher altitudes—enabling the Bayraktar TB2 and kamikaze drones to destroy higher-payoff targets like the Armenian air defense systems.

These tactics are reminiscent of Vietnam-era “Wild Weasel” or “Hunter-Killer” concepts, where a bait aircraft would fly at low altitude in an attempt to gain enemy contact or draw fire, and a separate trail aircraft maintained enough lateral and/or vertical separation to immediately engage enemy forces that exposed themselves. By leveraging these tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) with an unmanned fleet, Azerbaijan was able to destroy the vast majority of Armenian air and missile defense equipment and establish tactical air superiority with minimal risk to force or mission. It is worth noting that traditional rotary wing assets were not used during these attacks. The high density of ADA systems across the battlefield presented too great a risk for more expensive manned aviation assets.
Shaan Shaikh and Wes Rumbaugh of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) provided detailed analysis of how and why Armenian air defenses failed to counter Azeri UAS:

The bulk of Armenia’s air defenses consisted of obsolete Soviet-era systems, like the 2K11 Krug, 9K33 Osa, 2K12 Kub, and 9K35 Strela-10. TB2s flew too high for these systems to intercept even if they were able to detect these relatively small aircraft. Russian-supplied Polye-21 electronic warfare systems disrupted Azerbaijani drone operations but only for four days. Armenia’s Buk and Tor-M2KM air defenses likely downed a few drones, but they were deployed late in the conflict, limited in number, and vulnerable to attack themselves. Armenia’s larger air defenses like the S-300 are not designed for counter-UAV missions and were targeted early in the conflict by Azerbaijani loitering munitions.[11]

In addition to the apparent lack of Armenian counter-UAS (C-UAS) capability, the strikes clearly demonstrated the vulnerability of more advanced air defense systems when faced with an overwhelming UAS threat.

Continued.....

Housecarl · Apr 5, 2021

Continued.....

Fire and Maneuver
A number of reports indicate that Azeri special operations teams, also referred to as “saboteur groups” by both Baku and Yerevan, infiltrated Armenian territory and occupied vacant houses days before combat operations began. Ethnic Armenians in the local area verified these reports and highlighted that “strange men, not Armenians” had established a presence in the town.[12] After initial UAS strikes decimated Armenian positions and opened gaps in defensive lines, the small groups of Azeri operators were able to seize key terrain with minimal resistance. With the use of UAS, the Azeri saboteur groups were then able to call-for-fire, directing accurate rocket, artillery, and air-to-ground fire onto designated targets. It is currently unknown whether these saboteur groups leveraged any type of manned-unmanned-teaming platform (i.e., a One System Remote Video Terminal equivalent) to receive live video, identify targets, or conduct battle damage assessments. These tactics demonstrated a variety of similarities to NATO operations in Afghanistan, where U.S. Special Operations Forces use unmanned platforms and laser range finder/designators to direct laser-guided and precision munitions onto targets, or sparkle targets to aid in directing unguided munitions onto target.

In the highly mountainous terrain of Nagorno-Karabakh, where movement by dismounted troops is slow, cumbersome, and restrictive for large military equipment like tanks, UAS serve as an equalizer that limits the advantage provided by elevated terrain and the cover and concealment it offers. The inhospitality of the terrain is amplified when small areas of low ground within the rising terrain provide little vegetation for concealment. Outposts and fighting positions in mountainous terrain can be identified and destroyed by UAS outfitted with modern sensor payloads and organic weapons. This is particularly applicable to fighting positions without appropriate passive defense measures (i.e., camouflaging, target hardening, etc.). When UAS do not have organic munitions and another UAS or manned platform is unable to support a remote engagement, UAS can transmit highly accurate grid coordinates to artillery or multiple launch rocket systems, enabling immediate “fire-for-effect” capability that yields accuracy to within ten meters of the intended point of impact.

Non-Materiel Failures
Video footage demonstrated that forces from both sides lacked training and proficiency in the application of passive defense techniques. Forces were regularly observed operating in the open, remaining static or moving slowly, poorly camouflaged, and aggregating together in tight groups.[13] Robert Bateman, writing for Foreign Policy, asserts that while UAS are a force multiplier, many of the failures witnessed during the war can be attributed to poor training. “Neither [side] seems to have grasped the idea that even the most high-tech tank (or armored fighting vehicle) is only so much scrap metal if you do not have a trained and disciplined fighting force inside those vehicles.”[14] Whether a lack of training or tactical discipline/patience, the cost to Armenia was immense. Video also shows Azeri UAS processing multiple high-payoff and high-value targets and immediately engaging targets of opportunity (i.e., troops in the open and unarmored vehicles) after high-priority targets were destroyed. In an ammunition-constrained environment, attack platforms would traditionally pass on engaging small groups of personnel or non-critical mission equipment. This is an indication that Azeri forces had a robust supply of Turkish air-to-ground missiles and Israeli loitering munitions.
Turkish Role
All indications point to Azerbaijan having acquired a substantial portion, if not all, of its TB2s from Turkey just prior to the onset of the war. In the beginning of 2020 alone, Turkey reportedly sold Azerbaijan more than $120 million worth of military equipment.[15] Given the rapid buildup of equipment, subject matter experts have expressed doubts that Azeri forces could have received an appropriate level of training and proficiency on the new equipment in a timely enough manner to conduct such lethal strikes. A reasonable conclusion is that Turkey likely played an expanded role in the attacks on Armenian forces and equipment. Mark Episkopos, a reporter for National Interest, highlights Turkey’s potential role in the war:

There is a mounting body of evidence that the Azberbaijani war effort was planned, coordinated, and in large part executed by Turkey. Military aid from Ankara included, but was not limited to, Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones, special forces commandos, and Turkish-affiliated Syrian mercenaries. Turkish control over Azerbaijan’s armed forces is so deeply embedded that there are reports of Azerbaijani military officers being fired at Ankara’s behest after criticizing the extent of Turkish involvement in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s recent participation at a victory parade in Baku evoked a striking portrait: the two leaders stood side by side, behind them a row of Turkish and Azerbaijani flags arrayed in equal numbers. Indeed, Turkish flags were just as ubiquitous on the streets of Baku as their Azerbaijani counterparts.[16]

The regional implications of Turkish involvement in the South Caucasus are far more compelling than just its apparent “support” of—some may assert “control” over—Azerbaijani sovereignty. With Russian peace-keeping efforts underway for at least the next five years, it remains unclear who will actually control Nagorno-Karabakh and which nation’s influence will dominate the larger South Caucasus region.

General Lessons Identified
In assessing the lessons that we have identified in this conflict, it is important to consider the overall context in terms of making a realistic determination as to the applicability of these lessons to U.S. military planning. While the conflict took place between two state actors, they do not share the same capability as near-peer competitors to the United States. Therefore, the operational and strategic choices each country made could be vastly different from a conflict between the U.S. and a near-peer. Neither has an air force that could realistically compete with the United States Air Force. Peer competitors like Russia and China would not be expected to fight in the same way as Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Additionally, non-state actors such as terrorist groups will employ UAS in different ways than state actors. While it is safe to assume that they will lack the air power of a state actor, they can achieve tactical air superiority in limited circumstances.[17] State actors that lack the air capability and capacity of peer competitors will similarly look to identify weak points where UAS can be applied to gain asymmetric advantage. Russia and China can be expected to augment manned systems with ISR missions and targeting support while also engaging in manned-unmanned teaming. While the U.S. military may not face Russian or Chinese forces in direct conflict, proxies around the world should be expected to employ their systems and TTPs at a similar level of capability.

Continued.....

Housecarl · Apr 5, 2021

Continued.....

For the DoD to truly internalize the lessons that have been identified and move them to the lessons learned column, it is necessary to consider what these lessons mean for the United States in future conflict. Put another way, how will adversaries employ these UAS threats against the Joint Force? Both peer and non-peer adversaries will use UAS to seek asymmetric advantage against the Joint Force. They will leverage hard to detect nap-of-the-earth flight profiles while masking radar cross sections to exploit weaknesses such as non 360-degree sensor coverage and man-in-the-loop command and control (C2) systems. They will seek ways to multiply effects such as through SEAD. It is generally recognized that most advanced air and missile defense systems are not designed to defend themselves against the full spectrum of threats. This will remain an issue until short-range, point defense systems such as the Army’s M-SHORAD or Iron Dome are deployed within a layered defense. Additionally, peers will employ complex attacks. UAS may not be the threat in terms of an end unto itself; these systems will also be employed as one component of a threat that includes ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and air-to-ground-missiles. They will combine manned and unmanned teaming and swarm tactics to clutter the operational environment and attempt to overwhelm operators with decisions and engagement sequences.

The security of rear area operations can no longer be taken for granted. UAS can support deep attacks on supply lines and enable a degree of “control” in the defender’s rear area. Today’s battlefield is no longer linear. Rather than attacking head-on, adversaries will employ UAS to facilitate 360-degree attacks along multiple, unpredictable routes in order to probe weak points and create surprise. Furthermore, UAS can potentially provide uninhibited ISR from above defensive positions.
Employment of UAS provides a cost-effective mechanism to augment air capability. An opponent whose air forces may be considered comparable to or weaker than its adversary will incorporate UAS to achieve an asymmetric advantage. This will include targeting support, employment of loitering munitions, and a range of reconnaissance and security operations. While an adversary may be unable to operate freely in the air domain across an entire area of operations, it may be able to achieve localized air superiority with the use of tactical UAS.
Adversarial decisive operations will likely leverage electronic warfare to support UAS employment when achieving quantifiable destruction is critical. Adversaries will employ electronic warfare systems to jam radars in order to increase the effectiveness of UAS attacks, particularly when conducting SEAD missions.

Implications for DoD C-sUAS Strategy?
The Department of Defense’s first C-sUAS Strategy was approved in December 2020, establishing a framework for dealing with the C-sUAS challenge along a spectrum of hazard to threat in three distinct operating environments: homeland, host nations, and contingency locations.[18] To fully assess how the Department of Defense should respond to the lessons that have been identified from this conflict, it is important to consider whether and how the recently approved strategy addresses them in its current form.

As developed, the DoD strategy enables an array of potential technical solutions in order to address a wide variety of threats. These solutions include kinetic and non-kinetic systems ranging from directed energy to jammers to projectiles. Central to this is a C2 architecture that facilitates interoperability across the Joint Force as well as with international partners and other federal agencies.
Also underway – and stemming from the strategy – is a Joint Training Concept that covers the spectrum from understanding what sUAS are and how to deal with them to long-term development of the C-UAS Training Academy with the Army’s Fires Center of Excellence. Portable, online courses will augment existing programs of instruction within the Military Services.

The DoD strategy also facilitates a three-pronged approach to keeping pace with a threat that is clearly evolving rapidly. First, it directs proactive coordination with the intelligence community in order to identify intelligence requirements so that the Joint Force can stay ahead of the threat before it is demonstrated on the battlefield. Second, the Department will leverage existing science and technology investment to expedite the development of innovative solutions through partnerships with industry, academia, and research facilities. Third, the operational requirements that dictate the key performance parameters that future C-sUAS capabilities must meet will be updated every 18-24 months to pace the threat. All of this is centered on an enterprise approach – across the Department and beyond – with the Joint C-sUAS Office in position to unify the overall effort.

The DoD strategy builds the train, but the implementation plan drives it. The importance of the strategy lies much more in the Department’s ability to flesh out the tasks that fall under its three lines of effort (Ready the Force, Defend the Force, and Build the Team) than in the text of the strategy itself. This implementation plan and assorted, supporting efforts provide the depth and flexibility which will be paramount in enabling the Department to defeat UAS threats.
Recommendations
Going forward, what steps should the Department take in response to ensure that it has a trained Joint Force with a suite of solutions that can protect personnel, facilities, assets, and missions from both current and future UAS threats?

DoD must integrate conventional air defense systems with C-UAS defenses. Specifically, the Department should continue to emphasize the development of layered, “system of systems” defenses. This includes the incorporation of C-UAS into all critical asset defenses and linkage with concepts such as Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and network-centric systems such as the Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS).

DoD must incorporate machine learning and autonomy into C2 systems. Individual operators lack the bandwidth to deal with UAS swarms, so automatable decision support tools that provide “any sensor, best shooter” solutions are critical.

DoD must develop comprehensive defense concepts that integrate offensive and defensive fires. The Joint Force must be capable of integrating offensive fires with both active and passive defensive measures. Capacity will always be a challenge with defensive systems, so it is necessary to leverage attack operations that can potentially reduce threats and divert adversary resources. Passive defenses that apply cover and concealment will be instrumental in preventing successful ISR without revealing operating positions.
DoD must prepare the Joint Force to operate in a communications-degraded and/or denied environment. Adversaries will jam radars and radio signals and will seek to suppress C-UAS and air defense systems. Joint C-UAS training must incorporate the use of analog systems and redundant communications. Further enhancements to the resiliency of communications and situational awareness tools are also needed.
DoD must enable creativity and adaptability in C-UAS forces. This includes developing training and enabling flexible concepts of employment that support organizational flattening, seeking efficiencies in the modification of TTPs, and facilitating quick decisions at all levels. This is essentially an extreme example of mission command and is conceptually similar to how Special Operations Forces operate.
DoD must enable enhanced information sharing with our allies and partners and support the creation of interoperable solutions. Our allies and partners are key enablers. To more effectively protect U.S. forces abroad, the DoD must make collaborative research, development, test, and evaluation efforts and integrated systems a priority.

DoD must increase investment in non-materiel solutions. Materiel solutions are not enough by themselves. Non-materiel solutions (e.g., doctrine, training, etc.) must be synchronized with materiel to maximize their effectiveness. The right system with the wrong TTPs for employment will be ineffective.

Conclusion
The improved capability of UAS combined with decreasing price points has lowered the barrier for entry into conflict in the air domain. The relatively low cost and high capability of these systems provides smaller states and non-state actors the ability to change the status quo. Countries such as Azerbaijan now have improved access to air power, which in turn has upended existing notions regarding traditional air dominance. Azerbaijan’s preparation for and execution of the recent conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh provides a blueprint for state and non-state actors alike to easily modernize their military forces and rapidly augment air operations. The decreased personal risk and stand-off capability have altered the calculus for conflict, potentially increasing its likelihood and opening the door to the renewal of previously frozen conflicts. The United States military needs to heed the warning of Nagorno-Karabakh in order to effectively prepare for the battlefield of the future. However, the DoD must not simply look at tactical lessons learned from this conflict. The Department must also consider the wider strategic implications it suggests such as the likelihood for other frozen conflicts to heat up amid the clear benefits this low cost, low risk capability can provide to countries looking to change their fate.

[1] Council on Foreign Relations, “Global Conflict Tracker,” Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict | Global Conflict Tracker.
2 Ibid.

[3] David Hambling, "The ‘Magic Bullet’ Drones Behind Azerbaijan’s Victory Over Armenia", Forbes, 2020, The ‘Magic Bullet’ Drones Behind Azerbaijan’s Victory Over Armenia.
[4] Kevork Oskanian, “Turkey’s global strategy: Turkey and the Caucasus,” Report, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2011, p. 26.
[5] Ibid, Kevork
[6] Ibid, Kevork
[7] World Bank, GDP (current US$) - Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia | Data
[8] World Bank, World Development Indicators | DataBank, (figures are in U.S. dollars)
[9] Hambling, "The ‘Magic Bullet’ Drones Behind Azerbaijan’s Victory Over Armenia".
[10] Ibid.
[11] Shaan Shaikh, "The Air And Missile War In Nagorno-Karabakh: Lessons For The Future Of Strike And Defense", Center For Strategic And International Studies, 2020, The Air and Missile War in Nagorno-Karabakh: Lessons for the Future of Strike and Defense.
[12] Ron Synovitz, “Technology, Tactics, And Turkish Advice Lead Azerbaijan To Victory In Nagorno-Karabakh”, RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty, 2020, Technology, Tactics, And Turkish Advice Lead Azerbaijan To Victory In Nagorno-Karabakh.
[13] Shaikh, "The Air And Missile War In Nagorno-Karabakh".
[14] Robert Bateman, “No, Drones Haven’t Made Tanks Obsolete”, Foreign Policy, 2020, No, Drones Haven’t Made Tanks Obsolete.
[15] Andrew Bowen and Cory Welt, Azerbaijan and Armenia: The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict, CRS Report No. R46651 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2021), https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46651.
[16] Mark Episkopos, “Nagorno-Karabakh and the Fresh Scars of War”, The National Interest, 2020, Nagorno-Karabakh and the Fresh Scars of War.
[17] Keri Chavez and Ori Swed, “An Allegory of Cave: Innovation and Terrorist Drones,” U.S. Army War College War Room, August 27, 2020, AN ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE: INNOVATION AND TERRORIST DRONES. See also Jules “Jay” Hurst,” Small Unmanned Aerial Systems and Tactical Air Control,” Air & Space Power Journal (Spring 2019).
[18] Department of Defense, Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Strategy, 2020, https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jan/...-SMALL-UNMANNED-AIRCRAFT-SYSTEMS-STRATEGY.pdf.

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About the Author(s)
Derek Walton
Derek Walton is a KBR, Inc. Lead Specialist, Program Management, serving as a Strategy and Policy Analyst at the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office. He is a prior U.S. Army Aviation Officer and a contributing author of the Department of Defense’s first ever C-sUAS strategy and implementation plan.
Kendall Gamber
CPT Kendall Gamber is a U.S. Army Military Intelligence Officer serving as the Policy Integration Intelligence Planner at the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office. She holds a Masters Degree in Science and Technology Intelligence from the National Intelligence University.
Matthew Jamison
LTC Matthew Jamison is a U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery Officer serving as the Policy Integration Branch Chief at the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office. He is a graduate of the Secretary of Defense Strategic Thinkers Program at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
Nicole Thomas
Nicole Thomas is a civilian with the U.S. Army and the Division Chief for Strategy and Policy in the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office. She is a graduate of the United States Army War College.

Comments
RT Colorado
Mon, 04/05/2021 - 4:12pm
Permalink
Excellent article with…
Excellent article with appropriate and well organized content. The Nagorro-Karabakh conflict is an excellent example of what happens when one side has the support of a more sophisticated and better equipped ally...and more importantly, the "usual" major actors stay out of the conflict.
There is no doubt that UAV's and other remotely guided and or targeted aircraft will have a significant impact in future conflicts. The real question is how will a similar scenario play out when both sides are served by relatively equal technologies. Opponents like the US and Russia or China would have to have a very different plan as the level of sophistication between the combatants would be more similar than dissimilar, though if one side could pull off a "Pearl Harbor" surprise attack with little if any prior notice, the fighting could resemble a 1967 June War character. Imagine the disfunction of hundreds of swarming suicide drones attacking air defense systems, air bases, etc.
There is also little if any doubt that every "smaller nation" will be reviewing their defense plans to see how UAV's can fit into any potential conflict. The price tag for such technology is high for the moment as witnessed by the disparity between the availability of revenue between the two combatants in the conflict, but there's no reason that other "major nations" can't review the same process in assisting potential allies involved in "small wars". Another consideration...how long would American involvement as a "surrogate" remain quiet in a situation similar to the one between Turkey and Azerbaijan ?

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Housecarl · Apr 6, 2021

Posted for fair use.....

US Special Forces sent into Mozambique amid growing civil war

The Biden administration has quietly opened up a new front in the ever expanding number of shadow wars being fought across the globe by the US military.

www.wsws.org

US Special Forces sent into Mozambique amid growing civil war
Bill Van Auken
2 hours ago
Amid an escalating armed conflict in Mozambique, the Pentagon has sent US Special Operations troops into the southern African nation. The deployment of these troops, described as “trainers” and “advisers,” and justified in the name of the endless “war on terrorism,” provides fresh confirmation of the Biden administration’s global escalation of US militarism, including on the continent of Africa.

Announced in the middle of last month, the US deployment has come amid a sharp escalation in the civil war being fought in Mozambique’s northern-most province of Cabo Delgado, where the Mozambican government is confronting an insurgency among that region’s predominantly Muslim population.

US special forces commander addressing Mozambican marines on March 15 (US Embassy Mozambique)
The latest fighting has centered in the town of Palma, a hub for the exploitation of the country’s natural gas fields, which was seized by the rebels at the end of last month, sending an estimated 11,000 people fleeing to the port city of Pemba on the Indian Ocean. According to the United Nations, some 670,000 have been displaced since fighting began in the region in 2017.

Commander Chongo Vidigal, the chief of the government forces sent to retake Palma from the rebels told the media Sunday that the area was now “safe.” An earlier attempt to bring reporters to the scene, however, was aborted after the helicopter flying them to the town came under fire.

The main objective of the military operation was to secure the site of a $60 billion liquefied natural gas project initiated by the French energy giant Total, which has demanded a 15-mile secure perimeter as a condition for its continued presence. Having resumed operations only on March 24 after shutting down its facilities following an earlier rebel offensive at the beginning of the year, Total has shut down again, pulling all of its employees out of the region. In addition to the French-based energy transnational, Italy’s ENI and the US-based ExxonMobil also have interests in Mozambique’s natural gas reserves, believed to be among the largest on the planet.

Foreword to the German edition of David North’s Quarter Century of War
Johannes Stern, 5 October 2020
After three decades of US-led wars, the outbreak of a third world war, which would be fought with nuclear weapons, is an imminent and concrete danger.

Just days before the dispatch of the US special forces troops, on March 11, Washington designated “ISIS-Mozambique” as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” paving the way for the US military intervention. The US Embassy in Maputo said that Washington “is committed to supporting Mozambique with a multifaceted and holistic approach to counter and prevent the spread of terrorism and violent extremism.”

The “ISIS-Mozambique” label is an invention of the US State Department. Locally, the insurgents are known as al-Shabab, Arabic for “the youth,” and have no connection to the Islamist insurgent group based in Somalia that goes by the same name. While the Islamic State has issued videos falsely claiming responsibility for the Mozambican insurgency’s attacks, there is no evidence of operational links between ISIS and the rebellion in northern Mozambique, much less of it posing any threat of international terrorism.

The government of President Filipe Nyusi in Maputo, Mozambique’s southern capital, has pushed the “terrorist” label, and Washington has eagerly embraced it. Their aim is to cover up the complex political and social roots of the conflict and to justify a counterinsurgency campaign aimed at defending the interests of a ruling national oligarchy, transnational energy corporations and global finance capital.

The roots of the insurgency in Cabo Delgado lie in the conditions of stark inequality that characterize Mozambique, where, according to figures released before the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than half of the population live under conditions of absolute poverty. Wealth is monopolized by a small ruling elite dominated by the ruling FRELIMO (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) party and its cohorts and concentrated in Maputo.

Cabo Delgado, among the least developed areas of the country, has seen increasing amounts of wealth extracted from beneath its soil with the development of the natural gas projects as well as ruby mining. Virtually none of this wealth, however, has benefited the impoverished masses. Muslims, who are a minority in Mozambique, constitute more than half of the province’s population. Political domination of the province, however, has been monopolized by the predominantly Catholic Makonde ethnic group, of which President Nyusi is a member.

The immediate spark for the armed conflict came in 2017, after the government sought to suppress a layer of Muslim youth, some of them educated in Saudi Arabia, who had sought to introduce a stricter form of Islam and challenged older Muslim clerics with ties to the FRELIMO regime.

FRELIMO, considered at the time one of the most radical of the African nationalist movements, came to power in 1975 after a 10-year-long armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism. Independence came after the overthrow of Portugal’s Salazar dictatorship in 1974. It was followed, however, by 15 years of bloody civil war in which the apartheid regime in South Africa, the white minority regime in Rhodesia and the US Central Intelligence Agency backed a counterrevolutionary movement known as RENAMO (Mozambique National Resistance) in a bloody conflict that would claim a million lives.

That today’s FRELIMO regime of President Nyusi is calling on the very same forces against which the movement fought in the independence struggle to assist it in suppressing an insurgency speaks volumes about the organic incapacity of the bourgeois nationalist movements to realize the aspirations of the African masses for freedom from foreign domination, democracy and social justice. As in South Africa, Zimbabwe and elsewhere on the African continent, Mozambique’s former “freedom fighters” and self-styled Marxists have turned themselves into a gang of corrupt millionaire politicians and comprador capitalists.

In addition to the US Special Operations troops that have been deployed to Mozambique, Portugal, the country’s old colonial master, has announced that it is sending at least 60 special forces “trainers.”

The Mozambican security forces have also relied heavily on a South African-based private military contractor, the Dyck Advisory Group (or DAG), which consists of South African mercenaries commanded by Lionel Dyck, a former colonel in the Rhodesian army. The DAG has been charged by Amnesty International with crimes against humanity, including dropping so-called barrel bombs on population centers, firing machine guns from helicopters into crowds and attacking schools and hospitals.

While US troops have gone into Mozambique on the pretext of fighting “terrorism,” the Pentagon under President Joe Biden is acting under the same guidelines set by the National Security Strategy enacted under Trump at the beginning of 2018, which stressed that “Great power competition—not terrorism—is now the primary focus of US national security.”

Africa constitutes a key battleground in the “great power competition” between the US and China that is undergoing a sharp escalation under the Biden administration. China has surpassed the US as the continent’s number one trading partner and lender, while engaging in widespread infrastructure projects under its “Belt and Road” initiative. Washington fears being locked out of a strategically important market and source of raw materials and is seeking to compensate, as elsewhere, with military intervention, with the peoples of Africa suffering the consequences.

READ MORE

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Housecarl · Apr 6, 2021

Posted for fair use.....

Analysis of the activity of ISIS's branches in Congo and Mozambique following the imposition of US sanctions - The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center

Following the expansion of ISIS’s activity in the past year in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Mozambique, the US Department of State announced on March 10, 2021, the imposition of economic sanctions on ISIS’s branch in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its leader, Seka Musa...

www.terrorism-info.org.il

Analysis of the activity of ISIS’s branches in Congo and Mozambique following the imposition of US sanctions
Published: 05/04/2021
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Mozambican army vehicle seized by operatives of ISIS’s Central Africa Province in Cabo Delgado (Telegram, May 13, 2020)

ISIS operatives in the Democratic Republic of the Congo renewing their pledge of allegiance to ISIS’s leader (Telegram, July 24, 2019)

ISIS operatives in Mozambique renewing their pledge of allegiance to ISIS’s leader.

Armed ISIS operatives outside the local authority building of the Quissanga region (Telegram, March 24, 2020)

ISIS operatives who took part in the attack against the Mozambican army in the village of Malali.

One of the ISIS operatives who took part in the attack standing on an ATV of the Mozambican security forces (Telegram, December 8, 2019)

Mozambican army vehicle seized by operatives of ISIS’s Central Africa Province in Cabo Delgado (Telegram, May 13, 2020)

ISIS operatives in the Democratic Republic of the Congo renewing their pledge of allegiance to ISIS’s leader (Telegram, July 24, 2019)

ISIS operatives in Mozambique renewing their pledge of allegiance to ISIS’s leader.

Armed ISIS operatives outside the local authority building of the Quissanga region (Telegram, March 24, 2020)

ISIS operatives who took part in the attack against the Mozambican army in the village of Malali.

One of the ISIS operatives who took part in the attack standing on an ATV of the Mozambican security forces (Telegram, December 8, 2019)

Mozambican army vehicle seized by operatives of ISIS’s Central Africa Province in Cabo Delgado (Telegram, May 13, 2020)

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Full document in PDF format
Overview

Following the expansion of ISIS’s activity in the past year in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Mozambique, the US Department of State announced on March 10, 2021, the imposition of economic sanctions on ISIS’s branch in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its leader, Seka Musa Baluku, and ISIS’s branch in Mozambique and its leader, Abu Yasir Hassan (website of the US Department of State, March 10, 2021)[1].
Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are part of ISIS’s Central Africa Province, whose establishment was announced by ISIS in April 2019. In practice, there are two local organizations which pledged allegiance to ISIS: Ansar al-Sunna in Mozambique and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which also calls itself Madinat al-Tawheed wal Muwahideen, in Congo. These two organizations are apparently in contact with ISIS’s leadership in Syria.
Both organizations have similar forms of action. ISIS’s main activity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is attacking military targets and local Christian residents. Its attacks are focused on the region of the city of Beni, in northeastern Congo, about 50 km from the border with Uganda, where most of the residents are Christian villagers.
In Mozambique, ISIS attacks similar targets, but it also operates against Western targets (such as gas reserves and tourist sites), especially Christian ones. It also demonstrates an ability to rule over populated regions. The epicenter of the organization’s activity is the Cabo Delgado Province in the northeast of the country, a region rich with natural gas, with tourist sites and a seaport.
The US sanctions reflect the US administration’s concern about the expanding activity of these organizations and the feeling, which is also supported by up-to-date research on the part of the Pentagon, that the level of success of the US military aid, including in training local armies, is low.

Characteristics of ISIS’s activity in Mozambique
ISIS in Mozambique – Ansar al-Sunna

The Ansar al-Sunna organization in Mozambique is referred to as “Al-Shabab” (i.e., the youth) and sometimes as “Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jama’ah” or “Harakat al-Sunna wal-Jama’ah.” It started in 2007 as a small group of Islamist youth who were active in the Cabo Delgado Province, in northeastern Mozambique. In time, the group increased in number, reaching about 1,000 jihadist insurgents whose background was mainly social and economic frustration. The group’s activity began in October 2017. They pledged allegiance to ISIS in early 2018. In the beginning, the group operatives, who apparently were reinforced by other fighters from around East Africa, attacked remote rural areas. As years went by, their actions became more and more complex.[2] In 2020, the group carried out about 400 attacks, double the number of attacks carried out a year before. Three years after the organization started its attacks, more than 1,300 civilians were killed in Mozambique, hundreds of members of the security forces were killed or wounded, and about 670,000 civilians were forced to leave their homes.[3] In addition, the organization wreaked havoc on tourism and inflicted damage on the gas reserves, where much foreign funds have been invested.
According to the US, the organization is headed by Abu Yasir Hassan. No further details have been provided on him, apart from his name (or codename). The organization operatives attract the locals by persuading them that the local authorities are impotent and corrupt and by supplying them with food and funds. The group members are aware of the limitations of the Mozambican security forces. Disgruntled soldiers who joined their ranks added to the organization’s capabilities as they possess operational skill and also represent sources of intelligence[4].
The group’s epicenter is the Cabo Delgado Province, especially the region of Mocímboa da Praia. The Cabo Delgado Province is one of the poorest regions in the country, despite the potential of wealth inherent in the reserves of natural resources. Although most of the Mozambicans are Christians, Cabo Delgado has a Muslim majority (about 54%), a considerable part of which feels neglected and underprivileged. Therefore, they represent a potential pool for collaborators and recruits to the organization. The largest ethnic group in the region is the Makonde tribe, whose people live along the border between Mozambique and Tanzania and in Kenya (Wikipedia).
According to researcher Eleanor Beevor, the residents of the province were assimilated into criminal networks engaged in marine smuggling operations and were fertile ground for a wave of Islamist preachers who arrived in the region mainly from Tanzania, in 2014–2015, and found a sympathetic ear among local youth. These preachers not only inculcated their teenagers with radical Islamic ideology but also promised them loans to establish small businesses in return for loyalty to the group. The recruitment of the youth was even accelerated due to repressive measures against them by the army.[5]
According to researcher Emilia Columbo, Ansar al-Sunna has economic capability based on drug smuggling and trading in illegal timber, ivory, and rubies. According to Columbo, this may adversely affect the support of the organization leaders, who do not approve of this illegal activity, however lucrative it is. She believes that as this activity continues, it may create a rift in the ranks of the organization.[6]

Mozambique (www.worldometers.info)
Links with ISIS leadership in Syria and Iraq

Except for the fact that the group members pledged allegiance to ISIS, the relationship between the organizations and the extent of control by ISIS in Syria and Iraq over their activity are unclear. On November 12, 2020, the Mozambican attorney general said that the law enforcement authorities had arrested 12 Iraqi citizens suspected of supporting the rebels in the Cabo Delgado region (allafrica.com, November 12, 2020; Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2020). It can be estimated that these were ISIS operatives who arrived from Iraq to establish ISIS’s presence in the region.

Links with ISIS operatives in African countries

The Democratic Republic of the Congo: According to Eleanor Beevor, limited coordination is maintained between ISIS’s operatives in Mozambique and the operatives in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (ADF). She notes that Islamic operatives from Congo were arrested in Mozambique, which can indicate the presence of operatives from Congo in Mozambique and maybe also operatives from Mozambique operating in Congo.[7] On August 12, 2018, Mozambican chief of police Bernardino Rafael noted that one of the leaders of terrorist attacks in Cabo Delgado is Abdel Rahman Faisal, who has direct links to ADF and Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jama’ah. In addition, ADF recently released a propaganda video in which it expresses solidarity with Ahl al-Sunna wal-Jama’ah.[8]
Somalia: Tore Hamming noted in his recent article that ISIS’s Central Africa Province is administratively subordinate to Maktab al-Qarar (literally, “the Office of Decision”), which is based in Somalia and is responsible for ISIS’s branches outside Syria and Iraq. This may indicate that relations are maintained between ISIS operatives in Mozambique (as well as Congo) and ISIS operatives in Somalia.[9]

Control (at least partial) over territory

ISIS operatives in Mozambique control several regions in the country, including (since August 12, 2020) the port city of Mocímboa da Praia, from which they apparently launch some of their attacks against the province of Cabo Delgado. This indicates ISIS’s capabilities and may subsequently result in the takeover of further territory and maybe even an attempt to establish an alternative caliphate to that which existed in Syria and Iraq.
Last year, ISIS also controlled, for a short period of time, the Muidumbe District, a rural region in the Cabo Delgado Province. On April 7, 2020, ISIS operatives took over four villages in the region but had to withdraw after several days. They regained control on October 31, 2020, and were repelled once again by the Mozambican army on November 16, 2020. A UN report on the situation in Cabo Delgado (March 11, 2021) revealed that half of the district’s territory is inaccessible to UN activity due to the extensive presence of terrorist operatives and military operations in the area.[10]
In March 2020, local sources reported that ISIS’s operatives had taken over the Quissanga region, about 120 km south of Mocímboa da Praia, in the Cabo Delgado Province. A photo was disseminated on social media showing armed ISIS operatives outside the local authority building (Telegram, March 24, 2020). According to the aforementioned UN report, the operatives are still in control of the area, which is rich in natural gas.

Characteristics of ISIS’s terror activity in Mozambique

The following are several incidents characterizing ISIS’s activity (according to ISIS’s announcements posted on Telegram):

Activity against the security forces

On November 10, 2019, the organization’s operatives ambushed Mozambican soldiers in the Macomia region, in the eastern part of the Cabo Delgado Province. Eight soldiers were killed and four others were wounded in the exchange of fire.
On December 6, 2019, a Mozambican army camp in the village of Malali, near Mocímboa da Praia, was attacked. A total of 16 soldiers were killed in the exchange of fire, one soldier was taken prisoner, and weapons and ammunition were seized. The attackers set fire to the camp and to several houses of supporters of the Mozambican army.

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Housecarl · Apr 6, 2021

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On March 23, 2020, five army and police posts in Mocímboa da Praia were attacked. Dozens of soldiers and policemen were killed or wounded in the exchange of fire. Weapons and ammunition, as well as a number of vehicles, were seized. According to the BBC, “Islamist militants” took over Mocímboa da Praia and a military camp and raised a jihadist flag. The Mozambican army and police mounted a counterattack. It was noted that the city is situated near an area of a $60 billion natural gas project, with foreign companies investing in the site (BBC, March 23, 2021).

Mocímboa da Praia, Mozambique (Google Maps)

Right: Rifles seized by ISIS in an attack in Cabo Delgado. Left: Mozambican police vehicle hit by bullets (Telegram, March 24, 2020)

On May 11, 2020, two soldiers were killed and others were wounded in an exchange of fire with the Mozambican army in one of the villages in the Cabo Delgado Province. In addition, a vehicle was seized.
On August 6, 2020, two Mozambican army compounds near Mocímboa da Praia were attacked. About 50 soldiers were killed or wounded in exchanges of fire that lasted for several hours. In addition, weapons and ammunition were seized.

Right: Equipment of Mozambican soldiers seized by ISIS’s operatives. Left: Rifles seized by the operatives (Telegram, August 11, 2020)
Attacks against local residents, mainly Christian

On November 11, 2019, homes of Christian residents were set on fire in one of the villages in the Cabo Delgado Province. There were exchanges of fire between ISIS and the Mozambican army. The soldiers withdrew and the operatives took over the village and set the houses on fire.
On May 11, 2020, two Mozambican army compounds and several houses of Christian residents were set on fire in Miengueleue, about 20 km east of Muidumbe. No casualties were reported. The compounds and the houses sustained damage.
On April 7-8, 2020, a total of 52 young men were slaughtered, some of them by beheading, in Xitaxi, in the Muidumbe region, after refusing to join the organization (BBC, April 22, 2020).
On November 7-9, 2020, Christian villagers were murdered in several villages in Muidumbe and Macomia, about 50 km from Muidumbe, in the Cabo Delgado Province. In addition, women were abducted, and houses were set on fire (BBC, November 9, 2020; GardaWorld, November 9, 2020).

Right: Muidumbe, northeastern Mozambique. Left: Muidumbe and Macomia, northeastern Mozambique (Google Maps), Mocímboa da Praia, northeastern Mozambique, near the border between Mozambique and Tanzania (Google Maps)

Right: Article in ISIS’s Al-Naba’ weekly, documenting ISIS’s operatives inside the port of Mocímboa da Praia after taking over the port (Al-Naba’, Telegram, August 27, 2020)

According to Hisham al-Najjar, an Egyptian researcher specializing in terrorist groups, the attack on Mocímboa da Praia and the takeover of the nearby port indicate a change in the organization’s modus operandi. According to Al-Najjar, until the takeover of the port, the organization’s activity mainly consisted of attacking government institutions, destroying army camps and taking control of weapons and ammunition. The attack on the port testifies to the ability to carry out a more complex operation, targeting the country’s strategic assets. In his assessment, the change stems from the adoption of a new strategy, aiming to take advantage of the world preoccupation with COVID-19 instead of fighting terrorism, while striving to create sympathy among the local residents by catering to their needs in food and weapons (Al-Arab, a pan-Arab newspaper published from London, April 14, 2020).
On September 15, 2020, operatives affiliated with ISIS took over two islands in the Indian Ocean close to Mocímboa da Praia, where luxurious holiday resorts are located. The operatives destroyed the hotels, drove away the residents, and imposed sharia law on the islands. On September 20, 2020, it was reported that the operatives set fire to a hotel in the Sita region, which is considered an especially luxurious hotel site, causing widespread destruction (AFP, September 15, 2020; The Daily Telegraph, September 20, 2020; The Sun, September 17, 2020; www.jihadwatch.org, September 20, 2020).

Right: The island of Vamizi in northeastern Mozambique. Left: Location of the islands in northeastern Mozambique (Google Maps)

On April 8 or 10, 2020, a Gazelle helicopter crashed in one of the islands west of the city of Pemba, in the Cabo Delgado Province. It belonged to private contractors from South Africa operating in Mozambique as part of the fight against terrorism. The helicopter apparently crashed as a result of light weapon fire hitting its gearbox while it was attacking Islamic militants (Defence Web, news portal on security issues in Africa, operating from South Africa, April 15, 22, 2020). ISIS’s Amaq News Agency released a video allegedly photographed on April 8, 2020, showing operatives of ISIS’s Central Africa Province who shot down the helicopter, exchanging fire with the Mozambican army (Telegram, April 20, 2020).

Expanding activity to other countries
Terrorism spilling over from Cabo Delgado to Tanzania

On October 14, 2020, it was found that the organization’s activity had expanded to Tanzanian territory: ISIS operatives attacked a Tanzanian army compound in Kitaya, merely some 700 meters northwest of the border between Tanzania and Mozambique. Several soldiers were killed or wounded. Weapons and ammunition were seized, and one tank was set on fire. As far as is known, this was the first attack carried out by ISIS on Tanzanian territory. It can be estimated that those who carried out the attack were ISIS operatives from the Cabo Delgado Province who crossed the border (a distance of less than one kilometer) and apparently returned to Mozambique after the attack.

Kitaya, Tanzania (Google Maps)

On October 29, 2020, ISIS operatives set fire to three Christian villages in the Mtwara region, in southeastern Tanzania, near the border with Mozambique. The villages sustained damage.

Threats against South Africa

In the main article of ISIS’s weekly Al-Naba’ published on July 2, 2020, ISIS warned South Africa not to send forces to neighboring Mozambique, threatening that South Africa will also become an ISIS target. The threat was made following news on world media, according to which the United States and European countries work to have South African forces join the fighting against ISIS in Mozambique (Al-Naba’, Telegram, July 2, 2020).

The article threatening that South Africa will become an ISIS target if it sends forces to fight ISIS in Mozambique (Al-Naba’, Telegram, July 2, 2020)
Cautious optimism

Recently, security officials in Mozambique expressed optimism in view of a decrease in terrorism in Mozambique over the recent weeks. The decrease is apparently due to special activity by the Mozambican security forces. Owing to this activity, “only” 10 attacks were carried out in January 2021, compared to 30 in December 2020. In addition, recently, the US sent Special Forces to train Mozambican army special units in fighting against terrorism (The New York Times, March 17, 2021; AFP, February 9, 2021).[11] In spite of the optimism, the data should be examined over time.
In this context, it should be noted that according to a document which was leaked to the media, which was written by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a research institute that belongs to the US Department of Defense, the US army commando units sent to fight against radical terrorist groups in Africa over the past two years to reduce violence in the region have failed in their mission, and violence only escalated. The document describes a worrisome situation in the Sahel, in the region of Lake Chad and Somalia, noting a 43% increase in Islamist militant activity and violence in 2020, compared to the previous year (VICE World News, March 18, 2021). With that in mind, it will be difficult to assess the impact of US support on the security situation in the Cabo Delgado Province. It should be noted that the situation in the region is complicated in terms of ideology, politics, economy, and society; a military solution will probably not suffice to provide an answer to the intrinsic problems of the region, which are fertile ground for the development of violence.

Characteristics of ISIS’s activity in Congo

The organization of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which is also called Madinat al-Tawheed wal Muwahideen, i.e., City of Monotheism and Monotheists[12], was established by a group of Islamist rebels originating in Uganda, which has been operating in Congo since 1995. The organization is responsible for carrying out many attacks against civilians and members of the security forces, mainly along the border between Congo and Uganda. According to a UN report, the organization is responsible for the death of at least 849 civilians in 2020 alone. In 2014, the US Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on it, but back then, apparently there was no connection between the organization and ISIS, or at least no such connection was identified. The connection between ADF and ISIS apparently started in 2015. During the last two years, ISIS has been claiming official responsibility only for some of the attacks carried by ADF in Congo, which raises questions as to the nature of the relations between the two organizations.[13] The current announcement of the US Department of State may possibly hint that the US has information confirming actual links between the Allied Democratic Forces and ISIS.
Over the last year, there was a prevailing assessment among researchers that ADF is related to ISIS or is part of it, but it is unclear to what extent.[14] A report of the UN Security Council’s Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC, from June 2020, has not traced evidence indicating a direct link between the two organizations, apart from claiming responsibility for attacks and the pledge of allegiance.[15] According to the report, the claims of responsibility issued by ISIS have not necessarily been in line with actual facts on the ground. In addition, it was found that the improvised explosive devices used by ADF were different from the sophisticated explosive charges used by ISIS. Apart from that, no documentation, evidence, or any items were found to establish the existence of an organizational link between ADF and ISIS.[16]

The clause in the UN report published on June 2, 2020, stating that “The Group did not find any direct links between Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and ADF.[17]

An article published recently points out links between ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and ADF. However, this article does not specify the nature of the links either, since, according to the article, it is an organization which maintains a great degree of secrecy. The article does reveal that there exists communication between ISIS’s local leadership and its central leadership in Syria and Iraq, and also financial ties of sorts.[18]
The relation between ADF and ISIS started in 2015, after ADF leader Jamil Mukulu was arrested and Musa Baluku, who is considered more radical, took his place. It was Baluku who made the first contact with ISIS and nurtured it. Unlike his predecessor, Baluku intended, back in 2015, to turn ADF into a global organization, and therefore a relationship with ISIS was in line with his policy. The first connection with him was possibly made through social media, which Baluku started using, mainly for propaganda needs. In 2018, the contact between Baluku and ISIS’s central leadership became stronger, and in an audiotape released by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in August 2018, the latter mentioned the existence of ISIS’s Central Africa Province. On April 18, 2019, the Central Africa Province issued its first claim of responsibility. The claim was for an attack carried out by its operatives in Congo. Since then, it has claimed responsibility for dozens of operations. In July 2019, Baluku renewed his pledge of allegiance to ISIS’s leader.

Baluku preaches to his men, ADF operatives, during Eid al-Adha (Telegram, July 31, 2021)

According to the aforementioned article, in 2001-2010, ADF operatives kept a low profile and were assimilated into the local population, including by marriage. With time, ADF became a separatist and radical Salafi-jihadist organization. Although it began carrying out attacks in Congo only in 2003 (until then it carried out attacks only in Ugandan territory), it took advantage of the forest area in the Beni region to organize its forces even before that. Starting in 2014, following a military campaign against its operatives, ADF became more aggressive and cruel, not hesitating to kill civilians, including children and old people. Since 2015, after ADF joined forces with ISIS, the global Islamic ideology and brutality constitute a joint basis for the two organizations, along with ISIS’s aspiration to expand globally.

The leader

Seka Musa Baluku, also referred to as Musa Baluku and Musa Seka Baluku, was apparently born in 1977 in southwestern Uganda. He became Salafi-jihadist at a younger age and served as an imam in a mosque in Kampala. He is considered to be one of the first to join ADF, and was closely associated with the organization’s previous leader, Mukulu, who appointed him to a number of posts, including the senior legal authority and the official in charge of shaping the ideology. After Mukulu was arrested, Baluku took his place as commander of the ADF and appointed himself “Sheikh.”[19]

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Housecarl · Apr 6, 2021

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ADF’s ties outside of Congo

The ADF’s ties outside of Congo and Uganda are based on ties identified in the past which may still exist today, including immigrants from Uganda who live in London. In addition, there are ties in Kenya, described as the organization’s “financial outpost”, in Tanzania and in South Africa, where ties exist mainly with ISIS’s operatives in Mozambique.

Characteristics of ISIS’s terror in Congo (based on claims of responsibility of the Central Africa Province)

In Congo, ISIS mainly operates against security personnel and Christian residents. The operatives also carried out an attack to liberate prisoners, apparently following a call by ISIS’s central leadership which in the past two years has reiterated the importance of liberating prisoners by force.

ISIS’s operatives in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Telegram, July 24, May 30, 2019)

The epicenter of ISIS’s activity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the region of Beni, in the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, near the border with Uganda. This region, which is inhabited by poor Christian villagers, is rich in various minerals, especially gold.

The Beni region, in the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and near the border with Uganda (Google Maps)

Examples of recent outstanding attacks against the Congolese army (according to ISIS’s claims of responsibility posted on Telegram):
- On August 4, 2020, ISIS ambushed and exchanged fire with the Congolese army near one of the villages in northeastern Congo. One soldier was killed. Weapons and ammunition were seized.
- On December 21, 2020, two security personnel were attacked and a Congolese army compound in Beni was targeted by machine gun fire. Three soldiers were killed. Weapons and ammunition were seized.
- On December 29, 2020, ISIS operatives halted a Congolese army attempt to advance towards the village of Lusilusi (in the Beni region), which was taken over by ISIS operatives on December 28, 2020. The operatives fired at the retreating force. At least 15 soldiers were killed and a few others were wounded. Weapons and ammunition were seized.
- On December 31, 2020, a Congolese army compound in the Beni region was attacked, and the soldiers fled. The operatives set fire to the compound. One soldier was taken prisoner.
- On January 12, 2021, ISIS operatives attacked a Congolese army compound in Lusilusi for several hours. An officer and 14 soldiers were killed. Weapons and ammunition were seized.
- On January 13, 2021, there was an exchange of fire with Congolese soldiers in the Beni region. Several soldiers were killed or wounded. Weapons and ammunition were seized.
- On February 18, 2021, a Congolese army compound in the Beni region was attacked. Several Congolese soldiers were killed or wounded in the exchange of fire. The others fled. ISIS seized weapons and ammunition.
- On March 2, 2021, machine guns were fired at a town in the Irumu region, in northeastern Congo. At least seven soldiers and fighters of the Congolese army and militias supporting it were killed in the exchange of fire. The rest fled.
Attacks against Christian residents (according to ISIS’s claims of responsibility):
- On May 12, 2020, a gathering of Christians in Iringiti, near Beni, was targeted by machine gun fire. Ten Christians were killed (Telegram, May 13, 2020).
- On October 28, 2020, the Christian village of Biti, in the Beni region, was attacked. A total of 19 people were killed and others were wounded. In addition, 45 houses were set on fire (Telegram, October 29, 2020).
- On December 31, 2020, the Christian village of Tingwe, in the Beni region, was attacked. At least 25 people were killed and others were wounded (AP, January 1, 2021).
- On February 16, 2021, a group of Christians was targeted by machine gun fire in the Beni region. At least four Christians were killed (Telegram, February 17, 2021).
- Attack against the international forces (according to ISIS’s claim of responsibility):
- On June 22, 2020, soldiers of a UN force in the Beni region were targeted by machine gun fire. Five soldiers were killed.
- Operation to liberate prisoners:
On October 20, 2020, in the early morning hours, armed operatives broke into the Kangbayi Central Prison in the Beni region. According to the town head, Modeste Bakwanamaha, a large group of armed operatives broke into the prison with welding equipment. At the end of the attack, only 110 out of the 1,456 inmates remained in the prison (i.e., 1,346 escaped). A police official tweeted that two prisoners were shot dead during the attack (DW, October 20, 2020). ISIS’s Amaq News Agency released a statement according to which, on the morning of October 20, 2020, ISIS operatives attacked a prison and a Congolese army base in the Beni region. No further details were given.

Right: Beni region, in the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the Kangbayi Central Prison is located (Google Maps). Left: Kangbayi Central Prison (John Kanyunyu@Kanyunyu Twitter account, which belongs to an independent journalist from the city of Beni, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, October 20, 2020)
Are ISIS operatives in Congo (ADF) responsible for killing Italy’s ambassador to Congo?

On February 22, 2021, Italy’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo Luca Attanasio was killed in an attack on a UN convoy near Goma, in eastern Congo, near the border with Rwanda. The attack was probably carried out with the intention of abducting the ambassador. A security guard and an Italian policeman were killed along with the ambassador. So far, no organization has claimed responsibility for the attack. The blame was placed on the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, the militant organization dominant in the region. However, the organization denied any connection to the incident. Elements affiliated with ISIS expressed support for the killing on social media. Although the incident occurred some 200 km south of Beni, ISIS’s epicenter of activity in Congo, it cannot be ruled out that the organization behind the attack was ADF (MEMRI, February 22, 2021; The New York Times, February 23, 2021).

Full document in PDF format
[1] For the US Department of State’s announcement, see: State Department Terrorist Designations of ISIS Affiliates and Leaders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique - United States Department of State ↑
[2] Emilia Columbo, The Secret to the Northern Mozambique Insurgency's Success. War on the Rocks. Texas National Security Review, October 8, 2020:The Secret to the Northern Mozambique Insurgency’s Success - War on the Rocks
The author, Emilia Columbo, is a senior associate (non-resident) in the Africa Program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a research institute based in Washington D.C. Prior to this position, she served as a senior analyst at the CIA, covering African and Latin American political-security issues. ↑
[3] Sam Peters, Islamic State Africa – an Inevitability?, The Organization for World Peace, 2 May 2020:Islamic State Africa – An Inevitability?
The Organization for World Peace (OWP) works to resolve violent conflicts by peaceful means, mainly by providing aid to the displaced persons. It publishes daily and monthly reports, as well as breaking news.State Department Terrorist Designations of ISIS Affiliates and Leaders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique - United States Department of State ↑
[4] Emilia Columbo, Ibid. ↑
[5] Eleanor Beevor, Who are Mozambique’s Jihadists? IISS (International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, UK), 25 March 2020:
Who are Mozambique’s jihadists? ↑
[6] Emilia Columbo, Ibid. ↑
[7] Ibid. ↑
[8] https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/The Islamic State in Congo English.pdf ↑
[9] Tore Refslund Hamming, The Islamic State in Mozambique, WAWFARE, 24 January 2021: The Islamic State in Mozambique ↑
[10] The inaccessible regions mentioned in the report are the districts of Quissanga, Macomia, Meluco, Mocímboa da Praia, Muidumbe and Nangade. For the full report, see: Mozambique - Update, Cabo Delgado Situation, 16 February – 3 March 2021 - Mozambique ↑
[11] Mozambique sees militia violence dwindle as military gains steam - France 24 ↑
[12] The use of the word “city” probably stems from the fact that the organization operatives tried to establish a separate area in Uganda where sharia is implemented according to their ideology. This corresponds with the beginning of Islam, when the Prophet Muhammad left the city of Mecca and established the base of his forces in the city of Medina, disseminating Islam from there to the entire Arabian Peninsula. ↑
[13] Daniel Fahey and Judith Verweijen, A Closer look at Congo's Islamist rebels: Claims about links to the Islamic State may hamper civilian protection. The Washington Post, September 30, 2020:https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/30/closer-look-congos-islamic-rebels/
Dr. Daniel Fahey is an independent consultant on natural resources and armed conflicts, former financial expert and coordinator of the United Nations Group of Experts on DRC. Dr. Judith Verweijen is a lecturer on international relations in the University of Sheffield. Her research examines the micro-dynamics of militarization, including of conflicts around natural resources. See the wording of the UN Department of State: State Department Terrorist Designations of ISIS Affiliates and Leaders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique - United States Department of State ↑
[14] Ibid. ↑
[15] The report was submitted to the President of the UN Security Council on June 2, 2020. It includes 528 pages. As stated on p. 10, the Group did not find any direct links between Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and ADF. See S/2020/482 - E - S/2020/482 -Desktop. ↑
[16] Daniel Fahey and Judith Verweijen, ibid. ↑
[17] S/2020/482 - E - S/2020/482 -Desktop ↑
[18] Tara Candland, Adam Finck, Haroro J. Ingram, Laren Poole, Lorenzo Vidino, Caleb Weiss, The Islamic State in Congo, Program on Extremism, The George Washington University, March 2021:https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/The Islamic State in Congo English.pdf ↑
[19] Musa Baluku - Wikipedia. ↑

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Housecarl · Apr 6, 2021

Posted for fair use.....

Cameroon: Boko Haram Attacks Escalating In Far North

The Islamist armed group Boko Haram has stepped up attacks on civilians in towns and villages in the Far North region of Cameroon since December 2020, killing at least 80 civilians, Human Rights Watch said Monday. The group has also looted hundreds of homes in the region. The government should...

www.eurasiareview.com

Cameroon: Boko Haram Attacks Escalating In Far North
April 6, 2021 Eurasia Review 0 Comments
By Eurasia Review

The Islamist armed group Boko Haram has stepped up attacks on civilians in towns and villages in the Far North region of Cameroon since December 2020, killing at least 80 civilians, Human Rights Watch said Monday. The group has also looted hundreds of homes in the region. The government should take concrete measures to both increase protection to vulnerable communities and ensure a rights-respecting security force response to the worsening violence.

“Boko Haram is waging a war on the people of Cameroon at a shocking human cost,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “As Cameroon’s Far North region increasingly becomes the epicenter of Boko Haram’s violence, Cameroon should urgently adopt and carry out a new, rights-respecting strategy to protect civilians at risk in the Far North.”
Human Rights Watch documented how a Boko Haram suicide bomber blew up fleeing civilians, dozens of local fishermen were killed with machetes and knives, and an elderly village chief was assassinated in front of his family. Research suggests that the actual number of casualties is much higher, given the difficulty of confirming details remotely and that attacks often go unreported.

From January 25 to February 25, 2021, Human Rights Watch interviewed by telephone 20 victims and witnesses to 5 Boko Haram attacks since mid-December in the towns and villages of Blabline, Darak, Gouzoudou, and Mozogo in the Far North region, as well 4 family members of victims, 2 humanitarian workers, and 5 local activists. Human Rights Watch also interviewed 2 victims and a witness to human rights violations in the region by Cameroonian soldiers. Human Rights Watch reviewed reports from humanitarian and other nongovernmental organizations and local media reports on attacks in the region and consulted with academics, political analysts, and representatives of the African Union, the United Nations, and the European Union.

Human Rights Watch shared the research by email with Cyrille Serge Atonfack Guemo, the Cameroonian army spokesperson, on February 1 and again on March 19, requesting information about the Boko Haram attacks, the ongoing military operations, and the specific allegations Human Rights Watch documented. The army spokesperson did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Cameroon’s territorial administration minister said on February 12 that the security situation in the Far North region is “under control” and that Boko Haram is “living its last days.”

One of the deadliest recent attacks was in Mozogo on January 8, when Boko Haram fighters killed at least 14 civilians, including 8 children, and wounded 3 others, including 2 children. As fighters shot at residents and looted homes, a female suicide bomber infiltrated a group of fleeing civilians and then detonated her explosive vest, witnesses said.

“As the shooting started, I ran away toward the forest,” a 41-year-old resident said. “I heard a powerful explosion and lay on the ground. I saw a 7-year-old child covered in blood running toward me. He took me to the place where the kamikaze detonated her explosive vest. It was a bloodbath.”

The Boko Haram insurgency began in Nigeria in 2009 and then spread across the Lake Chad basin countries, including Cameroon. Boko Haram’s attacks are often indiscriminate, including suicide bombings in crowded areas that appear designed to maximize civilian deaths and injuries. Cameroon has had a sharp spike in attacks over the past year. According to a November 2020 report of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a United States Department of Defense think tank, the number of Boko Haram attacks against civilians in Cameroon in 2020 was higher than in Nigeria, Niger, and Chad combined.

In 2015, the African Union established the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), made up of troops from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, to respond to Boko Haram attacks across the Lake Chad basin. Comprising over 8,000 troops, the MNJTF receives technical, financial, and strategic support from international partners, including the European Union, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. The multinational force has conducted joint military operations across the Lake Chad basin.

It is essential for Cameroon and the multinational force to improve the conduct of forces deployed to counter Boko Haram attacks and to ensure that allegations of human rights violations by its forces are investigated and prosecuted, Human Rights Watch said.

Since 2014, rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have documented widespread human rights violations and crimes under international humanitarian law by Cameroonian security forces deployed on operations in the Far North, including extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, incommunicado detention, systematic torture, and forced return of refugees.

On December 9, soldiers from the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), an elite unit of the Cameroonian army, arrested four fishermen in Dabanga, in the Far North region, beat them, and took them to the Dabanga military base, where one of them died, said two of the fishermen and a family member. The fishermen said that the soldiers accused them of being Boko Haram members and that they saw one of the fishermen who was arrested with them taken from the cell soon after they arrived.

A family member of the fisherman who died said that BIR soldiers brought his body to their home hours after he was arrested, claiming he had died of a heart attack. The two fishermen and the family member said they believe the security forces killed him.

Cameroon’s international partners should push for accountability for human rights violations and work to strengthen the civilian component of the multinational force and its human rights compliance office, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch also urges the Cameroonian parliament to hold a hearing to explore the government’s response to the increasing attacks on civilians in the Far North, to provide recommendations on how to enhance civilian protection, and to seek input from international actors as needed.

International humanitarian law, applicable to the armed conflict with Boko Haram, prohibits deliberate disproportionate or indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian objects. Those who order or commit such attacks with criminal intent are responsible for war crimes.

“With Boko Haram attacks on the rise in Cameroon, more needs to be done to effectively protect civilians, including by boosting the military presence and patrols across the Far North region and ensuring that the soldiers respect people’s rights,” Allegrozzi said. “Cameroon’s regional and international partners, including those supporting the multinational force, should bolster these efforts and ensure that their assistance does not contribute to human rights violations.”

jward · Apr 6, 2021

U.S. arrested two Yemenis on terror watchlist who tried to cross border from Mexico
By Ted Hesson, Mark Hosenball
2 Min Read

FILE PHOTO: A Mexican federal police member stands guard during the visit of then-U.S. President Donald Trump to Calexico, California, as seen in Mexicali, Mexico April 5, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/File Photo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. border agents in recent months arrested two Yemeni men on a terror watchlist in separate incidents as they crossed the border with Mexico illegally, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced on Monday.

The men, arrested in January and March near a port of entry in California, were on a U.S. government watchlist for terrorism suspects and a “no-fly” list, CBP said in a press release.

A group of Republican lawmakers that visited the border in El Paso, Texas, in March said border agents told them during the trip that some people caught crossing the border were on a U.S. terrorism watchlist. Republicans have criticized President Joe Biden for easing some restrictions put in place by former President Donald Trump as the number of border crossings has risen in recent months.

One of the men, aged 33, was arrested on Jan. 29 after allegedly attempting to cross the border illegally near a port of entry in Calexico, California, CBP said.

Border agents found a mobile phone SIM card located beneath the insole of the man’s shoe, the agency said.

The second man, aged 26, was arrested on March 30 in the same vicinity.

A CBP spokesman said in a written statement that it is “very uncommon” for border agents to encounter people suspected of terrorism at U.S. borders, but that the arrests underscore the agency’s “critical” vetting efforts.

The agency did not provide the names of the men.

The watchlist is maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Terrorism Screening Center. The list contains “the identities of those who are known or reasonably suspected of being involved in terrorist activities,” according to the FBI.

Reporting by Ted Hesson and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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U.S. arrested two Yemenis on terror watchlist who tried to cross border from Mexico

U.S. border agents in recent months arrested two Yemeni men on a terror watchlist in separate incidents as they crossed the border with Mexico illegally, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced on Monday.

www.reuters.com

jward · Apr 8, 2021

On reviving the JCPOA, Russia has a dual-track plan and a three-fold interest

Maxim A. Suchkov
Non-resident Scholar, Conflict Resolution and Track II Dialogues Program

In the run-up to the meeting of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Joint Commission in Vienna on April 6, Russia seeks to emerge as a constructive deal-maker. As Americans and Iranians have clashed over who should make the first step to return to the deal, Moscow apparently has ideas on how to move forward.

On March 31, Russian daily newspaper Kommersant reported that Moscow proposed “a scheme of consistent reciprocal steps” that should return the U.S. and Iran to the deal. Kommersant cited source in the Russian Foreign Ministry who caveated that Russia is exclusively focused on resuscitating the 2015 deal without any "add-ons." This is fully consistent with the Iranian negotiating position. To embrace Washington’s interests, Moscow proposed to look into the Russian idea of a collective security architecture in the Gulf, which it publicized in the summer of 2019.

Essentially, the Russian proposal implies compartmentalizing the two issues into two different frameworks. The nuclear problem should be addressed within the framework designed for it – the JCPOA — while regional security issues should be tackled within the framework of the Russian-proposed collective security system. This way American concerns over the need to address Iran’s “destabilizing regional behavior” will also be accommodated, even though Moscow itself never talks about this aspect of the problem in such terms.

Russia’s own interest in all of this is at least three-fold.

First, it’s an opportunity for Moscow to showcase its responsible attitude vis-à-vis the issue of nuclear non-proliferation.

Second, it’s one of a few remaining issues on which Russia and leading Western states, the U.S. in particular, can engage in a constructive manner. Such issues are in short supply.

Third, it’s an area where Russia can showcase its support for what it sees as Iranian attempts to stand up for their sovereignty in the face of American pressure. Earlier this year, Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Javad Zarif inked an agreement to expand bilateral cooperation in cybersecurity.

Preserving the original JCPOA therefore seems like the best way for Russia to align these three considerations. Iran’s departure from the deal would undermine the first component of Russian policy. Expanding the deal into other areas (like missile defense or regional behavior), as the Americans propose, would be a challenge to the third. Alienating Moscow on either of the tracks would upset the second.

Foreign Minister Lavrov is scheduled to travel to Tehran shortly after the meeting in Vienna, on April 13.

Follow on Twitter: @m_suchkov

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Monday Briefing: Is this the same old in Pakistan-India relations?

Read MEI's weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.

www.mei.edu

jward · Apr 8, 2021

Is this the same old in Pakistan-India relations?

Marvin G. Weinbaum
Director, Afghanistan and Pakistan Studies

For a while, a breakthrough in ossified Pakistan-India relations seemed well under way. Signs of a rapprochement began with a late February reinstitution of a long-dormant cease-fire agreement along the Line of Control, the de facto border dividing Kashmir. Last month saw a resumption of meetings of the Indus Water Treaty Commission, which for over 60 years has exemplified the benefits of continuous cooperation between the two countries. Another hopeful note was struck in the mid-March inaugural meeting in Islamabad of a security forum where Pakistani army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa, while continuing to identify Kashmir as an obstacle to normalization with India, also expressed the need for the countries to “bury the past and move forward.” Meanwhile, Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Imran Khan have exchanged letters with uncharacteristically cordial language. And then last week, in a move suggesting a likely resumption of suspended Indian-Pakistani trade, the Khan cabinet Economic Coordinating Committee announced Pakistan’s removal this summer of a two-year-old ban on importing Indian cotton and sugar.

Observers have mused over the motives of leadership in both countries in seeking to lower tensions, especially the willingness of the militaries to agree on a cease-fire. Many suggest the heavy economic and strategic costs to both sides, as they face economic stringencies exacerbated by the pandemic. Strategically, they each have two-front security concerns. Greater normalization of ties with Pakistan would allow India’s military to focus solely on the threat to the northwestern border in Aksai Chin, where skirmishes with China took place last year. Pakistan would welcome stability on its eastern border, where conflict could ignite if the Afghan peace process fails. External pressures may also be at work. China needs regional stability for a return on its investment through the Belt and Road Initiative. It would rest more easily if it knew that Pakistan would not drag it into a conflict with India. The U.S., in encouraging India and Pakistan to normalize relations, hopes to free India to enlist as a stronger counterweight to China’s ambitions in South Asia. As the U.S. plans its military disengagement from Afghanistan, both countries are seen as having a role in assuring that Afghanistan avoids a descent into chaos.

But as has happened often in the turbulent history of Indo-Pakistan relations, developments that seem promising have a way of quickly fizzling out. This may now be occurring. Only a day after announcing its revised trade policy toward India, the cabinet committee and prime minister under domestic pressure reversed themselves. Pakistan’s foreign office followed with a statement that no normalization of relations with India is possible as long as the Modi government refuses to revoke its abrogation of Kashmir's special status under India’s constitution. For all the recent positive signals, Pakistan’s continuing fixation on the Kashmir issue and India’s lasting belief in Pakistan’s shielding of jihadi terrorists make for the same old thorns in relations.

This article was co-authored by Ghasharib Shoukat and Jack Ryan, research assistants to Marvin G. Weinbaum.

Follow on Twitter: @mgweinbaum

Monday Briefing: Is this the same old in Pakistan-India relations?

Read MEI's weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.

www.mei.edu

Housecarl · Apr 9, 2021

Posted for fair use.....

Biden seems ready to extend US troop presence in Afghanistan

Biden has inched so close to the deadline that his indecision amounts almost to a decision to put off, at least for a number of months, a pullout of the remaining 2,500 troops and continue supporting the Afghan military at the risk of a Taliban backlash.

www.stripes.com

ANALYSIS
Biden seems ready to extend US troop presence in Afghanistan

By ROBERT BURNS | Associated Press | Published: April 8, 2021

WASHINGTON — Without coming right out and saying it, President Joe Biden seems ready to let lapse a May 1 deadline for completing a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Orderly withdrawals take time, and Biden is running out of it.

Biden has inched so close to the deadline that his indecision amounts almost to a decision to put off, at least for a number of months, a pullout of the remaining 2,500 troops and continue supporting the Afghan military at the risk of a Taliban backlash. Removing all of the troops and their equipment in the next three weeks — along with coalition partners that cannot get out on their own — would be difficult logistically, as Biden himself suggested in late March.

"It's going to be hard to meet the May 1 deadline," he said. "Just in terms of tactical reasons, it's hard to get those troops out." Tellingly, he added, "And if we leave, we're going to do so in a safe and orderly way."

James Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral who served as NATO's top commander from 2009 to 2013, says it would be unwise at this point to get out quickly.

"Sometimes not making a decision becomes a decision, which seems the case with the May 1 deadline," Stavridis said in an email exchange Wednesday. "The most prudent course of action feels like a six-month extension and an attempt to get the Taliban truly meeting their promises — essentially permitting a legitimate 'conditions based' withdrawal in the fall."

There are crosscurrents of pressure on Biden. On the one hand, he has argued for years, including during his time as vice president, when President Barack Obama ordered a huge buildup of U.S. forces, that Afghanistan is better handled as a smaller-scale counterterrorism mission. Countering Russia and China has since emerged as a higher priority.

On the other hand, current and former military officers have argued that leaving now, with the Taliban in a position of relative strength and the Afghan government in a fragile state, would risk losing what has been gained in 20 years of fighting.

"A withdrawal would not only leave America more vulnerable to terrorist threats; it would also have catastrophic effects in Afghanistan and the region that would not be in the interest of any of the key actors, including the Taliban," a bipartisan experts group known as the Afghan Study Group concluded in a February report. The group, whose co-chair, retired Gen. Joseph Dunford, is a former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, recommended Biden extend the deadline beyond May, preferably with some sort of agreement by the Taliban.

If the troops stay, Afghanistan will become Biden's war. His decisions, now and in coming months, could determine the legacy of a 2001 U.S. invasion that was designed as a response to al-Qaida's Sept. 11 attacks, for which the extremist group led by Osama bin Laden used Afghanistan as a haven.

Biden said during the 2020 campaign that if elected he might keep a counterterrorism force in Afghanistan but also would "end the war responsibly" to ensure U.S. forces never have to return. The peace talks that began last fall between the Taliban and the Afghan government are seen as the best hope, but they have produced little so far.

Postponing the U.S. withdrawal carries the risk of the Taliban resuming attacks on U.S. and coalition forces, possibly escalating the war. In a February 2020 agreement with the administration of President Donald Trump, the Taliban agreed to halt such attacks and hold peace talks with the Afghan government, in exchange for a U.S. commitment to a complete withdrawal by May 2021.

When he entered the White House in January, Biden knew of the looming deadline and had time to meet it if he had chosen to do so. It became a steep logistical hurdle only because he put off a decision in favor of consulting at length inside his administration and with allies. Flying thousands of troops and their equipment out of Afghanistan in the next three weeks under the potential threat of Taliban resistance is not technically impossible, although it would appear to violate Biden's promise not to rush.

Biden undertook a review of the February 2020 agreement shortly after taking office, and as recently as Tuesday aides said he was still contemplating a way ahead in Afghanistan. White House press secretary Jen Psaki stressed that May 1 was a deadline set by the prior administration and that a decision was complicated.

"But it's also an important decision — one he needs to make in close consultation with our allies and also with our national security team here in this administration," Psaki said. "And we want to give him the time to do that."

In briefings on Afghanistan, Biden would have heard from military commanders such as Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, who have said publicly and repeatedly that the Taliban have not fully lived up to the commitments they made in the February 2020 agreement. McKenzie and others have said violence levels are too high for a durable political settlement to be made.

Congress has been cautious about reducing the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. Last year it expressly forbade the Pentagon from using funds to reduce below 4,000 troops, but the Pentagon went ahead anyway after Trump ordered a reduction to 2,500 after he lost the election. Trump got around the legal prohibition by signing a waiver.

Correction: This story has been corrected to reflect the proper spelling of the last name for James Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral.

previous coverage
With US withdrawal delay likely, and new peace proposal on the table, Taliban faces inevitable crossroads

Housecarl · Apr 9, 2021

Posted for fair use.....
For interactive map please see article source:

Analysis: Al Qaeda continues to operate throughout Afghanistan | FDD's Long War Journal

Based on reports from Al Qaeda, the United Nations, and press reports, the terror group and its allies are operating in 21 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.

www.longwarjournal.org

Analysis: Al Qaeda continues to operate throughout Afghanistan

By Bill Roggio | April 8, 2021 | admin@longwarjournal.org | @billroggio

Al Qaeda and its regional branch, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, continue to operate across Afghanistan despite repeated Taliban claims that the group has no presence in the country.

Al Qaeda’s enduring presence in Afghanistan is visible both through press reporting on Coalition operations against the terror group, and Thabat, Al Qaeda’s own media arm that has noted the groups operations in 18 provinces. Afghan security forces have targeted Al Qaeda operatives in two additional provinces. In all, Al Qaeda is operating in at least 21 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

Thabat, a weekly Al Qaeda newsletter that covers its operations across the globe and is analogous to the Islamic State’s Al Naba news service, has noted multiple reports of Al Qaeda’s activities in Afghanistan. Thabat is described by the United Nations Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team as “one of the group’s [Al Qaeda’s] media arms.”

While the Taliban, on its official website Voice of Jihad, reports on dozens of attacks daily against Afghan security forces and government targets, Thabat only reports on attacks in which Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, as well as allied groups such as the Islamic Jihad Union, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Katibat Imam Bukhari, Jamaat Ansarullah, and others are directly involved.

An analysis of 16 issues of Thabat (issues 3 through 18) shows that Al Qaeda and its constellation of allies in Afghanistan have been involved in dozens of attacks from Nov. 2020 to to the present in 18 of Afghanistan’s provinces. The provinces where Thabat reported on operations are Badakhshan, Balkh, Farah, Faryab, Ghazni, Helmand, Jawzjan, Kapisa, Kabul, Kandahar, Kunar, Kunduz, Khost, Logar, Nangarhar, Takhar, Uruzgan, and Zabul.

Afghan press reports from Sept. 2020 to the present confirms that Al Qaeda and its allies are operating in seven of the provinces noted by Thabat. Those provinces are: Badakhshan, Farah, Ghazni, Helmand, Kapisa, Kunar, and Nangarhar. Additionally, Afghan security forces targeted Al Qaeda in two other provinces that were not mentioned by Thabat: Nimroz and Paktika. There are over a dozen press reports noting Al Qaeda’s operations in the nine provinces. For instance, in late March 2021, Afghanistan’s National Directory of Security killed Abu Muhammad al Tajiki, a senior AQIS military commander in Paktika province. Also, in July 2020, Afghan officials noted that Al Qaeda was operating a training camp in southern Helmand and also operting in Nimruz.

The information is consistent with previous reporting on Al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan. In July 2020, the United Nations Security Council Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team reported that Al Qaeda “is covertly active in 12 Afghan provinces: Badakhshan, Ghazni, Helmand, Khost, Kunar, Kunduz, Logar, Nangarhar, Nimruz, Nuristan, Paktiya and Zabul.” This corresponds to nine of the 18 provinces mentioned by Thabat (Badakhshan, Ghazni, Helmand, Khost, Kunar, Kunduz, Logar, Nangarhar,and Zabul). The l Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team noted that AL Qaeda is estimated to have between 400 and 600 operatives in Afghanistan.

In May 2019, General Austin Miller, the commander of Resolute Support Mission and US Forces – Afghanistan, noted that Al Qaeda is operating “across the country” and not confined to one region. “We have seen al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Yes, in different parts of Afghanistan,” Miller said at the time. “In different parts of Afghanistan, we can find them, so it’s not one particular region, it’s across the country.” In March 2019, the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team estimated that Al Qaeda was operating in 13 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

FDD’s Long War Journal has tracked al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan for well over a decade, using press releases and public statements from the US military, NATO’s command in Afghanistan, and Afghan security services, as well as the jihadist groups’ own martyrdom statements. The data clearly shows that al Qaeda and allied terrorist groups have been operating on Afghan soil for the past two decades with the approval of the Taliban. These terrorist organizations often operate in areas controlled by the Taliban – and the jihadists killed in coalition or Afghan raids often die alongside members of the Afghan Taliban. Between 2007 and 2019, NATO, US, and Afghan forces, have launched at least 373 operations against these foreign terror groups in 27 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Many of the raids against Al Qaeda and its allies have gone unreported.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

jward · Apr 9, 2021

Now China Has Cruise Missile Carrying Catamarans Chasing Away Ships In The South China Sea
The appearance of the Chinese catamaran fast-attack missile craft adds a significant new player to these disputed waters.
By Thomas Newdick April 8, 2021

Chinese stealthy catamaran fast-attack missile craft have reportedly been involved in an incident with a boat chartered by a Philippine media company in the hotly contested waters of the South China Sea. According to an account citing ABS-CBN reporter Chiara Zambrano, the Type 022 Houbei class vessels appeared today in the Second Thomas Shoal, a submerged reef located in the disputed Spratly Islands. The missile craft then apparently aggressively chased away the boat operated on behalf of the ABS-CBN news crew, which had been sailing in the area to monitor the movements of other Chinese vessels.
This comes after a succession of reported incidents of intimidation of Filipino fishermen by Chinese boats, as well as alleged illegal fishing by Chinese vessels in these waters. In March, the Philippine Coast Guard said it had identified no fewer than 220 Chinese ships at another nearby reef, in waters also under Philippine jurisdiction.

message-editor%2F1617905264709-plantype022missilecraftexerciseecs.jpg

PLAN

A PLAN Type 022 fast-attack missile craft during previous maneuvers in the East China Sea.

“We were on our way to Ayungin Shoal [the Philippine name for Second Thomas Shoal] when a white Chinese Coast Guard ship headed toward us,” Zambrano said. “It moved closer and closer, and we could see that through our lens. After that, it sent a radio communication and in English asked who we were and what we were doing in the area.”
A tweet with a satellite image apparently showing the two Type 022 boats around 15 miles southeast of Ren'ai Shoal, a distance of Second Thomas Shoal:

敵情威脅報告
先前中國022型飛彈快艇曾經在台灣海峽一帶操演後沉寂很久時間，現在菲律賓媒體報導，022飛彈快艇出現在菲律賓實質控制的仁愛暗沙(Second Thomas Shoal)，根據即時衛星照片顯示，在4/8日下午，就追蹤到有兩艘在仁愛暗沙東南海域範圍航行，距離約24公里
Source: @duandang pic.twitter.com/JMKD6u1QxP
— 新‧二七部隊軍事雜談 (New 27 Brigade) (@new27brigade) April 8, 2021

The news team boat then apparently decided to head back to Palawan, at which point the fast-attack missile craft gave chase. “Two smaller but faster ships chased us,” Zambrano recounted. “The ships were Type 022 Houbei fast attack craft with two missiles mounted.”

The Second Thomas Shoal has been de facto in the Philippines’ possession since 1999, when a Philippine Navy amphibious transport ship, the BRP Sierra Madre, was intentionally grounded on the reef. Since then, the rusting wreck has been maintained by a contingent of marines as an improvised military outpost.
However, beginning in 2013, China has increased its maritime presence near the shoal, to protests from Manila. The area is within the Philippines’ internationally recognized exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and surrounding waters are rich fishing grounds.

message-editor%2F1617905109974-type022chasesphilippinenewsboat.jpg

ABS-CBN SCREENCAP

A still from the ABS-CBN news report purportedly showing a Type 022 boat close to Second Thomas Shoal.

In the past, Chinese fishing boats and patrol vessels from the Chinese Coast Guard and have been sighted close to the shoal. This latest incident may be the first time that a Houbei class missile craft operated by the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), specifically, has been identified here.
Late last month, three of the Type 022 vessels together with a supply ship were seen apparently moored at Mischief Reef. This area is home to one of China's man-made outposts in the South China Sea. It is also known in the Philippines as Panganiban Reef and falls within the Philippine EEZ.
While there doesn’t seem to be imagery available to support this claim, there is no doubt that huge numbers of Chinese fishing vessels have been moored around the disputed reef in recent weeks.

Chinese vessels on Julian Felipe (Reef) in the West Philippine Sea taken on March 27. Posting cos the hull numbers are somewhat clearer pic.twitter.com/4k8tEQaMlx
— Frances Mangosing (@FMangosingINQ) March 31, 2021

EXCLUSIVE: We have footage showing nearly 200 Chinese vessels in Philippine waters. The government has demanded China to withdraw these vessels, but more than that, a maritime expert suggests taking the matter to an international court.

Our @davidyusantos has more. pic.twitter.com/kZ5NB7t8fS
— CNN Philippines (@cnnphilippines) March 26, 2021

However, it is not clear where these PLAN fast-attack missile craft are operating from and whether any examples are now permanently or semi-permanently deployed at outposts in the South China Sea.
Last November, “multiple” Type 022s took part in Chinese maritime maneuvers in the South China Sea, together with three Type 071 amphibious assault ships. This was part of what the Global Times, an offshoot of the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, described as “a real combat scenario drill, with the catamarans training in comprehensive attack and defense, air defense and anti-terrorism.

The PLAN did not disclose exactly where the large-scale maneuvers involving Type 022s took place and the South China Sea is a very large area. With this in mind, missile craft operating in the northern end of these waters, near Hainan or Woody Island, would be significantly different from them patrolling the waters further south, and much further from the Chinese mainland, such as the Second Thomas Shoal.
These prolific vessels — China built more than 80 examples in a seven-year span — are part of a rapid expansion program for the PLAN. Chiefly considered a coastal defense asset up until now, it seems they might also now be used in a more expeditionary role, which could have major strategic implications for the South China Sea.
Video of the Type 022 class vessels during a previous military exercise:

In fact, the Type 022 appears to be especially well equipped for this sort of work, with robust datalink and other command and control capabilities that would allow for greater coordination with other Chinese aircraft and warships.
In addition to that equipment, these catamarans are also well-armed, with eight launchers for YJ-83 subsonic anti-ship missiles and a fast-firing 30mm H/PJ-13 Gatling-type gun on the bow to engage aerial targets and provide fire support. Short-range air defense is apparently entrusted to man-portable air defense systems operated by the

Firing the 30mm H/PJ-13 Gatling-type gun on one of the Type 022 boats.

The boats are credited with a maximum speed of around 36 or 38 knots and while their range is unknown, it could be around 300 miles. As noted before, the Type 022s spotted at Mischief Reef were accompanied by a supply ship that would be able to increase their radius of action considerably.
As well as maritime activity in this area, the importance of the Spratly Islands to Beijing’s wider ambitions in the South China Sea has also been reflected in the construction of artificial outposts here. Three locations, in particular, Fiery Cross Reef, Mischief Reef, and Subi Reef have all been subject to significant artificial expansion by China since 2014. They are defended by HQ-9B surface-to-air missiles and ground-launched YJ-12B anti-ship missiles, and all three are also equipped with long runways, at least some of which are capable of supporting bombers.

message-editor%2F1617902352342-9_dotted_line.png

CIA

A map of the South China Sea, including the Spratlys, with the so-called nine-dash line highlighted in green. The area within this, covering around 90 percent of the South China Sea, is claimed by China.

The Spratly Islands have also been a regular host to long-range air patrols by Chinese fighters, including Su-30 Flankers.
By not only deploying warships and aircraft to the Spratly Islands, but also transforming them into manmade bases provides a platform for Beijing to stake its claim to a vast economic exclusion zone, packed with shipping routes, fishing areas, and natural resources. From these outposts, China would be able to expand its anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) umbrella and then potentially claim control of the entire area, if it so wished.

In the past, China has denied that it’s actively establishing military strongholds in the South China Sea, but the fact remains that its claims cover the largest portion of this area and, despite international opposition and “freedom of navigation” missions by the U.S. military and others, Beijing has been unwilling to yield any ground over the Spratlys and, further north, the Paracel Islands.

China already has a fortress-like network of manmade outposts to project power in the southern end of the South China Sea, and it’s possible these could become further fortified with permanently stationed fighter aircraft, long-range sensors, and missile systems. However, having forward-deployed flotillas of Type 022s would provide an additional immediate layer of defense, as well as a way to strike outward against enemy naval forces from those bases. In particular, the vessels’ shallow draft and high speed make them ideal for defending these kinds of littoral claims. What is more, these vessels’ small crew requirements and ability to operate from austere locations would help maintain a powerful localized presence.
On top of that, the apparently new presence of these missile-armed craft in the southern South China Sea alone sends a powerful signal to the Philippines and other regional powers with competing claims in this region.
Contact the author: thomas@thedrive.com

Please see source for embedded videos
Posted for fair use

Now China Has Cruise Missile Carrying Catamarans Chasing Away Ships In The South China Sea

The appearance of the Chinese catamaran fast-attack missile craft adds a significant new player to these disputed waters.

www.thedrive.com

Housecarl · Apr 9, 2021

Posted for fair use.....

Why Is It So Tough to Withdraw from Afghanistan? - War on the Rocks

Twice in the past three weeks, President Joe Biden has commented publicly on how difficult it would be to withdraw all U.S. non-diplomatic personnel from

warontherocks.com

Why Is It So Tough to Withdraw from Afghanistan?

Ryan Baker and Jonathan Schroden

April 8, 2021

Commentary

Twice in the past three weeks, President Joe Biden has commented publicly on how difficult it would be to withdraw all U.S. non-diplomatic personnel from Afghanistan by the deadline stipulated in the U.S.-Taliban agreement. “It’s going to be hard to meet the May 1 deadline,” he said in his first press conference, “just in terms of tactical reasons, it’s hard to get those troops out.” While the sheer duration of U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere illustrates how politically difficult it is for the White House to completely disengage from U.S. counter-terrorism efforts overseas, in this case the president’s comments were referring to how tough it would be to do so logistically. But why are the logistics so hard? What are the “tactical reasons” Biden refers to?

Large military withdrawals are complex operations — especially those that require a complete drawdown of troops and equipment in theater. The mechanics of withdrawing troops and their equipment through an insecure environment, transferring or destroying excess matériel and facilities, and then transporting everything else out of theater requires time and effort to do in an orderly way. In Afghanistan, the process is further complicated by geographic, diplomatic, and legal constraints. The United States could withdraw its forces over the next few weeks, but it would be difficult and enormously costly. It would almost certainly require pulling transportation and logistical resources away from other missions around the world, abandoning a bunch of perfectly good equipment in Afghanistan, signing expensive contracts for quick-turn transportation capacity, leaving allied and partner forces in Afghanistan twisting in the wind, and potentially increasing the risk to U.S. troops on the ground during the withdrawal. If the United States is unwilling to pay these costs — and it appears Biden is unwilling — it will likely need some number of months, not weeks, to complete a full withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Current U.S. Force Posture in Afghanistan

The United States currently has between 2,500 and 3,500 troops on the ground in Afghanistan alongside about 7,000 or so from its allies in NATO, for a total of around 10,000 troops that would need to be withdrawn. While the United States could in theory leave NATO forces to their own devices, that seems unlikely given the Biden administration’s goal of repairing the U.S.-NATO relationship and Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s recent statement that the United States and NATO would “leave together.” Adding contractors — which the U.S.-Taliban agreement states must leave Afghanistan as well — increases the total number of people for withdrawal to somewhere in the range of 15,000 to 20,000.

The vast majority of these people are housed on roughly 12 to 15 bases, which include considerable amounts of military and other equipment required to support their basic needs and daily operations. For example, on every base, there are assortments of high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles, mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, and related all-terrain vehicles that are used for combat operations, as well as smaller vehicles such as M-Gators and ruggedized golf carts used to move around the bases themselves. There are stacks of shipping containers, some of which are housing units and office spaces, and some of which are filled with supplies, equipment, and military gear. And some bases have aircraft — drones and helicopters — that cannot fly out of Afghanistan by themselves.

In terms of raw capacity, the U.S. military has the assets to pull all of these people out by May 1. For example, a single C-17 can carry 188 passengers, which means it would take 80 to 106 sorties to withdraw 15,000 to 20,000 people from Afghanistan. Even at the moderate pace of eight C-17 sorties per day, it would take only about two weeks to fly all those people out. The U.S. military has 223 C-17s in total. But of course, raw capacity does not translate directly into the “safe and orderly” withdrawal that Biden has promised if he decides to leave. That goal requires a notable amount of sophisticated planning and sequencing of logistics operations — which take time to do well — in order to draw down the U.S. and NATO presence in a safe and methodical way.

In his excellent new book on the U.S. experience in Afghanistan’s Pech Valley, The Hardest Place, author Wesley Morgan describes the tactical pullout of a few U.S. Army companies (several hundred soldiers) from roughly a half-dozen combat outposts in Afghanistan’s infamous Korengal Valley, as follows:

It was going to take twenty helicopter flights a day for four days to get everybody and everything — including half a million pounds of equipment — out of the outposts that needed to go. [U.S. Army] Rangers and a company of [Afghan National Army] Commandos were going to fly in for the evacuation too, to provide extra security.

While this is a small, tactical example, it illustrates several of the physical challenges that need to be overcome to withdraw forces from Afghanistan. For example, it shows the required scale of withdrawal efforts (and associated pre-mission planning) relative to the number of combat troops involved. It also illustrates the additional costs imposed by the requirement for continuous security of troops and equipment on the ground. These include real and opportunity costs for military assets (including the deployment of additional troops) being used to cover the withdrawal as opposed to being used for offensive operations. And it hints at the requirement for secure positions to which to move the people and equipment being withdrawn.

The Logistics of a Complete Drawdown

Of course, the United States has removed forces and equipment from Afghanistan before, most notably in 2014. While the United States undoubtedly learned some lessons from that experience that will help it in a final withdrawal, there are important differences between removing some troops and equipment from a theater of conflict and removing all troops and equipment. As suggested above, while analysts often use troop levels as a benchmark, they can usually be removed much faster and with less difficulty than their equipment. Equipment — especially, but not only, vehicles — is heavy and bulky, and usually requires significantly more time to clean and prepare for inter-theater transport than personnel. Further, legal constraints prevent U.S. forces from simply walking away from equipment and facilities they would rather not retrograde. Only certain categories of equipment can be transferred to the Afghan government, for example. And before the U.S. military can destroy a piece of equipment still in good working order, it must either certify that there was no way to reuse or transfer it, or certify that a cost comparison determined destruction was the most cost-effective option. To meet these requirements requires an enormous amount of effort and coordination across multiple layers of the military bureaucracy.

Continued.....

Housecarl · Apr 9, 2021

Continued.....

In a partial drawdown, the military can usually remove a bunch of troops quickly to hit the target troop level while leaving a disproportionate share of the equipment behind for the residual force to either demilitarize or retrograde. The preferred “hub-and-spoke” drawdown technique U.S. forces used successfully during the 2014 drawdown — in which the United States moved people and equipment from smaller bases that were being closed to larger bases that were being retained (such as Bagram and Kandahar airfields) — naturally lends itself to this approach. But when the target is zero troops (and zero contractors) by a specific deadline, the military loses the flexibility that a residual force provides, which necessarily changes the way it plans and executes the drawdown, and almost always makes the final phase “tough.”

To get out by May 1, the United States would need to remove both its troops and a large portion of their equipment quickly. While the United States has recent experience withdrawing quickly from Iraq in 2011, in that case it was able to drive and haul the last of its people and equipment over land to bases in Kuwait, where it had the luxury of secure facilities to process the last of the items being withdrawn. In the case of Afghanistan, the United States will not be able to drive the last of its people and gear into a neighboring country. As a result, redeployment from Afghanistan typically requires troops and equipment to move over different supply lines using different modes of transportation, at different rates and with different in-transit requirements. When the United States drew down its surge forces from Afghanistan in 2014, most of the troops were flown directly out of country to regional way-stops and to their home station shortly thereafter. Their gear, on the other hand, was removed using a combination of airlift over Pakistan to U.S. bases in Gulf countries, trucking through Pakistan to various ports in that country, and combinations of rail and truck shipments through the Central Asian states to various ports on the Caspian, Black, and Baltic seas. This process, naturally, was much slower, and had to be carefully choreographed to avoid leaving people or equipment exposed to hostile forces on the ground.

Because of the insecure environment in Afghanistan, the U.S. military cannot allow a situation in which there are troops on the ground without equipment, nor can it allow one in which there is equipment on the ground without troops. Therefore, to truly be safe and orderly, the drawdown may even require a temporary surge of additional troops and equipment, further slowing the speed of the withdrawal. During the 2014 drawdown from Afghanistan, the 1st Theater Sustainment Command deployed logistics brigades to each of the regional command areas to facilitate the retrograde (which proved to be an effective way to apply the logistical expertise of these units). A rapid drawdown of forces in Afghanistan would likely, at a minimum, require a surge in aviation maintenance and ground support personnel to handle the influx of aircraft sorties that would be necessary to make the deadline. These forces, of course, need to be protected as they move and operate in the country, which increases both the security and sustainment requirements on the ground.

Several aspects of the current situation in Afghanistan conspire to make a withdrawal even more complicated. The level of violence means that units should retain enough capability to protect themselves and their equipment most of the way through the retrograde process, which imposes constraints on what can be packed and when, and what can be separated from the unit and when. While the “secret annexes” of the U.S.-Taliban agreement reportedly stipulate that the Taliban will not attack U.S. and NATO forces, neither the United States nor NATO would likely trust local Taliban units to completely adhere to that agreement as the withdrawal occurs, and the threat of attacks from Islamic State and other terrorist groups would remain. The fact that the U.S. military provides logistical and other support to its allies and partner forces in the country likewise means that the pace and order of the withdrawal should account for the distinct requirements of these forces as well. This includes NATO forces, which likely will expect some help from the United States as they withdraw. It also includes Afghan forces, who will likely be expected to take control of the bases and any residual equipment that the United States and its NATO partners leave behind, and who will have to adjust their posture and operations to account for the departure of critical enabling capabilities such as advisers, air and fire support, and contracted maintainers and logisticians. Failure to account for the needs of these partner forces could lead to their collapse, which would increase the security risk to U.S. personnel still in the country and have significant diplomatic and reputational costs. And of course, the remote, landlocked geography and underdeveloped infrastructure of Afghanistan make it hard to move large amounts of equipment and personnel quickly — except at enormous expense and with the cooperation of Afghanistan’s neighboring states (none of which, it turns out, are likely to be as accommodating as Kuwait was during the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in 2011).

The complexity of large-scale drawdowns means that speed is expensive, in dollar costs, opportunity costs, and reputational costs. Compressed timelines for withdrawal also increase the cost of the contracts the U.S. military relies on for part of its logistical operations, since it places increased demands on contracting companies’ assets. Compressed timelines also mean that U.S. Transportation Command needs to dedicate a larger portion of its available assets to the drawdown (i.e., to conduct as many aircraft sorties as possible in a short time). The change to its posture increases the risk to other U.S. interests around the world by reducing the command’s ability to support other military operations. A quick withdrawal would also mean that otherwise minor delays and hiccups that could be absorbed in the course of a normal withdrawal process may instead result in the need to destroy or demilitarize equipment that would have otherwise been cost-effective to bring home. For example, even with the advantage of a residual force, the U.S. military still destroyed over $7 billion worth of military equipment in Afghanistan during the surge drawdown in 2014. Withdrawing in a matter of weeks would also give the United States less time to coordinate with its allies and partners to ensure that withdrawing does not leave them in an untenable or unnecessarily dangerous position, as Sameer Lalwani noted in a recent War on the Rocks article.

When would the United States cross the threshold for no longer being able to conduct an organized withdrawal by May 1? Given the complexities described above, there is no clean break on the calendar between “safe and orderly” and “unsafe and disorderly.” Rather, large-scale drawdowns tend to get more difficult, more chaotic, and more expensive as the time available to complete them decreases. As a result, the amount of time necessary to withdraw the remaining troops and equipment from Afghanistan ultimately depends on how much the United States is willing to pay to get them out — in terms of dollars, opportunity costs, reputational costs, and geopolitical risk.

Conclusion

The U.S. military has the raw capacity to withdraw all remaining personnel from Afghanistan in just a couple of weeks. It is less clear that it can do so without abandoning a lot of expensive equipment, leaving its NATO allies to fend for themselves, pulling U.S. Transportation Command assets away from missions elsewhere in the world, and perhaps even exposing U.S. troops on the ground to significant risk by deprioritizing tactical considerations during the withdrawal. These are real costs and risks that are a large part of what makes getting out of Afghanistan on a short timeline — whether it be May 1 or a few months down the road — so hard. The “tactical reasons” Biden cited during his press conference are thus not ones of logistical capacity, strictly speaking. Rather, they are questions of how much he is willing to pay, and risk, to overcome the logistical difficulties and associated costs of a safe and orderly withdrawal. Given the president’s comments to date, it seems he prefers a timeline of several months to withdraw from Afghanistan, not several weeks.

Ryan Baker, Ph.D., is a non-resident fellow at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Creativity at Marine Corps University, and wrote his dissertation on the relationship between logistics and military power. He is also a reserve officer in the U.S. Marine Corps with active-duty experience in supply and logistics, including time overseas. The views expressed here are his, and do not necessarily represent those of the Marine Corps, Marine Corps University, the Department of Defense, or any other institution. You can find him on Twitter at @ryanbaker51.

Jonathan Schroden, Ph.D., directs the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at the CNA Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and analysis organization based in Arlington, Virginia. His work at CNA has focused on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency activities across much of the Middle East and South Asia, including numerous deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. The views expressed here are his and do not necessarily represent those of CNA, the Department of the Navy, or the Department of Defense. You can find him on Twitter at @jjschroden.

Housecarl · Apr 9, 2021

Posted for fair use.....

Turkey's Talk Show Nationalists - War on the Rocks

Turn on Turkish television on any given night, and it is likely you will meet eyes with a former general or admiral. At first blush, their steady presence

warontherocks.com

Turkey’s Talk Show Nationalists

Ryan Gingeras

April 8, 2021

Commentary

Turn on Turkish television on any given night, and it is likely you will meet eyes with a former general or admiral. At first blush, their steady presence as commentators on talk shows, as well as on social media, appears unremarkable. With the Turkish armed forces deployed on a variety of fronts both at home and abroad, events appear to demand the interpretative aid of those with military experience. Watch enough programming and you discover, however, that the generals and admirals of Turkish television are by no means passive actors. Former military officers have emerged as a potent constituency in Turkey’s fragmented partisan landscape. Via television and social media, many have sought to shape the tenor, and perhaps even the direction, of Turkish foreign policy.

Following a period of high-profile civil-military tensions in Turkey, TV generals have played a dual role, simultaneously legitimizing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and rehabilitating the army’s standing in society. By celebrating the victories of Erdoğan’s government, former high-ranking officers have sharpened the appeal of Ankara’s muscular foreign policy. Their endorsement of Turkish interventions has lent legitimacy to the belief that the military, helped by the country’s state-run defense industry, is leading a revolution that will transform Turkey into a regional powerhouse.

On Monday, however, the early morning arrest of 10 former admirals revealed that there are limits to how far media-savvy officers can press their influence. The government’s harsh reaction came in response to an open letter about the Montreux Convention signed by dozens of retired admirals. The question now is what space will be left for those who prove willing to keep their commentary within acceptable bounds.

Jingoism in the Zeitgeist

One cannot watch Turkish television today without seeing the deeply nationalist ethos that now pervades the country. In the last decade, issues of national belonging have been central to Turkey’s foreign and domestic politics. As either prime minister or president, Erdoğan has used nationalism as a tool to maintain and expand his power. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) has followed his lead in embracing nationalist tropes as a part of the party’s own identity. To some extent, the AKP’s “blood and soil” posturing is indebted to the growing influence of its governing partner, the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party. Erdoğan’s own rhetoric and behavior, such as his adoption of the “gray wolf” hand gesture, reflects his affection for the party’s anti-Western, ethno-nationalist tilt.

But the AKP’s hold over the state is not the only factor shaping Turkey’s current political climate. Now more than ever, the country’s popular culture is drenched with nationalist content. Historical dramas on television rank as perhaps the most visible expressions of contemporary nationalist trends. Shows like the Resurrection series offer an especially telling example of the country’s reigning values and perceptions. The two-part series, which traces the rise of the Ottoman Empire’s earliest founders, is an implicit homage to the country’s rich military history and its past as a global power. Resurrection’s narrative arc invites the viewer to ponder Turkey’s history as a premonition of the country’s rising fortunes — at least as Erdoğan would have it. Conversely, the show’s antagonists, the Byzantines and the Crusaders, are easy stand-ins for Turkey’s more contemporary rivals, chiefly Greece and the United States.

For an American viewer of a certain age, aspects of Turkish television news and commentary are heavily reminiscent of cable television in the age of the Gulf War or the “Global War on Terror.” On a regular basis, all-day news networks bombard audiences with dramatic footage of the country’s armed forces in action. Special attention is paid to the specifications and capabilities of indigenously produced drones, ships, and other vehicles. Panel discussions often feature vibrant, oversized digital graphics outlining the movement of troops and the location of strategic towns or landmarks. Fluttering Turkish flags are a consistent, if not constant, presence on the screen. Like America’s “video game wars” of 1991 and 2003, a boyish enthusiasm lies at the heart of the choreography and staging. It is not simply the fact that Turkish troops are on the march. They are advancing and winning with élan and precision.

These recent shifts in Turkey’s nationalist culture cannot be divorced from the politicized nature of the Turkish media environment. Turkish voters still receive much of their news from Turkey’s long-established state-run companies, TRT and Anadolu Agency. A handful of large conglomerates with strong ties to Erdoğan own the country’s popular television stations and newspapers. Evidence of the government’s guiding hand in news coverage appeared especially transparent with the resignation of Erdoğan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, as minister of finance in November 2020. Though he announced his departure on Instagram, neither the government’s spokesmen, nor major media channels, directly confirmed Albayrak’s resignation for over 24 hours. To this day, discussion of his whereabouts or criticism of his tenure as a government minister remains taboo.

Erdoğan and the Army

Recent history makes the growing visibility of former officers in the media particularly ironic. Over a decade ago, prominent media voices played a critical role in the prosecution of high-ranking officers accused of attempting to overthrow the AKP government. Before the opening of the so-called Sledgehammer trials of 2010, fear, as well as a good amount of shared reverence, tended to keep the Turkish media from approaching the military too critically. The indictment of scores of generals and other officers on charges of sedition suddenly erased these constraints, leading many editors and pundits to condemn the military for its history of coup-plotting and political intervention. For a time, many in print media and television celebrated the convictions in the Sledgehammer investigations. The military, they said, had returned to its barracks at long last. The age of generals interfering in Turkish politics was over.

Erdoğan’s break with his erstwhile ally Fethullah Gülen, culminating in Turkey’s 2016 coup attempt, fundamentally altered the relationship between the media, the military, and the state. Among the earliest signs of this change came with the 2015 release of all of Sledgehammer’s chief suspects on the grounds that they were victims in a plot staged by Gülen. Accusations that Gülenists had orchestrated the July 2016 putsch lent further credence to the claim that the military had been both falsely maligned and undermined from within. It was against this backdrop that Ankara undertook the first of three major armed incursions into northern Syria. Television and newspaper coverage of Operation Euphrates Shield in August 2016 previewed the blend of history, nationalist politics, and fantasy regularly seen on television today. More than a few commentators noted that Turkey’s invasion of Syria occurred on the 500th anniversary of Marj Dabik, the battle that ultimately led to the Ottoman Empire’s conquest of the Levant, Egypt, and western Arabia.

Turkey’s subsequent interventions in Syria, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Libya took place alongside the rising visibility of the country’s defense industry. Since the United States imposed an arms embargo over the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, Turkish civilian and military leaders have long expressed interest in producing the country’s own weaponry. It has been under Erdoğan, however, that Turkey has made the greatest strides in realizing this aspiration. Today, Ismail Demir, the head of the country’s Presidency of Defense Industries, ranks among the most recognizable faces in the Turkish government. Despite its history as a relatively minor department within Turkey’s Ministry of Defense, Demir’s organization now commands broad public attention with the help of commercial and state media.

As a result, television programing, as well as newspapers and policy journals, often resemble informercials dedicated to the technological capabilities of new Turkish weapons systems. One recent example was the launch of the country’s first indigenously produced frigate, the TCG Istanbul. News networks offered generous coverage of the event, in some cases lasting well over an hour. In addition to ample discussion of the ship’s capabilities and its future within the fleet, the launching ceremony featured an address by Erdoğan himself. In his remarks, he lauded the performance of the country’s defense industry and foreshadowed the debut of hundreds of other domestically produced systems, including ships and aircraft. “Being strong in military, economic and diplomatic terms,” he declared, “is, for us, a necessity rather than a preference.”

From the Barracks to the Broadcasts

It is in this environment that many former generals and admirals have found a natural home on television and other media. It is commonplace to find at least one former uniformed officer on talk shows such as Teke Tek (One-on-One) and Tarafsiz Bölge (Neutral Zone) when discussing developments in Turkish foreign policy. Their contributions to such discussions often range beyond technical military issues. Collectively, retired officers are an affirmative presence on television, lending both support and enthusiasm for Ankara’s more aggressive steps abroad.

Continued.....

Housecarl · Apr 9, 2021

Continued.....

A closer look at the former officers who frequently appear on television tells a more particular, revealing story. The vast majority may be described as possessing very specific nationalist credentials. Many of the more high-profile and outspoken generals and admirals are historically linked to the Fatherland Party, which is known for its hardline views on Western foreign policy and ethnic Turkish nationalism. The party’s founder, Doğu Perinçek, was once one of Erdoğan’s fierce critics. As recently as 2016, he accused Erdoğan of being an American stooge who hoped to establish himself as sultan over a weak and divided Turkey. Since then, Perinçek has grown more supportive of the president’s handling of foreign policy. Though his party represents only a tiny sliver of the Turkish electorate, Perinçek’s followers reportedly hold critical positions within the Turkish military — a status they allegedly earned on account of their die-hard opposition to the Gülen movement. The country’s interventions into Syria, Libya, and Iraq, Perinçek claimed, have done much to counter the “imperialist” agenda of the United States and the West. He has praised Ankara’s efforts to grow closer to Russia as a diplomatic partner. The purchase of the Russian-made S-400 missile system, he asserted, is “not simply a weapon, but a strategic preference,” one to be used in concert with Russia against the United States, Israel, and Greece.

Among the more prominent generals to echo Perinçek’s views is Erdoğan Karakuş, head of the Retired Officers Association. As a former lieutenant general and pilot in the Turkish Air Force, he has established himself as a regular contributor on network news shows. Karakuş often avails himself as a commentator on technical issues such as the use and effectiveness of drones. Yet, it is also clear that television producers value his presence because of his broader nationalist viewpoint. He has lauded Russia’s intervention into Syria as a counterstroke against the United States and Israel’s “greater Middle East project.” America, Karakuş argues, has engaged in a “long shadow struggle” against Turkey, one that began with Washington’s opposition to Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus and continued through the July 2016 coup attempt.

Former officers such as Karakuş do not simply play the role of cheerleaders on television. Over the last few years, a select few have led efforts to lobby the Erdoğan government to advance the so-called Mavi Vatan, or Blue Homeland, strategy. Conceptually, Blue Homeland is a catch-all phrase to describe a maximalist position regarding Turkey’s maritime interests in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. The concept was first spawned over a decade ago within the halls of the Turkish general staff. Its reputed father, Rear Adm. Cem Gürdeniz, then ranked as the navy’s chief strategist. After his arrest and imprisonment as a result of the Sledgehammer trials, Gürdeniz reemerged within the Turkish press as a frequent contributor to the Fatherland Party’s official newspaper, Aydınlık. Though vocally opposed to Erdoğan’s Islamic conservatism, he has made a name for himself as a proponent of the government’s plans to expand and modernize the Turkish fleet. His omnipresence in print, television, and social media, he maintains, is primarily bent toward raising public awareness of the navy’s critical importance to national security. Historically, he argues, Turkey’s investment in its army has come at the expense of the country’s maritime interests and natural strengths. Thus Blue Homeland provides a strategy for Turkey’s emergence as a premier power in the region and the world at large. Maps associated with his views have raised fierce objections in both Greece and Cyprus but Gürdeniz has rejected them out of hand. Like Perinçek, he contends that Athens, backed by Washington and Brussels, is engaged in a generational campaign to destroy Turkey or, at the very least, bring it to heel.

There are signs, however, that Erdoğan’s government does not fully embrace all of Gürdeniz’s ideas. Despite adopting much of his reasoning and rhetoric, official endorsements of maps associated with Blue Homeland are relatively scant. Many saw the forced retirement of the navy’s second in command in May 2020 as an even more emphatic rejection of the Blue Homeland thesis. As one of Gürdeniz’s closest protégés, Rear Adm. Cihat Yaycı achieved national attention as Blue Homeland’s chief proponent within the Turkish government. Since his resignation, Gürdeniz and like-minded allies have speculated that Erdoğan might forfeit Turkey’s maritime claims in the Mediterranean in order to improve relations with the United States and European Union. The possibility that the government could abandon Blue Homeland has deterred neither Gürdeniz nor Yaycı. In the year since his departure from the navy, Yaycı has quickly become a near permanent presence on television and social media. Both he and Gürdeniz have gained greater visibility as founders of maritime studies programs at two of Istanbul’s major universities. Collectively, both men have used their media and academic standing for the singular purpose of driving public debate around Blue Homeland. Judging from the support both former admirals have received from other retired officers, these efforts, on the surface at least, seem to have had an impact.

An open letter circulated by nationalist news outlets on April 2 appears to have upended whatever long-term plans Gürdeniz and other retired officials had. The letter, signed by 104 former admirals, railed against pro-government pundits who demanded the annulment of the Montreux Convention. This 1934 treaty, which regulates the passage of merchant vessels and warships through the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits, is heralded as a signature achievement of Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. If the government was to abrogate the treaty, the signers declared, Turkey would be undermining both its national security and its debt to Atatürk. A slew of government officials has since condemned the letter as an attempted coup against the Erdoğan administration, and 14 former admirals have been taken into custody. Among them is Cem Gürdeniz, who is now being investigated for “agreeing to commit crimes against state security and constitutional order.”

Speculation is rife in the Turkish press regarding the genuine intentions of the letter’s authors and the significance of the government’s crackdown. Even though Erdoğan has stated he has no intention of nullifying the Montreux Convention, he accused the admirals of “hinting at a coup” and suggested that the country’s main opposition parties are in league with the signatories. The AKP’s opponents have speculated that other issues may have inspired the publication of the letter, such as concerns over freedom of speech or fears over the growing influence of conservative Muslims in the military’s upper ranks. At the very least, the admirals are getting the same treatment as other groups, whether academics or union leaders, who organized similar public petitions. Whatever awaits Gürdeniz and others in government custody, other retired officers appear eager to steer clear of the current scandal. It took three days for Cihat Yaycı to issue a brief statement, via a late-night text to a talk show, that he has no interest in “interfering in domestic politics.” Erdoğan Karakuş has remained quiet, although his Retired Officers Association denied a report by the Ministry of Defense that it denounced the open letter.

These recent events are a reminder not to overstate the significance of so many admirals and generals appearing on television. At various points left-wing academics, Kurdish nationalists, and Sufi mystics have made common cause with the AKP administration. Erdoğan, by contrast, has shown little in the way of personal loyalty to allies outside the AKP camp. It may be, as one observer has suggested, that ultranationalists like Gürdeniz are simply the latest in a long list of soon discarded enablers. An even greater source of uncertainty is whether former officers, particularly those aligned with the Fatherland Party, actually reflect the feelings of senior leaders still within the ranks. The officer corps has long constituted a “black box” that has resisted close inspection. Events since 2016 have made any evaluation of the internal politics within the armed forces even more difficult. Hulusi Akar, Erdoğan’s minister of defense, reputedly runs the military with a suspicious eye. He has reportedly forced the retirement of several officers, including Yaycı, who drew too much public praise or media attention. Changes in the military education system, as well as new standards for promotion, also increase the possibility that older officers, such as Karakuş, no longer reflect current attitudes in the ranks.

Conclusion

Jingoism is now a critical part of the zeitgeist in Turkey, driving both policymakers and prospective voters. Ankara has shown an ability to modulate its behavior. However, there is reason to believe that Erdoğan is not through with escalatory action in Syria, Iraq, or the eastern Mediterranean. The steady chorus of support former officers have provided has normalized, if not encouraged, his government’s more aggressive tendencies. As the voices of former officers and others grow louder, the Turkish military may come to constitute a hammer looking for even more nails.

The visibility of former officers on mass media is also symptomatic of the surging influence of the defense establishment within the country. It is entirely possible that Turkey has seen its last officer’s coup. Recent events suggest, however, that the military continues to wield influence over the country’s future. Outspoken retired generals and admirals reflect only one faction with a vested stake in the militarization of Turkish policy. Academics and current and former intelligence officials, as well as defense industry leaders, also comprise segments of Turkey’s emerging “military-industrial-media complex.”

In this regard, Turkey may be opening a new chapter in its long, troubled history of civil-military relations. Instead of seizing TV stations by force, Turkish officers have been invited into them en masse, potentially giving the military new opportunities to influence politics in more subtle ways. If they keep their commentary confined to cheerleading government policies, Erdoğan stands to benefit from their new activism. But he clearly seems concerned that they might not be content with playing a supporting role.

Ryan Gingeras is a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School and is an expert on Turkish, Balkan, and Middle East history. He is the author of five books, including most recently, Eternal Dawn: Turkey in the Age of Atatürk. His Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire received short-list distinctions for the Rothschild Book Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies and the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize. The views expressed here are not those of the Naval Postgraduate School, the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.

Housecarl · Apr 9, 2021

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north-africa.com

Sahel: More European troops headed to Mali. Danish special forces are next

Posted On 9 April 2021

1209 issue: week ending 9 April 2021

Denmark plans to deploy about 100 special forces to Mali early next year to boost the elite anti-jihadist European task force Takuba headed by France, the government announced Thursday. “The terrorist threat posed by the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda remains significant,” the foreign and defence ministries said in a joint statement. “They want to create a hub in West Africa for their extremist regime… and we cannot allow that to happen,” they added.

The Danish contingent, which apart from the special forces will also include top level military officers and surgeons, will be deployed at the beginning of 2022, the ministries said. Copenhagen also plans to send a military transport plane to assist the UN mission in Mali, MINUSMA.

The French-led Takuba multinational force, launched in March 2020, has already seen Czech, Swedish and Estonian troops deployed in the region but France has struggled to obtain significant support from its larger EU partners.

AFP

Housecarl · Apr 9, 2021

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Southern African leaders concerned by Mozambique's rebels

Five southern African leaders expressed their concern at the militant violence in northern Mozambique and said they will consider “a proportionate regional response” at another summit in three weeks.

www.stripes.com

Southern African leaders concerned by Mozambique's rebels

By MOGOMOTSI MAGOME | Associated Press | Published: April 8, 2021

JOHANNESBURG — Five southern African leaders expressed their concern at the militant violence in northern Mozambique and said they will consider “a proportionate regional response” at another summit in three weeks.

Issuing a communique in Mozambique's capital, Maputo, Thursday, the African leaders “noted with concern, the acts of terrorism perpetrated against innocent civilians, women and children” in the Cabo Delgado province and “condemned the terrorist attacks in strongest terms; and affirmed that such heinous attacks cannot be allowed to continue.”

The presidents of Botswana, Malawi, South Africa, and Zimbabwe met with President Filipe Nyusi, following the prolonged assault in recent weeks on Mozambique's northern city of Palma. The leaders met as part of the 16-nation Southern African Development Community. known as SADC.

A team of technical experts will be sent to northern Mozambique to assess the situation and recommend what action should be taken by the group. The regional bloc has been criticized for failing at previous summits to agree upon specific actions to combat Mozambique’s crisis, which threatens to spread instability in the region.

More than 2,600 people have been killed and 670,000 displaced since the rebel insurgency started in 2017, creating a massive humanitarian crisis, according to U.N. agencies.

Nyusi, in an address to Mozambique, said his government has asked for assistance from neighboring countries and other international powers, but it does not want to compromise its sovereignty.

Nyusi announced Wednesday that government forces had regained control of Palma, after a prolonged battle with the rebels. More than 100 of the well-armed rebels attacked Palma on March 24 and held more than half of the strategic center for more than 10 days.

“The terrorists have been expelled from Palma. We do not intend to proclaim victory because we are in an ongoing fight against terrorism, but we are sure that if we are united, we will win,” Nyusi said, speaking in Portuguese on state media.

At least 50 people were killed, including several who were beheaded, in the rebels' assault on Palma and thousands fled the port city, which had more than 70,000 residents before the rebel attack.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was accompanied by his defense, intelligence and foreign affairs ministers.

“SADC is deeply concerned about the continued terrorist attacks in Cabo Delgado, especially for the lives and welfare of the residents who continue to suffer from the atrocious, brutal and indiscriminate assaults,” Ramaphosa’s spokesman Tyrone Seale said in a statement Thursday.

Last week South Africa sent military personnel to evacuate its citizens who were trapped in Palma. The South African forces also carried back the remains of Adrian Nel, a South African who was killed in the assault. He had been doing contract work in Palma since January, according to local reports.

The rebel attack on Palma brought the French oil and gas giant, Total, to completely withdraw its staff and close operations in its multi-billion dollar investment a few miles from Palma.

jward · Apr 9, 2021

U.K. Nuclear Weapons: Beyond the Numbers
Heather Williams
April 6, 2021

Sometimes numbers only tell part of the story, even when talking about nuclear weapons. For instance, the United Kingdom recently announced that it was increasing the cap on its nuclear stockpile from 225 to 260 warheads. The move — outlined in its government’s highly anticipated review of security and defense policy, Global Britain in a Competitive Age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy — largely took nuclear policy experts by surprise and reversed decades of British reductions. The government explained that the decision to increase its nuclear stockpile for the first time in decades was due to a worsening strategic landscape and technological threats, particularly Russian advances in missile defense and hypersonic weapons. The fact that the United Kingdom decided to make this decision now should be a wakeup call to those concerned about the security of the West and the global nuclear order.

The decision to boost the number of warheads in its arsenal wasn’t the only major nuclear policy change that the United Kingdom included in the Integrated Review. The document explained that the United Kingdom would no longer provide specifics about its nuclear stockpile or the conditions under which it would consider nuclear weapons use. In other words, the United Kingdom has now fully committed to a doctrine of strategic ambiguity. This approach is similar in some respects to what the United States, NATO, Russia, and China have done. But the increase in the warhead stockpile and reliance on strategic ambiguity come at a cost to nuclear diplomacy, and it will be difficult for the United Kingdom to balance these changes with its commitment to being a responsible nuclear power.

The announcement of an increase in the warhead stockpile, in particular, could not have come at a worse time for nuclear diplomacy. In August 2021, the United Kingdom and 190 other states will gather for a meeting of the parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which includes a commitment to the “cessation of the nuclear arms race” and “general and complete disarmament.” It will be a challenge for the United Kingdom to demonstrate progress towards nuclear disarmament five months after it has announced an increase in its stockpile cap. The reliance on strategic ambiguity also potentially undermines the country’s efforts to promote nuclear transparency among the treaty’s signatories. Obviously there are other considerations for the United Kingdom’s nuclear doctrine than the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but these changes could damage its credibility on disarmament matters. The United Kingdom, therefore, should take additional steps to demonstrate its commitment to transparency, including providing more information on its nuclear modernization plans and leading on risk reduction efforts in the context of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Reasons for a Larger Stockpile: Security and Technology
In its strategic reviews published in 2010 and 2015, the United Kingdom set a cap of 225 warheads and committed to reducing its stockpile ceiling to 180 warheads by the mid-2020s. The new Integrated Review increases the country’s nuclear stockpile ceiling to 260 warheads, a potential increase of approximately 15 percent from the current stockpile and 45 percent from the previous target.

The U.K. decision reverses decades of progress towards nuclear disarmament. Since the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, the United Kingdom has been gradually reducing its arsenal from a peak of approximately 500 warheads. At the same time, the United States and Russia have been reducing their arsenals through a series of bilateral arms control agreements. The United Kingdom’s decision to build more nuclear weapons places it in the company of China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea, which had previously been the only countries increasing their nuclear stockpiles. This decision by the United Kingdom, therefore, is a worrying reversal and suggests that the global nuclear order and nuclear stability might be in trouble.

The government justified the warhead increase on the grounds of “the evolving security environment, including the developing range of technological and doctrinal threats.” This bears many similarities to the 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy, which highlighted complexity and competition in geopolitics. The link between nuclear policy and the overall security context echoes statements made by other nuclear possessors and NATO. For example, the 2019 NATO London Declaration stated, “We are fully committed to the preservation and strengthening of effective arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation, taking into account the prevailing security environment.” (The Integrated Review uses identical language.) The United Kingdom’s role in NATO gets particular pride-of-place in the review — “We will continue to be the leading European Ally within NATO” — suggesting that while the United Kingdom might have left the European Union, it remains deeply committed to European security. The United Kingdom is also more concerned about China than in the past, and the review points to “China’s increasing international assertiveness and the growing importance of the Indo-Pacific.” The Integrated Review’s message coincides with U.K. concerns about China’s intervention in Hong Kong in breach of the handover agreement, along with a 2020 ban on buying Huawei’s 5G technology because it poses a “national security threat.”

The review cites “disruptive technologies” as a threat to strategic stability and as justification for increasing the warhead ceiling. In particular, it points to a “full spectrum of threats emanating from Russia.” Otherwise, it is vague about which capabilities are particularly concerning. Following its release, Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace explained that in order for the United Kingdom to maintain a credible deterrent, it had to respond to advances in Russian capabilities, particularly in missile defense. A week later, the government released Defence in a Competitive Age, a “defense command paper,” that pointed to hypersonic weapons and “early warning radar and integrated air defence systems” as potentially challenging U.K. military operations.

There are indeed plenty of causes for concern both in the security environment and with regard to technological developments. In particular, advances in Russian missile defense may be concerning to countries with smaller nuclear arsenals, such as the United Kingdom. The S-500, which Russia announced will be introduced later in 2021, is expected to be capable of intercepting ballistic, cruise, and, potentially, hypersonic missiles. (To be clear, the S-500’s full capabilities are unknown, and some experts have suggested that Russia’s anti-access area denial capabilities are “woefully overhyped.”) Other concerns include the breakdown of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and Russian advances in dual-capable shorter-range systems like the 9M729, which the United States alleged was in violation of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Many of these concerns resonate with a 2019 inquiry by the House of Lords, which concluded that nuclear risks were rising because of inter-state competition, technological developments, and nuclear doctrines and declaratory policy. These arguments, of course, will not persuade all experts, but the Integrated Review’s explanation is nonetheless plausible.

Doubling Down on Strategic Ambiguity
The United Kingdom is doubling down on its nuclear doctrine of strategic ambiguity. The government has never provided the exact size of its nuclear arsenal, and the recent review states, “we will extend this long-standing policy of deliberate ambiguity and no longer give public figures for our operational stockpile, deployed warhead or deployed missile numbers.” Previously, the country clarified the maximum number of warheads per submarine. The review also slightly changed the country’s declaratory policy to encompass a wider range of threats, stating that the United Kingdom will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states party to and in full compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but it reserves the right to review this in light of future threats from chemical or biological weapons, or emerging technologies. Like the warhead increase, this slight change in declaratory policy to include “emerging technologies” was justified on the grounds of a worsening security environment and technological advances by Russia and, to a lesser extent, China.

The goal of strategic ambiguity for the United Kingdom is to inspire caution in an adversary in a crisis and to deter nuclear use. Arguably, China and Russia have been practicing strategic ambiguity for years while also modernizing their nuclear arsenals. The United States and United Kingdom are catching up, with the aim to convince decision-makers in Moscow and Beijing that the risks of miscalculation are too high to pursue regional adventurism or aggression.

The British decision renewed an ongoing international debate as to whether strategic ambiguity is stabilizing or de-stabilizing, which was particularly evident at the time of the U.S. 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. Supporters of strategic ambiguity, including many U.S. allies (e.g., Australia), argue that strategic ambiguity deters Russia or China from using “conventional military force to impose their will, without having to worry about a nuclear riposte from the US, so long as they themselves remained below the nuclear threshold.” Complicating adversaries’ strategic calculus through doctrinal ambiguity, so the thinking goes, strengthens deterrence.

Conversely, opponents of strategic ambiguity fear that it increases the risks of misperception and misunderstanding, particularly during a crisis, and will “increase the risk of nuclear escalation and undermine global security.” And for others, such as MP Tobias Elwood, chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee, it is an insufficient response to growing threats, such as from China. For now, strategic ambiguity is an understandable response to geopolitical uncertainty, whereby the United Kingdom wants maximum flexibility to respond to as wide a range of threats as necessary.

jward · Apr 9, 2021

continued. . .

The Price of Ambiguity
Alas, the increased nuclear stockpile and the doctrine of strategic ambiguity will undermine the United Kingdom’s nuclear diplomacy. The move will open the country up to charges of hypocrisy. Future British delegations to international nonproliferation and disarmament negotiations should expect to be asked why other countries should make progress on these issues when the United Kingdom is building up its own nuclear arsenal. While this may seem relatively inconsequential compared to deterring Russian nuclear forces, it will make it harder for the United Kingdom to advance its interests in other areas that it cares about, especially within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The United Kingdom has historically demonstrated more restraint and transparency compared to the other officially recognized nuclear weapons states under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (i.e., China, France, Russia, and the United States). Under a Labour government, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett indicated in 2007 that the United Kingdom could be a “disarmament laboratory,” and the country has indeed led research into disarmament verification, inspiring even larger efforts such as the International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification. Three years later, this time during a Conservative government, Foreign Secretary William Hague committed to a “more open policy” on Britain’s nuclear weapons and announced that the stockpile would not exceed 225 warheads. More recently, in 2019, the United Kingdom held a workshop to discuss its nuclear implementation report to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which included clarification of its nuclear doctrine and terminology. It was the only nuclear weapons state to take such a move, and as one of three non-governmental participants at the workshop, I can confirm it was a truly frank and open dialogue. The British delegation showed much more transparency than its counterparts.

With the United Kingdom’s decision to increase its nuclear stockpile and become more ambiguous on nuclear matters, much of that progress and credibility may be called into question. Additionally, this could reinforce narratives from supporters of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, who are dissatisfied with the slowing pace of disarmament and pressuring the United Kingdom and other NATO members to join the treaty. Moreover, it will exacerbate concerns that nuclear possessors are moving in the wrong direction. This has been a particularly difficult and polarizing debate during recent meetings of the parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Some analysts have already argued that the stockpile increase is incompatible with the United Kingdom’s commitment to nuclear disarmament under the treaty, and it could also increase distrust within the “P5 process,” meetings of the five recognized nuclear weapon states to discuss opportunities for progress towards nuclear disarmament. The U.K. review will to some extent make it harder for President Joe Biden’s administration to tell a positive story about arms control and disarmament following the five-year extension of New START. It seems unlikely, therefore, that the United Kingdom would accept these potentially significant diplomatic costs, particularly in terms of its relationship with the new Biden Administration, if the strategic and security justifications were “all a ruse.”

U.K. Nuclear Policy After the Integrated Review
There are two relatively modest measures that the United Kingdom can pursue in an attempt to rebuild some of its credibility going into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference — clarifying its nuclear modernization plans, and pursuing risk-reduction measures in the context of the P5 process. These are realistic steps that the country could take at relatively low cost that would preserve its security interests and give British diplomats some leverage in future disarmament and nonproliferation talks.

First, the government could provide more information about its nuclear modernization plans. In 2016, the House of Commons voted to maintain the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent, and the current Vanguard-class submarines will be replaced with the Dreadnought class, which will become available in the 2030s. The government is also planning to replace its current Trident warhead, the Holbrooke, which is similar to the American W76 warhead, with a replacement warhead that might not be available until the 2040s. If the United Kingdom does increase its stockpile in the meantime, these warheads will likely come from a stockpile that are not “operationally available,” such as those previously assigned for decommissioning or going through re-assembly and thus not counted towards the current overall stockpile.

But major questions remain about the future of the U.K. arsenal, with implications for the independence and credibility of the deterrent. The government states that the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent is “operationally independent”, but historically the United Kingdom has relied on cooperation with the United States for capabilities such as Trident missiles and warhead technology, such as the W76. Moreover, a new Common Missile Compartment is being developed in conjunction with the United States. Exceptional research by Tom Plant and Matthew Harries at the Royal United Services Institute has raised questions about this relationship between U.K. and U.S. nuclear programs and highlighted ongoing challenges with British nuclear infrastructure.

The status of the replacement warhead is particularly muddled, with one official saying it will be a “joint project, in design terms” with the United States, along with reports of Wallace lobbying Congress to fund the W93. The day before the Integrated Review was released, the government finally provided more information about the independence of the replacement warhead project:

We are working with our U.S. counterparts to ensure the UK replacement warhead remains compatible with the Trident missile. The UK Replacement Warhead will be designed, developed and manufactured in the UK. It will be housed in the Mk7 aeroshell, as will the U.S. W93 warhead, but the requirements, design and manufacture of the warheads are sovereign to each nation. This is consistent with our obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

This is an important first step in clarifying the relationship between the W93 and the replacement warhead. The release of the Integrated Review presents an opportunity for Parliament to ask additional questions about the replacement warhead, and for the government to answer them and try to rectify the muddled messaging to date. To start with: What are the requirements for the replacement warhead? And how much will it cost? To be clear, the government should not reveal sensitive information about warhead design, nor should it reveal stockpile numbers. Instead, it should provide assurances to Parliament that the U.K. deterrent is indeed independent and credible.

Second, the United Kingdom will need to focus on opportunities to reduce risks of misperception within a doctrine of strategic ambiguity. For example, the five nuclear-weapon states have been slow to restate that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” If they are unable to jointly agree to this language, the United Kingdom could make a unilateral statement to a similar effect or with the United States and France, another partner on nuclear weapons issues. Another option would be offering concrete proposals for crisis communication channels, or for mitigating the risks that new technologies and doctrines of ambiguity present to nuclear stability, either within the P5 process or in the Creating an Environment for Nuclear Disarmament working group. This might include a cyber “no-first use” agreement among the recognized nuclear weapon states, expanding the “cyber hotline,” or a proposal on limiting space-based threats. Ultimately, the United Kingdom should be seeking concrete and practical tools to ensure that strategic ambiguity does not lead to strategic misperception. Ideally, all nuclear possessors would pursue such tools, as Russia and China also practice strategic ambiguity but don’t seem to come under the same scrutiny or criticism for doing so.

A Nuclear Wakeup Call
As a response to the worsening global security environment and technological advances, such as those made by Russia and China, it makes sense for the United Kingdom — with a relatively small nuclear arsenal to begin with — to increase the size of its nuclear stockpile and rely more heavily on strategic ambiguity. Nonetheless, it comes at an unfortunate time for the international nuclear order and British nuclear diplomacy. The government will have to work across Whitehall to try to rebuild the United Kingdom’s credibility as a leader in transparency and disarmament going into the 2021 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. This will not be an easy task.

Nothing can likely save the conference from the polarization that has defined it in recent years. The United Kingdom’s new stockpile ceiling will not be the thing that leads to failure at the upcoming gathering. But it certainly doesn’t help. What really matters here is that the United Kingdom, a leader in nuclear disarmament among the nuclear possessors, perceives the security environment to have become so much worse that it chose to increase its nuclear stockpile amidst growing pressure to disarm. It perceives the technological landscape to be increasingly dangerous, and would jeopardize its leadership on nuclear transparency in response. These are worrying trends indeed that should be a wakeup call to the changing nature of strategic threats. A change in the stockpile should say more about the security landscape than it does about U.K. nuclear warheads, but that remains a difficult story to sell.

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U.K. Nuclear Weapons: Beyond the Numbers - War on the Rocks

Sometimes numbers only tell part of the story, even when talking about nuclear weapons. For instance, the United Kingdom recently announced that it was

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jward · Apr 9, 2021

Austin Orders Immediate Changes to Combat Extremism in Military
April 9, 2021 | BY Jim Garamone , DOD News

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has ordered some immediate changes to better combat extremism, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said today.

Kirby said Austin started making moves after meeting with service secretaries and hearing partial results of the Defense Department-wide stand down he ordered in January.

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The actions he ordered are critical first steps, Kirby said.
Austin is establishing a countering extremism working group led by Bishop Garrison, the senior advisor on human capital and diversity, equity and inclusion. The group will examine how the services implement these immediate actions and also work toward intermediate and long-range goals.

A key action is directing DOD officials to review and update the definition of extremism contained in DOO Instruction 1325.06, Kirby said. Service members across the services asked for a clear definition of extremism, the service secretaries told Austin.

The secretary is also calling on the services to update transition instructions to warn those leaving the military of the dangers posed by extremist groups. Kirby noted that some extremist groups are actively trying to recruit military members who possess leadership abilities, planning expertise and knowledge of weapons that these groups desire.

He also ordered the services to work closer together and learn best practices from each other to ensure extremists do not get into the ranks. Kirby said the services will work with law enforcement agencies to accomplish this.
Austin also directed officials to try to discern the scope of the problem within the department.
One specific line of effort the working group will look at is determining how the department should facilitate better information collection, Kirby said. This would help define the scope and extent of the problem. It will also look at sharing among the service insider threat programs.

"I think the working group wants to look at how well (the services) are interconnected, and how robustly they are sharing information, best practices, to include data collection through partnership with the law enforcement organizations, as well as commanders and supervisors."

The service secretaries had a frank discussion with the secretary on the problems of extremism, but they also noted that the vast majority of service members and civilians take their oaths to support and defend the Constitution seriously.
"The vast majority are serving with honor and dignity and upholding the oath and living by the core values of the military," Kirby said.

The vast majority of those serving are not espousing these ideologies. Yet even the few doing so have a corrosive effect, the press secretary said.
The working group will meet around April 14 and have 90 days to deliver a report to Austin on recommendations for medium-range and long-range plans to combat this scourge.

Related Publication: Immediate Actions to Counter Extremism in the Department and the Establishment of the Countering Extremism Working Group

Related News Release: Secretary of Defense Austin Announces Immediate Actions to Counter Extremism in the Military and the Establishment of the Countering Extremism Working Group
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Austin Orders Immediate Changes to Combat Extremism in Military

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