WAR 09-23-2017-to-09-29-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(287) 09-02-2017-to-09-08-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...9-08-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(288) 09-09-2017-to-09-15-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...9-15-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(289) 09-16-2017-to-09-22-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...9-22-2017___****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

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China claims earthquake in North Korea set off by nuclear testing 23/09/2017
Started by*Marthanoirý,*Today*03:32 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...h-Korea-set-off-by-nuclear-testing-23-09-2017

--

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-n...-korea-says-likely-natural-idUSKCN1BY0BS?il=0

September 23, 2017 / 2:44 AM / Updated 19 minutes ago

China says North Korean quake 'suspected explosion', South Korea says likely natural

Ben Blanchard, Heekyong Yang
3 Min Read

BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - China’s earthquake administration said on Saturday it had detected a magnitude 3.4 earthquake in North Korea that was a “suspected explosion”, raising fears the isolated state had conducted another nuclear bomb test weeks after its last one.

An official at South Korea’s meteorological agency said they were analyzing the tremor, which they put at magnitude 3.0, but the initial view was that it was a natural quake.

“We use several methods to tell whether earthquakes are natural or manmade,” said the official, who asked for anonymity. “A key method is to look at the seismic waves or seismic acoustic waves and the latter can be detected in the case of a manmade earthquake. In this case we saw none. So as of now we are categorizing this as a natural earthquake.”

The earthquake was detected in Kilju county in North Hamgyong Province, where North Korea’s known Punggyeri nuclear site is located, the official said.

Related Coverage

Korean seismic activity took place 50 km from prior tests: CTBTO
CTBTO looking at 'unusual seismic activity' in North Korea

The Chinese administration said in a statement on its website that the quake, which occurred around 0830 GMT, was recorded a depth of zero kilometers.

All of North Korea’s previous six nuclear tests registered as earthquakes of magnitude 4.3 or above. The last test on Sept 3 registered as a 6.3 magnitude quake.

A secondary tremor detected after that test could have been caused by the collapse of a tunnel at the mountainous site, experts said at the time. Satellite photos of the area after the Sept 3 quake showed numerous landslides apparently caused by the massive blast, which North Korea said was a hydrogen bomb.

The head of the nuclear test monitoring agency CTBTO said on Saturday that analysts were “looking at unusual seismic activity of a much smaller magnitude” in North Korea, and that it would have more details to come.

There was no immediate reaction from China’s Foreign Ministry, but the news was widely reported by Chinese state media outlets and on social media.

Tensions have continued to rise around the Korean peninsula since Pyongyang carried out its sixth nuclear test, prompting a new round of U.N. sanctions.

North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, currently in New York for a United Nations meeting, warned on Thursday that Kim could consider a hydrogen bomb test of an unprecedented scale over the Pacific.

U.S. President Donald Trump called the North Korean leader a “madman” on Friday, a day after Kim dubbed him a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” who would face the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history”.

North Korea’s nuclear tests to date have all been underground, and experts say an atmospheric test, which would be the first since one by China in 1980, would be proof of the success of its weapons program.

Reporting by Andrew Galbraith in Shanghai, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Christine Kim and Heekyong Yang in Seoul; Editing by Lincoln Feast

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.militarytimes.com/flash...i-taliban-video-features-white-socks-and-m4s/

Pakistani Taliban video features white socks and M4s

By: Shawn Snow   16 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The Pakistani Taliban uploaded a propaganda video earlier this week showcasing a U.S. M4 rifle and its fighters training in white socks.

In the video titled, “Stomach to Fight,” the rifle is featured prominently in the video, and at several points, a lone shooter is filmed aiming and firing the weapon. Other fighters are brandishing typical Kalashnikov rifles commonly used by militants in Central and Southwest Asia.

The placement and shots of the M4 appear to give the weapon significance and importance with the group.

Also known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, the Pakastani Taliban are a separate group from the Afghan Taliban.

Taliban mimic American commandos in latest propaganda video
A recent Taliban propaganda video uploaded to the group’s official media site appears to show Taliban fighters mimicking the style and tactics of American commandos.
By: Shawn Snow
​

The TTP is almost exclusively at war with the Pakistani government, whereas the Afghan Taliban is waging an insurgency against the international coalition and Kabul-based government.

The TPP operate mainly in the ungoverned regions of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Prominently featured in the video are militants almost exclusively wearing white socks, an infraction guaranteed to draw the ire of Marine Corps first sergeants everywhere.

Whether the white socks will hasten the demise of the militant group remains unknown, but Marines have been complaining about scorn and punishment doled out by leadership over wearing the abundantly available and vastly more comfortable socks since the dawn of time.

Articles on the controversy have even appeared in the Marine Corps Gazette. “Sadly, the color of one’s socks has become an indicator of one’s worth as a Marine,” one Marine lieutenant colonel complained in the Gazette.

The Pakistani Taliban was designated a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department in 2010. Interestingly enough, the Afghan Taliban is not considered a terror group by the U.S. government despite its extensive ties to al-Qaeda and the Haqqani Network, organizations officially black-listed as terrorist organizations.

The group is known to carry out deadly attacks, including an attack in 2014 on a school in Peshawar that killed over 140 people, according to a BBC report.

About Shawn Snow
Shawn Snow is the editor of the Early Bird and a reporter for Military Times

 

[northern watch]

Strategic Sentinel‏Verified account @StratSentinel · 15m15 minutes ago

#BREAKING Developing: #Iran increases the number of troops, tanks, and artillery on the borders with #Kurdistan region

 

[northern watch]

Strategic Sentinel‏Verified account @StratSentinel · 16m16 minutes ago

Replying to @StratSentinel

This comes when #Kurdistan is about to hold an independence referendum. #Iran absolutely does not want that.

 

[northern watch]

Strategic Sentinel‏Verified account @StratSentinel · 16m16 minutes ago

Replying to @StratSentinel

It is, however, hard to believe that #Iran is about to invade. Perhaps this is merely a scare tactic.

 

[northern watch]

Turkey OKs military intervention, warns Iraqi Kurds on vote

By Zeynep Bilginsoy, Associated Press
ISTANBUL September 23, 2017, 1:49 PM ET

The Turkish parliament on Saturday renewed a bill allowing the military to intervene in Iraq and Syria if faced with national security threats a move seen as a final warning to Iraqi Kurds to call off their Monday independence referendum.

The decree allows Turkey to send troops over its southern border if developments in Iraq or Syria are seen as national security threats. Turkish officials have repeatedly warned the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq to abandon its plans for independence.

Kurds are dispersed across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran and lack a nation state. Turkey itself has a large ethnic Kurdish population and is battling a Kurdish insurgency on its own territory that it calls separatist.

The bill read in parliament Saturday listed combating Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq and the Islamic State group as national security requirements for Turkey. It also emphasized the importance of Iraq and Syria's territorial integrity and said "separatism based on ethnicity" poses a threat to both Turkey and regional stability.

Speaking in parliament, Turkish Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli likened Monday's vote in northern Iraq to a brick that if pulled out could collapse an entire "structure built on sensitive and fragile balances." The resulting conflict could be global, he warned.

Osman Baydemir, a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party or HDP the third biggest group in parliament called the bill "a war mandate" and "a proclamation of enmity towards 40 million Kurds." A dozen parliamentarians from the party are behind bars for alleged links to terror groups.

The HDP voted against the mandate Saturday. All other parties, including the main opposition Republican People's Party, voted for it.

Earlier Saturday, the Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim called the referendum "a mistake, an adventure." He said Turkey would take diplomatic, political and economic measures according to "developments on the ground." He added a cross-border military operation was also an option.

The renewed mandate is a combination of two previous bills that are based on a constitutional article on the "declaration of state of war and authorization to deploy the armed forces."

The Iraq Bill was passed in 2007 to combat outlawed Kurdish militants in northern Iraq to prevent attacks in Turkey. The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK has its headquarters in Iraq's Qandil mountains. Turkey, the United States and the European Union consider it a terror organization.

The Syria Bill of 2012 was in response to mortar attacks by Syrian government forces on a Turkish border town.

The combined bill was passed in 2014 as IS waged a deadly campaign in Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish town on the Turkish border. IS failed to take over the town and the victory strengthened Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units or YPG, who are now a key U.S. ally against IS in Syria. Turkey, however, considers them a terror group.

The mandate has allowed Turkey to launch a cross-border military operation into northern Syria with Syrian opposition forces in August 2016 to clear its border of IS and YPG. Turkey's air force has also been bombing targets in northern Iraq and Syria.

The Turkish military, meanwhile, said additional units joined this week's previously unannounced exercises near the Iraqi border. The chief of staff also met his Iraqi counterpart in Ankara to discuss the Kurdish referendum and border security.


http://abcnews.go.com/International...ish-leaders-vote-parliament-convenes-50040546

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.voanews.com/a/kabul-suicide-bomber-nato-convoy/4042009.html

Asia

Suicide Bomber Targets NATO Convoy in Kabul

Last Updated: September 24, 2017 5:35 AM
Ayaz Gul

ISLAMABAD —*
A suicide bomber has struck a NATO convoy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, injuring at least three people.

The Ministry of Interior described the injured as Afghan civilians but would not say whether foreign forces suffered any casualties.

In a statement NATO said “An improvised explosive device targeted a NATO convoy this morning in Kabul. There are no Resolute Support casualties as a result of the explosion. A team from Resolute Support is on the scene to recover the vehicle. There is no impact to Resolute Support operations.”

The Taliban insurgency has taken credit for plotting the attack. Its spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, claimed an American military convoy was targeted, destroying several vehicles and inflicting heavy casualties on the “invading” forces.

The insurgents are known for issuing inflated casualty tolls for such attacks that often turn out to be false.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...c70b6f98089_story.html?utm_term=.c82ff54dad3f

Middle East

Iran tries to reconcile Syria and Hamas, rebuilding alliance

By Bassem Mroue | AP September 23

BEIRUT — Iran is working to restore a lost link in its network of alliances in the Middle East, trying to bring Hamas fully back into the fold after the Palestinian militant group had a bitter fall-out with Iranian ally Syria over that country’s civil war.

Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah are quietly trying to mediate a reconciliation between Syria and Hamas. If they succeed, it would shore up a weak spot in the alliance at a time when Iran has strengthened ties with Syria and Iraq, building a bloc of support across the region to counter Israel and the United States’ Arab allies.

Hamas had long been based in Syria, receiving Damascus’ support in the militant group’s campaign against Israel. Hamas’ powerful leadership-in-exile remained in Syria even after the group took power in the Gaza Strip in 2007. Together with Iran and the Shiite guerrilla group Hezbollah, they touted themselves as the “Axis of Resistance” to oppose Israel.

But when Syria tipped into civil war, Hamas broke with President Bashar Assad and sided with the rebels fighting to oust him. The rebels are largely Sunni Muslims, like Hamas, and scenes of Sunni civilian deaths raised an outcry across the region against Assad, who belongs to the minority Alawite sect.

Iran, meanwhile, has been one of Assad’s strongest backers since the crisis in Syria began in 2011, pumping billions of dollars into the economy and sending advisers as well as Iranian-backed fighters to help him stay in power. Hezbollah sent thousands of fighters, helping tip the war in Assad’s favor against the rebels and now helping in the fight against the Islamic State group.

The reconciliation attempt comes after Hamas elected a new leadership and as its main backers, Qatar and Turkey — both strong supporters of the rebels in Syria — have sought to improve relations with Iran.

Hamas and Iran did not completely cut off their alliance after the fall-out with Assad. But ties cooled considerably. Tehran’s funding continued, particularly for Hamas’ armed wing, but at a reduced level, while political connections dwindled.

Since Yehiyeh Sinwar took over Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip in February, the militant group has been rebuilding those relations. In August, the most senior Hamas delegation in years visited Tehran and took part in President Hassan Rouhani’s inauguration. During their visit, the delegation met with the parliament speaker and senior aides to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. This year, Hamas officials have held three meetings with Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and relations have returned to normal, according to a Palestinian official in Beirut.

Video

Iran has responded by increasing funding. Sinwar told reporters last month that Iran is now “the largest backer financially and militarily” of Hamas’ armed wing. He said that with Iran’s help, Hamas is “accumulating” its military powers in preparation for a battle meant for “the liberation of Palestine.”

Now Iran wants to end the rift between its two allies, Assad and Hamas.
A Lebanese politician with close links to the Syrian government confirmed that Iranian-Hezbollah mediation is ongoing, adding that it is still in the “very early stages.”

A Palestinian official who closely follows Hamas’ relations in the region also confirmed the mediation effort and said there were “positive signals” from Syria.

Both the politician and the official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the secret mediation.

But the mediation faces a tough task given how bitter the split was.

At first when Syria’s conflict began, Hamas’ leadership in exile remained largely silent. But tensions grew with the increased bloodshed, and finally in January 2012, Hamas’ leader in exile Khaled Mashaal left Syria to Qatar, one of Assad’s main opponents.

The following September, he gave a speech in Turkey proclaiming, “We welcome the revolution of the Syrian people who are seeking freedom and independence” and that “the pure blood of these great people is being shed” because they seek democracy.

Within hours, Syrian authorities sealed up all Hamas offices in the country and expelled its members to Lebanon. They have not been allowed back since.

This month, Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas figure in Gaza, told Al-Mayadeen TV that relations must be repaired with Syria and other countries that “are hostile to us without a reason.” Pressed about possible reconciliation with Syria, Zahar said, “There are steps and they should continue.”

Syrian officials told mediators they are open to reconciliation but will not allow Hamas to open an office in Damascus, prominent Palestinian journalist Abdul-Bari Atwan wrote in his online newspaper Rai al-Youm.

Khaled Abdul-Majid, a Palestinian official based in Syria who has close relations with the government, said that in the Syrians’ eyes, statements by Hamas toward improving ties “are not enough.”

“What happened was big. It was betrayal as Syrian authorities say,” Abdul-Majid said. “These (mediation) efforts have not reached serious steps.”

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.rudaw.net/english/opinion/24092017

Opinion

What do the Kurds expect from the international community?

By Zana Kurda 5 hours ago

Iraqi Kurdistan region will hold a referendum on independence from Iraq on 25 September. In this podcast series, Zana Kurda, the director of European Affairs at the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Mission to the EU, presents the Kurdish perspective and explains why the Kurds are determined to hold the referendum.

Kurds historically have had a land where they belong to; Kurdistan. In fact a state of Kurdistan was guaranteed to the Kurds following the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. *But because of the interests of the super powers, as well as opposition from hostile neighbors, that decision was quickly reversed and that rendered the Kurds the largest nation in the world without a state at present. Instead, the superpowers brokered a deal, the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement, by which they carved up the Middle East based on table-drawn borders. The Kurdish nation was suddenly divided over four countries; Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, the latter two being the outcome of the Skyes-Picot agreement as newly created states.

The Kurds in Iraq revolted against their inclusion in the state of Iraq from the first moment. Kurds have a long history of struggle for freedom and sovereignty and they often paid a heavy price for it, including the genocides of the Halabja chemical attack and the notorious Anfal campaign against the Kurds.*

Kurds believe that depriving them of their own state was one of the greatest injustices of the last century. However, they believe that this injustice will be corrected in the 21st century and they seem to appeal to the moral argument and point to developments in the shared beliefs and values of the global community.*

*If that injustice was acceptable in a century full of wars, atrocities and genocides, they say, *in the 21st century the collective consciousness of the global community does not accept sustaining that injustice any longer. The people of Kurdistan therefore expect that the international community will respect their aspiration and will stand in solidarity with them when they march toward independence. The future will tell if Kurds are correct in their assessment and that the international community will indeed stay by their side and allow them to have their seat in the United Nations.*

 

[Housecarl]

Trump says Iran 'working with North Korea' after ballistic missile test
Started by Dennis Olson‎, Yesterday 09:19 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...with-North-Korea-after-ballistic-missile-test

Germans OK with thier women getting raped by musloids. (Merkel wins fourth term)
Started by Millwright‎, Today 12:52 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...g-raped-by-musloids.-(Merkel-wins-fourth-term)

Report: Merkel May Have Lacked Authority To Open Borders To Refugees
Started by Jonas Parker‎, Today 08:54 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...-Lacked-Authority-To-Open-Borders-To-Refugees

North Korea says strike on US is 'inevitable' as Pentagon flies bombers off coast
Started by Dennis Olson‎, Yesterday 09:17 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...nevitable-as-Pentagon-flies-bombers-off-coast

Europe: Politics, Trade, NATO-September 2017
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?523866-Europe-Politics-Trade-NATO-September-2017/page2

If North Korea gets ready to test a nuclear missile in the Pacific Ocean destroy it first
Started by Dennis Olson‎, Yesterday 07:23 PM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...missile-in-the-Pacific-Ocean-destroy-it-first

IRAN doesn't want to be left out>>>>
Started by ioujc‎, Yesterday 11:23 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?524860-IRAN-doesn-t-want-to-be-left-out-gt-gt-gt-gt

The Iraqi (Shiite) militia helping Iran carve a road all the way to Damascus and beyond
Started by Medical Maven‎, Yesterday 07:08 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...rve-a-road-all-the-way-to-Damascus-and-beyond

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For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/dipl...na-names-new-military-commander-strategically

China names new military commander for strategically important region near North Korea

Promotion of Li Qiaoming, 56, is the latest in a series of military personnel changes that suggest Beijing wants younger leaders in prominent positions

Kinling Lo
PUBLISHED : Friday, 22 September, 2017, 10:02pm
UPDATED : Friday, 22 September, 2017, 10:04pm
Comment 1

China’s military has named a new leader of its Northern Theatre Command as part of a reshuffle ahead of next month’s Communist Party congress.

Lieutenant General Li Qiaoming visited troops stationed in Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces – near the North Korean border – recently in his new role as commander of the theatre command, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday.

He was accompanied by General Xu Qiliang, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), which runs the People’s Liberation Army.

Along with the three provinces, the Northern Theatre Command also covers the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and Shandong. The five areas are of strategic importance since they share borders with North Korea and Russia.

Young guns including Xi Jinping’s top military aide expected to move up the ranks
The theatre command has held a number of drills recently that analysts believe were shows of force aimed at the United States and North Korea as tensions continue to escalate on the Korean peninsula.

US Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, meanwhile made time to visit the theatre command’s headquarters in Shenyang, Liaoning during a trip to China last month.

The promotion of Li, 56, to the strategically important position is the latest in a series of military personnel changes that suggest China wants younger leaders in prominent positions, observers said. Li, who is from Henan province, has been at the helm of the theatre command’s ground forces since February.

His predecessor General Song Puxuan – who is regarded as one of President Xi Jinping’s protégés – was elevated to the top job in the CMC’s Logistics Support Department earlier this month.

Worries over fitness levels as more young Chinese fail military exams

Xu Guangyu, former vice-president of the People’s Liberation Army Defence Institute of China, said it was unusual for someone at Li’s rank – he became a lieutenant general only in July – to be promoted to such an important position.

“Usually the head of a theatre command will already be at the rank of a colonel general. Li will need two or three more years of experience before his rank can be raised again,” he said.

Xu added that younger leaders were important for the military. “If Li performs well, given his relative youth, he still has time to accumulate that experience and become a potential candidate for many important positions in the future.”

Five theatre commands – northern, southern, eastern, western and central – were introduced in 2016 as part of a military overhaul, replacing the seven existing military regions.


This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: New leader for strategic northern PLA command

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/wit...ay-buy-unarmed-guardian-drone-from-us-1754437

With Eye On China, India May Buy 'Unarmed' Guardian Drone From US

Top of the agenda during US Secretary of Defence James Mattis' visit is the sale of 22 Sea Guardian remotely piloted vehicles, a $2 billion sale that could see the Indian Navy acquire the world's most advanced maritime reconnaissance drone.

All India | Written by Vishnu Som | Updated: September 24, 2017 15:51 IST
HIGHLIGHTS
- US Secretary of Defence James Mattis visiting India this week
- Indian Navy could get world's most advanced maritime reconnaissance drone
- China has deployed nuke attack submarines in Indian Ocean region

All India | Written by Vishnu Som | Updated: September 24, 2017 15:51 IST

24 COMMENTS

NEW DELHI: When US Secretary of Defence James Mattis flies out to New Delhi later today, his top priority will be to try and ensure that the new India-US "major defence partnership" ends up being more than a talk-shop on strategic issues of mutual concern.

On top of the agenda is the sale of 22 Sea Guardian remotely-piloted vehicles, a $2 billion sale that could see the Indian Navy acquire the world's most advanced maritime reconnaissance drone. Senior officials monitoring the progress of the deal have told NDTV, "Sea Guardian is top of Secretary Mattis' agenda" and that "maritime security is in common interest due to Chinese aggression with submarines in the Indian ocean, so this platform is a military and diplomatic message to all."

Significantly, NDTV has learned that while the drones India is looking at will come unarmed, they are fully weapons-capable and will come with seven external stations for carriage of payloads. This payload could eventually include Hellfire air-to-surface missiles presently being acquired by the Indian Air Force and Army along with 22 US-built Apache attack helicopters India first contracted in September 2015 in a $3 billion contract. In August, the government cleared the Indian Army's acquisition of six more Apaches which would come armed with the same missile.

In December last year, towards the end of Barack Obama's final term as President, the US Congress passed an amendment called "Enhancing Defence and Security Cooperation with India," which eventually resulted in India being designated a "major defence partner," a designation reaffirmed during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the US in June this year. If a deal for the drones is concluded, this would be the first US sale of the Sea Guardian to a non-NATO partner nation and the first sale of an extremely sensitive US system under India's "major defence partner" status.

The Sea Guardian Multi-Mission Maritime Patrol Aircraft can fly non-stop for 27 hours at an altitude of 50,000 feet. It can be remotely piloted or operate fully autonomous missions. Equipped with a multi-mode maritime radar, the Sea Guardian can observe the movement of Chinese warships and submarines when they surface.

Over the last three years, China has deployed nuclear attack submarines in the Indian Ocean region along with fleet support ships and warships, apparently to fight piracy off the coast of Somalia. The Indian Navy believes that the Chinese presence in these waters has less to do with the fight against lightly armed Somali pirates and more to do with Beijing's elaborate plans to strategically encircle India by establishing ports and military facilities in the Indian Ocean region such as its new logistics hub in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa.


Earlier this year, the Commander of the US Pacific Command Admiral Harry Harris said there was nothing to prevent a Chinese aircraft carrier battle group from sailing into the Indian Ocean at any time. According to the Admiral, "I believe India should be concerned about the increased Chinese influence. If you believe there is only a finite amount of influence in the region, then whatever influence that China has is influence that India doesn't have.''

In detecting the movement of Chinese warships across its area of interest, the Indian Navy has been relying heavily on its fleet of US-made Boeing P8-I anti-submarine warfare jets. The Sea Guardian is designed to work with the P8-I and can share information through a datalink. Significantly, both the P8 and the Sea Guardian would be able to share tactical data (such as the location of ships under surveillance) with US platforms in real time if India were to sign the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA). COMCASA allows the secure exchange of military information between US military partner nations.

According to Dr Vivek Lal, Chief Executive at General Atomics, which builds the Sea Guardian, the US willingness to sell the Sea Guardian is a clear indicator of the willingness of Washington to transfer some of its most sensitive military technology to New Delhi. "Not only will this platform enhance India's capabilities in the areas of maritime domain awareness and security, but the interoperability between both strategic partners will contribute to security across the region," said Mr Lal who has been recognised by the University of Cambridge as one of the world's top scientists of the twentieth century.

India's interest in US drones doesn't end with the Sea Guardian. In April this year, the Indian Air Force wrote to the US government looking at the possibility of acquiring the more advanced Avenger armed drone, a high-speed multi-mission Remotely Piloted Aircraft which can carry out "time-sensitive strike missions over land or sea." Powered by a turbofan jet engine, unlike the propeller driven Sea Guardian, groups of Avengers, which can fly at more than 740 kilometres per hour, can be deployed to ``swarm" enemy positions by overwhelming defences by their sheer numbers. According to sources, the "next step after this is 5 squadrons of Avengers for the IAF for which the IAF has written a letter of request to the US government." A deal for Avengers, which could be worth a reported $8 billion "is being considered by the White House for approval after a Guardian deal is signed."

The US Secretary of Defence will be in New Delhi between September 26 and September 28. He will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at India Gate and will meet PM Modi and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. According the US Department of Defence, "The secretary will emphasize that the United States views India as a valued and influential partner, with broad mutual interests extending well beyond South Asia."

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.longwarjournal.org/arch...es-on-islamic-state-camp-in-libyan-desert.php

US strikes Islamic State camp in Libyan desert

BY THOMAS JOSCELYN | September 24, 2017 | tjoscelyn@gmail.com | @thomasjoscelyn

Earlier today, the Islamic State released a video showing its men operating in Libya’s desert and elsewhere in the country. It was the first such video in months.

American forces launched “six precision airstrikes” on an Islamic State camp in Libya on Sept. 22, according to US Africa Command (AFRICOM). The bombings reportedly killed 17 jihadists and destroyed three vehicles at a “desert camp.”

“The camp was located approximately 150 miles southeast of Sirte,” AFRICOM said in a statement today. “The camp was used by ISIS to move fighters in and out of the country; stockpile weapons and equipment; and to plot and conduct attacks.”

The airstrikes are the first by the US government in Libya since January.

The self-declared caliphate lost its safe haven in Sirte, a city on the Mediterranean coast, late last year. At the height of its power, the group considered Sirte to be one of the three most important cities under its control, ranking behind only Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria in terms of prominence. A US-backed coalition pushed the jihadists out Mosul earlier this year and they have lost substantial ground inside Raqqa as well.

Between Aug. 1 and Dec. 19, 2016, AFRICOM conducted “495 precision airstrikes” as part of Operation Odyssey Lightning. The operation, carried out in conjunction with the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA), successfully dislodged the Islamic State from Sirte after seven months of heavy fighting. But the victory was costly for the GNA-backed militiamen responsible for the ground assault. More than 700 GNA-sponsored fighters were reportedly killed and thousands more wounded.

In Jan. 2017, the US bombed two Islamic State training camps south of Sirte, citing the presence of the group’s “external plotters.” The Defense Department estimated that dozens of jihadists were killed. Subsequent reporting revealed that the “external plotters” were connected to attacks in Europe, including the Dec. 19 Berlin Christmas market attack and possibly the May 22 Manchester Arena bombing.

Since losing Sirte, the Islamic State has been trying to regroup inside Libya.

In August, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s loyalists raided a checkpoint in the Jufra region, which is south of Sirte in the middle of Libya. Amaq News Agency, a propaganda arm of the so-called caliphate, claimed that 21 members of General Khalifa Haftar’s “militia” were “killed and wounded” during the attack. Haftar leads the Libyan National Army (LNA), which has fought the Islamic State’s men in several areas.

In early September, the jihadists carried out a series of small-scale operations on the road between Sirte and Nawfaliya, a town they seized in 2015. They attacked forces loyal to the LNA and set up checkpoints to extort payments from travelers. Their mini-surge along the coastline was celebrated in an issue of Al Naba, the Islamic State’s weekly newsletter. (A screen shot from Al Naba can be seen on the right.)

Then, earlier today, Wilayah Barqah (an Islamic State “province” in Libya) released a 17-minute video advertising the group’s continued presence inside the country. The footage contains scenes of the aforementioned checkpoints, as well as other operations. Some of the footage documents the jihadists’ monkish life in Libya’s deserts.

According to the State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2016, the so-called caliphate lost a significant number of its fighters during the battle for Sirte. Yet, several thousand of its men were either stationed elsewhere or survived the siege.

“Although more than 1,700 ISIS terrorists were killed during the Sirte counterterrorism operations,” the State Department reported, “many members of the terrorist organization fled to Libya’s western and southern deserts, abroad, or into neighboring urban centers.”

State also cited reports saying that Baghdadi’s organization had “as many as 6,000 fighters in its ranks” as of early 2016 — that is, several months before the US began its air campaign in Sirte in Aug. 2016. The number of jihadists fighting under its banner swelled between 2015 and 2016, as the Islamic State “doubled its presence in the country” during that time.

Taken at face value, therefore, the State Department’s report suggested that approximately 4,300 members of the Islamic State’s Libyan arm were not killed during the operation to free Sirte from the jihadists’ grip. It is not clear how many of these men are stationed in Libya, or fled elsewhere. Nor is it known how many were killed in other operations inside Libya since then.

Foggy Bottom also warned that the Islamic State has cadres sprinkled throughout the country.

“At the end of 2016,” Foggy Bottom said, the Islamic State was “no longer in control of any towns in Libya, but its members continued to operate throughout the eastern, southern, and western regions of the country.” The jihadists “also carried out attacks in Tripoli and Benghazi.”

Last December, the Islamic State’s Rumiyah magazine, which is published in multiple languages, carried an interview with Sheikh Abu Hudhayfah al Muhajir, who was identified as the group’s leader in Libya. The “detachments of the mujahidin” are “spread today throughout the deserts of Libya,” Muhajir claimed, and they will make their enemies “taste severe hardship.” He vowed that they “will reclaim the cities and areas once more, by Allah’s power and strength.”

Muhajir was asked about the Islamic State’s strength in “regions outside of Sirte.” He claimed that the number of “mujahid brothers in the Libyan wilayat [province] continue to be…abundant.” Their “covert units are scattered throughout all the cities and regions, and their detachments cruise the deserts both east and west.” Although he exaggerated his followers’ capabilities, there was some truth in Muhajir’s claims.

In its announcement today, AFRICOM noted that both “ISIS and al-Qaeda have taken advantage of ungoverned spaces in Libya to establish sanctuaries for plotting, inspiring and directing terror attacks.” Both groups have used Libyan territory for “recruiting and facilitating the movement of foreign terrorist fighters,” as well as “raising and moving funds to support their operations.”

While the Islamic State has consistently advertised its presence in Libya, however, al Qaeda and its regional branch, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), have often sought to obscure the extent of their network in North Africa. For instance, the State Department noted in July that AQIM has backed alliances fighting in Benghazi. “In the second half of 2016,” State reported, “AQIM increased its personnel and weapons support to the Benghazi Revolutionary Shura Council [BRSC] and the Benghazi Defense Brigades [BDB].” The BDB has denied links to known terrorist organizations, a claim that the US government clearly doesn’t buy.

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

Tags: AFRICOM, Islamic State, Libya, Sirte, US Africa Command, Wilayah Barqah

1 Comment

James says:
September 25, 2017 at 7:34 am
If I were part of the Vatican security personnel, I would be greatly concerned, yes, greatly concerned. Especially considering a liberal Pope that’s willing to let just about anybody in. You’d better believe that they are plotting to strike and attempt to destroy the Vatican. You see, it all goes back to the Crusaders. They see Rome and the Vatican as the seat of Christianity and the Crusaders.

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https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2017/09/jnim-claims-large-assault-in-kidal-mali.php

JNIM claims large assault in Kidal, Mali

BY CALEB WEISS | September 25th, 2017 | weiss.caleb2@gmail.com | @Weissenberg7

After a long media silence, al Qaeda’s Group of Support for Muslims and Islam (JNIM) returned to social media on Saturday and issued a claim of responsibility and also a video for last week’s multi-pronged attack against UN forces in the northern Malian city of Kidal.

The statement reads that forces from JNIM launched an attack on “the gates of the criminal MINUSMA forces in the city of Kidal.” It continues by saying that this battle resulted in one UN armored vehicle being burned and one peacekeeper wounded, while MINUSMA positions in Kidal were also targeted with mortars and rockets.

The jihadist statement largely conforms with what MINUMSA reported. According to the UN, the “MINUSMA camp in Kidal was the target of a complex attack, [resulting in] one wounded among its peacekeepers.” The UN also states that its forces repelled the assault after its “Rapid Reaction Force” was deployed.

In the video, jihadists can be seen firing on UN positions with mortars, rockets, small arms, and heavy machine gun fire. One vehicle can be seen burning in the background, confirming JNIM’s claim. In other scenes, jihadists are shown to be engaging with UN forces in relatively close combat. Saturday’s video is of lesser quality than what JNIM has typically produced in the past.

JNIM’s last claim came on July 31, when it stated its forces wounded four French soldiers with an IED near Tessalit in the Kidal region. It did, however, release a video showing its June 17 assault on a Malian base in the Timbuktu region in late August. Shortly thereafter, its Telegram channel was shutdown but a new one was created and remained silent until Saturday.

It is unclear why there was almost a month of media silence and why its last claim of responsibility was almost two months ago. Many attacks suspected to be the work of JNIM within this period have still gone unclaimed. In addition, more recent attacks, like Sunday’s IED blast near Gao which killed three UN peacekeepers and wounded five others. This is heavily suspected to be the work of JNIM, but has yet to be claimed.

Screenshots from the JNIM video:

Caleb Weiss is an intern at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a contributor to The Long War Journal.

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https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2017/09/taliban-retakes-district-in-afghan-northwest.php

Taliban retakes district in Afghan northwest

BY BILL ROGGIO | September 25th, 2017 | admin@longwarjournal.org | @billroggio

The Taliban has retaken control of the district of Kohistan in the northwestern province of Faryab over the weekend. The district has changed hands twice during the past several months.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Muhajid claimed on Sept. 24 that the Kohistan district headquarters and “all CPs/buildings” fell to the Taliban and there were “multiple gunmen killed” and a “sizable amount [of] weapons seized” during the fighting.

Mujahid’s claim of control of Kohistan was confirmed by Afghan officials from the area. The district fell after “hundreds of militants staged attacks from different directions,” according to Pajhwok Afghan News. Afghan security forces fled the area during the Taliban onslaught. Security officials accused the Taliban of burning down the homes of civilians.

The Taliban previously overran Kohistan, which is also known as Lolash, at the end of July 2017 and held it briefly before Afghan commandos retook the district center. The Taliban remained on the outskirts of the district center.

Faryab province has been a Taliban hotbed over the past several years. Of the 15 districts, the Taliban currently control three (Kohistan, Pashtun Kot, and Ghormach), and contest six more (Almar, Dawlatabad, Khwaja Sabz Posh, Maimana, Qaysar, and Shirin Tagab). The Taliban has used these rural districts and others in neighboring provinces to pressure the provincial capital of Maimana. In the winter of 2016, the Taliban launched major attacks in an effort to cut off and overrun the city of Maimana.

The Taliban has remained on the offensive in all regions of Afghanistan, despite the fact that the US military has loosened the rules of engagement to target the Taliban and give more discretion to US commanders to launch air strikes and other kinetic operations. While the US military is deploying an additional 3,000 troops to Afghanistan, they will primarily serve as advisers to the Afghan military and police. Meanwhile, the Taliban has been able to launch attacks using hundreds of fighters during broad daylight with little fear of being targeted via the air.

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

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/i...-step-towards-independence-or-regional-chaos/

Iraqi Kurds’ referendum: a step towards independence, or regional chaos?

23 Sep 2017|William Gourlay

The Kurds are flavour of the month. We are now familiar with media coverage of Kurdish fighters, many of them women, pushing back the jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Pursuing separate political projects on either side of the Iraq–Syria border, Kurdish forces have won praise and considerable military support in the international campaign to unseat ISIS.

Boosted by surging goodwill and recent territorial gains, Iraqi Kurdish president Massoud Barzani has called a referendum to decide whether the semi-autonomous region that he heads should seek independence from Iraq. If jubilant rallies in Kurdish cities in Iraq are any indication, the ‘yes’ vote on 25 September will win emphatically.

The independence referendum, however, may well undermine the Kurds’ favoured status. Few Western governments would quibble with the Kurds’ right to seek self-determination. Deprived of a state at the carve-up of the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurdish population was divided among Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. In each of those states they’ve since suffered numerous humiliations.

Numbering around 30 million, Kurds argue they deserve a national homeland: ‘Kurdistan’. That the Kurdish peshmerga have played an instrumental role in the struggle against ISIS adds weight to that argument. In Syria, Kurdish militia, under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces, form the backbone of the force to retake Raqqa, the seat of ISIS’s so-called caliphate.

On both of these fronts the Kurds have made considerable territorial gains with the military backing of the US and allies. Kurdish foot soldiers in the campaign against ISIS have saved Western governments from putting their own forces in the line of fire.

But any goodwill the Kurds have amassed doesn’t extend to Western approval of the independence referendum. Both the US and the UK foreign offices have voiced their dismay at this unilateral move. Western diplomats have made last-ditch efforts to get the Kurds to abandon the referendum.

Western concerns centre on any disruption to the anti-ISIS campaign that might result from a subsequent Kurdish declaration of independence. The emergence of a fledgling state is unlikely to go unquestioned in the region. It will inevitably have an impact on the geopolitical balance. Received wisdom holds that existing borders, which deprived the Kurds of a state, are sacred, and that any change could trigger a domino effect.

A prospective regional realignment also worries Turkey. Ankara maintains good relations with the Iraqi Kurds but is highly sensitive to the aspirations of its own Kurdish minority. The Turkish foreign ministry argues that the Kurds’ referendum will undermine Iraq’s territorial sovereignty (an issue Ankara glosses over when it ignores Baghdad’s demands to withdraw unauthorised Turkish troops stationed in northern Iraq). But Ankara clearly fears that an emerging Kurdistan will incite heightened separatist sentiments among Kurds in Turkey. That has given rise to extensive tub-thumping from Turkish politicians and recent military manoeuvres on the Iraqi border.

Iran is similarly concerned at the intentions of its fractious Kurdish minority. Tehran is also closely allied with the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. Earlier talk of a ‘Kurdish corridor’ allowing Iran access to the Mediterranean through northern Iraq and Syria has proved nothing more than hyperbole, with Tehran firmly voicing its disapproval of the Kurds’ referendum. Military officials in Iran state that should the referendum proceed it would close its borders and terminate security agreements with the Kurdish regime. Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Revolutionary Guards, has gone further, saying Iran will occupy the Kurdish region.

Meanwhile, not unexpectedly, Baghdad condemns the referendum. The Kurds made gains at Baghdad’s expense by claiming the disputed city of Kirkuk when the Iraqi army fled before ISIS’s advance. The Iraqi army has since regrouped and, with ISIS on the ropes, is more assertive. Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi decries the referendum as an ‘invitation’ for others to violate Iraqi sovereignty. He has stated that any violence arising out of the referendum will provoke a military response from Baghdad.

Just how Ankara, Tehran and Baghdad will play this is difficult to determine. All have track records of brutal responses to Kurdish manoeuvring. Despite bellicose talk, none of them desires greater conflict, but the positions of all three mean that the Kurds are conducting their referendum in a highly charged atmosphere.

The Kurds have played a clever strategic game since the emergence of ISIS. In beating back the jihadists in Syria and Iraq, they have consolidated their own positions. Whether that means they are canny operators or shameless opportunists depends on one’s perspective.

It should be remembered that the Iraqi Kurds’ referendum is not an irreversible step towards independence. This may just be yet more jockeying to create political capital as the Kurds negotiate their place as a non-state entity living among overbearing neighbours.

Whatever the case, there’s little doubt the Kurds would like more diplomatic support from the West. Considering all they have endured, perhaps that’s not too much to ask.

AUTHOR
William Gourlay teaches in the Politics and International Relations program at Monash University. Image courtesy of Flickr user Kurdishstruggle.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-steps-up-ideology-drive-on-college-campuses-1506250801

CHINA

China Steps Up Ideology Drive on College Campuses

Xi Jinping bolsters lessons in Marxism ahead of leadership congress

Students attend a graduation ceremony at Fudan University in Shanghai in June. ALY SONG/REUTERS

By Te-Ping Chen
Updated Sept. 25, 2017 11:27 a.m. ET
75 Comments

BEIJING—China may have poured billions into making its universities more globally competitive, but its idea of a quality education is guided more than ever by the Communist Party.

In a drumbeat that has accelerated ahead of October’s twice-a-decade Party Congress, President Xi Jinping’s campaign to rein in civil society, online media and speech has extended to the classroom.

Top universities seen as insufficiently rigorous in their ideological work are being shamed. Professors who speak out are punished. The government is sending observers to nearly 2,600 universities to monitor mandatory ideology classes, which include staples like “Mao Zedong thought.”

“What they most want to see is whether what you’re saying is in line with the official demands on ideology and values,” said Xiao Wei, who will be sitting in on classes in Shanghai this fall as part of a group of some 100 professors examining the quality of ideological education in the city. “They also want to understand how effective [the classes] are,” said Mr. Xiao, a professor of Marxism at Shanghai’s elite Fudan University.

Since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, the party has kept colleges on a tight leash, fearing a reprise of student-led demonstrations. Nevertheless, there had been some room to deal with sensitive topics in the classroom. Under Mr. Xi, that narrow space is closing.

For years in his class on China’s Cultural Revolution at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, Tang Shaojie played “red” songs from the era and showed the movie “Nineteen Eighty-Four” based on George Orwell’s novel. The goal, he told students, was to teach them what brainwashing looked like, former students said.

Mr. Tang told them it was a sign of academic freedom that Tsinghua allowed him to teach the class, said Aaron Feng, who took it in 2015 and is now studying at Vanderbilt University. “He said it really proudly.”

The class was canceled this fall. Tsinghua didn’t respond to questions about why.

“It’s not enough just to have economic development,” said Mr. Xiao of Fudan University, explaining the country’s recent emphasis on ideological education. “You need a sense of values and morals.”

The shift in the classrooms comes as President Xi moves to extend his dominance ahead of the Party Congress, a conclave set to anoint him for a second five-year term.

Mr. Xi in December declared that universities should become “strongholds that adhere to party leadership,” and that—amid increasing collaboration with Western universities and more Chinese students studying abroad—China should develop its own vision of education guided by its unique history.

The Ministry of Education has declared 2017 a key year for enhancing the quality of ideological education—an area where classes have long been seen as turgid affairs. Officials are trying to shed that image, encouraging teachers to make lessons more engaging, while giving such classes greater academic weight.

In the northeast city of Tianjin, authorities announced plans to hire 1,300 workers to deepen ideological education in 16 universities. Beijing has long required colleges to employ at least one full-time ideology teacher for every 350-400 undergraduate students, but in practice, many schools have fallen short of that goal.

Along with attempts to improve lessons come warnings against stepping out of line. Students at Sun Yat-sen University in southern China arrived this year to find new instructions affixed to classroom walls telling them not to criticize party leadership; their professors were advised to do the same.

An associate professor at an elite Beijing university said he was told he was rejected for promotion because of social-media posts that were critical of China’s political system. “Now I don’t speak much online,” he said.

This summer, the party’s discipline inspection agency, in the first report of its kind, criticized 14 top Chinese universities for what the agency said was weak party leadership and poor ideological work.

Since the February release of a State Council document calling for stronger party leadership in schools, at least 30 top-tier universities have tapped university presidents to also take on the role of deputy party secretary. Such joint appointments had taken place before, but the pace has accelerated in recent months.

Over the past two decades, Chinese universities have invested in raising their global standing, and over a dozen U.S. schools have founded degree-granting institutions with Chinese universities. But any hopes that China would in time allow more academic freedom have dimmed under Mr. Xi.

“There’s no question the party is exerting stronger control over universities,” said Elizabeth Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government at Harvard University, who studies Chinese higher education. “We’ve seen a real backtracking.”

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Chinese scholars say government-restricted access to the internet and overseas scholarship have put them at a disadvantage. Li Tao, a postdoctoral fellow at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, said that friends in China often ask him for help downloading articles they aren’t able to access. “If you’re working in the natural sciences or engineering, information changes really quickly, and you need to stay up-to-date,” he said.

Sometimes articles are blocked because they contain sensitive content, he said, though on other occasions it is unclear why they are inaccessible.

Still, Mr. Li said he is contemplating an eventual return to China. “There are more opportunities” than in the West, he said, including for funding and academic jobs.

One key component of Mr. Xi’s call is to build up social sciences “with Chinese characteristics,” outlined in a document issued by the party’s Central Committee this spring. Since 2010, the number of grants for Marxism and party-related research from the National Social Science Fund of China has grown more than most areas, by 72%.

Some Chinese students have in years past been able to write dissertations about nonpolitical aspects of the Cultural Revolution era, such as fashion or gender relations, “but now even this isn’t tolerated,” said Michel Bonnin, an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who specializes in the Cultural Revolution.

He said he felt fortunate that his book on Chinese youth sent to live in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution was published on the mainland in 2010. Today, he said, “it would be more difficult.”

—Xiao Xiao contributed to this article.

Write to Te-Ping Chen at te-ping.chen@wsj.com

Appeared in the September 25, 2017, print edition as 'China Tests a New Kind of Class Struggle.'

 

[energy_wave]

Mattis: US Must Face ‘Somber Reality’ Of Military Option On North Korea

http://taskandpurpose.com/mattis-north-korea-military-options/

By Corey Dickstein, Stars and Stripes
on September 21, 2017

The United States must face the “somber reality” that military action against North Korea could be necessary should diplomacy fail to curb the nation’s hostile provocations, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Sept. 20.

“This is still a diplomatically led effort,” Mattis told the Air Force Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Washington. “It is one that is fully supported by the Department of Defense, in terms of ensuring that the military options exist.”

Mattis’ comments came just one day after President Donald Trump during his speech to the U.N. General Assembly threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea if Kim Jong Un’s regime forced the United States to defend itself or its allies.

Pentagon leaders have provided Trump with a range of military options for dealing with Kim, whose regime has launched 22 missiles in 2017. This month, North Korea conducted its sixth, and most powerful, nuclear test.

Mattis and other Pentagon leaders have been tight-lipped on what the options entail. The defense secretary told reporters Monday that they include actions that would not risk Seoul, South Korea’s capital of more than 10 million in range of North Korean artillery. He declined to say whether the options included a cyberattack.

A war on the Korean peninsula would be brutal and likely kill millions of civilians on both sides, Mattis and other Pentagon officials have said.

That’s the primary reason that the United States for now is relying on the international community to find a diplomatic solution, Mattis said Wednesday. The increased sanctions on North Korea approved by the entire U.N. Security Council, which includes Russia and China, is a positive sign that Kim should heed, he said.

“That gives you an idea of the degree of international concern and the alignment of international interest to stop the provocations, to stop the nuclear program in North Korea,” Mattis said.

Nonetheless, Kim has shown no sign that he intends to stop testing missiles or abandon his nuclear program. Just days after the U.N. Security Council approved new economic sanctions in response to the Sept. 3 nuclear test, Kim’s regime launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean on Sept. 15. It was the second straight test that sent a missile over Japan.

North Korea also has conducted two successful tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles this year that experts believe could reach the U.S. mainland. Intermediate-range missiles can fly 3,000 to 5,500 kilometers. Intercontinental ballistic missiles are classified as any missile capable of traveling farther.

Mattis told Air Force personnel in the audience Wednesday that they were perhaps the single greatest deterrent the United States and its allies have to prevent North Korea or other adversaries from attacking.

The Air Force, with its vast arsenal of bomber and strike aircraft, has “the power of intimidation” that is unrivaled by any other air force in the world, he said.

The military routinely sends strategic bombers and fighter aircraft to fly near North Korean airspace after a Kim provocation.

On Sept. 18, for example, two American B-1 bombers and four F-35 strike fighters flew over the Korean Peninsula alongside South Korean aircraft in a show of force that followed Kim’s latest missile launch. The planes dropped live weapons over a South Korean training range, according to U.S. Pacific Command.

“We need the Air Force to make clear to our adversaries — make very clear to our adversaries — that it is much better for them to deal with Secretary [Rex] Tillerson in the State Department,” Mattis said. “They do not want to deal in combat with the U.S. Department of Defense.”

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/ghost-soldiers-are-the-talibans-secret-weapon

VANISHED

‘Ghost Soldiers’ Are the Taliban’s Secret Weapon

Defeating a hardened insurgent force is already hard. Doing it when many of your ‘troops’ don’t actually exist? That’s practically impossible.

THE BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
09.25.17 5:01 AM ET
By Jessica Purkiss, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Frank “Gus” Biggio arrived in Nawa, a district in Afghanistan’s embattled Helmand province, in the summer of 2009. Back then, he recalled, it was "a violent, lawless, ungoverned place," like an "apocalyptic scene out of a movie."

The battle to secure the district was tough—four Marines were killed during Biggio’s deployment as a Marine Reservist, including his friend, Bill Cahir. "We had worked hard, I had lost my team chief, a good friend," he said.

But by the time his battalion had left seven months later, Biggio says the Taliban were gone and normal life seemed to be resuming for its residents. Nawa quickly became one of the most celebrated successes in the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign.

In the following years, Biggio watched as district after district fell to the Taliban. He hoped fervently that Nawa would buck the trend. But as the Taliban's advance strengthened, with the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2014, its downfall seemed on the cards. In October 2016, Taliban fighters overran Nawa.

Why it happened has been the subject of a Bureau investigation. We have uncovered systemic corruption that demonstrates that the Afghan forces holding the front line were significantly undermanned, their numbers falsely inflated with so-called "ghost soldiers" or security force personnel that existed only on paper.

The Taliban were finally dislodged in July 2017 after a major offensive by Afghan forces backed by U.S. airstrikes but Nawa remains vulnerable.

“I would like to see places like Nawa thriving economically and politically today,” Biggio said. “Asking whether the sacrifice was worth it or not would be easier to answer then.”

Across Afghanistan, the Taliban has profited from the endemic corruption and mismanagement that plagues the Afghan forces. President Donald Trump has signalled that yet more troops will be sent to Afghanistan to prop up places like Nawa. But without addressing these issues, any gains made by sending additional U.S. troops will likely be fragile.

“This was the Achilles heel of the 2009-2011 surge and continues to undermine efforts for a successful outcome,” said Christopher Kolenda, a former U.S. military officer in Afghanistan.

“140,000 international troops could not solve that problem. 3,500 more American troops now cannot do so, either. Only the Afghan government can solve it, and they have yet to demonstrate the willingness to do so,” Kolenda added.

When the U.S. Marines took over from the British in 2009, Nawa was in a bad way. Heavy fighting and a sustained Taliban presence had left the once-bustling district centre an empty wasteland.

Within a few months of the Marine mission, however, U.S. troops could walk around the center without body armour. Many shops had reopened and the open-air Friday bazaar resumed.

Soon, experts from the State Department and the U.S. government’s aid agency were turning up in the district with plans for long-term reconstruction and development projects. Money was being pumped into Nawa, in part to lure low-level insurgents away from the Taliban.

The turnaround in Nawa caught the attention of General David H. Petraeus, the then top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. He featured Nawa in a PowerPoint presentation to senior members of President Obama's national security team participating in evaluating the war at the time. It was proof the counter-insurgency strategy was working and he wanted them to know about it. As another Marine put it, “Nawa city was an example of what could be.”

For Marines serving in Nawa, this was a source of pride. “We worked hard on being Nawa’s Marine battalion,” said Matt Baker, the commander of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, back in 2009. He recalls an incident where rumors had surfaced Marines had desecrated a Qur’an in the neighbouring district. Fearing tensions would reach Nawa, he arranged a meeting with the elders. However, he said, they already knew and had assured their neighbours that “their” Marines would not do such a thing. “It was a wonderful compliment,” said Baker.

The gains, however, were fragile. Crime reportedly rose after the Taliban left. “The Marines feel safe, but the ordinary people in Nawa do not," Khawanin, the headmaster of the main school in the district, told the Washington Post in 2010. Security deteriorated further when the U.S. troop presence began to gradually go down.

In 2015, district governor Haji Abdul Manaf, a lynchpin of stability in Nawa, was gunned down on his way to Kandahar.
“His death was the beginning of the end for Nawa,” said Biggio.

When the Taliban offensive started in earnest in late 2016, it was brief. Insurgents had been inching closer and Helmand's districts were falling like dominoes.
‘Left to be Overrun by the Taliban

’It’s hard to say what would have happened to Nawa if it had proper defenses. But it had been left with a large gap. According to local council members and a source within the Afghan administration, the district had only half the roughly 700 policemen it was supposed to have.

“Nawa was deliberately left to be overrun by the Taliban,” one furious Nawa elder told us.

The national government in Kabul allocates a set number of police to defend each area, Atuallah Afghan, a member of Helmand’s Provincial Council, explained. The number of police allocated to each district in Helmand is held in the police headquarters in Lashkar Gah, Atuallah said. Nawa was supposed to have 700, but that did not seem to reflect the reality on the ground.

Atuallah and others concerned about the issue of phantom cops would ring up local officials to ask them how many men they had their nearby checkpoints. In this way they were able to estimate the number of police actually deployed in Nawa, and put the figure at around 300. What happened to the salaries of the other 400 was unclear.

Three other well-placed sources also told the Bureau that Nawa only had between 300-400 police on the eve of its fall.

Atuallah said he complained about the phantom cop problem in Helmand to government officials before the Taliban push on Nawa began. “No one did anything about it,” he said.

This is hardly surprising, given how deep the problems of corruption go. Local elders described to the Bureau a network of connections protecting those siphoning off the salaries at the time.

These kind of problems are not unique to Nawa; phantom cops and ghost soldiers are a problem throughout Afghanistan. This is in part facilitated by the high rate of casualties in the Afghan security forces—they were being killed at a rate of 130 a week at the beginning of this year. Often the names of the dead (and defectors) are not taken off lists of personnel allowing for their paychecks to continue.

But in Helmand, the combination of high U.S. military spending and powerful mafias has helped make the problem of corruption particularly acute.

Abdul Jabar Qahraman was appointed operational commander for all of Helmand in January 2016, and resigned this spring. He described to the Bureau what the ghost soldier phenomenon looked like on the ground.

In one district, he said, there were 10 checkpoints, and 25 people had been allocated to each one, meaning there should have been 250 men in total. When he paid a visit, he only saw 96. “Out of them 54 had AK47s and the rest were unarmed,” he said. Most the others were unfit to work.

He said brought the problem to the very top: Afghan president Ashraf Ghani.
“I put this on the president’s table and told him, ‘if there are 50 opponents attacking this checkpoint, how can you defend it?’” Qahraman said, explaining his frustration. “You know why I resigned from my post in Helmand? I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

In a statement last year, Helmand’s then police chief confirmed Qahraman’s estimate of the scale of the problem. He offered up some startling figures – around half of the 26,000 personnel assigned to the province did not exist physically. Their salaries, he said, were ending up in personal accounts.

There have been efforts to tackle the issue in a wide-reaching manner. President Ghani established an anti-corruption court to hold those once believed to be above the law to account. In Helmand, the U.S. military put in over $100 million last year to rebuild the Afghan army’s 215th Corps, bogged down by mismanagement and corruption.

These initiatives have seen some success, especially in Helmand. But the roadblocks they’ve encountered also illustrate the depth of the problem they’re tackling. The general appointed to rebuild and reform the 215th Corps was himself arrested in March 2017, accused of misusing food money meant to supply his soldiers among other things. A previous police chief of Helmand, who had also been appointed as a reformer, was reported at the same time to be under investigation after allegedly being fired for selling the positions of district chiefs of police in the province.
‘Nawa Was Lost Years Ago’

Nine months after it fell, Afghan security forces launched a massive offensive, Operation Maiwand Four, to win Nawa back. They were supported by coalition drones, air strikes from F-16s and attacks by Apache AH-64 helicopter gunships. After two days, they had recaptured the district center.

Insurgents then launched a counter-attack, meaning that a second, large-scale military operation was necessary to secure the district.

How long Nawa will stay out of Taliban hands is an open question. Even if the operation is successful, some worry the ongoing corruption, and in particular the stubborn problem of ghost forces, will leave Nawa vulnerable yet again. “The cause of most of our problems in Nawa is this issue and we fear that because of this issue once again our district might fall into Taliban hands,” a district tribal council member told the Bureau.

However, the former Marine commander Matt Baker is frustrated at what he sees as a tendency to view corruption in simplistic terms. He argues that in a country like Afghanistan, the opportunity to make money is part of what can incentivise people to commit to the military.

And, Baker adds, the reasons behind it are not always negative. He points to instances where commanders used money collected in this way for their troops, including to provide some funds or gifts to wounded soldiers.

Perhaps, he said, if a better system of incentives was put in place, things might have turned out differently.

“It might be true that Nawa was lost years and years ago because no-one fixed the system which incentivises people to do this,” he added. Biggio now works for a law firm in the United Arab Emirates, but still follows the news on Afghanistan. Speaking from his home in Dubai, he says that he accepts the necessity of U.S. troops going back in to Nawa. However, he stresses that there must be an end-point.
He told the Bureau: "I don’t want us to be there forever.”

 

[Lone_Hawk]

China names new military commander for strategically important region near North Korea

Promotion of Li Qiaoming, 56, is the latest in a series of military personnel changes that suggest Beijing wants younger leaders in prominent positions

IF they are replacing older commanders with younger ones, then they are cleaning house and preparing for war. They don't want the grafting paper pushers of old, but someone with incentive to be combat ready....

 

[Housecarl]

IF they are replacing older commanders with younger ones, then they are cleaning house and preparing for war. They don't want the grafting paper pushers of old, but someone with incentive to be combat ready....

Yeah, that and Xi is consolidating power even further....

 

[energy_wave]

IF they are replacing older commanders with younger ones, then they are cleaning house and preparing for war. They don't want the grafting paper pushers of old, but someone with incentive to be combat ready....

Or, they may just be sacrificing the young while saving the older, wiser commanders for when it's over.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ol-of-airports-to-avoid-embargo-idUSKCN1C12BP

September 26, 2017 / 9:28 AM / Updated 2 hours ago

Iraq gives Kurdistan till Friday to hand over control of airports to avoid embargo

Reuters Staff
2 Min Read

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Iraqi government gave the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) until Friday 3:00 p.m (1200 GMT) to hand over control of its airports in order to avoid an international air embargo, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said, according to state TV.

The measure is meant as a retaliation against the independence referendum held by the KRG in northern Iraq on Monday.

Domestic flights are not involved in the ultimatum and in the worst case, international travel to and from the KRG will be re-routed through Baghdad and other Iraqi airports.

Baghdad last week asked foreign countries to stop direct flights to the international airports of Erbil and Sulaimaniya, in KRG territory, but only Iran declared such an air embargo, halting direct flights to and from Iraqi Kurdistan.

Humanitarian and “emergency” flights are exempted, provided they are pre-approved by Baghdad, Abadi said.

Baghdad will also ask neighboring countries to shut the border with Iraqi Kurdistan if the KRG doesn’t hand over border posts to the central government by Friday.

Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli and Ahmed Rasheed; writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by; Larry King

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine....nuclear-modernization-programs-moving-forward

Nuclear Modernization Programs Advancing Amid Doubts (UPDATED)

9/26/2017
By Jon Harper

The Air Force is moving forward with plans to develop new ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles. But there are doubts about whether the programs will be fully funded in the coming decades.

In August, Boeing and Northrop Grumman were awarded $349 million and $329 million contracts respectively to conduct technology maturation and risk reduction work for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, known as GBSD, which is expected to replace legacy ICBMs. The goal is to “deliver a low technical risk, affordable total system replacement of Minuteman III,” the Defense Department said in a news release.

The Air Force also awarded Lockheed Martin and Raytheon $900 million each for the technology maturation and risk reduction phase of the Long Range Stand-Off weapon, known as LRSO, which is intended to replace aging AGM-86B air-launched cruise missiles.

But some analysts question whether enough money will be available to fully fund the GBSD and LRSO programs down the road. The Pentagon is also pursuing next-generation stealth bombers and ballistic missile submarines, which could compete for procurement dollars.

“All three legs of the U.S. nuclear triad are currently slated for modernization in the next 10 to 20 years,” Amy Woolf, a nuclear weapons policy specialist, said in a recent Congressional Research Service report titled, “U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background, Development and Issues.”

“Each of these programs is likely to stress the budgets and financial capabilities of the services,” she added.

Pentagon cost estimates for the GBSD program have ranged from $62 billion to $85 billion. The LRSO program has been estimated to cost $10.8 billion, Woolf said.

Defense Department officials have said that current nuclear modernization plans could come with a $350 billion to $450 billion price tag over the next 20 years, and some think tank analysts have projected even higher costs. At the same time, the Pentagon will also be trying to fund big-ticket conventional weapon systems such as the F-35 joint strike fighter.

“While the Air Force appears committed to pursuing the development of a new ground-based strategic deterrent, there is growing recognition among analysts that fiscal constraints may alter this approach,” Woolf said.

The ongoing Nuclear Posture Review is likely to strongly reaffirm the need to maintain and modernize all three legs of the triad, said Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense budget expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

That conclusion would have strong political support from President Donald Trump and Congress, she said. Whether the efforts will be fully funded in accordance with the Pentagon’s schedule is another matter.

The budgets that Trump has already proposed and the expected topline figures for the fiscal year 2019 budget blueprint “simply do not support full modernization,” Eaglen said in an email. “Things will get squeezed and pushed to the right. The most likely candidate is the ground-based leg, partly because it is the last to modernize and partly because it is easily criticized as the most vulnerable leg.”

Unofficially, there is a hierarchy of support for the different components of the next-generation nuclear force, she said. The Navy’s Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine tops the list, followed by the B-21 bomber and the GBSD. “Funding will flow accordingly,” she said.

All three legs could see funding and quantity trims, she added.

The most controversial of the nuclear modernization programs is the Long Range Stand-Off weapon.

“Analysts outside government and several members of Congress have questioned whether the Air Force needs to accelerate the LRSO program and whether the United States needs and can afford to develop and produce a new cruise missile in the coming decade,” Woolf said. “They have questioned whether the capabilities provided by the LRSO may be redundant, as the Air Force is also developing a new penetrating bomber.”

A contingent of Democratic lawmakers has come out strongly against the new cruise missile, creating additional uncertainty about its future prospects.

“It is super controversial,” Eaglen said. “This program will be a partisan fight from beginning to end.”

Correction: a previous version of this story misspelled Amy Woolf's name.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://breakingdefense.com/2017/09/industrial-base-too-brittle-for-big-war-dunford/

Industrial Base Too ‘Brittle’ For Big War: Dunford

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.
on September 26, 2017 at 5:29 PM
45 Comments

CAPITOL HILL: Is the arsenal of democracy out of business? Probably not, but America’s “increasingly brittle industrial base” may not be able to sustain our forces in a protracted war, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Joseph Dunford, warned the Senate in a written statement this morning. It’s a problem a lot of people are wrestling with, from Dunford’s subordinates on the Joint Staff to academics and a White House-commissioned task force. There are solutions, a panel of experts said this afternoon on the Hill – if we just invest enough to research and develop them.

The highest-level effort to find answers is that White House task force, commissioned by President Trump. “In the executive order, the analytical focus is on peer competitor conventional threats that would really stress all the different vectors of the industrial base,” an administration official told me, in contrast to the past 16 years of counterinsurgency, which only strained certain sectors like uparmored vehicles.

In the old days, when traditional defense contractors were tapped out, the military could turn to commercial companied. That’s no longer true. “In not just World War II, but Korea and Vietnam and the Cold War, you were able to draw from this manufacturing industrial base that was dual use. You had a vibrant automotive industry for instance,” the official said. “Today, the manufacturing capacity is just not there on the civilian side.”

From Mass Production To 3D Printing? Maybe.

“In 1944, this country built 100,000 airplanes. (Today), we probably build 1,000-2,000,” from Cessnas to 787s, said John Langford, CEO of drone-maker Aurora Flight Sciences, to a panel co-sponsored by the AIA and AIAA. So, yes, the old-school industrial capacity no longer exists. But, Langford continued, “a lot of what we’re moving towards is manufacturing on demand, (e.g.) 3D printing.”

That suggests a radically different model for military logistics. Instead of manufacturing “iron mountains” of supplies in the US, then shipping them overseas, stockpiling them behind the battlefront, and finally distributing them to combat units – creating targets for enemy strikes all along the way – those units could have 3D printers to make their own spare parts and potentially even food and ammunition. The supply lines would still have to provide raw feedstock of various kinds, but that’s much simpler than delivering thousands of different parts to the right place at the right time.

Better yet, the military doesn’t have to fund this additive manufacturing revolution on its own, because 3D printing technology is tremendous attractive to commercial industry all over the world. There are already, 3D printers in use everywhere from hobbyists’ desks to the International Space Station to, yes, military aircraft factories, and private sector R&D is going to keep making them better.

Another private-sector wave the Defense Department can catch is robotics, added Darryll Pines, dean of the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, speaking alongside Langford. For years, the US government led the development of drones, especially but not exclusively the military. (A NASA weather program funded initial development of what became the Predator B, said Langford). It was DARPA that kick-started development of autonomous ground vehicles with its Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge a decade ago. But now, companies from Tesla to Google to Uber to General Motors are investing in self-driving cars. That creates a lot of capacity and expertise that could be mobilized for military purposes in a crisis.

“Manufacturing to respond to a war demand would leverage…. advanced manufacturing and advances in robotics that will make us competitive,” Pines said.

There’s likewise a rush of commercial investment into space, even including some application of automotive industry style mass production, said Mike Gazarik, VP of engineering at Ball Aerospace.

The new frontiers of technology are great, said the administration official, but war still requires old-fashioned industrial might to build ships, tanks, planes, and missiles. “There’s some advanced manufacturing stuff that’s pretty aggressive where we are world leaders, some nuclear and some energy stuff where we’re pretty dynamic,” he said, “but where we really struggle is in heavy industry. The conventional wisdom for so many years has been that we’ve moved past this industrial age manufacturing economy – but a great deal of what we do is 20th century industrial warfare.”

“The Fitzgerald and McCain collisions are test cases that are going to put severe strain on the ship repair industrial base – and these are not the same as taking a missile in your hull, these are collisions,” the official said. “If you start thinking about a wartime tempo of surface ship problems…. you’re really going to start stressing the ship repair industrial base.”

Especially worrying are the single points of failure, the chokepoints in the supplier base where a single small firm, often struggling to get by, is the only maker of some critical spare part. There’s little profit to be made on such components because they’re only needed in small numbers – at least until something goes badly wrong, like an accident or a war.

The Disadvantages of Democracy

By contrast, the official said, our adversaries are willing to subsidize production of such key components, not to mention long-shot research that might one day yield some future weapon.

“China certainly has some advantages there….They are perfectly happy to build factories that don’t make economic sense but maybe produce the widget they need in some contingency,” the official said. “The Russians, they’re not lighting the word on fire with their dynamism but they’re certainly move focused on investing in capabilities, looking at the future…..The oligarchs are essentially an arm of the state. It’s a corporatist system.”

The US government and industry, by contrast, struggle to communicate with each other, let alone sticking to a shared strategy despite short term fluctuations in poll numbers and stock prices.

There is “a grotesque imbalance” at many companies, said Anthony Velocci, who spent 10 years as editor of Aviation Week. Management focuses far too much attention on short-term shareholder value – often spending 100 percent of a company’s cash flow on stock buy-backs – while neglected long-term investments in new products – with R&D spending typically at just 2-3 percent of revenue. This near-sightedness is just one manifestation of a wider culture of risk aversion that hobbles innovation, he said. Rather than spend on “slick television ads that bracket the Sunday morning talk shows,” Velocci scoffed, companies need to invest in the future.

America’s lack of long-term perspective has hurt us in areas as diverse as quantum computing and hypersonics, areas where China is catching up, said Pines. In particular, he said, a boom-and-bust cycle of investment in hypersonic systems – which move at more than five times the speed of sound – is causing talented people to quit the field and take jobs they know will last.

Private industry has to live “quarter to quarter” on its price:earnings ratio and return on investment figures, Langford said, but government can take a longer perspective.

But government often doesn’t, said Gazarik. “It’s very non-linear, very hard to trace” an initial investment in research to a new working product many electoral cycles later, he said – and that makes R&D a hard sell to Congress.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/resisting-china-s-magic-weapon

CHINA | CHINA-AUSTRALIA RELATIONS

Resisting China’s magic weapon

BY
Anne-Marie Brady@Anne_MarieBrady
27 September 2017, 16:22 AEDT

In the classic Cold War-era film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, aliens quietly invade earth by replicating the bodies of each human being they encounter. The resulting 'pod people' take on the physical characteristics, memories, and personalities of the humans they replace. In its day, the film was understood as an allegory for political influence activities. It speaks to an ongoing fear about the vulnerability of open, democratic societies to foreign influences undermining their sovereignty and their politics.

China's foreign influence activities have hit the headlines in both Australia and now New Zealand, but Chinese influence is not unique to these two countries. China's attempts to acquire political influence abroad are widespread and pervasive. They are part of a global strategy that has its own government department (统战部) that follows a longstanding approach adapted to fit current government policies. Foreign influence activities are a core task of China's United Front work (统一战线工作), one of the famed 'magic weapons' (法宝) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that helped bring it to power.

Under CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, foreign influence activities have gone into turbo drive. CCP United Front officials and their agents follow a longstanding policy of developing relationships with foreign and overseas-Chinese personages (the more noteworthy the better) to influence, subvert, and, if necessary, bypass the policies of the local government and promote the interests of the CCP.

Xi also seeks further control over the information environment in China. In order to gain this control in a porous global information environment, he needs to curb debates on China outside the country. China has officially embraced Joseph Nye's theory of soft power, using it both as a justification and as a new euphemism for the Chinese government's expanded and revised overseas Chinese and foreigner management techniques and propaganda offensive. Through its party-state agencies and their affiliates, China has adopted a much broader approach to enhancing its soft power.

China's strenuous United Front efforts of the last few years have delivered a return: the CCP is increasingly able to use its soft-power magic weapons to help influence the decision-making of foreign governments and societies. Australia and New Zealand, like many other states, have become saturated with the CCP's accelerated political-influence activities.

All states resist political interference in their affairs by other nations. The CCP frequently berates the US and other states for perceived interference in China's domestic politics, and promotes the non-interference in the domestic affairs of other states as an important principle of its foreign policy (不干涉内政).

For nations like New Zealand and Australia, it can often be a challenge to defend against foreign political interference. Unless they result in treason, bribery, or some other form of corruption, most political influence activities are not illegal. They are instead matters of propriety and national security, which are much more subjective. But foreign influence activities (of any state) can only thrive if public opinion in the state being influenced tolerates them.

The 1956 adaptation of Invasion of the Body Snatchers had two endings, one pessimistic, one optimistic. Most subsequent versions of the film feature the pessimistic ending – all the humans end up subsumed into pod people. In the novel, the aliens voluntarily left as a result of resistance from the human population.

In real (not reel) life, the ending is up to us. How can we use democracy's own magic weapons to defend ourselves against foreign influence activities? We have many options at our disposal. We have the right to select our governments; checks and balances on power through the courts; regulatory bodies that manage the media and other aspects of society; the legally-supported role of the academic as critic and conscience; freedom of speech and association; and the media as our fourth estate.

As former colonies of the UK and close partners with the US, both New Zealand and Australia are proud to espouse an independent foreign policy. But an independent foreign policy should not mean falling into the arms of another dominant power. Now is the time to use democracy's magic weapons to protect our societies against foreign influence and interference in our politics, from all states. Australia is tightening its laws around this issue and has engaged in in-depth investigations into the extent of China's influence activities. So too should New Zealand, and many other nations.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-c...-says-china-needs-reality-check-idUSKCN1C20YF

SEPTEMBER 27, 2017 / 2:19 AM / UPDATED 14 HOURS AGO

China says Taiwan not a country, Taiwan says China needs reality check

Reuters Staff
3 MIN READ

BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) - China warned self-ruled Taiwan on Wednesday that it would “reap the consequences” of promoting formal independence, a red line for Beijing which claims the island as its own.

Taiwan’s government hit back, saying it was a reality that the Republic of China, the island’s formal name, was a sovereign country and that no matter what China said it could not change this fact.

Taiwan is one of China’s most sensitive issues. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring what it considers a wayward province under its rule.

Defeated Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of the Chinese civil war. Taiwan was a Japanese colony from 1895 until 1945.

Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, newly appointed Taiwan Premier William Lai said he was a “political worker who advocates Taiwan independence”, but that it already was an independent country called the Republic of China and so had no need to declare independence.

Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said in reaction that relations across the Taiwan Strait that separates them are not “country to country” relations, and there is no “one China and one Taiwan”.

“Taiwan is an inseparable part of Chinese territory, has never been a country and can never become a country,” Ma said.

“The mainland side resolutely opposes any form of ‘Taiwan independence’ words or action, and will never allow the historical tragedy of national separation to repeat itself. The consequences will be reaped for engaging in Taiwan independence separatism,” he added, without elaborating.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said it did not matter what Beijing said, it was an “objective reality” that the Republic of China was a sovereign state.

“Taiwan’s future and the development of relations across the Strait will be jointly decided by Taiwan’s 23 million people,” it said.

Taiwanese officials have said previously that there is no need to declare independence, as the Republic of China is already an independent country, though its territory only covers Taiwan, a few offshore islands close to China and some in the South China Sea.

Relations between Taipei and Beijing have nosedived since Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party won election last year. China suspects her of wanting independence, but she says she wants to maintain peace with China.

Beijing has suspended a regular dialogue mechanism with Taipei established under the previous, China-friendly government in Taiwan, and there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan.

Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Jessica Macy Yu; Editing by Nick Macfie

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.defensenews.com/space/2...ress-to-move-416-million-for-missile-defense/

Pentagon asks Congress to move $416M for missile defense

By: Joe Gould and Aaron Mehta  
22 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is asking Congress to move $416 million to missile defense programs that was originally allocated to other defense accounts as the Trump administration mulls military responses to North Korea’s recent belligerence.

The request, which requires congressional approval, would add the funding on several missile defense programs — some classified — mostly by taking it from unspent Army and Army Reserve operations and maintenance accounts in the fiscal 2017 budget.

The request, signed by Defense Department Comptroller David Norquist on Sept. 7, was obtained by Defense News.

Senate Armed Services Committee member and a missile defense advocate Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, hailed the plan. But it has triggered pushback from the House Armed Services Committee’s ranking member, Rep. Adam Smith, who said the money would sacrifice readiness and not have an immediate effect.

“Mr. Smith has significant concerns about taking that much money from near-term readiness and putting into missile defense programs that will not have an impact until the 2020s at the earliest,” said a spokesman for Smith, D-Wash.

According to the request, the operations and maintenance money could not be obligated because the 2017 budget arrived later than usual. Congress passed omnibus spending legislation in May.

[House lawmakers want space-based missile defense strategy]

DoD proposes adding a total of $136 million to start raising the number of ground-based interceptors from 44 to 64 and to add 20 new silos in a new Missile Field 4 in Fort Greely, Alaska.

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DoD also asked for money to accelerate upgrades for four Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense ships, which would enable them to launch the Standard Missile-3 Block IIA missile.

It also adds funding for a variety of threat-discrimination technologies and radars. That includes a floating Sea-Based X-band radar, evaluations for a nascent medium-range discrimination radar in Hawaii to help Alaska-based interceptors and a life extension for the Cobra Dane surveillance radar on Shemya, Alaska.

Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, teased the previously unpublished request during a reconfirmation hearing Tuesday, but in his wording, created some confusion about where the money would coming from.

Sullivan had asked Dunford whether the administration “plans to, at least from a supplemental perspective or working with the Congress, beef up our missile defense.” Dunford replied, “We did do exactly as you suggest, and we’ve submitted it.”

[House pressures Army to buy new missile defense radar that the White House opposes]

“We looked at additional radar systems. We looked at THAAD systems, Patriot systems. As you know, on the [pending 2018 defense policy bill], there’s additional interceptors — additional 21, I think, is the number that I recall — that are in there,” Dunford said. “All of those issues are part of — we did an immediate, kind of, supplemental for — just as your suggestion, for ballistic missile defense.”

“I think it was maybe the first or second week of August to make sure it was in time for the budget cycle,” Dunford said. “So I think what you have outlined in the NDAA, combined with the supplemental that the administration has put together, will meet the immediate needs.”

The reprogramming request would apply to the 2017 budget, whereas the term “supplemental” implies the administration may yet make a request for additional funding next year beyond the president’s 2018 budget request.

Key lawmakers or their staffs said they had yet to receive any such supplemental, and a Pentagon spokesman said there was “no decision when or if” the department would send over a supplemental request, though one administration official said they are “certainly looking at opportunities for increased investments” in fiscal 2018.

U.S. President Donald Trump said in August his administration would “be increasing our budget by many billions of dollars because of North Korea, and other reasons having to do with the anti-missile. ... We are going to be increasing the anti-missiles by a substantial amount of billions of dollars.” At the time, he said such an increase would be delivered to Congress quickly.

Trump pledges 'billions' increase in missile defense spending
Trump pledges 'billions' increase in missile defense spending

U.S. President Donald Trump has pledged to increase defense spending by “billions of dollars,” while hinting that a plan to increase spending on missile defense may come as soon as next week.

By: Aaron Mehta

If there is to be a 2018 supplemental request, the extra money seems likely to receive support from defense-focused lawmakers.

“We need it; we need it; we need it for missile defense,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chair John McCain, R-Ariz., told reporters Wednesday. “They are still putting it together.”

“I think people just see it’s got to be a key part of our North Korea strategy and our Iran strategy,” said Sullivan, who introduced legislation this summer to bolster missile defense. “I like the fact that they’re motivated on it.”

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://jamestown.org/program/syrian-lessons-and-russias-asymmetric-response-to-the-us/

‘Syrian Lessons’ and Russia’s ‘Asymmetric Response’ to the US

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 118
By: Sergey Sukhankin
September 26, 2017 05:15 PM Age: 2 days

The Russian military operation in Syria has highlighted “urban warfare,” information security and electronic warfare (EW) as crucial elements of how Moscow envisions the “wars of the future” will be fought. However, Russia’s top brass is currently allocating a central role to the development of EW capabilities. Increasingly viewed by Russian military strategists as a pivotal tool for gaining and maintaining information superiority over its adversaries in future conflicts, Russia’s growing emphasis on the development of EW is inseparable from two events that occurred soon after Russia went into Syria. First was the November 2015 downing of a Russian Su-24 bomber by Turkish jets after it had strayed into Turkey’s airspace. The second incident, reported on later that same month, involved Turkey deploying Koral electronic warfare complexes on its southern border in order to “dazzle” (blind) Russian S-400 air-defense missile systems that Moscow had just brought into Syria (TASS, December 1, 2015).

Incidentally, speaking from a historical prospective, Syria first became a training ground for the Soviet Army to test its EW capabilities as far back as 1982, following the outbreak of hostilities in Lebanon. And Moscow renewed those efforts in October 2015, when it deployed the Krasukha-4 multifunctional jamming station to the Hmeymin airbase (Obzor.press, October 22, 2015), thus signaling a qualitatively new stage of Russian engagement in the Syrian civil war.

Analysis of Russia’s performance in Syria when it comes to electronic warfare poses a number of challenges, of which the most important is the lack of uniformity in assessments produced by top Russian military experts. Some Russian sources clearly overestimate Russia’s EW capabilities, asserting their total superiority over foreign analogues. Whereas others argue that “the lack of precision-guided munitions at the terrorists’ disposal have made Russian systems such as the ‘Krasuha’ and ‘Khibiny’ almost irrelevant” on the Syrian battlefield (Tvzvezda.ru, August 8).

Still, empirical evidence suggests that events in Syria (and of course in Ukraine—see EDM, May 24) have spurned the Russian side to increase both its theoretical and practical efforts in upgrading EW capabilities. The most recent trends in this domain include:

• 
  Import substitution and modernization: This past summer, the first deputy director of Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies (KRET), Vladimir Zverev, declared that “Russia has been able to fully substitute Ukrainian components in domestically produced EW technologies” (Tvzvezda.ru, July 18). This development signifies that Russia has finally overcome its pre-2013 dependency on Ukraine in this sector. Moreover, KRET has reportedly begun work on a new land-based EW system designed to “replace” the Krasuha-2 and Krasuha-4 jamming stations (Tvzvezda.ru, July 21), which might have a revolutionary effect on Russia’s EW industry as such. Moreover, some sources have revealed that Russia has finalized work on a radio-photonic radar for a future sixth-generation fighter jet that will one day replace the Su-57 (T-50). The invention is said to be superior to “all existing radars when it comes to its power and range” (TASS, July 27). According a to top-ranking KRET functionary, Vladimir Mikheev, the new device “will burn out the eyes of the missiles looking at us.”
  
  Spoofing, jamming and deceiving: Allegedly, KRET has created a new reconnaissance complex that can function even under “extremely difficult radio-electronic conditions” (Tvzvezda.ru, July 18). Another potential invention—the Tarantul aircraft electronic countermeasures complex (ECM), which has been undergoing testing since 2007—will be integrated onboard the Su-34 fighter-bomber. One such system, when integrated into a single Su-34, is said to be capable of protecting a group of aircraft from enemy radar; and it has been described as “the future of Russian EW” (RIA Novosti, August 28).
  
  New type of radio connection: On August 25, the head of the Armed Forces Communication Chief Department and the deputy head of the General Staff, Lieutenant-General Khalil Arslanov, stated that the Russian Armed Forces tested in Syria a new type of “secure communications.” This system could effectively replace previous models (used by the Syrian Army) that were discredited in the course of the Palmyra, Deir ez-Zor and Idlib operations (Rosbalt, August 25). The main idea behind Russia’s new invention is based on the use of so-called “trunked systems” (radial-zonal systems) of communication, capable of an automatic distribution of channels among different user groups.

Russia’s conceptual approach to the development of EW capabilities was recently outlined by the editor-in-chief of Arsenal Otechestva, Victor Murakhvoskii, who specifically defined it as an “asymmetric response” (Pravdinform, August 28). The expert argued that Russia (due to its economic hardships and the smaller size of its domestic economy) is unable to directly engage the United States in competition in all areas and domains. Instead, he suggested, Russia needs to achieve “technological superiority in key branches of the domestic Armed Forces.” Given Russian perceptions of how the “wars of the future” will be fought, Murakovskii identified air, naval and EW capabilities as prime capabilities in which Russia has to develop its superiority.

On the other hand, it might well be expected that in light of the experience gained in Ukraine and Syria, Russia will also attempt to focus on “cyber warfare” (primarily cyber operations) and “electronic warfare.” Such an emphasis would become apparent if the Russian Armed Forces are repeatedly observed carrying out military exercises whereby they practice corrupting or disabling a simulated adversary’s Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems.

In the final analysis, when assessing the key trends and developments in Russia’s EW capabilities being honed in Syria, one needs to keep in mind that aside from being an actual battlefield, Syria has also become a theater of violent information warfare (primarily information-psychological operations). In such an environment, truth and disinformation are not easily distinguishable. Thus, Russian claims regarding EW should be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://jamestown.org/program/syria...of-zero-sum-thinking-in-russian-us-relations/

Syrian War and the Return of Zero-Sum Thinking in Russian-US Relations

By: Pavel Felgenhauer
September 28, 2017 05:38 PM Age: 3 mins

Tensions flared between the United States and Russia, with Moscow’s top generals and diplomats insisting that Washington is siding with terrorist groups in Syria to attack Russian soldiers and their allies. Russia’s defense minister, Army General Sergei Shoigu, reportedly canceled a visit to Belarus last week (September 20), on the last day of the Zapad 2017 military exercise, because of the acute crisis in Syria (Kommersant, September 21).

The main goals of Russia’s air bombing campaign over Syria, which began on September 30, 2015, have been to defeat and force into submission the Syrian opposition, restore land corridors between different provinces, and allow Bashar al-Assad’s government to retake control of major cities, like Aleppo in the north. In recent months, Syrian opposition forces were forced to sign ceasefire agreements and were corralled into four designated “de-confliction zones,” the major one in Idlib province in northwestern Syria. In the summer of 2017, the Islamic State (IS) began to visibly collapse under relentless pressure from US-led coalition forces, losing most of the territories it controlled in Iraq. At the same time, its official capital, Raqqa, in northern Syria, has come under sustained attack by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a militia alliance including Arab and Kurdish fighters. Responding to the changing situation, Russian generals shifted their emphasis to the east, organizing a major push deep into IS-controlled territory by pro-al-Assad forces, supported by relentless Russian aerial bombardments and the deployment of additional Russian forces and advisors (Regnum, August 27).

The aim of the advance through the Syrian desert was to relieve the garrison of Deir el-Zour on the banks of the Euphrates, besieged by the Islamic State for some three years, with part of the city controlled by the radical group and part by pro-al-Assad forces. The oil- and natural gas–rich province of Deir el-Zour, which borders Iraq, is a prime prize: Oil and gas revenue could prop up al-Assad’s government and somewhat ease the financial burden on Moscow and Tehran, which have been sustaining the regime in Damascus with money, troops and a constant flow of supplies. Clearing out the IS and taking over the entire province of Deir el-Zour is seen in Moscow as an essential step on the way to full victory—restoring President al-Assad’s rule over the entire country. On September 5, Shoigu personally briefed President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin that the siege of Deir el-Zour had been broken. The Kremlin press service described it as “a very important strategic victory” (Militarynews.ru, September 5). The chief of staff of the Russian forces in Syria, Lieutenant General Alexander Lapin, claimed, “Illegal armed formations have been cleared out of 85 percent of Syrian territory,” and operations against “terrorists” will continue until total victory (RIA Novosti, September 12).

After the initial breakthrough, pro-al-Assad forces fought to expand their control and fully oust IS fighters. At the same time, US-backed SDF militias moved into parts of Deir el-Zour city and province, on the northern banks of the Euphrates. Apparently, the Russian generals were infuriated by what they presumed was Washington trying to steal their hard-won victory. On September 7, a “military-diplomatic source” told RIA Novosti, “The US and the coalition it leads are actively supporting [the Islamic State] in Deir el-Zour and other parts of Syria.” The US-led coalition rejected the charge (RIA Novosti, September 7).

A high-ranking US diplomat told this author (on condition of anonymity) that US and Russian military authorities apparently reached a tentative understanding regarding the separation of zones of responsibilities in fighting the Islamic State in northern Syria to avoid clashes. The US and its allies will operate north of the Euphrates River, while Russia and its allies—to the south. But on September 18, pro-al-Assad forces crossed the Euphrates at Deir el-Zour. An extended bridgehead was established and a pontoon crossing established, apparently violating the de-confliction understanding with Washington (Interfax, September 18). The Russian military later disclosed that the 210-meter floating bridge over the Euphrates was built by Russian sappers who were rushed into Syria by air, together with the newest PP-2005 pontoon-bridge complex equipment, using heavy-load An-124 transport jets (Militarynews.ru, September 24, 26).

It seems, the scramble to cross the Euphrates did not fully pay off. The SDF fighters, together with US Special Forces, were already there. Washington and Moscow and their proxies in Syria were on a collision course.

On September 21, the deputy chief of the General Staff and chief of the Main Operational Directorate, Colonel General Sergei Rudskoy, accused “the US intelligence services” of organizing an attack by former al-Nusra “terrorists” near Hama, in central Syria, on pro-al-Assad forces and a Russian military police company that was policing a newly established “de-escalation” zone. According to Rudskoy, the main aim of this US-organized attack was to undermine the successful offensive in Deir el-Zour. The Pentagon rejected the accusation (Kommersant, September 21).

The same day, defense ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov accused the SDF and its US Special Forces companions of firing on pro-al-Assad forces in Deir el-Zour. He threatened the Russian military may “wipe out” the SDF and US commandos if such attacks continue. The US-led coalition, meanwhile, accused the Russians of bombing the SDF. Both sides denied the other’s charges (RIA Novosti, September 21). The Russian defense ministry published drone photos allegedly proving the SDF and US Special Forces had joined up with the Islamic State in Deir el-Zour (RIA Novosti, September 25). On September 23, a top Russian military advisor, Lieutenant General Valery Asapov, was reported killed in Deir el-Zour by mortar fire, together with two Russian colonels (Kommersant, September 25). Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov blamed “American double-dealing” for Asapov’s death and also predicted the US would finance anti-government protests in Russia in the run up to presidential elections next March (RIA Novosti, Interfax, September 25).

Washington and Moscow seemed on the verge of a direct military clash, but apparently took a step back following contacts through military channels. On September 27, strategic Tu-95MS bombers hit Deir el-Zour and Idlib provinces with long-range cruise missiles. The Tu-95MSs were escorted by Su-30 and Su-35 jet fighters, based in Syria. Evidently, the Russian military believed US jets could try to intercept the slow-flying bombers, assuming they may be targeting US Special Forces units. But this worst-case scenario did not happen, and Konashenkov assured journalists, “Not a single American was harmed” (Militarynews.ru, September 27). Still tensions continue to simmer. Washington and Moscow are becoming ever more deeply engaged in a worldwide zero-sum game, with no letup in sight.

 

[Housecarl]

May was interviewed on John Bachelor's Show last night....HC

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http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/latin-americas-socialist-islamist-narco-terrorist-alliance/

Latin America’s socialist-Islamist-narco-terrorist alliance

Clifford D. May
27th September 2017 - The Washington Times

At the U.N. last week, President Trump had harsh words for the “socialist dictatorship” that has impoverished Venezuela. He railed against “Islamist extremism” and “radical Islamic terrorism,” the former a supremacist ideology, the latter a weapon being used to mass-murder Muslims, Christians Yazidis, Jews and Hindus. He took note, too, of the threat posed by “international criminal networks” that “traffic drugs, weapons, people.”

What may not have occurred to Mr. Trump or most of his audience: the extent to which these evils are now being combined.

No one personifies this poisonous cocktail better than Tareck El Aissami, Venezuela’s 43-year-old vice president. Mr. El Aissami comes from a Lebanese-Syrian family with ties to Shia jihadist groups in Iraq. He also has been linked to a list of South American drug traffickers. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, he was appointed to the No. 2 government job in January by Venezuela’s dictator, President Nicolas Maduro.

One month later the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Mr. El Aissami, saying he “played a significant role in international narcotics trafficking.” At least some of his assets – estimated at around $3 billion – were frozen.

Investigators also revealed that he had issued hundreds of Venezuelan passports to members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and to operatives of Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanon-based international terrorist proxy. That may be one of the reasons President Trump on Sunday added Venezuela to the list of countries from which immigrants and visitors should be restricted.

Penetrating Latin America has been an Iranian and Hezbollah project for decades. They have been recruiting allies and agents in the Lebanese Shia diaspora communities, setting up “cultural centers” and mosques, establishing media outlets and “educational” institutions, sending missionaries to preach and convert, and selecting individuals for indoctrination and training in Iran.

Terrorism is another weapon in their arsenal. In 1992 the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina was bombed. Two years later, the target was AMIA, a Jewish cultural association. More than a hundred people were killed in the two attacks.

Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman spent years investigating. In 2013, he published a 502-page indictment accusing Iran of establishing terrorist networks in countries throughout the hemisphere. He presented evidence pointing to Mohsen Rabbani, formerly Iran’s cultural attaché in Argentina, as the mastermind behind both the networks and the Buenos Aires attacks. Other senior Iranian officials were found to be deeply involved as well.

By early 2015, Mr. Nisman’s had prepared a second report, one that implicated then-President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in “a plan to illegally aid and fraudulently exonerate the Iranian suspects” responsible for the attacks. But on Jan. 18th, hours before Mr. Nisman was to present his evidence to Argentine lawmakers, he was murdered.

Over the weekend, a 7-month-long Argentine police investigation confirmed that conclusion, ruling out claims (initially by Mrs. Kirchner, among others) that he had committed suicide. No one has yet been brought to justice, though under Argentina’s post-Kirchner government that’s not impossible.

My colleague Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has been researching Iranian and Hezbollah penetration of Latin America. In May, he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, detailing the growing cooperation between “Islamic terror networks” and “violent drug cartels.” Such alliances, he noted, are often facilitated by “corrupt political elites” that provide Hezbollah’s trafficking networks “safe harbor.”

He told the legislators that Hezbollah now “plays a central role in a new landscape where drug and human trafficking, gun running, illicit cigarette trade, trade-based money laundering, and terror financing can no longer be treated as distinct phenomena.”

Instead, Hezbollah’s infrastructure and activities should be understood as “an integral part” of a comprehensive and long-term strategy to “export” Iran’s Islamic Revolution to the Western Hemisphere and establish forward operating bases to be used against the United States.

The most notorious Latin American haven for terrorists and organized crime figures is the Tri-Border Area (TBA), where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet. The U.S. State department’s annual report on terrorism last year noted that the Paraguayan slice of the TBA in particular, “continued to be attractive to individuals seeking to engage in terrorist financing.”

Less well known: Cuba, a bastion of communist atheism that prohibits Christian proselytizing, takes a more lenient attitude toward Iran’s brand of Islam. Last year Dr. Ottolenghi identified both an Iranian-backed Shia cultural center and a Shia mosque in Havana. Cuban converts are being sent to other Latin American countries to spread Iran’s revolutionary theology.

The Colombian government recently concluded a “peace deal” that legitimizes and awards political power to FARC, the far-left guerrilla group that has been waging a civil war since 1964. No one should be surprised if Hezbollah – with whom FARC has long cooperated on arms deals, drug trafficking and money laundering – benefits. Iran, too, of course.

The growing socialist/Islamist/narco/terrorist alliance south of the border represents a clear and present danger. Nevertheless, as Dr. Ottolenghi told Congress, Washington has yet to formulate “a coherent foreign policy that recognizes the importance of Latin America as a key arena of competition with Iran and puts in place the needed resources to blunt Iranian and Hezbollah threats.”

In addition, “our limited intelligence capabilities make it difficult to fully assess the amount of terrorist financing generated in Latin America, or understand the scope of possible criminal-terrorist collaboration.”

That last comment was made two years ago by the commander in charge of U.S. Southern Command. Today, Gen. John F. Kelly serves as chief of staff to President Trump. So perhaps, sooner or later, this maturing threat will get the attention it so richly deserves.

Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. Follow him on Twitter @CliffordDMay.

Follow the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on Twitter @FDD.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/david-adesnik-preventing-a-fait-accompli-in-syria/

Preventing a “Fait Accompli” in Syria

David Adesnik
27th September 2017 - FDD Policy Brief

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with representatives of 17 like-minded nations to discuss the future of Syria last week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Following the meeting, Ambassador David Satterfield, acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said the U.S. and its partners were firmly opposed to “accepting a fait accompli” in which the Assad regime and its Iranian patrons consolidate their grip on Syria with the expected defeat of the Islamic State.

Satterfield argued that the urgent need for aid to rebuild Syria would ultimately compel Assad and his patrons to engage in a “credible political process that reflects the will of the majority of Syrians.” Without such a process, he said, “you’re not going to get international participation in Syria, and that’s vital. The regime needs it. Russia needs it.”

The U.S. should by no means finance the recovery of a nation dominated by Assad. And there is little reason to believe that withholding such aid will sway the calculus of the regime and its patrons in Tehran. Rather, the effective route to building leverage at the negotiating table is to consolidate and expand the influence of U.S. partner forces in eastern Syria, especially the Sunni Arab elements within the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

However, the U.S. has sent mixed signals regarding its readiness to compete with the Iranian axis for influence in eastern Syria, or even to acknowledge that such a competition is under way. Earlier this month, President Trump stated, “We have very little to do with Syria other than killing ISIS. What we do is we kill ISIS.” Similarly, Satterfield listed the defeat of the Islamic State as the top priority, followed by a need to “end the violence.”

In contrast, Tillerson declared last month that putting an end to “Iran’s military influence” in Syria is one of two essential U.S. objectives. To that end, the U.S. military is supporting an SDF offensive designed to prevent the Assad regime and its partners from establishing a dominant position in the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor. Journalists now describe the SDF-Assad competition as a race for eastern Syria, reminiscent of the race between U.S. and Soviet forces to claim the lion’s share of German territory in 1945.

One of the most concerning aspects of the regime offensive in the east is the prominent role played by Hezbollah and other Iranian proxy forces, such as the Fatemiyoun Division, composed of Shiite fighters from Afghanistan. Unless the U.S. commits to preventing the march of these forces, Iran will be the ultimate victor of the Syria conflict, thereby expanding its influence across the Middle East and setting the stage for future conflict – with both Sunni states and with Israel. Indeed, this would likely mark not the end of a war, but rather the beginning of yet another.

David Adesnik is the director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @adesnik.

Follow the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on Twitter @FDD.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://thediplomat.com/2017/09/russia-tests-topol-m-intercontinental-ballistic-missile/

Russia Tests Topol-M Intercontinental Ballistic Missile

The purpose of the missile launch was reportedly to test advanced ballistic missile warheads.

By Franz-Stefan Gady
September 28, 2017

Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces (SMF) test-fired a Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from the Kapustin Yar testing range in the southern Astrakhan region, the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced on September 26.

“The goal of the launch was to test advanced ballistic missile warheads,” a Russian MoD spokesperson told TASS news agency. The missile’s warhead successfully destroyed a maneuver target at the Sary-Shagan range in Kazakhstan. The data gathered from the launch will be used to develop advanced anti-missile defense penetration aids, the spokesperson added.

The nuclear-capable Topol-M (aka RS12M2/NATO reporting name SS-27) is a three-stage solid fueled ICBM first test launched in 1994. It has a reported maximum range of about 11,000 kilometers (6,835 miles) and can carry a single 550 kiloton nuclear-tipped warhead. The missile can also be upgraded to carry independently targetable warheads. As I explained in January:

Russia has also been developing an upgraded Topol-M variant, the more advanced Topol MR (aka SR-24 Yars/NATO reporting name SS-27 Mod2) first revealed in 2010. The Yars, reportedly fitted with more advanced decoys and countermeasures than the Topol-M, and featuring a higher speed, has been specifically designed to evade Western anti-ballistic missile defense systems.

The Yars can reportedly carry up to ten multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs).The SMF have conducted two Yars ICBM tests in September. Both tests took place at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, in Arkhangelsk Oblast, approximately 800 kilometers north of Moscow. Both tests were a success, according to the Russian MoD. Both the RS12M2 and SR-24 Yars can be deployed from either missile silos or transporter-erector launchers (TELs).

As I reported elsewhere (See: “Russian General: Russia Now Fields 400 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles”):

Independent assessments in 2015 estimated that Russia has around 300 ICBMs deployed with a little over 1,000 warheads. According to an April 2016 estimate by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Russia deploys an estimated 307 ICBMs that can carry approximately 1040 warheads, nearly 40 percent of the country’s total strategic warheads.”

The SMF is estimated to operate up to 20 road-mobile and 60 silo-based RS-12M2s,and around 60 mobile and 10 silo-based SR-24 Yars ICBMs. “The Yars will eventually replace older Topol-M models as the SMF’s road-mobile mainstay of its arsenal,” I explained in December 2016.

The SMF is also expected to test their new super-heavy thermonuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) RS-28 Sarmat this October, according to Russian media reports. The Sarmat, reportedly capable of carrying up to ten heavy or 15 (some sources say 16) lighter warheads, will become the mainstay of the Russian Strategic Missile Force’s silo-based ICBM force.

 

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://www.france24.com/en/20170929-us-carries-out-more-airstrikes-libya

29 September 2017 - 01H20

US carries out more airstrikes in Libya

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US military has carried out more air strikes against the Islamic State group in Libya, killing several fighters, the US Africa Command said Thursday.

The strikes hit Tuesday about 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of the Mediterranean city of Sirte, AFRICOM said in a statement.

On Sunday, the Pentagon announced the first air strikes in Libya since President Donald Trump took power in January.

Prior to that, the last known US air strikes were carried out in early January under then-president Barack Obama, targeting two IS camps where militants were suspected of actively planning operations in Europe.

IS "and Al-Qaeda have taken advantage of ungoverned spaces in Libya to establish sanctuaries for plotting, inspiring, and directing terror attacks; recruiting and facilitating the movement of foreign terrorist fighters; and raising and moving funds to support their operations," AFRICOM said Thursday.

Libya has been rocked by chaos since the 2011 fall and killing of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi in a NATO-backed revolution.

Jihadists, arms dealers and human traffickers have gained a foothold in the North African country as multiple authorities and dozens of militias vie for power.

© 2017 AFP

 

[Shacknasty Shagrat]

FYI.
SS

Intel Crab‏ @IntelCrab 28m28 minutes ago

SKYKING EAM on 8992/11175 khz. (10:07 PM)

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.thelocal.dk/20170928/armed-military-to-replace-cops-on-danish-streets-and-border

Armed military to replace cops on Danish streets and border

The Local
news.denmark@thelocal.com
@thelocaldenmark
28 September 2017
15:59 CEST+02:00

Starting Friday, armed soldiers from the Danish Armed Forces (Forsvaret) will replace police officers at both Denmark’s southern border to Germany and at potential terror targets in Copenhagen.
According to the Danish National Police (Rigspolitiet) and Copenhagen Police, 160 soldiers will patrol the border and take over guard duties at Jewish institutions including the Great Synagogue in central Copenhagen.

The synagogue has been under constant police protection since a Danish-born terrorist of Palestinian descent shot and killed 37-year-old Dan Uzan, a volunteer security guard, outside the building in February 2015. The gunman, Omar El-Hussein, had earlier in the night opened fire with an automatic rifle outside a cultural centre hosting a free speech event, killing 55-year-old Finn Nørgaard and injuring police officers. El-Hussein was later shot and killed by police.

The soldiers’ role at the German border was described as ancillary and will not entail actively checking the IDs of those entering the country. That role will still be filled by police officers and members of the Danish Home Guard (Hjemmeværnet), which has been active in border checks since April 2016.

The plan to put armed military personnel at the border and potential terror targets has been under discussion for well over a year. It is being implemented as a way to ease the workload of an overworked and undermanned police force.

The 160 soldiers will relieve the police force of the equivalent of 128 full-time police officers. According to news agency Ritzau, police currently use the equivalent of 456 full-time officers on border controls and patrolling potential terror targets.

Danish police have been saying for years now that officers are stretched so thin that they are unable to carry out basic police work.

It was not immediately announced how long military personnel would remain on the streets or at the border.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/28...m_campaign=Edpix 9/28&utm_term=*Editors Picks

Dispatch

Israel Is Going to War in Syria to Fight Iran

Israeli officials aren't shying from confronting Tehran's forces — since no one else will.

By Jonathan Spyer
September 28, 2017

JERUSALEM – Israeli officials believe that Iran is winning its bid for dominance in the Middle East, and they are mobilizing to counter the regional realignment that threatens to follow. The focus of Israel’s military and diplomatic campaign is Syria. Israeli jets have struck Hezbollah and Syrian regime facilities and convoys dozens of times during Syria’s civil war, with the goal of preventing the transfer of weapons systems from Iran to Hezbollah.*In an apparent broadening of the scope of this air campaign, on Sept. 7 Israeli jets struck a Syrian weapons facility near Masyaf responsible for the production of chemical weapons and the storing of surface-to-surface missiles.

The strike came after a round of diplomacy in which Israeli officials concluded that their concerns regarding the developing situation in Syria were not being addressed with sufficient seriousness in either the United States or Russia. A senior delegation led by Mossad chief Yossi Cohen visited Washington in late August, reportedly to express Israel’s dissatisfaction with the emerging U.S.-Russian understanding on Syria. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi to raise similar concerns with Moscow.

In both cases, the Israelis were disappointed with the response. Their overriding concern in Syria is the free reign that all the major players there seem willing to afford Iran and its various proxies in the country.*And as long as nobody else addresses that concern in satisfactory, Israel is determined to continue addressing it on its own.

Iranian forces now maintain a presence close to or adjoining the Israeli-controlled portion of the Golan Heights and the Quneitra Crossing that separates it from the Syrian-controlled portion of the territory. Israel has throughout the Syrian war noted a desire on the part of the Iranians and their Hezbollah clients to establish this area as a second line of active confrontation against the Jewish state, in addition to south Lebanon.

“Syria,” of course, hardly exists today. The regime is in the hands of its Iranian and Russian masters, and half of the country remains outside its control. But the Iran-led bloc and its clearly stated intention to eventually destroy Israel*certainly do exist, and the de facto buffer against them may be disappearing. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah recently declared “victory” in the Syrian war, adding that what remained was “scattered battles".

With the prospect of pro-Iranian forces reaching Bukamal on the Syrian-Iraqi border, this opens up the possibility of the much-reported Iranian “land corridor” stretching uninterrupted from Iran itself to a few kilometers from the Israeli-controlled Golan. Earlier this month, Israel shot down an Iranian drone over the Golan Heights. It was the latest evidence of Iran’s activities on the border. Syrian opposition reports have noted an Iranian presence in*Tal Al-Sha’ar area, Tal Al-Ahmar, and Division 90 headquarters, all in the vicinity of the border. Pro-Iran forces, meanwhile, are open in their ambitions. Hezbollah al-Nujaba, an Iraqi Shiite force supported by Iran, has formed a “Golan Liberation” unit and declared itself “ready to take action to liberate the Golan.” Senior figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij have been photographed in areas close to the border.

Israel has so far thwarted these ambitions in two ways. First, it has launched attacks to frustrate and interdict attempts to build a paramilitary infrastructure in the area. Most famously, the killing of Jihad Mughniyeh, son of Hezbollah military chief Imad Mughniyeh, in a targeted strike at Mazraat Amal in the Quneitra area in January 2015 was part of this effort. Five other Hezbollah members and a general of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Allahdadi, were also killed in the strike.
Second, Israel has developed pragmatic working relations with the local rebel groups who at the moment still control the greater part of the border, such as the Fursan al-Joulan group. This cooperation focuses on treating wounded fighters and civilians, and providing humanitarian aid and financial assistance. There has also probably been assistance in the field of intelligence, though no evidence has yet emerged of direct provision of weapons or direct engagement of Israeli forces on the rebels’ behalf.

On July 9, a ceasefire ...... (problem cutting and pasting rest of the article HC...)