WAR 11-12-2016-to-11-18-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

Sorry folks, some stuff in the "Meat World" came up "literally" from yesterday...I've been resting up most of today....HC

(241) 10-22-2016-to-10-28-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...28-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(242) 10-29-2016-to-11-04-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...04-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(243) 11-05-2016-to-11-11-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...11-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

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For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/c...-rebels-sign-modified-peace-agreement-n683096


NEWS
NOV 12 2016, 8:54 PM ET

Colombia's Government, FARC Rebels Sign Modified Peace Agreement

by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

HAVANA — Colombia's government and its largest rebel group signed a new, modified peace accord on Saturday following the surprise rejection of an earlier deal by voters in a referendum.

The latest agreement aims to address some of the concerns of opponents of the original accord, especially former President Alvaro Uribe who said the deal was too lenient on a rebel group that had kidnapped and committed war crimes.

"The new deal is an opportunity to clear up doubts, but above all to unite us," said chief government negotiator Humberto de La Calle, who signed the accord along with rebel negotiator Luciano Marin, alias Ivan Marquez, in Cuba, moving to end a half-century-long conflict that has claimed more than 220,000 lives.

De la Calle described the text of the modified accord as "much better" than the previous one, but didn't say if or how it would be submitted to a referendum.

President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia inked an initial peace deal on Sept. 26 amid international fanfare after more than four years of negotiations. But voters rejected it on Oct. 2 by just 55,000 votes, dealing a stunning setback to Santos who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end Colombia's conflict.

Santos immediately began looking for ways to rescue the deal and the sides extended a cease-fire until Dec. 31 to get the modified deal done. The rebels insisted they wouldn't go back to the drawing board and throw out years of arduous negotiations with the government.

"The meetings with the FARC delegation were intense," said De la Calle. "We worked 15 days and nights to reach this new agreement."

Video

De La Calle said some of the modifications made were related to transitional justice, punishment for conflict participants accused of war crimes, and reparations for the victims, points of contention with opponents of the original deal. The negotiator added that details of how and where rebels would serve time for any crimes committed had been cleared up. Judgments for drug trafficking will be in accordance with Colombia's penal code and be heard by the country's high courts. He said further details would be released later.

"We are convinced that this accord offers roads to peace that are viable and possible," he said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry congratulated Colombians, including Santos and those from the "no" campaign, for reaching the new peace deal.

"After 52 years of war, no peace agreement can satisfy everyone in every detail. But this agreement constitutes an important step forward on Colombia's path to a just and durable peace. The United States, in coordination with the Government of Colombia, will continue to support full implementation of the final peace agreement," he said in a statement.

Hours before the deal was announced, Uribe, a conservative who was Colombia's president from 2002 to 2010, had asked that it "not be definitive" until opponents and victims of the conflict could review the text.

Following a meeting with Santos in Colombia, Uribe read a statement to reporters saying he had asked that the "texts to be announced from Havana" not be official until they had been reviewed.

Uribe and his supporters had demanded stiffer penalties for rebels who committed war crimes and criticized the promise of a political role for the FARC, a 7,000-strong peasant army that is Latin America's last remaining major insurgency. They didn't like that under the old deal guerrilla leaders involved in crimes against humanity would be spared jail time and allowed to enter political life.

FARC negotiator Ivan Marquez said "the implementation of the accord is all that remains for the construction of the bases for peace in Colombia."

Simultaneously, the government is trying to advance peace talks with the country's second-biggest rebel group. But Santos wants the National Liberation Army, known by its Spanish initials ELN, to first free a former congressman it has held captive for six months before holding negotiations.

The ELN is far smaller than the FARC and was founded in the same year, 1964. Inspired by the Cuban revolution, it is ideologically more doctrinaire and recalcitrant than the FARC, which grew out of peasant self-defense forces. It has fewer than 2,000 fighters, making it less than one-third the size of the FARC.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/world-news/iraqi-forces-battling-mosul-discover-9248463

News World News

Iraqi forces battling for Mosul discover massive secret ISIS missile factory amid savage street fighting

17:52, 12 NOV 2016 UPDATED 21:56, 12 NOV 2016
BY CHRIS KITCHING

Photos broadcast by a TV station show various pieces of equipment that were recovered from the missile-making facility which was set up inside an apartment

Iraqi authorities say they have discovered a secret factory where ISIS extremists manufactured missiles that were used to kill their enemies.

Photos broadcast by a TV station show various pieces of equipment that were recovered from the facility which was set up inside an apartment in eastern Mosul .

When they raided the flat authorities also found memos which were sent by the terror group's leadership and featured the seal of its "quality control" office, according to reports.

The factory was discovered as Iraqi troops and militias advance on Iraq's second city in a US-backed campaign to recapture ISIS last stronghold in the country.

The missile-making factory was discovered by Nineveh provincial police in Mosul's al-Samah area, the Muslim Press reports.

Iraqi authorities have discovered several secret factories where ISIS constructed crude bombs or missiles in their fight against the extremists.

The campaign to seize Mosul is entering its fourth week as Iraqi troops and militias advance on the terror group's territory.

Mosul has been under ISIS rule for more than two years and there are fears that many innocent civilians are being used as human shields by the terror group as it defends its shrinking territory in northern Iraq.

On Saturday Iraqi special forces backed by US-led air strikes took control of two districts during heavy street fighting in eastern Mosul.

The military said the coalition destroyed at least 10 cars deployed by ISIS as suicide bombs and three rocket launchers.

Thirty militants, including snipers, were killed, the military said.

Lieutenant-General Abdul Wahab al-Saidi of the Counter Terrorism Service said his forces had completely taken over al-Arbajiya district and were halfway through clearing the adjacent al-Qadisiya al-Thaniya.

Last week Kurdish peshmerga fighters said they have found a network of tunnels used by ISIS in the town of Bashiqa.

The tunnels were identified by a hand-drawn map posted on a wall over an entrance.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-iraq-checkpoint-idUKKBN1361NM?il=0

WORLD NEWS | Sat Nov 12, 2016 | 9:10pm GMT

Fear and relief at Iraqi checkpoint on escape route from Mosul

By Stephen Kalin | KOKJALI, IRAQ
The Iraqi police interrogator paced back and forth, towering over a dozen men from Mosul who were crouching in the dirt after escaping an area of the city recently recovered from Islamic State.

"The security forces are now going to liberate your city. How is it possible that you don't know who those rats are?" First Lieutenant Qaisar Mohammed asked the men in the village of Kokjali on Friday, demanding names and phone numbers of the jihadists controlling the rest of Mosul.

Government forces are relying on intelligence from evacuees and sources still inside the city in their campaign to recapture Mosul from Islamic State, which seized a third of the country in 2014.

Authorities are also keen to screen people leaving the city to prevent fighters from slipping through front lines in disguise and going underground to resume their insurgency.

Twenty five-year old Najah, who had left his home in Mosul hours earlier, acknowledged that he knows some neighbours who were with Islamic State.

But he says his information is limited because the militants kept changing houses and instilled such fear in ordinary people that nobody dared spend much time with them or ask too many questions.

More than 45,000 civilians have fled their homes since the Mosul operation began less than a month ago, a fraction of the 1 million people the United Nations has warned could eventually evacuate the city.

Mohammed, who previously worked in a western Mosul district that was a hotbed for Islamic State's al Qaeda predecessor, told Reuters that most residents cooperated with the authorities.

Some have been less forthcoming.

"After two years under Daesh (Islamic State), they have terror in their hearts," he said. "Their reaction is fear. They think maybe the Iraqi forces cannot liberate Mosul and then they will return. That is how they think."

The Iraqi operation, involving a 100,000-strong alliance of troops, security forces, Kurdish peshmerga and Shi'ite militias, backed by U.S.-led air strikes, is doing everything it can to make sure that doesn't happen, but so far it has gained just a small foothold in the city.

FLEEING FROM MORTARS

The checkpoint in Kokjali, manned by counter-terrorism forces and local police, is the first stop for residents leaving eastern Mosul.

Vehicles packed with civilians stop for a brief weapons check before continuing towards Kurdish-controlled areas.

Tears streamed down the face of a woman in one car, betraying the mixture of fear and relief expressed by many.

Those who arrive at Kokjali on foot are sometimes questioned by police while they wait for government buses. They are then taken to another checkpoint where their names are entered into a database and checked against lists of Islamic State suspects.

People who are cleared head mostly to camps, while others are held for further questioning.

Mohammed's checkpoint is more than a kilometre from the front line inside Mosul, but it is far from safe.

Earlier this week, an Islamic State fighter slipped among civilians at a similar site north of Mosul and blew himself up, he said. A few days later, a person wearing a black face veil and carrying a child did the same on the southeastern front.

Along with such suicide attacks, the retreating jihadists have begun bombarding heavily populated civilian areas with mortars.

A 54-year-old man from the Zahra district of the city said he had escaped with his two sons after a hellish night. Islamic State had launched shells randomly, he said, and laid down gunfire so heavy "it was like it was raining".

(Reporting by Stephen Kalin; editing by Giles Elgood)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/6109e52b-d9aa-3342-b6bf-bbb83b9dc66d/russia-arrests-10-people.html

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/russia-arr...paign=rss&utm_content=/rss/yahoous&yptr=yahoo

Russia arrests 10 people thought to be plotting Islamic State-linked terror attacks

The terrorist suspects were arrested with the help of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Jen Offord
International Business Times ONC UK•November 12, 2016

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) have arrested 10 people on suspicion of planning terror attacks in two major Russian cities, the FSB announced on Saturday. The FSB did not specify which countries the arrested suspects were from but did confirm that the arrests were made with the cooperation of Kyrgyzstan. In a statement released to Russian news agencies on Saturday, the FSB said the suspects had a number of explosives, intended for use in the mass killing of civilians. They said that the suspects confessed to having links to Islamic State (Isis). The statement, reported by TASS news agency, said: "The Russian Federal Security Service, with support from the Interior Ministry and cooperation...

 

[Housecarl]

TALIBAN ATTACK ON BAGRAM AIRFIELD
Started by Maryh‎, Today 07:15 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?505474-TALIBAN-ATTACK-ON-BAGRAM-AIRFIELD

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://kucb.org/post/explosion-kills-4-bagram-airfield-largest-nato-base-afghanistan

Explosion Kills 4 Americans At Bagram Airfield, Largest NATO Base In Afghanistan

By BILL CHAPPELL • 13 HOURS AGO

Originally published on November 12, 2016 9:04 am
The Taliban says one of its operatives caused a large explosion at NATO's largest military base in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Ash Carter says the apparent suicide bomber killed four Americans — two service members and two contractors — and wounded 17 others.

The bombing comes two days after a German diplomatic mission in northern Afghanistan also suffered a deadly suicide attack.

An investigation into how the attacker was able to get the explosives into the base is under way; Carter says that he is "deeply saddened" by the fatal attack, and that the U.S. military will look for ways to prevent similar strikes.

"The explosion wounded 16 other U.S. service members and one Polish soldier participating in our NATO mission," Carter says, adding, "I want to express my sincere condolences to the families of the fallen, and I want to reassure the loved ones of those injured that they are getting the best possible care."

From Brussels, Teri Schultz reports:

"The early-morning explosion at Bagram Air Base reportedly targeted service members gathering for a Veteran's Day commemoration. U.S. Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of the NATO mission in Afghanistan, says his thoughts are with the loved ones of the victims, vowing the suicide attack will not deter the effort to assist Afghan forces.

"NATO has not explained how the bomber got onto the heavily fortified base but there are reports it was by coming in with a group of local workers. Earlier this week the U.S. embassy in Kabul put out a warning that there were indications of pending attacks on a hotel and guest house frequently used by foreigners."

Citing the Taliban's claim of responsibility, the Stars and Stripes military newspaper reports that the insurgent group said one of its militants "had been working undercover on the base and had planned the attack over the past four months."

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-chad-bokoharam-idUSKBN1370BP

WORLD NEWS | Sat Nov 12, 2016 | 8:30am EST

Hundreds of Boko Haram fighters surrender in Chad: sources

By Emma Farge | DAKAR
Hundreds of Boko Haram fighters and their families have surrendered in Chad in the past month, security and U.N. sources said, in a sign the military campaign against them is making headway.

Boko Haram, which has killed and kidnapped thousands of people, had seized an area approximately the size of Belgium in northeastern Nigeria by last year but has since lost significant ground amid growing regional military pressure.

Analyst and security sources think the fighters are probably recent recruits that Boko Haram has struggled to retain as it has ceded territory. Defections of Boko Haram fighters have been reported in Nigeria but are not known to have previously occurred on such a large scale.

"They surrendered to our troops on the front line in Lake Chad," said Colonel Mohammad Dole, Chief Military Public Information Officer for the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) headquartered in Chad's capital N'Djamena.

"The surrenders are taking place because of the firepower of our operations. The groups, many of them armed, have been arriving since September and their number keeps increasing," he said.

Some 240 fighters, most off whom are Chadian, are now being held in detention along with their families, Dole said.

The MNJTF, with troops from Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and Benin and intelligence, training and logistical support from the United States, launched a regional operation in July against the group, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

It has since continued patrols around the waterways of Lake Chad - one of the world's poorest regions whose villages were last year regularly struck by fighters, sometimes aboard canoes.

Around 2.6 million people have been displaced in the Lake Chad Basin where Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon meet.

Signs that regional armies are wresting back control of the Chadian part of the lake is significant since it had been a recruitment hub, even if the group never sought to conquer territory there, said Ryan Cummings, director of consultancy Signal Risk.

"Their presence in Chad was more for recruitment and for resources. Its strikes in the country were punitive," he said, referring to revenge attacks on regional military heavyweight Chad, which has supplied 3,000 troops for the MNJTF.

FORCED RECRUITMENT

Chadian military officials are currently profiling the detainees currently housed at two detention centers in the remote town of Baga Solo, some of whom arrived this week.

Based on previous patterns, it is likely that many were abducted or forcibly recruited by Boko Haram whose name means "Western education is sinful" in the local Hausa language.

Stephen Tull, U.N. Resident Coordinator in Chad, said a total of around 700 people were being held, including men, women and children.

It was unclear how many were fighters, he said. Boko Haram has in the past deployed child soldiers and female suicide bombers.

"They are mostly Chadians and appear to all be more recent recruits," he said citing information from a U.N. visit to the centers earlier this month.

Islamic State named Abu Musab al-Barnawi as Boko Haram's leader in August although another branch loyal to former head Abubakar Shekau is still operational. It was not clear from which branch the fighters surrendered, nor how senior they are.

Philippe Barragne-Bigot, head of the U.N. children's agency in Chad, said that it had set up a center for the children, who he said should be treated as former hostages.

"We want to profile them and make sure they have the right psychological rehabilitation," he told Reuters.

(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Joe Bavier)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-mosul-chemical-idUSKBN1370HO

WORLD NEWS | Sat Nov 12, 2016 | 12:01pm EST

Islamic State victims suffer as evidence of chemical attacks grows

By John Davison | QAYYARA, IRAQ
The skin on five-year-old Doaa's legs, arms and neck is blackened and hard even weeks after the attack. She is still in severe pain and tries not to touch anything or move too much.

Doaa was playing in the courtyard when a rocket fired by Islamic State landed and exploded in the neighbor's garden, emitting a toxic gas, her father Abdallah Sultan and other residents said.

Around a month after the blast, a strong burning smell still pervades the air and stings the nose. The wall next door is black and all the plants in a small vegetable patch have died. Part of the rocket, which the families avoid touching, is left on the ground. The rest has been removed by rescue workers.

"We don't know what the substance in the warhead was. All we know is that it made Doaa break out in blisters all over her body, and she's not got better," 33-year-old Sultan said.

She was a victim of what appears to have been the fourth chemical weapons attack launched by Islamic State during September and October against civilians in the town of Qayyara in northern Iraq. Rights workers have so far documented at least three others.

The United Nations says Islamic State is stockpiling ammonia and sulfur in civilian areas and fears it intends to carry out more chemical attacks as Iraqi forces, backed by U.S. air power, battle the jihadists in an effort to drive them out of Mosul, their last major stronghold in Iraq.

The ultra-hardline group has shown its willingness to use toxic substances and to repeatedly target civilians, lashing out at populations in areas under its control as it has retreated towards Mosul.

The attacks on Qayyara, some 50 km (30 miles) south of Mosul, took place just before the current offensive began in earnest on Oct. 17. Qayyara was recaptured from Islamic State in August but the militants were still in the area until last month.

Around the corner from where Doaa was hit, another chemical warhead landed inside a home in September, burrowing into the lawn.

The victims and witnesses said the substance used in that and all the other attacks was mustard gas.

Sirhan Awwad, in his 20s and who was injured trying to help remove the rocket, had to go to Baghdad for treatment because staff at the local clinic said they could not treat that type of burn.

"I went to bed that night and a few hours later my arms went red. The next day, I started to get blisters," he said, wearing a surgical mask at the spot where the rocket landed. His arms were still covered in blistered skin.

'NOT A NORMAL ATTACK'

Awwad's brother filmed the immediate aftermath. He showed footage on his laptop of the tail of the rocket protruding from the earth, and a pool of water from a damaged underground pipe. The water had turned yellow and was bubbling.

Police removed the rocket and filled the hole with earth. Plants and trees in the yard were singed and dead.

Awwad said doctors in Baghdad had identified his symptoms as consistent with those from exposure to mustard gas agents.

Human Rights Watch on Friday reported that attack and two other uses of chemical weapons by Islamic State in Qayyara. The New York-based watchdog cited experts as saying that blister agents such as sulfur mustard might have been the chemicals that were used.

Islamic State also set ablaze a sulfur plant outside the town as they withdrew from the area during fighting against Iraqi forces last month, U.S. officials said, and hundreds of people were treated for breathing problems.

U.N. human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said on Friday there were reports of people dying from the fumes after that incident.

Qayyara, a town that suffered under Islamic State, still reels from the aftermath of the fight to drive out the militants.

On the street where Sultan and Doaa are staying with relatives - they fled from a village nearby earlier this year - buildings bear black marks from exploding mortar shells, and others are reduced to rubble and collapsed roofs.

Thick plumes of smoke from the oil fields which Islamic State militants set on fire as they withdrew in August billow into the air, turning the sky black and gray as the sunlight struggles to permeate the haze.

Shepherds herd sheep whose fur has been blackened by the smog, and a cow chews on rubbish.

Sultan's cousin Omar Khalifa called the Islamic State chemical attacks "not normal". But for people in Qayyara, it is no longer clear what normal is.

(Reporting by John Davison; additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; editing by John Stonestreet)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/11/11/China-Developing-Its-Own-Version-Top-Gun

China Is Developing Its Own Version of ‘Top Gun’

By Yuval Rosenberg
November 11, 2016

"Quantity has a quality all its own" is a phrase that's been popular in U.S. military circles for decades, and is most often attributed to Stalin. It's also variously attributed to Lenin, Mao and even former Sen. Sam Nunn. Regardless of its origin, the American defense establishment's response to that approach helped form the basis of U.S. military tactics and strategy during the Cold War. The Soviet Union may have had more tanks, ships, missiles, etc., but America's were going to be better. This response also extended to aircraft and the people who flew them — where the enemy's greater numbers in planes would be offset, it was hoped, not just with superior equipment but with better-trained operators of that equipment.

Like the old Soviet Union, current-day China is another potential U.S. adversary that has traditionally subscribed to a quantity-over-quality military philosophy, and is attempting to address this deficiency in its air force. The People's Liberation Air Force, or PLAAF, has recently embarked on a major revamping of its fighter pilot training in the hope of bringing its pilots' capabilities up to par with those of western "near peer" adversaries. Combine this development with the recent high-profile (air show, not operational) debut of China’s latest-generation fighter — the J20, designed to approach the capabilities of the West's best offerings — and the aggressive patrolling of the South China Sea, and the balance of power in the Pacific is worth renewed attention.

Related: The Pentagon Is Planning a New Super Rival to the Troubled F-35

According to RAND Corporation's Lyle J. Morris and Eric Heginbotham, co-authors of a recent report on the Chinese air force’s plans for its fighter units, the new training will focus on "actual combat conditions ... manifested in training scenarios meant to mimic or simulate real-world battle conditions."

The United States has done this type of training for decades. The Navy's Fighter Weapons School, better known as Top Gun, was created in 1968 to teach pilots the art of "dogfighting," or traditional air-to-air combat, which was feared to be dying. The Air Force does similar training for its fighter pilots at its own Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, and four times a year hosts a massive, mock air-combat exercise called Red Flag, also conducted at Nellis.

But maybe most noteworthy, and worrying, for the U.S. defense community, is that the PLAAF's training revamp includes an emphasis on "free air combat" and "unscripted scenarios" — another aspect of air combat that has always kept U.S. air forces not just competitive but dominant in engagements. The good news is, creating fighter pilots who can operate autonomously (that is, without much help from ground control, unlike standard procedure for the old Soviet and current Chinese command structure) at a high level of air-to-air combat competency isn't easy, and certainly can't be done overnight.

Related: China Will Own New Year’s Eve in Times Square

Morris and Heginbotham note that RAND's research saw "shortfalls in pilot performance, including insufficient flight-lead skills and autonomy, lax discipline during daily training, poor tactics, and a lack of coordination with other PLAAF branches." These are characteristics and capabilities that U.S. air forces have always excelled at — aspects of air war that are part institutional culture, part societal.

In an age of increasing technologicalization, and with drone strikes in particular such a high-profile feature of current American military operations, it's easy to overlook the human element when it comes to thinking about modern military might. But until the world's fighter pilots are entirely replaced with remote pilots, or even artificial intelligence, the capabilities of the people physically sitting in the cockpit still matter. In the end, The Right Stuff — Tom Wolfe's famous phrase for the flying, fighting and personality qualities found in America's best military pilots — knows no international boundaries.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/...s-first-supercarrier-will-nuclear-powered.htm

Nuclear Powered INS Vishal, India’s First Supercarrier, will Deploy EMALS

By Arthur Dominic Villasanta | Nov 11, 2016 05:29 AM EST

The guessing game is over. INS Vishal, India's first supercarrier that should see service with the Indian Navy (IN) in the early 2030s, will be nuclear powered.

She will be the first nuclear powered surface warship in the navy and the second in the navy as a whole. The navy's first nuclear powered warship is the Akula II-class nuclear attack submarine INS Chakra (S71). Unlike the INS Vishal, which will be made in India, the Chakra was leased from Russia for a period of 10 years starting in 2012.

The navy will also lease a second Akula-class submarine from Russia. The Akula I-class submarine expected to arrive in India in 2018 has been identified as the K-322 Kashalot (Sperm Whale), one of only three operational Akula I-class subs in the Russian Navy.

Indian media said sources in the IN revealed important details about INS Vishal, chief among which is will be powered by a nuclear reactor. The INS Vishal will also use a catapult assisted take-off but arrested recovery (CATOBAR) electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) similar to the system the U.S. Navy plans to deploy on its new Gerald R. Ford-class nuclear powered supercarriers.

The Gerald R. Ford-class is a class of supercarriers being built to replace some of the Navy's existing Nimitz-class carriers.

The decision to use nuclear propulsion, however, will set back the Vishal's entry into IN service from the early 2020s to the early 2030s. IN has no experience in operating a nuclear powered surface warship and will undoubtedly seek assistance from either the United States or France.

The U.S. Navy operates 10 Nimitz-class nuclear powered supercarriers. On the other hand, the French Navy operates the carrier Charles de Gaulle, the only nuclear-powered carrier outside the U.S. Navy. The Charles de Gaulle is the flagship of the French Navy (Marine Nationale).

With a displacement of 65,000 metric tons, INS Vishal is the second ship of the Vikrant-class and the first supercarrier to be built in India.

Her EMALS CATOBAR system will allow her to launch heavier aircraft like larger fighters; unmanned air combat vehicles (UCAVs); turbo-prop airborne early-warning aircraft and aerial refueling tankers. INS Vishal remains under development, however, and it is unclear when her construction will begin.

She will be built by state-owned Cochin Shipyard Limited in Kerala. Vishal is Sanskrit for "immense."

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.defenseworld.net/news/17...ring_Its_2006_War_Against_Israel#.WCfoTy0rLIU

Iran Confirms Aleppo Missile Factory To Support Hezbollah During Its 2006 War Against Israel

Our Bureau 11:52 AM, November 12, 2016 383 views

Iran has officially confirmed that it's missile factory had been transferred to the Syrian city of Aleppo for supporting Hezbollah group that was in war against Israel.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah (Shia militant group) had used Iranian-made missiles manufactured in Aleppo during its July 2006 war with Israel, Beirut- Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Bagheri said. It is the first time a high-ranking Iranian officer has announced the presence of Iranian-made weapons produced on a foreign soil, which is Syria.

However, the Iranian officer Bagheri did not specify the timetable for producing the missile nor their range type. He only spoke about a manufacturing zone near the industrial city of Aleppo, where fierce battles took place lately between opposition fighters and Syrian regime forces and their allies.

Tehran lost a large number of fighters during the battles, Asharq Al-awsat reported Friday.

Last June, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah admitted that his forces received missiles and money from Iran.

The missiles produced in Aleppo were used against the Tel Aviv regime during the 33-day Israeli war against Lebanon in the summer of 2006. During these days, Hezbollah launched over 4,000 rockets at Israel, an average of over 100 a day.

Free Syrian Army Commander Col. Ahmed Rahal said, “Iranian military production on Syrian soil started in 2002 as part of a deal inked between Bashar Assad and the Iranian leadership,”. “The Iranian information is very accurate and true,” he added.

He asserted that Iranian military production in Syria is part of a comprehensive military and economic plan between the countries.

 

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ezbollah-assad-military-support-a7412266.html

Israel is ‘determined to stop Iran establishing itself militarily’ in Syria, Benjamin Netanyahu claims

Rare comments on Syrian war also highlight Israel’s increasing military cooperation with Russia

Bethan McKernan Beirut Friday 11 November 2016 302 comments

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is “determined” to prevent Iran from becoming a military actor in the complex Syrian civil war.

“We are determined to... prevent Iran... from establishing itself militarily in Syria, on the ground, in the air or at sea,” Mr Netanyahu told reporters after talks with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Jerusalem on Thursday.

“We are also determined to prevent [Iran] from bringing about the establishment of Shia militias, which it is organising, and of course, the arming of [Lebanon’s] Hezbollah with dangerous weapons aimed at us.”

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The Syrian government has been greatly aided in its fight against rebel factions by allies in Moscow and Tehran since the 2011 popular uprising deteriorated into civil war.

Thousands of troops belonging to foreign Shiite militias from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon are currently fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s troops in the multi-sided conflict. Russia has lent the Syrian government air support since September 2015, which has markedly turned the war in the regime’s favour.

Though formally neutral on Syria's civil war, Israel has frequently pledged to prevent shipments of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah, which – like Iran – does not recognise the Jewish state.

In April Mr Netanyahu acknowledged that Israel had conducted air strikes in Syrian territory to stem the flow of weapons from the Golan Heights, but did not give details on when or where Israeli bombings had taken place.

Mr Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin set up a “hotline” between their defence ministries last year to avoid any accidental airspace clashes, which “highlights the dramatic change in our bilateral relations,” the prime minister said.

Jerusalem has increasingly welcomed relations with Russia in recent years in the light of strained relations with the US and the European Union caused by disagreements over the US-Iran nuclear deal and EU pressure on the Israeli government to stop settlement building in the West Bank.

“Israel, Russia, the United States and many other countries share the objective of defeating the Islamic State,” Netanyahu said during a joint media conference.

“At the same time, we are also concerned by the second actor promoting radical Islam – Iran – which champions the destruction of Israel and also supports 360-degree terror on five continents.”

Mr Medvedev hailed the “special values” that Russians and Israelis have in common and agreed that the two countries have “common challenges”.

“Every time I visit Israel I feel at home,” he said. “Our countries have common challenges, primarily terrorism. Terror threatens the entire world but in this region it is felt particularly strongly.”

He did not comment on the Israeli prime minister’s view of Moscow’s allies in Tehran.

Mr Medvedev began his trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories on Wednesday and is due to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Jericho on Friday.

In September both Mr Abbas and Mr Netanyahu agreed in principle to peace talks in Moscow, although no date has been set for such a meeting.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/per...-beginning-of-Hezbollah-ization-of-Iraq-.html

PERSPECTIVE ANALYSIS

Is this the beginning of ‘Hezbollah-ization’ of Iraq?

By Hassan Dai, Editor, Iranian American Forum
Thursday, 10 November 2016

For months prior to the offensive, Iran, and its Iraqi proxies pressured the Iraqi government to accept the militias’ role in the Mosul offensive, a move that could give them a share of victory and provide them with a pretext to justify their activities long after the defeat of ISIS. That would secure Iran’s influence in Iraq that predominantly relies on these militias, a prospect that many believe to be the Hezbollah-ization of Iraq.

On October 29, the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) predominantly comprised of Iran-backed Shiite militias, joined the military offensive led by the Iraqi army, US and Kurdish forces to reclaim the Sunni-populated city of Mosul from the Islamic State (ISIS). The Shiite militias opened a new front in western Mosul, a trajectory that could cut off ISIS from their bases in Syria. While the Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi had agreed to the militia’s role, there was no agreement on entering the city itself.

According to press reports, Qassem Suleimani, chief commander of Iran Revolutionary Guards Quds Force is in Western Mosul commanding Shiite militias, and Hezbollah members are also present and assisting the militias.

The PMF’s chief commander Hadi Al Amiri and his deputy Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis have been members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force and commanders of the Badr Brigade in Iran, a militia group formed by the Revolutionary Guards in the 1980s to fight alongside Iranian forces against Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War.

Following the fall of Saddam in 2003, the Badr Brigade changed to the Badr organization with an armed militia, which has become Iran’s key proxy force in Iraq.

For the Iranian regime, PMF’s participation in the Mosul offensive is a crucial step in securing the future of its Shiite militias in Iraq.

On October 28, PMF’s deputy chief commander, al-Muhandis gave an interview to pro-Hezbollah Al-Akhbar that was also posted on an IRGC-tied website in which he confirmed the PMF’s role in the Mosul operation and declared that “after the defeat of ISIS, PMF will continue to exist, will combat terrorism and defend Iraq against any threat. PMF will expand its activities into Syria.”

It is worth noting that many of the Shiite militias that form the PMF have already sent thousands of fighters to Syria defending the Assad regime.

Muhandis’ use of “defending Iraq against the threat of terrorism” as a justification for maintaining armed Shiite militias in Iraq is similar to Hezbollah’s pretext in keeping its army in Lebanon allegedly to “defend Lebanon against Zionist threat” even though Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000.

For months prior to the offensive, Iran, and its Iraqi proxies pressured the Iraqi government to accept the militias’ role in the Mosul offensive, a move that could give them a share of the victory and provide them with a pretext to justify their existence in Iraq long after the defeat of ISIS. This would secure Iran’s influence in Iraq, which predominantly relies on these militias, a prospect that many believe to be the Hezbollah-ization of Iraq.

Iran has been clear about its intentions on the role of PMF in Mosul and the future of its Shiite militias in Iraq. In late August, cleric Akram al Ka’bi, the leader of the Harakat al Nujaba, a main Iranian proxy militia in Iraq which is part of the PMF and is also heavily involved in Syria, traveled to Iran, met with the regime’s top officials including IRGC commanders and was given a platform to show his allegiance to the Iranian Supreme Leader and to echo the regime’s views about the Mosul offensive and the PMF’s future.

In his meeting with the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Ka’bi declared: “The battle for Mosul is a defining battle for the future of Iraq that could shape the future of Islamic resistance in Iraq. Mosul is the scene of battle against the US and Barzani, the leader of Kurdistan who wants to create a pro-Israeli government in Kurdistan.”

In his press conference, Ka’bi declared that “No country including the US can prevent us from participating in the Mosul offensive and cannot eliminate us and the PMF will continue its activities after the defeat of ISIS.”

He continued: “the PMF militants are trained by Hezbollah. We do not believe in geographical borders and commander Suleimani represents the resistance front in the world.”

In his interview with Iran state TV, Ka’bi declared that despite US opposition, the PMF would definitely participate in the Mosul offensive. He stated that the PMF could agree to be integrated into the Iraqi Defense Ministry only if its organizational structure, its hierarchy, and its leadership remain intact and the PMF is subordinated to resistance groups (a term used by the Iranian regime to identify its proxies across the Middle East).

In the meeting with Ali Akbar Velayati, top foreign policy advisor to the supreme leader, Velayati emphasized the significance of PMF participation in the Mosul offensive. According to Mashrigh news website, Ka’bi told Velayati that his militia follows the orders of Iran’s Supreme Leader.

A more aggressive Iran
In the absence of being held accountable for its crimes in Syria or its hegemonic drive across the region, Iran seems to be emboldened and on the offensive.

Since Iran and the 5+1 countries reached a nuclear agreement and the economic sanctions against Iran were lifted, Iran has become more aggressive in pursuing its radical agenda in the region. It has accelerated its missile program, increased its military support to Yemeni rebels who are firing Iranian missile to Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, increased support to Islamist groups in Palestine, expanded its military involvement in Syria, taken more American hostages and provoked US ships in the Arab Gulf.

Iran is also encouraged by the recent developments in Lebanon as its proxy Hezbollah successfully bullied the entire political establishment in Lebanon in surrendering to its demand and accept its candidate for the Lebanese Presidency.

For Iran, the participation of its proxy militias in the Mosul offensive and securing the continuation of their activities in Iraq is a sign of having the upper hand in the region.

Mashrigh, a website affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards, echoed this attitude in an editorial published on October 28: “The summit of three foreign ministers from Russia, Iran, and Syria in Moscow is a signal that these three countries have decided to take the offensive in the region. This change of attitude is well demonstrated by PMF’s decision to take part in the Mosul offensive. In the summit, the foreign ministers discussed the aftermath of ISIS defeat and how to counter US plots.”

Bleak outlook
PMF’s role in the Mosul offensive and the prospect that these Shiite militias remain active in Iraq will have disastrous consequences for Iraq and the whole region. These militias have a long record of accomplishment of sectarian violence and human rights abuses and are accused of war crimes in the Sunni regions of Iraq.

A US embassy cable from Baghdad dated December 9, 2009, that was revealed by WikiLeaks writes the following regarding Hadi Ameri, the head of PMF and the leader of Badr organization: “Ameri is widely known to have played a leading role in organizing attacks by the Badr Corps militia (the strongest, most disciplined Shia militia at the time and precursor to the current Badr Organization) against Sunnis during the sectarian violence of 2004-2006. Sources indicate that he may have personally ordered attacks on up to 2,000 Sunnis. One of his preferred methods of killing allegedly involved using a power drill to pierce the skulls of his adversaries.”

Since the creation of PMF in 2014, these militias have been involved in atrocities against Sunni minorities in Iraq. They have repeatedly been denounced by international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, which has reported “Evidence of war crimes by government-backed Shi’a militias.”

In January 2016, Human Rights Watch deputy Middle East director denounced these crimes and declared, “again civilians are paying the price for Iraq’s failure to rein in the out-of-control militias. Countries that support Iraqi security forces and the Popular Mobilization Forces should insist that Baghdad brings an end to this violent abuse.”

It is also imperative to note the role that Iran and its proxies have played to fuel sectarian tensions across the region and contributed to the rise of radical Sunni groups including ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

In March 2011, in the midst of the Arab Spring, the Syrian people rose up against the Bashar Assad regime. The regime’s security forces reacted brutally and used deadly force to crush the uprising. In response, to the government crackdown, Syrians took to arms and joined the Syrian Free Army. In late 2011, the anti-regime forces were on the brink of triumph to topple the Assad regime. At which point, the Iranian regime decided to intervene on a large-scale to prevent the downfall of Assad, deploying its Revolutionary Guards members along with Hezbollah fighters, Shiites from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Assad and Iranian force begun the widespread massacre of the Syrian people. As a result, the situation took a dramatic turn for the worse and became significantly more radicalized. As the Free Syrian Army and other moderate opposition groups became increasingly weakened, the extremist elements such as the Al-Nusra Front and ISIS grew intense.

Following the US troop’s withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011, the Iran-backed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his allies, the Shiite militias, stepped up their repressive and sectarian policies against a Sunni minority. Consequently, protests erupted in the Sunni-populated regions. The Maliki government suppressed and murdered protestors with renewed brutality. Sunnis rebelled in many of these regions creating a power vacuum in these areas.

In the spring of 2014, ISIS forces, which had already emerged and strengthened in Syria, exploited the rebellion in Sunni regions of Iraq against the central government and took over important Sunni-populated cities including Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, establishing dominance over significant parts of both Iraq and Syria.

Participation of Iran-backed Shiite militias in the Mosul offensive highlights the crucial issue of Iranian influence and role in Iraq. Since the fall of Saddam in 2003, Iran’s proxies have been the primary force in fueling sectarian tensions, undermining democracy and spreading violence and instability in Iraq and across the region.

The longer it takes for the Iraqi government and the international community to realize the need to confront Iran and its militias, the costlier it would be for the people in Iraq and the region.


The story was first published on November 9, 2016 on the website of the Arabian Gulf Center for Iranian Studies (ArabianGCIS)

Last Update: Friday, 11 November 2016 KSA 10:10 - GMT 07:10

 

[Housecarl]

THE PERILS OF CONVENTIONAL DETERRENCE BY PUNISHMENT
MICHAEL PETERSEN
NOVEMBER 11, 2016
http://warontherocks.com/2016/11/the-perils-of-conventional-deterrence-by-punishment/
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...*WINDS****of****WAR****&p=6262796#post6262796

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/th...ange-missiles-could-be-the-perfect-tool-18357

THE BUZZ

The U.S. Army’s Long-Range Missiles Could Be the Perfect Tool to Neutralize China’s Artificial Islands

How to push back.

http://nationalinterest.org/files/s...lic/main_images/shugarimage.png?itok=NGi-4XVY

Thomas Shugart [2]
November 10, 2016

Construction of China’s massive artificial island bases appears to be progressing rapidly [3], and is likely to transform [4] the military balance of power in the South China Sea. In an unclassified letter [5], Director of National Intelligence James Clapper assessed that the cluster of island bases will provide China with the ability to “deploy a range of offensive and defensive military capabilities,” as well as “significant capacity to quickly project substantial offensive military power to the region.” He also stated that the facilities would likely be “completed by the end of 2016 or early 2017,” a time frame that is now upon us.

In order to maintain the ability to intervene in defense of U.S. national interests in the South China Sea at a reasonable level of risk and cost, the United States needs to rapidly develop innovative plans and tools to deal with these island bases, with timelines measured in months rather than years.

Fortunately, military history has shown that the most effective military innovation usually takes place with just this sort of specific adversary and operational challenge in mind. As the scholars MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray demonstrate in The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050 [6], the major clusters of innovations that were developed during the interwar period—combined-arms ground warfare, carrier warfare and amphibious warfare—were inspired by the existence of concrete adversaries. Likewise, the Cold War–era first and second offset strategies [7] were intended to exploit U.S. advantages in nuclear weapons and precision-strike, respectively, against the specific challenge of the Soviet army in the European theater. As the U.S. Army and Marine Corps move ahead with their new multi-domain battle concept [8], the rapid development of China’s artificial island bases presents itself as a looming real-world problem that requires a specific military solution, and soon.

Enter the surface-to-surface missiles that either are or will be in the arsenals of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps: the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS [9], in service) and Long Range Precision Fires missile (LRPF [10], under development with a planned deployment date of 2027). While China has, over the last decade or two, deployed large numbers of precision-strike long-range surface-to-surface ballistic and cruise missiles, the United States has been slower to do so, limited in part by the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty but also by qualms [11] about the employment of non-nuclear ballistic missiles—concerns that the Chinese leadership clearly does not share. As a result, U.S. maritime power projection and large-volume precision-strike concepts have focused mostly on traditional (and relatively expensive) strike platforms such as fighters, long-range bombers and aircraft carriers. The proximity of China’s artificial islands to allied territory, along with the planned greater reach of the LRPF missile, could provide an opportunity for an alternative approach.

Some accounting is in order: first, based on recent export sales figures, individual ATACMS missiles appear to cost approximately $1.1 million [12] each; their associated air-transportable mobile launchers [13] cost approximately $3.5 million [14] apiece. While these missiles would not be appropriate for truly long-range, penetrating-strike or air-sea-control applications, for the particular problem set of “kicking down the door” of China’s artificial island bases, this appears to be a relatively inexpensive solution. This is especially the case when compared to risking other far-more-expensive strike platforms such as $100-million-or-so Joint Strike Fighters [15] or billion-dollar-plus warships, thereby freeing up those assets for deeper strikes or other high-priority operations.

As another consideration, the INF treaty [16], by which the United States still abides—for now [17], at least—but to which China is not a party, prohibits the possession of ground-launched cruise or ballistic missiles with a range of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Similarly, the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), a voluntary regime to which the United States also subscribes, restricts the export (by the United States) of missiles and related technologies capable of carrying a payload past three hundred kilometers. As a likely result, the maximum stated range of the current fielded (and exported) version of ATACMS is three hundred kilometers, and the maximum planned range of the next-generation LRPF missile [10] is five hundred kilometers—again, the range limit of the INF Treaty. Luckily for the United States and its allies, China has built all three of its largest artificial island bases within five hundred kilometers of the coast of the Philippines. Mischief Reef, the largest island [18] built so far, and Scarborough Shoal, seized by China from the Philippines in 2012, are both located within three hundred kilometers (see above graphic).

In the event of U.S.-PRC conflict in the South China Sea, one could envision the employment of a low-cost and brutally effective surface-to-surface missile barrage from the Philippine Islands. This campaign would rain down difficult-to-stop mach-3 missiles from road-mobile launchers [19] hidden in the rugged terrain of the Philippines onto China’s painstakingly constructed island bases. Stealthy ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) platforms such as low-observable drones or submarines (or even drones launched from submarines [20]) could essentially be used as artillery spotters, operating from within China’s anti-air/anti-ship missile umbrella to provide real-time fire direction and battle-damage assessment. The advantages of this concept would include reduced risk associated with keeping high-value, but non-stealthy, strike platforms outside of China’s anti-air and anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles’ coverage areas until after their reduction by U.S. ballistic missile fire.

Of note, ATACMS missiles were similarly used for air-defense suppression [21] during both U.S. invasions of Iraq as a way to strike missile defenses with low risk and reduce the danger to follow-on strike aircraft, and Air Force special-operations forces still train to do so [22]. Additionally, the relatively quick flight time (about ten minutes at the most) and potential speed of targeting (little strike package planning required) could help to negate the current ability of China’s road-mobile missile systems to pack up and move frequently or after detecting an inbound subsonic cruise-missile attack. Given the air-transportability of the latest mobile ATACMS/LRPF launchers [14], they could rapidly be flown in to deal with this target set.

Given recent outbursts [23] of anti-Americanism by the Philippine head of state, the promulgation of this specific operational concept could help to clarify in the minds of Philippine leadership that a stable relationship, a financial commitment to buy the necessary weapons systems and a commitment on its part to the use of its territory both in peacetime preparation and in time of conflict, would be necessary preconditions to U.S. cooperation to support alliance commitments in the Spratly Islands and at Scarborough Shoal.

Ideally, the quiet but relentless pursuit of a disproportionately cost-imposing operational plan to neutralize China’s island bases might have a much-needed deterrent effect [24] on plans to continue to militarize them. While the United States has already demonstrated the ability to deploy ATACMS [25] to the Philippines, Manila has shown interest [26] in buying the system and development of the LRPF missile has been quite public, the resulting potential peril to China’s island bases could be made more explicit. For example, additional deterrent value could be gained by the demonstration of rapid and large-scale joint deployment (via U.S. Air Force heavy lift) of Marine and Army ATACMS units, with large numbers of missile reloads brought in by Navy high-speed logistics ships [27] into austere port facilities—as they might have to be in the face of China’s own land-attack ballistic and cruise missiles.

Just as important, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps should radically accelerate the development and large-scale purchase of the LRPF missile, which, at current pace, is years from operational deployment. The United States should also demonstrate, to both our allies and to China, that in the case of a unilateral U.S. intervention from offshore to uphold maritime rule of law or freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, these missiles could even be fired from logistics vessels or any other platform with an open deck that can carry a truck-mounted launcher. Perhaps the United States should also consider a specific waiver to the current U.S. policy on submunitions [28] to support their use against China’s artificial islands, which, after all, were built from scratch as isolated facilities with no native civilian population. In any case, the timeline for action is short.

For quite a while now, U.S. policymakers and planners have spent much time and effort—and, as stated [29] by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John M. Richardson, sometimes too much—fretting about the range arcs representing China’s various counterintervention systems. In this case, China may have erred by putting massive resources and political capital into building island bases that could happen to reside within range of near-future U.S. surface-to-surface missile systems. The accelerated development and employment of the Army and Marine Corps’ ballistic missiles for this problem set could provide an opportunity to force China’s planners and policymakers to start drawing some unsettling range arcs of their own.

Thomas Shugart [30] is a senior military fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a submarine warfare officer in the U.S. Navy. The opinions expressed here are the author’s and do not represent the official position of the U.S. Navy, Department of Defense or the U.S. government.

Image Credit: 300 km (limit of Missile Technology Control Regime) and 500 km (INF Treaty limit) range arcs from main Philippine islands. Google Earth.

Tags
China [31]U.S. Army [32]Army [33]US Army [34]Military [35]Missiles [36]Technology [37]
Topics
Security [38]
Regions
Asia [39]
Source URL (retrieved on November 12, 2016): http://nationalinterest.org/blog/th...ange-missiles-could-be-the-perfect-tool-18357
Links:
[1] http://nationalinterest.org/blog/th...ange-missiles-could-be-the-perfect-tool-18357
[2] http://nationalinterest.org/profile/thomas-shugart
[3] https://amti.csis.org/island-tracker/chinese-occupied-features/
[4] http://warontherocks.com/2016/09/ch...-are-bigger-and-a-bigger-deal-than-you-think/
[5] https://news.usni.org/2016/03/08/do...militarization-reclamation-in-south-china-sea
[6] http://amzn.to/2eJOgAn
[7] http://warontherocks.com/2014/10/offset-strategies-warfighting-regimes/
[8] http://warontherocks.com/2016/09/multi-domain-battle-a-new-concept-for-land-forces/
[9] http://www.lockheedmartin.com/conte...1a-unitary/mfc-atacms-block-1a-unitary-pc.pdf
[10] http://nationalinterest.org/blog/th...launched-missile-raining-down-death-500-17606
[11] http://breakingdefense.com/2012/12/pentagons-global-strike-weapon-stuck-in-limbo-congress-fears-a/
[12] http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/1454M-for-130-Export-ATACMS-Missile-Pods-06977/
[13] http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/himars.html
[14] http://www.bga-aeroweb.com/Defense/HIMARS.html
[15] http://nationalinterest.org/blog/th...f-35-program-became-boringly-successful-18280
[16] http://www.state.gov/t/avc/trty/102360.htm
[17] http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-accuses-russia-of-violating-missile-treaty-1476912606
[18] https://amti.csis.org/mischief-reef-tracker/
[19] http://www.marines.com/operating-forces/equipment/vehicles/himars
[20] https://news.usni.org/2016/03/31/navy-set-to-buy-awesum-miniature-sub-launched-uavs
[21] http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA429075
[22] http://warontherocks.com/2016/11/offsetting-air-superiority-with-air-force-special-operations/
[23] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-philippines-idUSKCN12K0AS
[24] http://warontherocks.com/2016/10/healeys-wrong-its-deterrence-stupid/
[25] https://amti.csis.org/balikatan-exercise-highlights-territorial-defense-multilateral-approach/
[26] http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/stor...pressed-by-us-missile-system-mulls-buying-one
[27] http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=4200&tid=1100&ct=4
[28] http://www.acq.osd.mil/tc/treaties/ccwapl/DoD Policy on Cluster Munitions.pdf
[29] https://news.usni.org/2016/10/03/cno-richardson-navy-shelving-a2ad-acronym
[30] https://www.cnas.org/people/cdr-thomas-shugart-uscg
[31] http://nationalinterest.org/tag/china
[32] http://nationalinterest.org/tag/us-army
[33] http://nationalinterest.org/tag/army
[34] http://nationalinterest.org/tag/us-army-0
[35] http://nationalinterest.org/tag/military
[36] http://nationalinterest.org/tag/missiles
[37] http://nationalinterest.org/tag/technology
[38] http://nationalinterest.org/topic/security
[39] http://nationalinterest.org/region/aisa

 

[Housecarl]

This shouldn't be too much of a surprise when everything is taken into account....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.voanews.com/a/former-afg...an-militarily-supporting-taliban/3592267.html

Former Afghan Intel Chief Accuses Pakistan of Militarily Supporting Taliban

November 11, 2016 10:56 AM
Ayesha Tanzeem

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN —
Former Afghan Intelligence Chief Accuses Pakistan of Militarily Supporting Taliban

Afghanistan’s former spy chief has accused Pakistan of helping the Afghan Taliban militarily, as well as providing them with safe havens..

In an exclusive interview with VOA in Kabul, Rahmatullah Nabil, the former head of the National Directorate of Security, said Pakistan helped create a strike force called the Red Force or Red Brigade in late 2014, and that it started operating in early 2015 when international forces had mostly left and surveillance had been reduced.

Initially, Nabil added, almost 3,000 people were recruited to fight in southern Afghanistan. They were divided into cells of 25 fighters assigned to one handler from Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI.

Each fighter was armed with an AK-47 and each cell received portable rocket launchers or machine guns like an RPG-7, a PKM, an 85-millimeter gun, and a Dushka machine gun.

He said there were signs that these cells were involved in conflict in Farah, Helmand, Ghazni, and Uruzgan, some of the provinces that have seen heavy fighting between members of the Afghan security forces and Taliban.

http://gdb.voanews.com/679BC1FB-0647-4B4E-B4C8-49CDEA29D474_w610_r1_s.png

Explosive charges

Nabil also accused Pakistan of reopening and distributing weapons from at least four depots that he said were last used to dispense firearms to Mujahedeen fighters during the conflict with the former Soviet Union.

He said the depots were close to the Pakistani cities of Quetta, Miramshah, Peshawar, and Spin Tal.

Pakistan strongly denies allegations it supports the Afghan Taliban.

Lt. Gen. Ehsanul Haq, the former head of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, called the allegations “absolutely ridiculous.”

If Afghanistan was worried about militants coming from this side, he said, the best solution was to “harden, regulate, and stabilize” the border between the two countries, but that the Afghan government balked at any such suggestion.

Nabil, a longtime critic of Pakistan, was forced to resign after he publicly criticized his boss, President Ashraf Ghani, for engaging with Pakistan and trying to secure Pakistan’s help in restarting peace talks with the Afghan Taliban after an initial round failed.

Flow of militants

He now runs the charity Help for Afghan Heroes, which works for families of Afghan national security personnel killed or wounded in battle.

The former spy chief also criticized Pakistan’s military operation, called Zarb-e-Azb, saying it deliberately helped push some militants across the border into Afghanistan.

The operation, he said, was intentionally launched at a time when Afghan forces were busy with the second round of presidential elections and could not control militants crossing to their side of the border.

Nabil accused Pakistan of relocating several Afghan Taliban, particularly members of the Haqqani network, to other areas of Pakistan before launching its military operation, along with opening several mountain passes to allow some of them *— along with members of other international militant groups like Jundullah, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) — to cross over to Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials have said they shared their plans with both the government in Kabul and NATO forces in Afghanistan well ahead of time, but that both failed to take the necessary actions against possible infiltration of militants during the operation.

Competing interests

Commenting on reports of Iran’s support for the Taliban, the former spy chief said the country is using the Taliban as a tactical tool because it is afraid of Islamic State gaining ground. Most of the Iranian support, he explained, was in western Afghanistan bordering Iran, in the form of money or small arms.

He also said Russia’s interest in Afghanistan had increased since 2014 when violence reached northern Afghanistan near areas Russia considered its backyard.

Intelligence cooperation between China and Afghanistan, according to Nabil, had increased significantly during the last few years.

Afghanistan, he added, handed several members of ETIM to China that had been trained in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city.

That was when, according to Nabil, China’s interest in Afghanistan’s peace process increased and it became part of the efforts to help facilitate peace talks between the Afghan Taliban and Afghan government.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-N...y-base-near-North-Korea-border/1451478925020/

Report: China building new military base near North Korea border

By Elizabeth Shim
Nov. 11, 2016 at 11:34 PM

SEOUL, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- China is building on its military presence at its border with North Korea, a source in North Korea tells Radio Free Asia.

Beijing is also doing its part to keep out defectors, and is constructing more barbed-wire fences, according to the report.

The source in North Hamgyong Province said a large-scale military facility in the Chinese city of Longjing, in Jilin Province, has been under development.

The base faces the Sambong workers' zone in the North Korean county of Onsong.

Kaishan Tunzhen South Mountain Community, where the base has been under construction since August, is coping with the changes, and local residents are being relocated because of the military, according to the RFA report.

"Heavy equipment and material are being brought in order for building to take place," the source said.

North Korea is responding to the new measures by deploying about 20 soldiers to monitor the situation from the Sambong workers' zone.

A Korean-Chinese source in Longjing said the government's measures are "unprecedented" in the area close to the border.

"The Chinese leadership seems to preparing for the collapse of the North Korean regime," the source said.

Barbed wire fencing along the border in Yanbian prefecture have been reinforced as well, another source in the area told RFA.

"Fencing that was washed away due to the flooding of the Tumen River and old rusted barbed wire have all been replaced with new barbed wire," the source said.

The barrier not only keeps out refugees but would also cause trade to diminish.

Authorities are also cracking down on border crimes, which have included murder and burglaries, according to the report.


Related UPI Stories
Japan, South Korea expected to finalize intelligence sharing, Seoul says
'Kim Fatty III' reference to Kim Jong Un deleted from Chinese Internet
Experts weigh in on Donald Trump's future Korea policy

 

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http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/i...uicide-bombing-muslim-shrine-pakistan-n682971

NEWS
NOV 12 2016, 6:42 PM ET

ISIS Claims Responsibility for Deadly Suicide Bombing at Muslim Shrine in Pakistan

by WAJAHAT S. KHAN, REUTERS and ELIZABETH CHUCK

A suicide bombing claimed by ISIS rocked a Muslim shrine in a remote part of southwestern Pakistan just before sunset Saturday, killing more than 50 people, officials said.

The attack, which also injured dozens, happened while hundreds of people were gathered for worship at Dargah Shah Noorani, a shrine in Balochistan province.

The attack occurred in the women's section of the shrine. At least 52 people, mostly women and children, were killed, Balochistan Interior Minister Mir Sarfaraz Bugti told NBC News.

"The area is isolated and dark, and it is not even reachable by car but only by foot, so we are expecting higher casualties," added Ghulam Ali, an ambulance dispatch operator.

Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps said it had moved 40 dead from the site along with another 100 injured.

The government dispatched 25 ambulances from the nearby town of Hub to the shrine, said Akbar Harifal, provincial home secretary for Baluchistan.

Sarfaraz Bugti, home minister of Balochistan, told NBC News that "right now, our sole focus is rescue. This place is tough to get to, and tough to get casualties out of."

A Sindh Rangers officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to NBC News that the attack was a suicide bombing. He said the Army, Frontier Corps and Rangers were on their way to assist, and a medical helicopter was attempting a landing.

Related: Quetta Bombing: Dozens Killed in Attack Targeting Pakistan Hospital

ISIS claimed responsibility for the blast in a statement released by the group's news agency.

This is the third major terror attack in Balochistan in the last few months. A suicide bombing in a Quetta hospital killed 81 in August, while a gun and suicide attack killed over 50 police cadets when their barracks were stormed last month. Both attacks were claimed by ISIS.

The province is key to a $46 billion transport and trade corridor between Pakistan and China, which hinges on a deep-water port in the southwestern city of Gwadar.

The region remains rocked by attacks. In Afghanistan on Saturday, a man wearing a suicide vest killed two American service members and two American contractors inside the largest NATO military base in the country, the Pentagon said. Another 16 U.S. service members and a Polish soldier were injured in the blast.

 

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ssian-missiles-jolt-oldest-ex-soviet-conflict

Kamikaze Drones, Russian Missiles Jolt Oldest Ex-Soviet Feud

Zulfugar Agayev
November 13, 2016 — 1:00 PM PST Updated on November 14, 2016 — 6:12 AM PST

- Tensions mounting after worst outbreak of fighting in decades
- Arms race between Armenia, Azerbaijan sidelining peace efforts

Old grievances are being aired with new force in the former Soviet Union’s longest-running conflict.

Armenia and Azerbaijan, technically at war over the Nagorno-Karabakh region despite a cease-fire brokered by Russia 22 years ago, are beefing up their arsenals just seven months after the worst fighting in two decades. Armenia has acquired Russian-made Iskander ballistic missiles, while Azerbaijan says it’s tested combat drones produced with Israel and is in talks with Pakistan to buy high-tech weapons.

“We have a much more serious arms race,” said Zaur Shiriyev, an academy associate at Chatham House in London. “It will significantly increase the chance of future outbreaks.”

The rearmament is raising the stakes should tensions flare again between Russian ally Armenia and Azerbaijan, close to NATO member Turkey, after the two neighbors spent almost $27 billion on defense in 2005-2015. The conflict, within striking distance of a BP Plc-led oil pipeline, is once more showing signs of boiling over as talks mediated by Russia and the U.S. run aground and uncertainty mounts after Donald Trump’s election as American president.

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Armenians took over Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts from Azerbaijan after the 1991 Soviet breakup. The conflict killed 30,000 people and displaced more than a million. No peace accord was signed despite talks involving Russia, the U.S. and France halting major hostilities in 1994.
The enclave’s mainly Armenian population declared independence in 1991, which hasn’t been recognized internationally, and insists on its right to self-determination. Azerbaijan says it’s ready to grant more autonomy than the region enjoyed during the Soviet period, but demands respect for its territorial integrity.

Military Might

Azerbaijan, the third-largest crude producer in the former Soviet Union, has converted its oil wealth into battlefield might, becoming Europe’s largest importer of major weapons in the decade through 2015 by spending $22.7 billion on the military in the period, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Its annual defense spending eclipses Armenia’s entire state budget.

The largess has been a boon for companies like Uralvagonzavod, the state-run maker of battle tanks in central Russia since World War II, and Elbit Systems Ltd., Israel’s biggest publicly traded defense contractor.

Violence surged in April, when more than 200 troops were killed on both sides in four days of fighting that involved hundreds of tanks and aircraft. Azerbaijan regained control of several hills lost to Armenians 23 years ago, before another Russian-engineered truce.

New cease-fire violations were reported last week, which the belligerents blamed on each other, accusing the opposing side of using large-caliber mortars for the first time since April. At least three soldiers were confirmed killed in October.

‘Kamikaze Drones’

April’s clashes featured the first known use of “kamikaze drones” by Azerbaijan, with the explosive-tipped aircraft slamming into a bus carrying Armenian volunteers. Media including Radio Free Europe claimed to have identified the weapons as Israeli-made Harop drones. The Azeri and Israeli defense ministries both declined to confirm or deny that Harops were used.

Azerbaijan said in September that it would build “hundreds” of kamikaze and other combat drones using Israeli technology. Speaking on Saturday while visiting Azeri troops stationed southeast of Nagorno-Karabakh at one of the hills recaptured in April, President Ilham Aliyev said his country has already purchased modern weapons worth billions and intends to buy more. Aliyev called on Armenia to “draw lessons” from the last bout of fighting and vowed to recapture control of the breakaway region.

Armenia has also bolstered its capabilities, getting a $200 million loan from Russia to buy and modernize weapons and other military equipment. In a document dated Nov. 12, President Vladimir Putin approved an agreement on creating a joint military force with Armenia and instructed officials to complete the remaining negotiations. The group, which plans to operate in the Caucasus region, will be responsible for defending the borders of Russia and Armenia and rebuffing an attack on either party.

In Cross-Hairs

Armenia showcased its Iskander missiles at an Independence Day parade in September in Yerevan, the capital. Stationing the short-range rockets in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s BP-operated Sangachal oil-and-gas-processing terminal south of Baku would fall within firing range. Azerbaijan has attracted more than $60 billion of investments in energy projects by BP and its partners in the past 20 years.
A spokesman for Russia’s state-run arms trader Rosoboronexport, Vyacheslav Davidenko, declined to comment on any weapons provided to Armenia.

Russia has stressed that is also sells military hardware to Azerbaijan. It supplied the missiles through the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a post-Soviet military alliance, according to the Vedomosti business newspaper.

Shifting Balance?

“Armenia sought to use this display to deter Azerbaijan from a further attack and to demonstrate a solid position in the recently shifting military balance of power,” said Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center in Yerevan. “This missile system is capable of reaching significant infrastructure and vulnerable targets in around Baku and throughout Azerbaijan. This is why the balance of power is now more equal.”

Azerbaijan rejects any shift in the military balance, and Armenia’s missile display certainly hasn’t eased tensions. The Azeri Defense Ministry responded by holding drills involving Russian-made S-300 air-defense systems and threatened to retaliate with “thousands of rockets” should Armenia try to use “a few” of its missiles. Deadly clashes around the conflict zone resumed last month, while Azerbaijan began some of its biggest-ever military drills on Nov. 12.

The military one-upmanship has complicated mediation. Talks over a settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh are deadlocked, according to Russia, which helped arrange a June meeting between the Azeri and Armenian presidents. U.S., Russian and French diplomats failed to persuade them to meet again soon.

Meanwhile, the possible cost of any renewed violence is rising.

“Russia’s delivery of Iskander missiles and other heavy weapons systems to Armenia” has the potential to “raise the costs to both sides of a potential future armed conflict,” said Matthew Bryza, an ex-U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state who also served as an ambassador to Azerbaijan and brokered talks over Karabakh.

 

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http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se...-raises-questions-about-chinas-strategic-aims

Malacca harbour plan raises questions about China's strategic aims

PUBLISHED NOV 14, 2016, 5:00 AM SGT

Shannon Teoh Malaysia Correspondent In Kuala Lumpur
A RM43 billion (S$14 billion) harbour being developed in Malacca aims to overtake Singapore as the largest port in the region, but questions are being raised about the need for the added capacity and whether China's eager participation has to do with good business or its crucial strategic interests in the Malacca Strait.

For China, not only does most of its trade pass through the Malacca Strait, but so does up to 80 per cent of its energy needs. This prompted then President Hu Jintao to make the "Malacca Dilemma" a key strategic issue as far back as 2003.

"There is the strategic element of the Malacca Strait. It always starts with an economic presence, which can develop into a naval one, because China will be obliged to ensure the safe passage of its commercial ships," said Dr Johan Saravanamuttu of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, who studies the Malaysia-China relationship.

The Melaka Gateway joint venture is part of a wider port alliance between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing to increase bilateral trade and boost shipping and logistics along China's much-vaunted Maritime Silk Road.

Chinese firm Guangxi Beibu International Port Group already owns 40 per cent of Kuantan port, which faces the disputed waters of the South China Sea, and 49 per cent of the Kuantan Industrial Park in Pahang, the home state of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.

The Malaysian authorities are talking up the game-changing Melaka Gateway deal between little-known KAJ Developments and energy giant PowerChina International, which will form a joint venture and spend RM30 billion to reclaim three islands off Malacca's coast. The entire Gateway development will be completed in 2025 but the deep-sea port is expected to be ready by 2019. The Malaysian government hopes to attract the bulk of 100,000 vessels, most of them Chinese, that ply the Malacca Strait annually.

http://www.straitstimes.com/sites/default/files/st_20161114_port14_2740099.jpg

Some industry players have expressed concern about the cannibalising of existing ports along the strait, especially in the light of Singapore's own port expansion.

Though the Malaysian government has said a new port is needed because Klang, the country's most important port, will be full by 2020, studies appear to show otherwise.

A World Bank study commissioned by the government last year showed a new port on Malaysia's west coast is not necessary, as existing facilities have yet to reach capacity, according to sources. Both operators at Port Klang - Westports and MMC - have also made expansion proposals that would double the port's capacity, the sources added.

"Because there seems to be no logic to the Melaka deal, many are questioning if this has more to do with military rather than commercial interests," a logistics player told The Straits Times.

Sources also said the reclaimed islands would be given freehold status and the port granted a 99-year concession - both rare and generous terms. Melaka Gateway did not respond to a request for comment.

China's military presence around Malaysian waters has increased significantly since last year. In September last year, all three branches of the Chinese armed forces took part in a six-day joint exercise on "disaster relief" in the Malacca Strait.

China has also gained access to Kota Kinabalu, a crucial dock in Sabah close to the disputed Spratly Islands, where Beijing's construction activities have been a source of diplomatic strife in the region.

A former port authority chief noted that China has made moves to reduce its reliance on the Malacca Strait, such as via port-and-rail or pipeline projects in Pakistan, Myanmar and Eastern Europe, which means "we cannot take Beijing's commitment here for granted".

"If China pulls out her support, the port becomes useless because it has no hinterland, unlike Klang and Penang which serve a big local market. In fact, many businesses prefer to send their goods to Klang by road instead of the existing Malacca or Penang ports because it is more efficient."

Critics have questioned Malay- sia's over-reliance on China, in the light of the huge deals struck during Datuk Seri Najib's recent visit to Beijing, as well as a whopping RM55 billion loan to build a railway that will eventually link Port Klang on the west and Kuantan port in Pahang and also Terengganu and Kelantan.

"There is the question of over-dependence, and the diplomatic leverage involved if Beijing were to move in more aggressively. So far, Najib is still hedging, but when it comes to investments, you can't expect as much from America as you can from China. If you want to go up against Singapore, then this port makes sense, especially when it is in the form of foreign investment, given Malaysia's fiscal constraints," said Dr Saravanamuttu.

Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai batted away these concerns on his return from Beijing, telling reporters that "with the economy growing, we need more ports". He said: "The port alliance... has seen results, bringing more competitiveness to our ports and logistic sectors."

 

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/14/u-s-can-t-find-isis-prisoners.html

THE DISAPPEARED

U.S. Can’t Find ISIS Prisoners

Captured ISIS fighters should be an invaluable source of intelligence in the fight for the terror group’s Iraqi capital. But U.S. forces have only questioned ‘a handful’ of them.

NANCY A. YOUSSEF
11.13.16 10:15 PM ET

It’s the most important battle in the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State to date: the fight to retake Mosul, the terror group’s Iraqi capital. But so far, the U.S. military does not know how many ISIS fighters have been taken prisoner, a senior defense official explained to The Daily Beast.

Iraq’s security forces have allowed the U.S. military to interview fewer than “a handful” of detained fighters under Iraqi control since the Mosul offensive began in mid-October, a U.S. defense official told The Daily Beast. The official could not say if any of those detainees were captured before the Mosul offensive, or after it began.

“We do occasionally get access to detainees that the Iraqis capture,” a second defense official said. “But it’s rare.”

Iraqi officials have said hundreds of ISIS fighters have died so far in the three-week-long battle; U.S. officials estimate a smaller number have fled. It is those fleeing forces that evade capture that are a potentially lost source of intelligence for the U.S. and its allies—and an opening for ISIS fighters to creep back into Mosul, U.S. officials concede.

Asked by The Daily Beast whether the U.S. military knew the number of ISIS fighters that had been captured, the first official replied, “Nope.”

In contrast, the U.S. military during its last war in Iraq had access to thousands of Iraqi prisoners—and the intelligence they provided. But observers said the lack of detainees this time around reflects an ISIS eager to fight. And it shows the limits of a war in a city littered with bombs and tunnels, and home to hundreds of thousands of civilians.

“You can’t do these capture operations in the middle of the urban warfare. It’s too dangerous. We didn’t capture many people in the [U.S.-led] Fallujah battles of 2004,” James Jeffrey, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2010-2012, explained to The Daily Beast.

Jeffrey said the lack of the detainees who could provide intelligence is the cost of not having U.S. troops involved in frontline combat, who could hold suspected ISIS fighters, even temporarily, to interrogate them.

“Some of that intelligence would be helpful not for [learning about] longer term ISIS plans”—the frontline fighters are unlikely to know about such strategic aims—“but for specific intelligence on the fight for Mosul itself,” said Jeffrey, the Philip Solondz distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Human Rights Watch offered a more troubling explanation for the lack of reported detainees, saying it believes that Iraqi and Kurdish forces have detained “at least 37 men from areas around Mosul and Hawija suspected of being affiliated with the Islamic State” and that government officials have not allowed those detainees to make outside contact.

“Human Rights Watch spoke to 46 relatives and witnesses, who described how security forces took the men from checkpoints, villages, screening centers, and camps for displaced people. Most said that they did not know where the men are being held and all of them said that the men have not been able to contact them while in detention,” the group said in a statement.

In the war against ISIS in Mosul, the number of fighters detained is the dog that doesn’t bark. ISIS repeatedly has urged its troops to fight to the death, declaring anything short of that punishable by execution. On the other side of the battlefield, neither the Iraqis nor the Americans, for their own reasons, are eager to hold detainees. And if HRW is correct, some Iraqi forces don’t want to say how many detainees they are holding.

The status of detained ISIS fighters “is something I have never heard come up in a briefing with the Iraqis,” the second defense official said about briefings between the U.S. and Iraqi military.

To be sure, both Iraqi and Kurdish forces have arrested hundreds of fighters but what it is less clear is how many have remained in custody. One Kurdish official told The Daily Beast that Kurdish forces alone had detained hundreds of militants, but could not say how many remain in their custody, adding that any suspected ISIS fighter would be handed over to the Iraqis. Since most suspected ISIS fighters are Iraqis, they are not considered prisoners of war but detainees in their own country. There are international rules for the treatment of prisoners of war but each nation decides how to treat its own criminals. And therefore it is up to the Iraqi government if it will expend resources to bring a case against a prisoner through its tenuous court system. Releasing or mistreating those in custody, for some, are easier alternatives.

The U.S. military has agreed to notify the International Committee of the Red Cross within two weeks of taking a detainee in Iraq, but it is not clear if the Iraqis have made a similar agreement with the ICRC.

Given the seemingly limited number of ISIS fighters captured, the war against ISIS increasingly appears to end with death or flight. When roughly 100 ISIS fighters launched a surprise attack last month on the Iraqi city of Rutbah, for example, half the ISIS fighters involved were killed in the 36-hour battle, U.S. Air Force Col. John Dorrian told The Daily Beast.

“Most of them were killed in place. Some of them were trying to escape the city and were struck by coalition airstrikes,” Dorrian told reporters during an Oct. 28 briefing.

With ISIS fighters either fleeing or dying, U.S. hopes to glean intelligence through the fight to retake Mosul will hinge on information discovered in documents and electronic files, not through prolonged interrogations. And if enough ISIS fighters are able to flee, as they have so far in Mosul, that could stoke fears among Iraq’s Sunni population that the terror group could return, making it harder for Iraq’s central government to gain the confidence of the population needed to retain control of the city after the battle ends.

“The issue of fleeing ISIS fighters is an indicator of whether local Sunni Arabs or alleged former ISIS fighters feel that their security and interests will be protected by the force that defeats ISIS. If they don’t believe it, they have no incentive to remain in the territory cleared of ISIS or to disarm and re-integrate,” Jennifer Cafarella, a Syria analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

There could be more ISIS detainees in the weeks ahead, as Iraqi Security Forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters start the block-by-block clearance of Mosul, Pentagon officials said, as it will be much harder for ISIS militants to flee in that urban environment. Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga forces first reached the city borders last week.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi hinted at the possibility of increased detainees in his comments last week, when he called for ISIS fighters in Mosul to “surrender or die.” There are Iraqi detention centers set up south of the city for such detainees, Pentagon officials said, but no indication the Iraqi forces could handle a large number of detainees.

“We will close in on [ISIS] from all angles and God willing we will cut the snake’s head. They will have no way out and no way to escape,” al-Abadi said on state television, while dressed in combat fatigues.

The belief that ISIS will not surrender has led local forces to conclude that the only way to defeat ISIS fighters is to kill them, Pentagon officials concede. After all, no one is pushing Iraqi security forces to grab fighters that could be laden with explosives and prepared to kill Iraqi troops in suicide missions. Moreover, taking detainees slows down operations and such detainees demand housing, food, and eventually a judicial process.

The U.S. troops joining local forces in the push against Mosul are only there in an advisory role, Pentagon officials have said. And the U.S. has largely gotten out of the detention business in Iraq after a sordid history during the 2003-2011 occupation. Photos of U.S. troops humiliating and mistreating prisoners held in Abu Ghraib become some of the most defining images of a U.S. presence that fell far short of its promise be liberators for Iraqis living under Saddam Hussein’s regime. At its peak in 2007, there were roughly 50,000 Iraqi detainees—half of whom were held by American forces.

In 2015, the U.S. military acknowledged building a makeshift detention center for high-value ISIS detainees, but so far has only admitted to holding one such person: suspected ISIS chemical-weapons expert and Iraqi national Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, who was captured by U.S. special-forces commanders in February; U.S. officials did not acknowledge al-Afari’s capture until a month later.

Officials said then that al-Afari provided so much intelligence, it led to additional strikes on the terror group’s chemical-weapons facilities.

The best-known ISIS detainee was Umm Sayyaf, who was captured during a May 2015 raid that targeted her husband, Abu Sayyaf, a top-level ISIS operative who oversaw gas and oil operations. Umm Sayyaf was initially held by the U.S., but was handed over to Kurdish authorities in August. Like al-Afari, U.S. officials said she provided a tremendous amount of intelligence about internal ISIS operations and its detention of American citizen Kayla Mueller, who according to ISIS, died in February 2015.

Perhaps that’s one reason why ISIS has been so forceful in urging its fighters to not be captured. ISIS declared to its fighters that surrendering is a crime punishable by death. And there is evidence the terror group has followed through on that charge. Earlier this month, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights received reports that ISIS killed 50 of its own militants at the Ghazlani military base in Mosul for “alleged desertion.”

 

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http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/us-on-alert-for-new-nuclear-or-missile-test-by-north-korea

U.S. on alert for new nuclear or missile test by North Korea

By: Kirk Spitzer, USA Today, November 14, 2016 (Photo Credit: Senior Airman Colville McFee/Air Force)

TOKYO — Among the pressing issues facing President-elect Donald Trump when he takes office on Inauguration Day will be North Korea’s rogue nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs — and a crisis might not wait that long.

U.S. forces and allies in Japan and South Korea are on alert for a new missile launch after recent satellite imagery that showed what appeared to be potential preparations at North Korea’s Sohae launch facility.

North Korea has carried out two nuclear weapons tests and dozens of missile tests and launches this year in defiance of U.N. sanctions. Although not all the missile tests have been successful, the North has made significant advances in developing nuclear weapons and the technology needed to mount them to long-range missiles.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said last week it was closely monitoring moves by the North Korean military at its Punggye-ri nuclear test site and other possible missile-launching sites and is prepared to respond to any provocative acts, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported.

“North Korea is preparing more launches, and it has also been continuously showing eagerness about nuclear tests and miniaturization of nuclear warheads,” Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada said recently in Tokyo.

North Korea’s leaders have often timed weapons tests or other provocative actions to key dates and events at home or overseas as a way of drawing attention to its demands.

About 36,000 U.S. and Japanese troops and hundreds of aircraft and warships took part in a major exercise held every two years that ended Friday in and around Japan and the western Pacific that was pegged, at least in part, to ballistic missile defense.

In a statement released last month, U.S. Forces-Japan said training scenarios for the exercise will include “integrated air and missile defense and ballistic missile defense in order to keep pace with the growing ballistic missile threat in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.”

North Korea’s advances in nuclear weapons and missile technology make defense planners “nervous and alarmed,” said Narushige Michishita, director of the security and international studies program at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

He said the most recent nuclear test, in September, showed North Korea is capable of building a weapon equivalent in power to the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima in World War II .

North Korea has at least 12, and perhaps as many as 20, functional nuclear weapons and is likely to have an arsenal of 50 to 100 nuclear weapons within the next five years, Michishita said.

North Korea has 200 to 320 medium-range Nodong ballistic missiles that can reach major cities in Japan, along with key U.S. military bases there. The longer-range Musudan missile could threaten U.S. bases in Guam and Alaska. North Korea is developing two other missile variants with range to strike parts of the continental USA.

 

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-pivot-to-asia-1479145312

OPINION COMMENTARY

Trump’s Pivot to Asia

The president-elect will need to renounce his campaign rhetoric to preserve stability in Asia.

By MICHAEL AUSLIN
Updated Nov. 14, 2016 4:09 p.m. ET
7 COMMENTS

Within 48 hours of being elected president of the United States, Donald Trump was in touch with America’s two main allies in Asia. A phone call from South Korean President Park Geun-hye and an agreement to meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in New York this week began the transition from campaigning to governing, laying the groundwork for policies that will come into effect in January. Still, this cooperative start to Mr. Trump’s Asia policy doesn’t erase the many problems he will face once inaugurated.

While not unexpected, the president-elect’s willingness to talk with both Ms. Park and Mr. Abe marks a change from his campaign trail rhetoric. He shocked friends and adversaries alike by openly questioning the value of key regional alliances, threatening to walk away from them if Tokyo and Seoul failed to pay more for the privilege of hosting U.S. forces for their own defense. Mr. Trump even indicated he might encourage both countries to pursue an independent nuclear capability, thereby ending the decades-long American guarantee of extended deterrence.

Mr. Trump also mused about a potential trade war in Asia, punishing both China and Japan for their supposed currency manipulation and unfair trading practices. His adamant rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) showed disregard for years of negotiations and the promise of a new liberal trade architecture in the Asia-Pacific.

These campaign specifics and his general “America First” policy raised alarm bells among U.S. allies and engendered mixed emotions in Beijing, which welcomed his embryonic distancing from Japan and South Korea but worried about economic tension.

Mr. Trump’s policy musings, however, were not the first signs of danger in Asia. Despite the Obama administration’s enthusiastic Asia pivot, relations with China worsened over the past few years. Beijing has built and militarized islands in contested waters of the South China Sea and lately drawn both the Philippines and Malaysia closer to its embrace.

As for North Korea, the Obama policy of “strategic restraint” has resulted only in an intensification of Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs. This has led South Korean thinkers and media to call for either the reintroduction of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons or the pursuit of an indigenous nuclear program.

Mr. Obama’s failure to make TPP a legislative priority before leaving office has also soured relations with other signatories, including Japan, whose lower house of the Diet ratified the treaty the day after Mr. Trump’s victory.

In his conversation with Ms. Park, Korean sources say, Mr. Trump reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to South Korea. That will be welcome news to those worried about how North Korea’s Kim Jong-un would take advantage of a distancing between the allies. Mr. Trump should also push for the timely introduction of the Thaad anti-missile system, as a signal for Pyongyang to reconsider any provocations it may have planned.

As for Japan, Mr. Trump seems to have a longtime antipathy toward the country. It was thus a bold move for Mr. Abe to request a meeting so soon, and to have been willing to fly to the U.S. ahead of the APEC summit to meet the president-elect. Given that Mr. Abe is now likely to lead Japan through 2021, thanks to a change in the rules of the Liberal Democratic Party, the relationship between the two men will be particularly important to U.S. policy in Asia.

Mr. Abe needs to sell Mr. Trump on the value of the alliance, and on why the investments made by both sides are a low-cost means of ensuring Asia’s stability. He can do so by pointing out how much more Tokyo is willing to do under his leadership, including new defense cooperation with Southeast Asian nations, deepening alliance cooperation, revamping Japan’s laws on collective self-defense, and increasing the military’s budget.

Mr. Trump meanwhile will have to convince Asia that under his leadership America will not retreat from the region. He will need to create credible policies to stabilize the South China Sea, or face the de facto Chinese control of its strategic waterways. Similarly, South Korea and possibly Japan will not wait another eight years for a clear American policy to remove the North Korean nuclear threat.

Perhaps above all, Mr. Trump will have to determine how to deal with a China facing a slowing economy and possible internal turmoil from President Xi Jinping’s moves to consolidate his power.

As the risks to Asia’s future grow, firm personal relationships with America’s key allies are crucial to making the difficult policy choices that lie ahead. Any indication that Mr. Trump will carry through his campaign rhetoric will cause a crisis in existing alliances. If, on the other hand, Mr. Trump takes advantage of the outreach from Japan and South Korea, he’ll have a better chance of building on Mr. Obama’s achievements and fixing his failures.

Mr. Auslin is the author of “The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region,” out from Yale University Press in January.

 

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http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2016...s-border-u-s-election-day-planned-new-routes/

EXCLUSIVE: Top Mexican Cartel Leaders Met at Texas Border on U.S. Election Day, Planned New Routes

by CARTEL CHRONICLES
14 Nov 2016
Comments 97

MATAMOROS, Tamaulipas — The leaders of two of the most powerful drug cartels in Mexico gathered to strengthen alliances, draw new routes and territories for the smuggling of drugs, and discuss battle plans against shared rivals.

The meeting was exclusively confirmed to Breitbart Texas by a witness to the event. Last week, while the world tuned in to the U.S. elections, the leaders of the Gulf Cartel in Matamoros met with their counterparts of the Los Zetas Vieja Escuela (Old School Z), in an effort to solidify an alliance dubbed the “Carteles Unidos” (United Cartels). Mexican federal intelligence officials separetly confirmed the accuracy of the meeting witness’ claim to Breitbart Texas.

The meeting occured in the downtown area of Matamoros beginning at 11 a.m. local time and lasted for more than 6 hours. Those in attendance left after 5 p.m. in a discreet fashion. The event was organized by Sergio “Sr. Cortez” Ortegon, who is the current leader of the Gulf Cartel in Matamoros. Those in attendance included leaders of the Zetas Vieja Escuela group from Oaxaca, Tabasco, Nuevo Leon, San Luis Potosi, Coahuila, Veracruz, and Quintana Roo.

Breitbart Texas has reported in the past that the Vieja Escuela Zetas faction of the Los Zetas has been at war with the faction called Cartel Del Noreste (CDN). The fighting between the two has sparked widespread violence in Tamaulipas and spread to other states, including Nuevo León and Coahuila.

The main topic of the meeting was the opening of border trade routes and putting an end to tensions within the groups in attendance. The Gulf Cartel in Matamoros would open its drug trafficking routes and provide logistical support while the Los Zetas Vieja Escuela would not only pay for the service but also provide training, weapons and strike teams if needed.

Members of the Gulf Cartel from Reynosa, under the leadership of Julian “Comandante Toro” Loiza Salinas were not invited to the summit. Intelligence sources on both sides of the border confirmed to Breitbart Texas that there has been a long-standing rivalry between Cortez and Toro. In 2015, Gulf Cartel forces from Matamoros and Reynosa clashed in a bloody turf war.

According to the witness, both the Zetas Vieja Escuela and the Gulf Cartel in Matamoros have been carrying out a “cleanup”, where they have gone after kidnappers and robbers in an attempt to resurrect the times when cartels simply moved drugs and left average citizens alone. Breitbart Texas has reported in some of these cases that have included the executions of kidnappers and the torture of robbers. The CDN faction of the Los Zetas as well as the Gulf Cartel in Reynosa are believed to actively promote kidnapping, extortion, and other crimes to diversify their cash flows.

Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “A.C. Del Angel” from Reynosa, Tamaulipas.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.longwarjournal.org/archi...ot-down-helicopter-in-central-afghanistan.php

Taliban, Islamic State both claim to have shot down helicopter in central Afghanistan

BY BILL ROGGIO | November 14, 2016 | admin@longwarjournal.org | @billroggio

Both the Taliban and the Islamic State claim to have shot down a helicopter in the central Afghan province of Ghor today. The Afghan military instead claims the helicopter made an emergency landing due to technical issues.

The Taliban, on its official website, Voice of Jihad, claimed it downed “a hireling helicopter while bombing the area.” The helicopter “was shot by Dshk [a heavy machine gun] and downed before landing in the said area, leaving all puppets killed or hurt inside.”

“It is worth mentioning that this is the second enemy helicopter being downed in Ghor province over the past one and half month,” the Taliban statement continued.

The Islamic State, on its Amaq News Agency, first claimed it shot down “a US helicopter gunship,” but later issued a correction that noted it took down a helicopter operated by “Afghan forces.”

Afghan officials in Ghor claimed the helicopter landed at a local airport after catching fire. “The helicopter made emergency landing due to technical issues and there were no casualties reported in the incident,” Khaama Press reported.

In the past, the Afghan military has attempted to cover up Taliban attacks on its helicopters. In March 2016, Afghan officials claimed a helicopter in Kunar province made a hard landing, while the Taliban claimed it destroyed it as it landed at a remote base. The Taliban later issued video footage of the helicopter exploding in a massive IED attack as it landed. [See LWJ report, Taliban destroys Afghan army helicopter in IED attack at military base.]

The Taliban and the Islamic State have issued competing claims for attacks in Afghanistan in the past. The Taliban is known to operate in Ghor province. The Islamic State was blamed for rounding up and killing 30 civilians in Ghor province at the end of October, however officials later said that a local Taliban commander was responsible. No group claimed credit for the October massacre in Ghor. The Islamic State has not shied away from claiming credit for mass executions, which increases the probability that the slaughter in Ghor was indeed carried out by the Taliban.

In the past, the Taliban has shot down several US helicopters using RPGs, or rocket-propelled grenades. The most newsworthy strike took place in Aug. 2011 in the Tangi Valley of Wardak province. Taliban RPGs struck a US Army Chinook that was involved in a raid to capture a senior Taliban commander. That attack resulted in the deaths of 38 US and Afghan troops, including 17 Navy SEALs from SEAL Team 6, the unit that killed al Qaeda’s founder and first emir, Osama bin Laden.

Also, on Dec. 17, 2013, a US Blackhawk helicopter went down in Zabul province, killing six US soldiers. The Taliban claimed it shot down the Blackhawk. But the US military discounted the Taliban’s claim and said in a press release that “initial reporting indicates there was no enemy activity in the area at the time of the crash.” Three weeks later, the US military told the families of the soldiers killed that “enemy action caused the crash and loss of life.”

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

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37972054

Kashmir clash: Pakistan says India killed seven troops

14 November 2016
From the section Asia

Seven Pakistani soldiers have been killed by Indian shelling in disputed Kashmir, the Pakistani military says.

The troops died in "unprovoked" firing overnight in the Bhimber sector on the Line of Control (LoC). India blamed Pakistan for starting the clash.

It is thought to be the Pakistani military's biggest single loss of life in Kashmir since a 2003 truce.

Tensions have flared over the long-running dispute since an Indian army base was attacked in September.

Both India and Pakistan accuse each other of violating the 2003 ceasefire agreement.

Both sides have reported civilians and a number of soldiers being killed or injured in recent weeks, during which time the LoC has seen intense exchanges of fire.

Hundreds of civilians in villages along the LoC have been evacuated.

Read more about Kashmir
Did India really "surgically strike" Kashmir militants?
Rivals trade blame as 24 are killed
What is Kashmir?
The teenager blinded by pellets in Indian Kashmir

http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/146DC/production/_91767638_kashmir_map624.png

The territorial dispute between India and Pakistan over Muslim-majority Kashmir has been running for decades.

Both nuclear-armed states claim the territory in its entirety but control only parts of it. Two of the three wars fought between the two sides since independence have been over Kashmir.

After the 18 September army base attack on the Indian-administered side, the Indian military said it had carried out "surgical strikes" against suspected militants along the LoC.

Pakistan called the strikes an "illusion" and denied Indian claims it was behind the militant attack.

A subsequent BBC investigation found that while India did not airdrop commandos to hit militant camps or conduct ground assaults deep into Pakistani-administered territory, troops did cross the LoC a significant distance to hit border posts and then pulled back.

Pakistan said two soldiers were killed in the strikes. Two more are reported to have died in cross-border firing since.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/14/o...-president-for-interpol.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

The Opinion Pages | EDITORIAL

A Troubling New President for Interpol

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
NOV. 14, 2016

Interpol, the international law enforcement agency, has had a history of allowing its international database of fugitives to be used by authoritarian governments to persecute dissidents and critics. It is therefore deeply troubling that a senior Chinese security official will become the organization’s next president.

Interpol announced last week that Meng Hongwei, China’s vice minister of public security, was elected by members of the agency’s general assembly to serve as president for a four-year term. He is the first Chinese official to lead the agency.

Human rights lawyers and activists in China have been persecuted by the authorities for years. Some have been detained and harassed; dozens have been held in secret prisons without access to lawyers, according to Human Rights Watch.

“The appointment of Meng Hongwei is alarming given China’s longstanding practice of trying to use Interpol to arrest dissidents and refugees abroad,” Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia director of Amnesty International, said in a statement. “It seems at odds with Interpol’s mandate to work in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Beyond handling routine policing matters, China’s Ministry of Public Security protects the Communist Party and its leaders. This raises the possibility that Mr. Meng could use his influence at Interpol to target critics of the Chinese government. Mr. Meng steps into the post as Interpol embarks on an effort to systematically collect and share biometric information of suspected terrorists.

China and Russia are among the countries that have abused Interpol’s “red notice” database of information about fugitives. While the system is central to international law enforcement cooperation — preventing suspected terrorists from obtaining visas, for instance — it has been used to punish journalists, pro-democracy activists and human rights defenders. There is a mechanism for people to challenge red notice alerts, but it can be time-consuming and costly.

As Interpol’s president, Mr. Meng will run its executive committee, which plays a key role in setting the agenda for new initiatives and has oversight over the work of the secretary general, the day-to-day chief. His appointment calls into question the firmness of Interpol’s commitment “not only to refrain from any possible infringements of human rights, but also to actively promote the protection of human rights.”

When Interpol’s general assembly meets next year in Beijing, it should, at the very least, take steps to prevent the red notice database from being misused. It can also clarify and strengthen its human rights policy so that Interpol is used solely to share intelligence about legitimate threats and criminals.

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/11/15/tal_afar_escalation_beyond_mosul_110345.html

Tal Afar: Escalation Beyond Mosul

By Ramzy Mardini
November 15, 2016

The international media often describes the city of Mosul, the capital of Ninawa province, as the Islamic State’s (ISIS) last remaining stronghold in Iraq. However, there is another major stronghold that may soon be a flashpoint between rival factions of the anti-ISIS coalition. In late October, Iraq’s Shia militias opened a new front in the military campaign against the Islamic State, aiming to liberate the city of Tal Afar, about 35 miles west of Mosul. The entrance of pro-government Shia militias—known as the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU)—prompted a Turkish warning that it may intervene to protect Sunnis in Tal Afar from potential revenge killings at the hands of Shia militia forces.

Falling a week after Mosul, the ethnically Turkmen city of Tal Afar was then the Iraqi government’s last remaining outpost in Ninawa province. Its population is difficult to assess given the violence and instability it has experienced since 2003, but most accounts place it between 100,000 to 200,000 before it fell to ISIS in 2014. Reports during the US occupation described the religious demographics of the city as 75 percent Sunni and 25 percent Shia, but this proportion before the ISIS takeover is also difficult to assess. Some residents of Tal Afar place the pre-ISIS balance as more evenly balanced between Sunni and Shia Turkmen.

Tal Afar has played a major role in the wars in Iraq since 2003. The city experienced cycles of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia Turkmen well before the bombing of the Ali Askari Mosque in Samara in February 2006, which many analysts identify as the start of a sectarian civil war in Iraq. In 2005 to 2006, Tal Afar was the site of an attempted “hearts and minds” counterinsurgency—well before the introduction and implementation of the US “surge” strategy in which an additional 30,000 US troops were sent to Iraq in 2007. But US efforts to pacify relations between Sunni and Shia Turkmen failed to be sustained. For example, in the spring of 2007, two truck bombs exploded in a Shia area of Tal Afar, killing 83 Iraqis and wounding nearly 200. Soon after the bombings, according to the New York Times interviews with local leaders and witnesses, militias joined by Shia police officers from the city “went house to house in a Sunni neighborhood, dragged people into the street and shot them in the head.” Retaliatory violence left 70 dead.

Sectarian tensions continued from 2006 to 2014 through the reign of then-prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, who favored and empowered the Shia over the Sunnis in Tal Afar’s local sectarian balance. By the time Sunni insurgents swept through northern Iraq in June 2014, many Sunni Turkmen had joined ISIS and settled scores against their Shia counterparts. The Shia Turkmen who fled Tal Afar to Sinjar following the fall of the city to ISIS, were again forced again to flee by ISIS’s advance in Sinjar less than two months later. Today, many of ISIS’s most hardline Iraqi fighters and commanders hail from Tal Afar. *

Grievances and retribution has led many Shia Turkmen to form and join militia forces within the Iranian-backed PMUs, and they now intend to take back Tal Afar. Today, with Shia militias moving towards Tal Afar, the cycle of revenge is almost fulfilled. There are Sunni fears that Iran—through its militia proxies—aims to cleanse Sunni Turkmen from Tal Afar, permanently altering its demographics, and those that fled their homes may be prohibited by Shia militias from returning.

Underneath the sectarian rivalries between Sunnis and Shias in Tal Afar, however, are strategic interests. By taking control of the city, Shia militias would cut off the road that connects Mosul to ISIS’s escape route into Syria. While that could be the tactical aim, the strategic goal may be anchored in the region’s geopolitics. As Martin Chulov of The Guardian reported in early October: “By not helping to retake Mosul, the militias are free to drive one of its [Iran’s] most coveted projects—securing an arc of influence across Iraq and Syria that would end at the Mediterranean Sea. The strip of land to the west of Mosul in which the militias will operate is essential to that goal.” That strip of land is Tal Afar and Sinjar, which would effectively connect the Iraqi land route to a Syrian one. There has been a good deal of suspicion among Kurds and Yazidis in Iraq that Tehran and Baghdad are cooperating with the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK)—designated a terrorist organization by Turkey—and its affiliate in Syria and Iraq to help consolidate a land corridor.

Last month, some observers in Washington initially downplayed Turkey’s threats to militarily intervene in Iraq as a bluff intended purely for domestic consumption, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to consolidate power in response to an attempted coup over the summer. But there is little reason to be confident that Turkey’s threats are empty, or that circumstances in such a dynamic environment do not create conditions that alter Ankara’s calculus to favor military intervention. “Tal Afar is a very sensitive issue for us,” Erdogan recently said, “We definitely do not regard it [Shia militia involvement] positively in Tal Afar and Sinjar.”

Indeed, Turkey’s threat to protect its ethnic kin in Iraq does play into Turkish nationalism and serves to advance Erdogan’s interests domestically. But Turkey’s foreign policy cannot simply be assessed through the lens of domestic politics alone; and its threats are not merely for domestic consumption. There are strategic implications at play in the war against ISIS, especially given that Iran aims to undermine Turkey’s sphere of influence in Iraq and near its own border by working with a domestic adversary, the PKK. Moreover, Turkey already has hundreds of its troops in Iraq, in direct opposition to Baghdad. Given these realities, Washington and Baghdad would be wise to bear in mind that all options for Turkey remain on the table.

There is room for competition given the multi-layered alliances and rivalries built into the political context underlying post-ISIS Ninawa. The security and political management of post-ISIS Iraq will be an enduring problem given the conflicting interests between armed actors on multiple dimensions.

Ramzy Mardini is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

This article originally appeared at Atlantic Council.


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[Housecarl]

Hummm......

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http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/11/15/mo_mirvs_mo_problems_110347.html

Mo’ MIRVs, Mo’ Problems

By Christopher Cowan
November 15, 2016

When you think of American and Soviet Cold War nuclear arsenals, the descriptor ‘huge’ automatically comes to mind. One technological innovation in the 1970s contributed more than any other factor to the creation of those five-digit warhead stockpiles: multiple independently-targetable re-entry vehicles (or MIRVs). MIRVs allowed a single ICBM to carry multiple warheads and hit multiple targets, so warhead numbers grew rapidly as more missiles were MIRVed. Despite many believing that MIRVs would be reduced to Cold-War-relic status after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they’re beginning to make a comeback in Asia. It’s a development that has worrying implications for the Asian nuclear offence–defence balance.

A recent book from the Stimson Center, The Lures and Pitfalls of MIRVs: From the First to the Second Nuclear Age (PDF), provides an excellent overview of that topic and is worthy of an in-depth read. For the sake of brevity however, I’ll summarise the main argument. While the development of MIRVs led to rapid expansions in US and Soviet nuclear arsenals and the embrace of counterforce targeting, the big nuclear powers in Asia (China, India, and Pakistan) are MIRVing much more slowly. China has had the technical capacity to MIRV since the 1990s, but has only recently done so on a limited number of its ICBMs, primarily in response to US missile defence systems and to demonstrate China’s technical skills. India, the authors argue, has gradually shifted towards MIRVing its own missile force due to China’s nuclear advances, as well as domestic pressures. Meanwhile, they argue that Pakistan’s pursuit of MIRVs will in turn be driven by its rivalry with India. The authors conclude that while the slow pace means that MIRV-induced competition in Asia is likely to be less intense and less destabilising than US–Soviet competition in the Cold War, the triangular nature of the competition opens up more avenues for external disruption and unintended consequences.

An interesting takeaway from the book is that one of the commonly-held public justifications for MIRVs doesn’t really pass muster. Chinese proponents of the technology often cite the need to penetrate improving US ballistic missile defence (BMD) systems as a justification for introducing multiple warheads to their missiles. BMD has long been controversial among nuclear strategists, as its (theoretically) successful implementation removes the opponent’s ability to guarantee retaliation against your homeland if attacked, which undermines deterrence and encourages striking first.

The issue here is that this misunderstands the capabilities of current ballistic missile defence systems. As Andrew Davies and Rod Lyon point out, current missile defence systems work best against attacks featuring a small number of short-ranged ballistic missiles that are simple in nature (i.e. missiles that don’t employ countermeasures). MIRVed ICBMs are the exact opposite: they’re long-ranged, typically equipped with sophisticated countermeasures (such as dummy warheads or chaff), and, in theory, would be launched in large numbers.

Destroying ICBMs in their boost phase is the ideal way to counter MIRVs, but the technology to guarantee interception doesn’t currently exist and requires persistent capabilities that are politically risky. But it becomes more difficult and costly to intercept an ICBM as it gets further along in its flight trajectory. Most current BMD systems (such as Patriot and THAAD) intercept ballistic missiles in their midcourse or terminal phases using interceptor missiles. But once the warheads have separated from the booster—which occurs in the midcourse phase—those types of BMD systems would have to destroy each individual warhead with an interceptor missile to work effectively. Given the cost of a single interceptor missile, fielding even a moderately effective defence against an incoming ICBM strike is likely to prove too expensive to be practical—even if the ‘leakage’ of multiple nuclear warheads could be judged acceptable.

MIRVs help to skew the offence*–defence nuclear balance firmly towards the offence even as BMD capabilities improve. Putting multiple, individually-targetable warheads on a large number of missiles also provides a substantial first strike capability, as it allows you to potentially disarm your opponent. That, in turn, encourages a*first strike, creating a ‘use it or lose it’ mentality that decreases stability. This problem is especially acute for stationary silo-based missiles, which are vulnerable to attack. Deploying MIRVed missiles at sea makes more sense, because submarines are generally more survivable than silos—a reason why the vast majority of the US’ nuclear arsenal is deployed underwater. China’s developing MIRVed SLBMs alongside its ground-based arsenals, which suggests Beijing wants to keep a foot in both camps—at least until it’s more confident of its SSBN/SLBM capabilities. India’s sea-based deterrent is also in its infancy, so it’ll be relying on its vulnerable siloed ICBMs for deterrence for the time being.

However, the slow pace of MIRVing in Asia today is a hopeful sign that the region’s nuclear-armed states have learned from the Americans and Soviets about the consequences of unchecked MIRVing. But the fact remains that MIRVs, and the potential for instability that comes with them, will be an important part of the Asian nuclear balance for decades to come.

Christopher Cowan*is a research intern at ASPI.

This article originally appeared at The Strategist (ASPI).

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[Housecarl]

Going HOT: Russian Using S-300, S-400, Bastion P-800, Pantsir Systems in Syria
Started by*Possible Impact‎,*Today*08:35 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...-S-400-Bastion-P-800-Pantsir-Systems-in-Syria

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Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-aleppo-idUSKBN13A16O

World News | Tue Nov 15, 2016 | 12:07pm EST

Air strikes pound rebel-held east Aleppo after weeks-long pause

By Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall | BEIRUT

Intense air strikes resumed in rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo after a weeks-long pause on Tuesday, killing at least three people, residents and a war monitor said.

Syrian state television said the Damascus government's air force took part in strikes against "terrorist strongholds" in Aleppo's Old City while Russia said it had struck Islamic State and former Nusra Front sites elsewhere in Syria, without mentioning Aleppo.

The bombardment appeared to mark the end of a pause in strikes on targets inside the city declared by Syria's government and Russia on Oct 18.

"Our houses are shaking from the pressure. Planes are soaring above us and the bombardment is around us," said Modar Shekho, a resident of eastern Aleppo. Both rocket strikes by jets and barrel bombs dropped by helicopters were used, residents and a war monitor said.

The renewed violence in Aleppo will be closely followed in Washington where President-elect Donald Trump has signaled he intends to take a different approach to Syria from that of President Barack Obama, who has backed some rebel groups.

Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose approach in Syria has been praised by the U.S. president-elect, spoke by phone on Monday and agreed to "combine efforts to tackle international terrorism and extremism", the Kremlin said.

Aleppo has become the fiercest front in Syria's five-and-a-half-year war, pitting President Bashar al-Assad, supported by Russia, Iran and Shi'ite militias against Sunni rebels including groups backed by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

Damascus describes all the rebels fighting to oust Assad, which include both jihadist factions banned by Western countries and nationalist groups, as terrorists.

Islamic State does not operate in rebel-held areas, including eastern Aleppo, but the former Nusra Front, now known as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, does.

Aleppo has for years been divided into government-held western and rebel-held eastern sectors but the Syrian army and its allies managed to isolate and besiege the insurgent districts during the summer. Its allies include Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iraqi Shi'ite militias.

OFFENSIVE

A government offensive to retake eastern districts raged from late September to late October, backed by an intense aerial bombardment that the United Nations said killed hundreds and drew condemnation from western countries and rights groups.
However, after Damascus and Moscow announced their pause in strikes last month, a move they said was to let those who wished to quit besieged areas, rebels launched their own assault that killed dozens of civilians in west Aleppo according to the U.N.

Syria's army and its allies reversed all the gains made by the rebels, who had attacked Aleppo's government-held western fringes from outside the city, and then intensified their bombardment in insurgent-held areas nearby, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said.

On Monday and early Tuesday, air strikes hit hospitals in three towns and villages in rebel-held areas to the west of Aleppo, putting them all out of action. Damascus and Moscow both deny targeting hospitals.

Other strikes, including some by suspected Russian cruise missiles, hit Saraqeb in Idlib, a province near Aleppo where many of the rebel factions have a large presence.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday Russia had launched attacks in Idlib and Homs provinces using missiles and jets from the country's only aircraft carrier, which recently arrived in the eastern Mediterranean.

"We carried out exhaustive advance research on all targets," said Shoigu. "We are talking about warehouses with ammunition, terrorist training centers ... and factories," said Shoigu, adding the strikes would continue.

Rebels and residents in eastern Aleppo have said for more than a week that they expected a resumption in air strikes and a new assault by the army and its allies after the aircraft carrier arrived near Syria and Moscow said the pause would end.

Strikes hit the Haidariya, Hanano and Sakhour neighborhoods, said civil defense official Ibrahim Abu al-Laith. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes also hit the Sheikh Faris, Bab al-Nairab, Qadi Askar and Qaterji districts.

The Observatory and the Civil Defence rescue organization both reported that three people had been killed and others wounded in the air strikes.

"It's all air strikes and parachute bombs. Today, the bombing is violent... There hasn't been this kind of attack in more than 15 days," said Abu al-Laith in Aleppo.


(Reporting By Ellen Francis; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37985339

Jia Jinglong: Chinese villager executed despite campaign

By Stephen McDonell
BBC News, Beijing
5 hours ago
From the section China

The execution of a Chinese villager - despite widespread calls to commute his sentence - has drawn criticism from those who say this country's courts have one way of handling the powerful and a different way of handling the poor.

In early May 2013, Jia Jinglong was preparing for his wedding day.

He wanted to have the ceremony at his family home in Hebei Province, not far from Beijing in northern China.

However, just prior to the big day, his house was knocked down to make way for a new development.

Adding to his woes, his fiancee then called off the wedding and he reportedly lost his job.

Jia Jinglong felt it was all too much. He sought revenge for the upheaval in his life following the destruction of his house without proper compensation.

In February 2015, he took a nail gun and went looking for the village chief, the man he decided was to blame. Then the groom-to-be-no-longer shot and killed the chief, 55-year-old He Jianhua.

For this he was sentenced to death.

Class and injustice

In accordance with the rules governing all death penalty cases, his went to the Supreme Court for ratification. It was cleared to proceed.

There has been a major public campaign to have his death sentence commuted because of extenuating circumstances. Even some newspapers controlled by the Communist Party have been arguing that he should be spared.

But now word has come through from an official social media account run by the Shijiazhuang Intermediate People's Court: Jia Jinglong has been executed.

Some outside China will be wondering why the general public and Chinese media might have felt the need to campaign for somebody who admitted to murdering his local Communist Party secretary.

Well it all comes down to class and injustice in modern China.

These types of forced demolitions are routine here. It would be hard to argue against the premise that for years this country's central government has turned a blind eye while property developers, in league with corrupt local officials, have bulldozed people's houses, using paid thugs to beat up villagers if they try to resist.

It is a way of clearing out pesky residents which continues to this day.

The "compensation" paid is usually nowhere near enough to buy an apartment in the same area, forcing evicted families to move to distant, low-grade housing estates.

How can I say this so confidently? Because I've seen it first hand time and again. I've seen the houses being destroyed, I've seen the crying families and I've seen the men sent in to silence them.

Ask pretty much any China correspondent and they will tell you the same thing.

'Pushed into a corner'

We are constantly approached by desperate people claiming their homes have been effectively stolen and destroyed. The BBC could do a story on one of these cases in a different location every week if we wanted to.

Because this is seen here as such a widespread abuse of power against the lao bai xing (the ordinary punters) there has been a view that - while murder is not to be condoned - Jia Jinglong was pushed into a corner; that the crimes against him should have meant commuting his death sentence to some lesser penalty.

After all, people will tell you, government officials and those in the upper echelons of society are saved from a lethal injection for much less.

These cases are posing a real problem for the Communist Party in terms of perceived legitimacy, especially when its reason for monopoly power is supposed to be delivering a more just world for the downtrodden.

In 2009, a 21-year-old woman working as a pedicurist in a hotel building was on a break, washing some clothes.

Attached to the hotel was a massage and entertainment complex called Dream Fantasy City. Offering food, drink, massages, karaoke and often prostitution, these types of establishments are popular with government officials.

When a local Communist Party figure approached Deng Yujiao asking her to stop washing her clothes and instead provide him with "special services" he fully expected to get his way.

She told him she didn't do that kind of work there. It's said he then took a wad of cash from his pocket and started slapping her on the face with it. He then pushed her onto a lounge and got on top of her. To defend herself she stabbed him four times with a small knife. One of the blows struck him in the neck, causing the director of the local township's business promotions office to bleed to death on the spot.

Deng Yujiao was charged with murder.

Her case drew huge waves of support from Chinese people using the Internet to campaign in her favour. To many, she was seen as a hero. Finally somebody was standing up to these small-town, corrupt and arrogant officials.

The social media posts were censored but the momentum could not be stopped.

Prosecutors dropped the murder charge and granted bail. She faced a lesser charge of "intentional assault" but was never sentenced. This was apparently due to her mental state.

There are considerable parallels in these two cases but certainly not in one respect.
Despite the public outcry there was to be no sparing Jia Jinglong.

His crime was committed in the new era of President Xi Jinping. Justice now appears to be more hardline and the Communist Party remains well and truly in charge of the courts and all that takes place inside them.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-iran-talk-10-billion-193010171.html

Russia, Iran Talk $10 Billion Arms Deal

Tom O'Connor
IBTimesNovember 14, 2016
38 Comments

Russian media reported Monday that Moscow and Tehran are negotiating an arms deal worth about $10 billion through which Russia would send a massive supply of military equipment to its Middle Eastern ally.

The deal reportedly includes T-90 tanks, artillery systems, planes and helicopters. Talks regarding the agreement were taking place during a parliamentary visit, RIA News Agency reported*Viktor Ozerov, defense and security committee chief in the upper house of the Russian parliament, as saying. The deal reportedly does not involve one single shipment, but a number of deliveries over the coming years.

The report also noted that the content of the delivery necessitated permission from the U.N. Security Council in order to be carried out. The so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, signed in July 2015 and effective January of this year, mandates that the sale*of any offensive weapon systems to Iran before October 2020 must first be approved by the international body. Russia has not yet submitted a formal request, but officials have said they will respect the resolution if the U.S. or European nations block the move.

Last month, Russia supplied Iran with missiles intended for an S-300 surface-to-air defense system. Russia had previously imposed a ban on the sale of military supplies to Iran in 2010, but lifted the restrictions in April 2015 following the international interim agreement that preceded last July's nuclear deal. Ozerov confirmed that the system would be operational by the end of the year.

Russia and Iran often support one another to counter Western influence, especially from the U.S. The two nations' militaries are currently active in Syria where they support President Bashar al-Assad against Western-backed rebel organizations and the Islamic State group. Russia has collaborated extensively with the Iranian-supported, Lebanese-based Hezbollah, a powerful and influential paramilitary movement. In August, Iran allowed Russia to use its Shahid Nojeh Air Base, also known as Hamadan Air Base, to conduct operations in Syria.

https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/S.../ibtimes_176/04ee17845009983067e97ba3717eb037

A map displays the locations of Iran's nuclear facilities, with a diagram on the S-300 PMU2 missile, Aug. 28, 2016. Photo: Reuters

Related Articles
Iranian President Says Nuclear Deal Cannot Be Reversed
Iranian Ayatollah Assails Clinton, Trump In Speech To Students

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-the-rest-of-the-world-is-busy-cutting-deals/

Trump hates the nuclear pact with Iran, but the rest of the world is busy cutting deals

By Brian Murphy
November 14

Judging from Donald Trump’s campaign posturing, his Big Three foreign policy views go something like this: Russia can be wooed, Iran needs to be slammed, and China’s economic and strategic reach must be tamed.

But what happens when they all start to overlap? A series of initiatives and announcements Monday pointed to the deepening interplay between Iran, China and Russia — and offered an early lesson to the Trump administration on the slippery reality of the world.

One maxim Trump will quickly learn: Washington now has very limited power to isolate and punish Iran. Trump may be able to follow through on pledges to tear up the U.S. portion of last year’s nuclear deal, which seeks to rein in Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for easing international sanctions.

But that leaves America’s other five negotiating partners — including Russia and China — sticking with the program and making deals with Iran.

[Iran deal in question as Trump takes aim]

Business projects with Iran are already in motion with France and other European Union nations. (Germany, France and Britain also were part of the nuclear talks). In Brussels, E.U. foreign ministers made an indirect jab at Trump on Monday by reaffirming support for the nuclear accord, which the president-elect has branded as the “worst deal in the world.”

Beijing and Moscow also appear to be moving ahead strongly on the military front with Iran.

Russia has opened talks with Iran on a major arms deal worth around $10 billion, Russia's*RIA Novosti news agency reported. The package would include T-90 tanks, artillery systems, warplanes and helicopters, according to the head of the top parliamentary defense committee, Viktor Ozerov.

[China may have learn to live with Trump's unpredictability]

At the same time, Iran’s defense minister, Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, signed an agreement Monday in Tehran with his Chinese counterpart, Chang Wanquan, to conduct joint military training exercises, Iranian state media reported.

Neither announcement offered details, such as a possible timetable for the Russian arms pact or the size and scope of the planned Chinese-Iranian war games.

But any military expansion by Iran has some fundamental motivations: worries about the U.S. naval presence in the Persian Gulf and U.S. upgrades to the armed forces in Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Russia has been a major arms supplier to Iran for decades and built Iran's lone energy-producing nuclear reactor. A possible increase in Russia’s weapons flow right before Trump takes over the White House would likely give pause to even his stalwart backers.

They looked the other way when Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s uncompromising leadership, and Trump’s campaign team hailed the release of leaked Clinton team emails despite U.S. intelligence assertions that the hacks likely came from Russia. But Trump is now getting a quick taste of the normal push-and-pull of diplomacy. His possible first test: Vow to follow through with pledges to reset the frosty relations with Russia even while Moscow is boosting arms sales to Iran?

Russia may even start goading Trump to stick with his promises.

A senior Russia Foreign Ministry official, Ilya Rogachev, cast doubts Monday on whether the outsider Trump could stand up to the “establishment, political elite” in Washington and forge new bonds with Russia, such as proposed cooperation in fighting the Islamic State in Syria. Moscow is a critical ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while the United States and many allies back rebel factions seeking to bring him down —*yet another morass awaiting Trump.

“As we are well aware, part of the U.S. establishment is being quite negative about prospects of cooperating with us,” said Rogachev, who heads the Foreign Ministry office for new challenges and emerging threats.

In Beijing, meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping told Trump by telephone Monday that the two powers need to work together on challenges, such as global economic growth, state broadcaster China Central Television reported.

The Trump transition team said the two leaders “established a clear sense of mutual respect,” but it made no mention of U.S. worries over Beijing’s expanding influence in the region. One major flash point facing Trump is Chinese claims of sovereignty over the South China Sea, which borders the Philippines, Vietnam and other nations that have been wary of Beijing’s growing influence.

The apparent cordial exchange with Xi may not play so well with some of Trump’s voter base, which seized upon his denunciations of China as a currency manipulator that has helped undermine U.S. manufacturing jobs.


54 Comments

Brian Murphy joined the Post after more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief for the Associated Press in Europe and the Middle East. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has written three books. Follow @BrianFMurphy

 

[Housecarl]

Talk about a hollow force.....

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http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/royal-navy-to-lose-its-anti-ship-missiles

Royal Navy to Lose its Anti-Ship Missiles

By MarEx 2016-11-15 16:43:33

The UK Ministry of Defense has decided not to fund a replacement for the Royal Navy's aging Harpoon anti-ship missiles –*meaning that after 2018, its frigates and destroyers will lack a long-range surface warfare capability for the foreseeable future.

"It's a significant capability gap and the Government is being irresponsible. It just shows that our warships are for the shop window and not for fighting," said Rear Adm. Chris Parry, speaking to the Telegraph.*

In addition to the loss of the ship-launched*Harpoon, the service's Lynx Wildcat helicopters will lose their anti-ship missiles next year. These will not be replaced until 2020, when the lightweight Sea Venom will enter service, leaving a gap of at least two years.

The Sea Venom's 30kg warhead is designed to be effective against smaller targets (corvette and smaller), with a more limited "precision" targeted strike capability against larger vessels.*

Analysts expect the Sea Venom's range to be between about 15-40 nm. Larger Russian surface combatants, like the Kara and Kirov classes, carry S-300 surface-to-air missiles with a range of 50 nm –*eliminating the Wildcat's ability to strike from a standoff distance.

The loss of the Harpoon, which has been in service since 1984, leaves the Royal Navy with its Mk 8 4.5 inch deck guns, which can reach to a range of about 17 nm.
*
The news follows shortly after the U.S. Navy's*announcement that it will not be buying*a precision land-attack munition for the Advanced Gun System, a self-loading 155mm deck gun mounted on the new Zumwalt class of destroyers. Due to the Navy’s slashed order for the Zumwalt class,*the rounds would be procured in smaller quantity, leading to a prohibitively high*cost of*over $800,000 per shot.*

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-erdogan-idUSKBN13B0M3

World News | Wed Nov 16, 2016 | 2:38am EST

Erdogan says Turkish-backed rebels close to taking Syria's al Bab

Turkish-backed rebels are just 2 km (1.25 miles) from the northern Syrian city of al Bab and are expected to take it from Islamic State quickly despite some resistance, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday.

The rebels said on Tuesday they had taken Qabasin, several km northeast of al Bab, to set the stage for an onslaught on the last urban stronghold of Islamic State in the northern Aleppo countryside. Kurdish-dominated militias have also been pursuing a drive to seize al Bab.

At a news conference before departing on a trip to Pakistan, Erdogan also accused Germany of not being fully committed to the fight against terrorism and of supporting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group.

He also said that an executive presidential system in Turkey, which he has long sought, should not mean the president cutting ties to his political party, saying that would constitute a weakness in the system.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and David Dolan; Writing by Nick Tattersall)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/16/world/global-terrorism-report/

Terror attacks in developed world surge 650% in one year

By Kara Fox and Dave Gilbert, CNN
Updated 2:48 AM ET, Wed November 16, 2016

London (CNN)The developed world became more dangerous in 2015 with a massive increase in deaths from terrorism, although globally there was a slight fall, according to new figures released Wednesday.

There was a 650% increase in fatal terror attacks on people living in the world's biggest economies in 2015, the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) 2016 reveals.

The annual report carried out for think tank the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) shows a complex picture with terrorism intensifying in some countries and spreading to new ones.

Small reduction in global deaths

However, the study also shows that across the world as a whole, the number of deaths from terrorism fell 10% to 29,376, compared to the previous year.

In 2015, there were 731 deaths related to terrorism in the 34 countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes the US, UK, Germany, France, and Turkey.

The number represents the 650% increase on the previous year, with 21 of the 34 countries suffering at least one attack, the report says. Most of the victims were killed in Turkey and France.

The Bataclan music venue in Paris where 90 concert-goers were killed in a terror attack reopened Saturday, a year on from a string of ISIS shootings in the city which left 130 dead.

Five countries -- Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan -- experienced the worst attacks, accounting for 72% of all deaths from terrorism in 2015.

Syria saw a 50% rise in terrorism from 2014 to 2015.

Military success against ISIS and Boko Haram resulted in fewer deaths in Iraq and Nigeria but the two groups spread to neighboring states and regions, according to the GTI report.

It also says the global economic impact of terrorism amounted to $89.6 billion in 2015.

Related: In push for Mosul, US coalition pummeling ISIS

Terror spread 'cause for serious concern'

"While the reduction in deaths is positive, the continued intensification of terrorism in some countries and its spread to new ones is a cause for serious concern and underscores the fluid nature of modern terrorist activity," IEF chief Steve Killelea said in a statement.

"The attacks in the heartland of Western democracies underscore the need for fast paced and tailored responses to the evolution of these organizations," he said.
The report claims that within OECD countries, youth unemployment, levels of criminality, access to weapons and distrust in the electoral process are the most significant factors correlating with terrorism.

ISIS activity spreads

It also says ISIS became active in more countries -- jumping from 13 in 2014 to 28 countries in 2015.

"Understanding the drivers of terrorism is crucial if we are to develop counter-terrorism strategies that help combat radicalization," Killelea said.

"Military operations are clearly contributing towards restraining ISIL [ISIS] in Iraq, but the continued appeal of the organization, evident in the ISIL-inspired attacks in Europe, demonstrates the limitations of a purely military approach."

Last year's report detailed the toll inflicted by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram, which in 2014 was responsible for 6,644 deaths. ISIS killed 6,073 people in 2014. The two groups were responsible for more than half (51%) of deaths attributed to terrorism that year.

 

[Housecarl]

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/police-raid-mosques-flats-across-germany-government-bans-072358472.html

Germany bans Islamist 'True Religion' group, raiding mosques and flats

By Caroline Copley and Madeline Chambers
Reuters
November 15, 2016

BERLIN (Reuters) - Police launched dawn raids across Germany on Tuesday on about 190 mosques, flats and offices linked to an Islamist group after the government banned the organization, accusing it of radicalizing youngsters.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the DWR "True Religion" group had persuaded about 140 people to join militants in Iraq and Syria.

DWR, also known as "READ!" made no reference to the raids on its website and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. De Maiziere said it had several hundred members.

Pictures showed masked police officers carrying away computers and files from properties.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under pressure to harden her line on security after several attacks claimed by Islamic State across Europe, including a bombing and a knifing in Germany that wounded some 20 people in July. She is also under fire for letting in about 900,000 migrants, mostly Muslims, last year.

Some Syrians in Germany say many mosques here are more conservative than those at home, and that they are confronted by Muslims who insist on a literal interpretation of the Koran.

Last month, a Syrian committed suicide in prison after he was arrested on suspicion of planning to bomb an airport. His brother and friends have said he was "brainwashed" by ultra-conservatives imams in Berlin.

The Bundesverfassungsschutz domestic intelligence agency estimates that there are about 40,000 Islamists in Germany, including 9,200 ultra-conservative Islamists known as Salafists, Hans-Georg Maassen, who leads the agency, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

"There are about 500 people that the police consider dangerous," he said. "We remain a target of Islamic terrorism and we have to assume that Islamic State or other terrorist organizations will carry out an attack in Germany if they can."

De Maiziere said Tuesday's raids in 10 German states were the biggest crackdown on any group since the government shut down a movement known as Kalifatstaat (Caliphate State) in 2001, accusing it of extremist activities.

He said DWR had distributed Korans and other religious material especially to young people, but this was not the reason for the ban.

"Today's ban is rather directed against the abuse of religion by people propagating extremist ideologies and supporting terrorist organizations under the pretext of Islam."

Maassen said the ban - which had been carefully prepared to ensure it could not be overturned by the courts - could prompt large numbers of people to withdraw from the Salafist scene, or at least reduce their missionary work.

"The decisive issue now is that the evidence has to be examined to understand how the organization funded itself and who else was behind it as supporters and financiers, so that we can take additional measures," he told Reuters.

He said there was evidence that a foundation in Bahrain had paid for Korans used by the group, but did not name the foundation and gave no further details.

DWR members have tried to hand out material in German town centers to passers-by, often holding banners or wearing garments with the word "READ!" emblazoned in gold. The ban means they are now prohibited from running such campaigns.

Fears about the number of migrants entering the country have boosted support for Alternative for Germany (AfD), a populist party that says Islam is incompatible with the constitution and has siphoned off support from Merkel's conservatives.

A spokeswoman for the interior ministry said there was no indication that DWR was planning attacks itself. Overall, some 820 people have left Germany for war zones in Syria and Iraq, and officials fear they may pose a security threat on their return.

(Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal and Gernot Heller; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Robin Pomeroy)

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[Housecarl]

Hummm......

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http://warontherocks.com/2016/11/stabilizing-iraq-with-and-without-the-islamic-state/

Stabilizing Iraq With and Without the Islamic State

Denise Natali
November 16, 2016

The military campaign to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has generated much-needed attention to “day-after” scenarios. *This includes security arrangements for Mosul city and governance structures that address competing territorial claims by diverse ethnic and religious groups in Ninewa province. *Even if Mosul is relatively secured, ISIL remnants will likely go underground, re-integrate into cities and outlying areas, and wage guerilla warfare to destabilize the Iraqi state. *Underlying these threats are ISIL’s root causes — namely Sunni Arab grievances — and the potential for another iteration of this jihadist movement to emerge in the future. *To thwart this outcome, some analysts, media, and officials have proposed different ethno-sectarian solutions such as creating regions based on sects and ethnicity, arming “the Sunnis” and “the Kurds,” and finding ways for “deeply skeptical Sunni territories to support a Shi’ite dominated government.”

These solutions are faulty. As a recent research trip to Iraq confirmed to me, while ethno-sectarianism persists in Iraq, its influence on post-ISIL stabilization should not be overdetermined. *Important shifts have occurred in Iraqi politics and society since the ISIL onslaught in Mosul in June 2014, rendering state partition along ethnic and sectarian lines even less likely today than a decade ago. *Instead, the Iraqi state has broken down into hyper-fragmented entities with their own militias, all of which seek recognition, economic benefits, self-rule, and self-protection within the Iraqi state. ISIL’s consequences include demographic shifts, re-ordering of internal boundaries, and pacts and divisions within and across communities.* Any successful plan to stabilize Iraq must address these developments. At minimum, both policy and plans should enhance Iraqi sovereignty and focus on local governance and security arrangements in official territorial units, rather than particular ethnic and sectarian group interests.

State Break-Down, not Break-Up
The key political challenge in former ISIL safe havens is determining authority and control over territories and resources.* Although these tensions precede the ISIL onslaught, particularly in northern Iraq’s “disputed territories,” they have become far more complicated in the hyper-fragmented Iraqi state.* Delineating internal boundaries is an issue not only between Baghdad and Erbil, but one that now involves a multitude of sub-state actors and their militias.* Groups are also divided from within. *Some are affiliated with Baghdad, others are tied to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), and** still** others** oppose** both — with* no* real agreement on how to administer territories. **Some of these groups are also acting as proxies for external actors — namely Iran and Turkey — which seek to maintain zones of influence inside a weak Iraqi state.

http://warontherocks.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/MosulMap-AUS.jpg

These hyper-localized dynamics enhance the potential for conflict, particularly in disputed territories. Violence has already erupted in former ISIL safe havens in northern Iraq between different local militias: namely Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), Sunni Arab tribes, Kurdish Peshmerga, and other local militia forces. *Tensions also exist at a societal level, where distrust and hatred between some communities is palpable. *In one locality in the Kurdistan Region, Sunni Arabs refuse to go to the same hospitals as Yezidis, while Yezidis will not send their children to school with Arabs.

Communal tensions coincide with Sunni Arab political grievances.* Most continue to feel marginalized, particularly given their post-ISIL conditions. *More than 3.2 million Sunni Arabs have become internally displaced persons (IDPs) over the past two years. Their homes are destroyed. Their villages, towns, and fields are wastelands.* Although one third (over one million) have returned to their homes with support from the Iraqi government, United Nations, and local officials, most have not due to ongoing security threats — IEDs, unexploded ordnance, Iranian-backed PMFs, and lack of services. *The 1.4 million IDPs living in the Kurdistan Region for over two years cannot fully integrate, while others in disputed territories are being “transferred” to different localities to prevent their permanent settlement. These challenges will continue as tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs flee their homes in Mosul. They are creating or reinforcing a sense of disfranchisement that has the potential to become a source for al-Qaeda and ISIL recruitment, just as it has done in the past.

Still, opportunities to stabilize Iraq have emerged, at least in the short and mid-term.

The recent reset in Baghdad-Erbil relations is not only based on shared aims to defeat ISIL and U.S. influence but also economic and political expediency. Some important factors include the drop in world oil price and serious financial crises, Kurdish power struggles, attempts to leverage Turkey, and an unviable Kurdish independence project.* This is why, instead of calling a referendum for Kurdish statehood, Iraqi Kurdish leader Mas’ud Barzani returned to Baghdad in September 2016 as part of a KRG delegation, affirmed that the Iraqi government was the Kurdistan Region’s “strategic depth”, and has attempted to negotiate KRG oil exports with Baghdad once again. *Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi will also likely continue attempts to negotiate with Erbil (in fits and starts), particularly as Baghdad seeks to increase oil exports from Kirkuk and the northern corridor – which is under the de-facto control of the KRG.

Pacts have developed between some Sunni Arab groups and Baghdad that were unthinkable two years ago.* In contrast to 2014, whereby nearly all Sunni Arabs reacted against a highly sectarian Iraqi government under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, tens of thousands of Sunni Arab forces have mobilized alongside the Iraqi Security Forces, elite counter-terrorism forces, PMFs, and Peshmerga to fight ISIL. *Sunni Arab political grievances also differ across and within territories, based on distinct issues and changing incentive structures. *For instance, although Sunni Arabs adamantly reject Iranian-backed PMFs and want to be treated as equal citizens, their main criticisms are government weakness, corruption, and failure to provide services, jobs, and security.* These criticisms are not necessarily sectarian and are being made by most Iraqis as part of an ongoing reform movement. *Sunni Arabs emphasize that they are not against Shi’ite communities (some Sunni Arab tribes also have Shi’ite members) but government officials who encourage sectarianism.* Some local Sunni Arab leaders would accept Iraqi Army, federal police forces, or Kurdish Peshmerga in their localities, alongside local police, while others would not.

Part of these shifts can be attributed to the ravages of ISIL. *Although ISIL has brutally targeted Shi’ites, Yezidis, Christians, and other minorities, it has also waged war against and repressed Sunni Arabs.* Unlike in 2014, many Sunni Arabs that initially welcomed or tacitly supported ISIL have turned against the group, particularly after it resorted to extreme violence. Those with family members who were with ISIL, either tacitly or actively, are being accused and held accountable *by fellow Sunni Arabs. **Revenge killings are occurring within and between Sunni Arab tribes, as well as between urban Sunni Arab militias inside Mosul.

These dynamics are unfolding in a hyper-fragmented Iraqi state, whereby political entities or leaders are scrambling to ascertain authority, secure territories, and balance local power by negotiating deals with external patrons — Iran or Turkey — as well as different local power brokers.* Deals have already developed between the Iraqi government, some Sunni Arab tribal leaders and different Kurdish officials in distinct localities. They are based on economically and politically expedient needs; opening trade routes, enhancing investment and business, and securing internal boundaries.* These arrangements are essential given the KRG’s expansive territorial gains that have increased its operating costs and security requirements during a time of deep financial constraints. *They also provide provincial and local leaders with access to resources and security that the Iraqi government cannot offer — at least for now.

One problem is that these de-facto arrangements may work at a provincial level, but they can undermine official state interests and institutions. *For instance, Ma’sud Barzani and some Sunni Arabs, including former Ninawa governor Atheel al-Nujaifi, — influenced by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — jointly seek to divide Ninawa into several new provinces . The Iraqi parliament, however, opposes this plan and recently passed a law affirming that the borders of Ninawa and other territories would not be changed until Mosul city is liberated, and then only by local populations in a referendum.* This reaction coincides with large-scale opposition across Iraq — from nearly all Arabs and most Kurds — to Turkish President Erdogan’s efforts to militarily engage in the Mosul campaign.

Consequently, the Iraqi government will be pressed not only to integrate Sunni Arabs into the state and make them feel that they are equal citizens but to provide security, jobs, and services across hyper-fragmented localities. ***It must do so while communal distrust is salient, regional states are challenging Iraqi sovereignty, populations are demanding a strong and effective federal government, but one also limited in its powers,and with Baghdad beset in its own political turmoil and economic crises.* One way to set the stage for stability is to encourage pacts between local authorities and Baghdad based on joint extraction (and security) within existing provincial and regional (KRG) structures.

Indeed, transactional pacts will not necessarily remove local patronage and smuggling networks or resolve deep-rooted disputed over territories. They also have political trade-offs.* Greater complexity and decentralization will likely increase political entropy across Iraq, particularly if the lines of authority between provincial, regional, and state authorities remain unclear or contested. Still, as long as the Iraqi state is weak, hyper-fragmented, and financially stressed, these arrangements may help create conditions for the necessary devolution of authority, shared governance, zones of stability, and economic reconstruction. They can help integrate some de-facto authorities, including local militias that have developed over the past two years, into official state institutions, and as part of provincial administrations or the KRG.

Policy Recommendations:
These dynamics and trends have implications for U.S. policy. *Washington should recognize the highly localized challenges of stabilizing post-ISIL Iraq and the limitations and opportunities to affect long-term outcomes. *Rather than attempting to resolve all of Iraq’s challenges or fix the Iraqi state by reinforcing identity politics, the United States should assist the Iraqi government in creating zones of stability that can contain ISIL and mitigate its resurgence in former jihadist safe havens. *Where can the U.S. government start?

Reinforce Iraqi state capabilities and sovereignty. The United States should continue to emphasize Iraq’s territorial integrity, state sovereignty, and existing provincial boundaries per the 2005 Iraqi constitution. *Any de-facto territorial changes made during the anti-ISIL campaign should be considered unofficial until recognized by the Iraqi government. Focus should be on strengthening state institutions, to include security and power-sharing arrangements with provincial administrations and the KRG. All military and training support, including to the KRG, should continue to be channeled through and be approved by federal authorities in Baghdad.

Contain ISIL and enhance border security. Counter-terrorism support to the Iraqi government should continue. It needs to include training of the Iraq Security Forces and Peshmerga, enhanced border security and security procedures at checkpoints in towns and cities, and support for the integration local militias, including some PMFs, into the Iraqi Army and Peshmerga. The United States should also assist the Iraqi government in negotiating border security in northern Iraq with Turkey and the KRG.* The Iraqi government should be pressed to disband, weaken, or isolate Iranian-backed militias through deals with local leaders.

Train Local Police.* The United States should assist the Iraqi government in training local police forces alongside federal police.* Particular attention should be given to disputed territories and developing and enhancing local police forces in provinces populated by Sunni Arabs and minority groups.

Humanitarian aid and reconstruction. The United States should continue to provide financial and technical support to U.N. and Iraqi government efforts to resettle IDPs and reconstruct former ISIL safe-havens. *International organizations and neutral third party actors should work with the Iraqi government and local officials to help implement reconciliation efforts at national and local levels.

Approaching Iraq’s post-ISIL stabilization challenges from an ethno-sectarian lens not only ignores complex political realities on the ground, but it threatens to reverse important political and societal shifts that have emerged in Iraq over the past two years. *The hyper-localized nature of Iraq’s security challenges also suggests that post-ISIL stabilization is politically rooted and will differ across provinces based on distinct demographics, territories, and local economies.* This effort should commence today, alongside current military operations, and not after ISIL is considered to be defeated.
*
Denise Natali is a distinguished research fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University where she specializes on regional energy politics, Middle East politics and the Kurdish issue. The views expressed are her own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government. She can be reached on Twitter at @DnataliDC.

 

[Housecarl]

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Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-security-idUSKBN13B1U3

World News | Wed Nov 16, 2016 | 9:37am EST

At least 20 troops dead in fighting in Libya's Benghazi, hospital says

At least 20 members of the Libyan National Army (LNA) have been killed and 40 injured in two days of fighting in the eastern city of Benghazi, a hospital official said on Wednesday.

The clashes come as the LNA, a force loyal to the country's eastern government, tries to extend its grip on the port city and dislodge the Islamist-dominated forces it has been battling for more than two years.

Led by Khalifa Haftar, the LNA has made major gains in Benghazi this year but still faces pockets of resistance. On Monday, it launched a fresh offensive in the Guwarsha and Ganfouda districts, carrying out air strikes and saying it had made some progress in ground fighting.

War planes could still be heard over Benghazi on Wednesday morning, and ambulances ferrying casualties raced through the streets. Roads were shut leading to western parts of the city where clashes were continuing.

At least seven militants were killed in Guwarsha on Wednesday, military spokesman Fadel al-Hassi said. Earlier casualty figures for the LNA's opponents were not available.

On Tuesday, a car bombing near a vegetable market at the eastern entrance to the city left 14 wounded, a second hospital official said.

Libya slid into political turmoil and conflict after long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in an uprising five years ago. In 2014, rival parliaments and governments were set up in Tripoli and eastern Libya, both backed by loose alliances of armed groups.

Haftar has become the dominant figure for factions based in eastern Libya. So far, they have opposed a government backed by the United Nations that arrived in Tripoli in March.

(Reporting by Ayman al-Warfalli; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Larry King)

Also In World News
Parts of Mosul come back to life, but dangers are close by
Macron launches French presidential bid as polls show tight race

 

[Housecarl]

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http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-N...-to-change-Seoul-lawmaker-says/7851479303155/

U.S. North Korea policy of 'strategic patience' to change, Seoul lawmaker says

Chung Dong-young said the Obama administration’s approach to Pyongyang could shift in 2017.

By Elizabeth Shim **|** Nov. 16, 2016 at 9:38 AM

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- A bipartisan delegation of South Korean lawmakers visited with U.S. congressmen and President-elect Donald Trump advisers on Tuesday to review possible changes in policy under the new administration.

Chung Dong-young of the minor opposition People's Party and others met with U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo.

The two sides discussed a likely shift in U.S. North Korea policy and the strengthening of the U.S.-South Korea alliance, South Korean newspaper Segye Ilbo reported.

Chung said in the course of the meetings the Obama administration's North Korea policy of "strategic patience" was discussed critically.

"U.S. experts said under Trump that policy is to change," Chung told reporters.

In 2015, Gardner had said the current administration's policy was a "strategic failure," and that Pyongyang's threat has "grown exponentially" while Washington's focus has been turned on the Middle East.

The South Korean delegation also met with Edwin J. Feulner, chairman of the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation.

Feulner, a member of the president-elect's transition team, told the delegation that in addition to existing sanctions, the new administration is likely to impose additional embargoes on North Korea, according to the report.

Feulner also said he supports "secondary boycotts" against third-party firms in China and other countries that engage in illicit trade with Pyongyang.

Other aspects of Trump's Asia policy are a "blank slate," Chung said, but it is likely "within one or two days after inauguration the administration could designate China as a currency manipulator and take symbolic measures against steel dumping."

The assessment comes at a time when North Korea has yet to show signs of stepping back from stated positions on nuclear proliferation.

During a conversation with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg on Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in five years North Korea is likely to pose the most serious threat to the United States along with the Islamic State and Iran.

Carter said U.S. troops have been in position in South Korea for decades in order to deter a North Korea attack.

 

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http://thediplomat.com/2016/11/can-the-india-pakistan-ceasefire-survive/

Can the India-Pakistan Ceasefire Survive?

The 2003 agreement is falling apart amid a sharp decline in India-Pakistan relations.

By Sudha Ramachandran
November 11, 2016

Thirteen years after it came into effect, the India-Pakistan ceasefire agreement is in serious trouble. Shelling and firing across the Line of Control (LoC) and the International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has increased sharply over the past 40 days and is showing no signs of abating.

This is “the most intense” ceasefire violation over the past 13 years, a senior Border Security Force (BSF) official based at the headquarters in New Delhi told The Diplomat, adding that only along the Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) (the India-Pakistan frontier in the Siachen Glacier region) are “the guns silent now.” Elsewhere, the 2003 ceasefire agreement appears to be “in tatters.”

The ongoing ceasefire violations have come amidst a significant deterioration in India-Pakistan relations, with the immediate trigger for the latest downturn being the September 18 attack on an Indian army camp at Uri in J&K. The attack, which was carried out by the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based terrorist group with close ties to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was the deadliest on an Indian military facility in over a decade. It resulted in the death of around 18 Indian soldiers, prompting India to carry out a military assault on terrorist “launch pads” in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) on the night of September 28-29.

Following the Uri attack, India stepped up its diplomatic efforts to isolate Pakistan at the regional and global level for Islamabad’s support of anti-India terrorist groups. Delhi was successful in getting other South Asian countries to boycott a South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit that Islamabad was to host. More recently, India and Pakistan have been locked in a tit-for-tat contest to identify and expel each other’s High Commission staffers for alleged involvement in espionage activities.

But more worrying than the growing diplomatic chill is the India-Pakistan military face-off along the LoC and the IB in J&K. Following the Indian assault on terrorist launch pads in POK, Pakistan struck back by firing into and shelling Indian territory. Since then, the mountains amidst which the LoC and the IB run in J&K have been reverberating to the sound of daily firing and shelling by Indian and Pakistani security forces.

India and Pakistan accuse each other of violating the ceasefire agreement. While blaming the other for “unprovoked firing” they describe their own actions as mere “retaliation.”*Both boast that they are responding “befittingly” to the other’s aggression and inflicting “heavy casualties.” And both allege that it is domestic considerations that are driving the other’s cross-LoC aggression.

While the Pakistani media attributes India’s “warmongering” to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s domestic electoral considerations, Indian analysts argue that the power struggle between Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army Chief Raheel Sharif, and the Pakistan military’s need to regain *the prestige it lost when India conducted “surgical strikes” on POK terrorist launch pads, drives Pakistan’s heightened muscle-flexing.

Importantly, the militaries of the two countries claim to be targeting only each other’s border posts. The reality is different. They are hitting villages too, sometimes deliberately. As an editorial in Indian Express points out, “they are willfully endangering the lives of civilian communities on both sides of the border, and destabilizing the entire region.”

On November 26, 2003 the ceasefire took effect along the entire stretch of the India-Pakistan frontier i.e. the IB, the LoC and the AGPL. For the first time in several decades, the guns along this frontier went silent, bringing much needed respite to the shelling-scarred lives of people in hamlets along the LoC and to soldiers guarding the border posts. It facilitated the opening of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad and Poonch-Rawalkot routes, paving the way for bus and truck services linking the two Kashmirs for the first time in six decades and encouraging cross-LoC contacts, exchanges, travel, and trade. The ceasefire also enabled India to complete the construction of a fence near the LoC to prevent Pakistan’s infiltration of terrorists into Kashmir, a project that it had begun a couple of decades earlier but had to suspend due to Pakistan’s artillery fire.

The ceasefire has been successful in holding a peace of sorts along the India-Pakistan frontier. However, it has been violated off and on and with growing frequency since 2008. According to Indian official figures, there were 114, 347, and 583 ceasefire violation along the LoC and IB in J&K in 2012, 2013, and 2014, respectively and in the January-November period last year the figure was 400.

Between January and September 29 this year, there were 58 ceasefire violations. This figure soared thereafter; in the 40 days since, Pakistan has violated the ceasefire 99 times, India alleges.

The current ceasefire violations show*no signs of abating, raising concern for the future of the ceasefire agreement. Would India and/or Pakistan pull out of the ceasefire? That is unlikely, as “it would make bad press internationally,” Happymon Jacob, associate professor at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi told The Diplomat. Instead, they can be expected to continue to act as they have in recent years: continuing to “disregard the ceasefire agreement and engage in anger-venting on the LoC and IB.”

A breakdown of the ceasefire is in the interest of neither country. In addition to the human toll and the economic costs, it would have negative long term consequences for the security of India and Pakistan.

In the case of India, for instance, a breakdown of the ceasefire or continued shelling and firing would undo its many achievements in curbing infiltration and terrorism in Kashmir in the past decade. Pakistan is known to provide cover via*shelling and firing to infiltrate terrorists into India. Continued shelling would provide Pakistan with space and opportunity to resort more frequently to this tactic. Additionally, Pakistan could use artillery fire to destroy the LoC fence, which India built at enormous cost and which has helped India curb infiltration.

As for Pakistan, the breakdown or unraveling of the ceasefire along its frontier with India would require it to deploy more troops to its eastern front. This would mean shifting troops from the western front to the east, in essence forcing*Islamabad India-to shift attention away from eliminating terrorism from its soil at a crucial stage.

Keeping the ceasefire alive is therefore in the interest of both India and Pakistan.
If they are keen to revive the ceasefire, they need to shift away from the current ad hoc manner in which they are managing their border in J&K as this slapdash arrangement contributes to the “recurrent ceasefire violations” along the LoC and IB in J&K, Jacob observes.

Drawing attention to the fact that the ceasefire emerged from a telephone conversation in November 2003 between the directors-general of military operations (DGMOs) of the two countries, Jacob pointed out that the agreement is “not a written agreement.” There are “no rules, norms or principles governing the ceasefire agreement,” he said, observing that “a ceasefire agreement without the attendant dos and don’ts is not useful to the security forces on the ground.”

Adding to the confusion in managing the border are two other agreements, the 1949 Karachi Agreement and the 1960 Ground Rules Agreement. Jacob points out that although India maintains that the 1972 Shimla Agreement superseded the 1949 Karachi agreement, its security forces managing the LoC “follow some of [the] Karachi agreement’s stipulations, especially regarding bunker construction (although in reality both sides violate them at will), as they have no other agreement to go by.” And along the IB, the forces follow the 1961 Ground Rules, although neither India nor Pakistan has signed this agreement.

Given the “abundant confusion on what constitutes a ceasefire violation,” India and Pakistan should formalize the 2003 ceasefire agreement, the BSF official said, underscoring the need for “a written document that clarifies the rules.” Such a document would “ease the management of the LoC and the IB for the forces on the ground,” he noted. This would benefit immensely civilian populations living along the border, Jacob said.

In addition to putting in place a “proper agreement to govern the ceasefire,” Jacob underscored the need for the two DGMOs and the chiefs of the BSF and Pakistan Rangers to hold regular meetings. More flag meeting points are needed, he said, as are hotlines between the two sides. Additionally, local commanders should be empowered “to meet periodically to discuss and resolve local disputes that could escalate, and both sides should be made to withdraw heavy weapons from close to the border.”

But first both sides need to summon the political will to safeguard the ceasefire. So far in the current phase of conflict escalation, neither side has displayed signs of such will.

Dr. Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore, India. She writes on South Asian political and security issues.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...1f4a84-ab79-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html

Opinions

In our new Cold War, deterrence should come before detente

By David Ignatius Opinion writer November 15 at 7:45 PM
Comments 20

The White House sent a secret “hotline”-style message to Russia on Oct. 31 to warn against any further cyber-meddling in the U.S. election process. Russia didn’t escalate its tactics as Election Day approached, but U.S. officials aren’t ready to say deterrence worked.

The previously undisclosed message was part of the high-stakes game of cyber-brinkmanship that has been going on this year between Moscow and Washington. How to stabilize this relationship without appearing to capitulate to Russian pressure tactics is among the biggest challenges facing President-elect Donald Trump.

The message was sent on a special channel created in 2013 as part of the Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, using a template designed for crisis communication. “It was a very clear statement to the Russians and asked them to stop their activity,” a senior administration official said, adding: “The fact that we used this channel was part of the messaging.”

According to several other high-level sources, President Obama also personally contacted Russian President Vladimir Putin last month to caution him about the disruptive cyberattacks. The senior administration official wouldn’t comment on these reports.

The private warnings followed a public statement Oct. 7 by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson charging that “Russia’s senior-most officials” had authorized cyberattacks that were “intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.”

The senior administration official said Russia gave a “noncommittal” response to the Oct. 31 message, neither acknowledging the U.S. charges nor denying them. But the official confirmed reports by other high-level sources that after the public and private warnings, Russia did not increase its cyber-activity and may have reduced it.

“We did not see an escalation of Russian cyber-activity aimed at either trying to disrupt the election process or trying to influence the process, in the month leading up to the election,” said one senior official. A second senior official cautioned, however, that it was too early to say “whether the Russians were deterred” from additional activity.

The White House feared a last-minute Russian cyber-onslaught right up to Nov. 8, but it apparently never came. “We saw no evidence of any systematic attempt to disrupt the election on Election Day,” the first official said.

These disclosures about secret U.S.-Russia contacts are the latest chapter in the story of heightened confrontation between the two countries — a process that Putin and Trump say they are seeking to reverse. Putin phoned Trump on Monday to discuss ways to improve current “unsatisfactory” relations after Trump takes office and seek a “partner-like dialogue,” according to a Kremlin statement.

The Obama administration has grappled with how to establish norms of deterrence in cyberspace that check destabilizing actions by an aggressive, risk-taking Russia. The White House thought it was making progress with a joint statement at the November 2015 G-20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, which affirmed that “international law applies to state behavior in cyberspace.” The United States argues that this commitment includes observing laws of armed conflict that require proportionality and limited collateral impact in whatever battlespace. But the Obama administration fears Russia is ignoring these limits.

The Obama administration is ready to explore these issues further with Russia through a little-known “working group” created under a defunct “presidential bilateral commission.” The working group last met in April in Geneva. At that meeting, according to the White House, “both sides discussed the possibility of expanding the quantity and scope of information sharing about malicious activity occurring on the networks of both countries.”

Those words ring hollow now, in light of alleged Russian activities this year.

Russia experts in the Obama administration caution their successors: “It will be very difficult for the next administration . . . to know what Russia’s intentions are and whether you can have confidence that they will live up to their commitments,” said the second official. Russia has shown “increasing willingness to take risky actions,” and “old assumptions about the careful, calculating, risk-averse nature of Russian leadership . . . seem to be shifting.”

Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), a longtime critic of Russia, issued a similar warning Tuesday about Putin’s professed desire for “partner-like” relations. “We should place as much faith in such statements as any other made by a former KGB agent who has plunged his country into tyranny, murdered his political opponents, invaded his neighbors, threatened America’s allies and attempted to undermine America’s elections,” he said.

A new Cold War has begun in cyberspace. Trump seems to want detente. But first he should think carefully about how to establish clear norms of deterrence in this new domain.