Terrorism & Security
A daily summary of global reports on security issues.
U.S. military prepares to train Pakistani forces
Suggesting a dramatic shift in Washington's counterterrorism strategy, the State Department and the Pentagon want to beef up training of foreign militaries and paramilitary troops. The proposal comes as US military trainers are preparing to train Pakistan's paramilitary forces this summer.
In a proposal to Congress this week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requested $750 million to train troops around the world who are engaged in counterterrorism operations. That would constitute a 250 percent increase, The New York Times reports.
Mr. Gates said that rapidly building up the armed forces of friendly nations to combat terrorism within their borders was "a vital and enduring military requirement."
The additional funding is designed to augment the Global Train and Equip program, created in 2006 to assist foreign militaries, The Times reports.
"The current program has paid for parts and ammunition used by the Lebanese Army against terrorist threats in a Palestinian refugee camp as well as for helicopter spare parts, night-vision devices and night-flight training for Pakistani special forces fighting suspected members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda along the Afghan border, Mr. Gates said."
Funding for the program expires in about five months, The Washington Post explains. But Gates and Ms. Rice hope to make the program permanent.
Gates and Rice seek to increase funding authority for the program from $300 million a year to $750 million, make it permanent and expand it to allow assistance to police and paramilitary forces. The program is to expire at the end of September.…
A third facet of the proposal would make permanent a program that allows U.S. Special Operations Forces to spend $25 million annually to pay or supply equipment to indigenous forces that support their clandestine operations.
The proposal comes as Washington is preparing to send military trainers to Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, an area near the Afghan border where Taliban troops and Al Qaeda have been on the upsurge, CNN reported last week.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has signed deployment orders that will send U.S. military trainers to Pakistan this summer, CNN has learned.
Their mission: To teach Pakistan Frontier Corps units counterinsurgency skills critical to fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda.
The U.S. trainers will begin by training key Frontier Corps units to become trainers themselves so the program can quickly expand. The Frontier Corps is drawn from tribes in the border area and is considered vital in the fight against militants. In July 2007, The Christian Science Monitor reported that the intention of such training “would be to turn the corps against Al Qaeda, much as the US military in Iraq has forged alliances with Sunni tribes to take on Al Qaeda in Iraq.”
Pakistan's Frontier Corps, as well as the Pakistani Army, have come under increased attack in recent months, suffering several hundred casualties in a spate of suicide attacks. And in a battle with Taliban militants in Swat Valley last fall, poorly trained Frontier Corpsmen were killed in large numbers or fled without fighting, prompting alarm from many observers, including the editors of Foreign Policy magazine, who wrote, "Desertion is becoming a serious problem in the ranks of the Frontier Corps, the locally recruited paramilitary force that has been on the front lines of Pakistan's fight against insurgents in its tribal areas."
US military trainers on Pakistani soil is not a new thing, The New York Times explained in an article last month. But their numbers are set to rise significantly.
For several years, small teams of American Special Operations forces have trained their Pakistani counterparts in counterinsurgency tactics. But the 40-page classified plan now under review at the United States Central Command to help train the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force of about 85,000 members recruited from ethnic groups on the border, would significantly increase the size and scope of the American training role in the country.
United States trainers initially would be restricted to training compounds, but with Pakistani consent could eventually accompany Pakistani troops on missions "to the point of contact" with militants, as American trainers now do with Iraqi troops in Iraq, a senior American military official said. Britain is also considering a similar training mission in Pakistan, officials said.
But American troops stationed in Afghanistan's border region appear to harbor suspicions about the Frontier Corps, The Washington Post reported.
"The Frontier Corps might as well be Taliban.... They are active facilitators of infiltration," said a U.S. soldier who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Many Pakistani analysts and leaders have warned that a larger US military footprint could lead to a backlash from the public in Pakistan, the British newspaper the Guardian reports.
"They are making a big mistake. With the Frontier Corps they are going to put people to fight against their kith and kin. It will create a greater problem," said General Hamid Gul, a former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, the country's spy agency.
But some Pakistani observers see the proposed new training program as a welcome and vital change, writes Haider Ali Hussein Mullick, a Pakistani scholar and US foreign policy researcher, in Newsweek's PostGlobal blog.
The current U.S. plan to increase the training of Pakistani troops – paratroopers, Pakistani Special Forces, and Frontier Corps – is a step in the right direction. U.S. training programs must be supplemented by U.S. military hardware and intelligence exchange across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. A unilateral U.S. attack on Pakistan's rustic tribal areas, however, will be devastatingly unsustainable and counterproductive.
Dalai Lama's US visit roils US-China relations
The Dalai Lama's high-profile visit is stirring pro- and anti-China sentiment in the US as the White House prepares to host the exiled Tibetan leader next week. The meeting is likely to be sensitive for US-China relations, as China continues to reject Western criticism of its handling of widespread unrest in Tibet amid increasing international calls to boycott the opening ceremony of 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The Dalai Lama has repeatedly denied any involvement and condemned violence in Tibet. Last week, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate arrived in Seattle to attend a conference on compassion at the University of Washington. While thousands gathered to hear him speak Monday of peace and dialogue, hundreds of people, mostly Chinese-Americans protested outside the venue against the Dalai Lama, reports the Associated Press.
Demonstrators held signs alleging media bias and protesting the violence from rioting by Tibetan monks.
Some echoed Beijing's stand that the Dalai Lama is behind the recent uprising against five decades of Chinese rule. Signs called the Dalai Lama a liar and a "CIA-funded militant." Many people waved large Chinese flags.
"I think that people are misinformed. They have media discrimination," demonstrator Jiange Li said. "Tibet was freed – 50 years ago."
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that protesters sang the Chinese national anthem and waved American and Chinese flags. A small plane circled above the university, pulling banner that read DALAI UR SMILES CHARM, UR ACTIONS HARM. One organizer said ethnic Chinese had paid for the flight.
President Bush's special envoy on Tibet, Paula Dobriansky, is due to meet the Dalai Lama next week. It will be the highest-level meeting with the US administration since the unrest began. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that a Chinese envoy in Washington criticized the US for the planned meeting, as it amounted to interfering in China's "internal affairs." A State Department spokesman called for dialogue between Chinese authorities and the Dalai Lama.
The Dalai Lama said Sunday that some backdoor discussions were being held between the two sides, but said he was not directly involved, says The New York Times. His comments came a day after Chinese President Hu Jintao said that dialogue was possible only if the Dalai Lama stops "scheming and instigating violence" and trying to "sabotage" the Olympics.
Since March, anti-Chinese protests rioting and protests across a large swath of ethnic Tibetan areas in western China have tested security forces there. Paramilitary troops have been at the forefront of the crackdown. Chinese police recently said that pro-independence Tibetans were planning suicide attacks ahead of the Olympics. This claim is hotly disputed by exiled Tibetan activists.
The unrest has focused world attention on Beijing's rule in Tibet and sparked angry protests during recent legs of the Olympic torch relay. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon last week joined other world leaders, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in declining to attend the opening ceremony in Beijing on Aug. 8, a clear snub to Beijing.
Over the weekend, Chinese state media reported that nine Tibetan Buddhist monks were arrested last month for bombing a government building in western China. State television broadcast footage of a damaged building and said the suspects had confessed but made no mention of casualties, reports Agence France-Presse.
The report is the latest in a series by Chinese media that portrays the unrest as a violent separatist campaign orchestrated by the Dalai Lama and his exiled supporters, and, as The Christian Science Monitor reported, "The vast majority of Chinese citizens, relying on state-run media for news and official views, appear to find no fault with their government's handling of recent Tibetan unrest, presented as an outbreak of murderous mob violence instigated by separatist plotters abroad."
Last week, Chinese authorities said they had thwarted a plot by a Muslim minority group to carry out suicide attacks and kidnappings during the Olympics. The Associated Press reports that a security official revealed that 35 people had been arrested over the alleged plot in Xinjiang, a vast western province where Muslim Uighurs have long bristled under Chinese rule. But analysts have questioned the veracity of this and other reported terrorist threats involving Uighurs in the run-up to the Olympics.
Nicholas Bequelin, a Xinjiang expert with Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, said Beijing has undercut its credibility by consistently labeling criminal acts, anti-government violence and peaceful dissent as terrorism.
"The experience around the world since the launch of the global war on terrorism, has taught the international community how easily threats of terrorism can be manipulated by authoritarian governments for their own purposes," Bequelin said.
The Washington Post says that China has deliberately minimized its deployment of the People's Liberation Army in putting down unrest in Tibet, preferring to draw on the People's Armed Police, a growing paramilitary force of around 700,000. Analysts say this may reflect Beijing's belief that the current crisis is less serious than the last major outbreak of antigovernment unrest in 1989. The global spotlight ahead of the Olympics may also have played a part in keeping the army in reserve.
The shift in approach by President Hu and his Communist Party lieutenants reflected political sensitivities that still surround memories of 1989, when public esteem for the Army suffered after it moved against its own people.
The party Propaganda Bureau has worked tirelessly since then to restore the military's image and portray it as devoted to China's 1.3 billion inhabitants.
Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun reports that relatives living in the Dalai Lama's childhood home are under virtual house arrest as security forces control their access. The spiritual leader spent several years living in Pingan County before moving to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. On the front gate of the house, a government notice warned against "destructive antigovernmental behavior" and forbade the reproduction of the Dalai Lama's image.
On Feb. 21, before the uprising took place in Lhasa, there was a clash between monks and police officers in Tongren County in Huangnan, Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, which is about 150 kilometers [100 miles] south of Pingan County.
When we visited the site of the incident, a young monk expressed anxiety.
"Military officers are coming round and searching our rooms every day. If they find even a fragment of a Dalai Lama photograph, they will take us away immediately," he said.
Maoists set to sweep Nepal election
Former Maoist rebels in Nepal look set to seize power through the ballot box as the country awaits the final results of recent elections. The step will see a remarkable transition for a movement that led a 10-year insurgency that claimed up to 14,000 lives.
The group, still labeled a terrorist organization by the United States, has promised to abide by a multiparty democratic system. The Maoists' leader, known by his nom de guerre, Prachandra, which means "the fierce one," told reporters that the party was "committed to the peace process and multiparty democracy and to rebuild this country," reports the BBC.
Although the Maoists have not yet renounced violence, they will almost certainly now have to adjust from being a party of revolt to being a party at the heart of government.
Initial results in the country's first elections for over nine years, held on April 10, project a clear victory for the Maoists, reports Reuters.
Results from last Thursday's elections for a special assembly meant to write a new constitution and formally abolish the 240-year-old Hindu monarchy show the Maoists have won 83 of the 160 seats declared, according to election officials.
Despite their good showing so far, a complicated electoral system will make it difficult for them to win an absolute majority in the new assembly, charged also with running the country for at least two years.
While final results are still several weeks away, a Maoist victory is likely to spark significant political change in the mountain kingdom, says The Times of London:
If the Maoists emerge as the dominant force in the assembly, they will insist that it abide by a pre-election agreement to abolish the 240-year-old monarchy at its first meeting. They are also likely to demand a strong, executive presidency, occupied by Prachanda.
At the heart of the Maoist insurgency was a drive for greater social equality and the ousting of the monarchy.
King Gyanendra, who assumed power after a prince murdered the rest of the royal family in 2001, sacked his government and assumed absolute power in 2005. Subsequent antimonarchy demonstrations helped push opposition parties and the rebel Maoists together, and Gyanendra was forced to give up authoritarian rule. The following year the government and Maoists reached a peace agreement that ended the long and violent insurgency, comments the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR):
A peace deal between the Maoists and the government in November 2006 put an end to a decade-long civil war that had resulted in thousands of deaths and widespread human rights abuses by both the Maoists and the Nepalese security forces. According to Human Rights Watch, "Nepal ranks near the bottom of nearly all indexes of human well-being and development." The long-drawn conflict has left the country impoverished and "seriously hampered aid distribution, health care and education."
Nonetheless, the Maoists' popular support and election romp so soon after the peace deal has stunned observers, reports the Economic Times of India:
But for the moment, it's time for platitudes and euphoria. The magnitude of their own performance seems to have stunned even the Maoist leadership, [as well as] the local media and political observers.
According to Agence France-Presse, poverty, deepening social problems, and a dysfunctional political system combined to give the Maoists their opportunity.
Behind the numbers emerging from the Election Commission in Kathmandu is what observers and ordinary voters say is a resounding demand for sweeping change in the Himalayan nation and one of the world's poorest places….
"The Maoists had an election slogan: 'We have seen everyone else time and time again, lets see the Maoists' this time'," recounted 56-year-old Ganey Darai, a voter who gave the ex-rebels his backing.
"People have decided to take them up on their word, and see what they can do," said Darai, who earns less than a dollar a day hiring out weighing scales outside a hospital in Kathmandu.
While the elections were deemed "free and fair" by international observers – including former President Jimmy Carter – international governments face a dilemma in responding to the election says The Times of London:
The prospect also raises some international concerns, because the Maoists are still listed as terrorists by the United States and have threatened to tear up treaties with India and to abolish Britain's Gurkha Brigade.
The Himalayan News Service says only that the Maoists "would like to maintain friendly and cordial relations with friendly countries."
Moreover, the CFR says the election could usher in further instability:
Social unrest and the growing discontent of marginalized ethnic groups loom ahead. The Foreign and Commonwealth office of the United Kingdom takes note of protests and rioting in southern Nepal in late 2006 and early 2007: "A number of people were killed during clashes with the Police. Protestors defied curfews, and vandalized government offices." Moreover, the fate of thousands of armed Maoist guerrilla fighters remains uncertain.
According to a recent report by the International Crisis Group, "the capital's political games increasingly fail to reflect the realities of a turbulent country."
Do satellite photos show Iran ballistic missile facility?
A new report by The Times of London says that satellite photographs of a site in Iran indicate the location is being used to develop a ballistic missile that could reach most of continental Europe.
The Times writes that the photographs show the launch site of a Kavoshgar 1 rocket that Iran tested on February 4. Tehran claimed that the rocket was intended to further a nascent Iranian space program, but The Times says that the photos suggest otherwise.
Analysis of the photographs taken by the Digital Globe QuickBird satellite four days after the launch has revealed a number of intriguing features that indicate to experts that it is the same site where Iran is focusing its efforts on developing a ballistic missile with a range of about 6,000km (4,000 miles).
A previously unknown missile location, the site, about 230km southeast of Tehran, and the link with Iran's long-range programme, was revealed by Jane's Intelligence Review after a study of the imagery by a former Iraq weapons inspector. A close examination of the photographs has indicated that the Iranians are following the same path as North Korea, pursuing a space programme that enables Tehran to acquire expertise in long-range missile technology.
Geoffrey Forden, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that there was a recently constructed building on the site, about 40 metres in length, which was similar in form and size to the Taepodong long-range missile assembly facility in North Korea.
The Times adds that the rocket launched from the facility in February was based on Iran's Shahab 3B missile, which is in turn based on North Korea's Nodong missile. Geoffrey Forden, a member of the UN team monitoring Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in 2002 and 2003, noted that while the test rocket did not indicate any significant advances in Iran's missile technology, the launch site had "very high levels of security and recent construction activity" and appeared to be "an important strategic facility."
If the Iranian facility is indeed developing a long-range ballistic missile, it would explain NATO's decision last week to move ahead with the missile shield program supported by the US. The Christian Science Monitor reported last week that the Bush administration scored a key success by persuading NATO to approve the missile shield, which is meant to protect against missiles like those that Iran is linked to.
NATO members all supported the US position on missile-shield defense, which is to be deployed in the Czech Republic and Poland. "There is a threat ... and allied security must be indivisible in the face of it," read the statement on missile defense.
But Iran has denied any hostile intent behind its rocket program. While Tehran has not yet commented on the Times report, after the February test of the Kavoshgar 1 rocket it stated its intent to use the technology for launching satellites, reported The New York Times.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad... said on state-run television: "We need to have an active presence in space. We witness today that Iran has taken its first step in space very firmly, precisely and with awareness."
Iran has said that it wants to put satellites into orbit to monitor natural disasters and to improve telecommunications, as well as for security reasons.
Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najar said Iran would launch its domestically made satellite, called Omid, meaning Hope, in June, Fars News reported.
But US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called the launch "troubling," noting that "the kinds of technologies and capabilities that are needed in order to launch a space vehicle for orbit are the same kinds of capabilities and technologies that one would employ for long-range ballistic missiles."
Much of the concern of both the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, stems from evidence found on a laptop stolen by an Iranian in 2004 and turned over to US intelligence services. Among other documents on the laptop, investigators found "drawings on modifying Iran's ballistic missiles in ways that might accommodate a nuclear warhead," reported The Washington Post in February. But the problem is proving that the documents are legitimate.
U.S. intelligence considers the laptop documents authentic but cannot prove it. Analysts cannot completely rule out the possibility that internal opponents of the Iranian leadership could have forged them to implicate the government, or that the documents were planted by Tehran itself to convince the West that its program remains at an immature stage....
British intelligence, asked for a second opinion, concurred last year that the documents appear authentic. German and French officials consider the information troubling, sources said, but Russian experts have dismissed it as inconclusive. IAEA inspectors, who were highly skeptical of U.S. intelligence on Iraq, have begun to pursue aspects of the laptop information that appear to bolster previous leads.
"There is always a chance this could be the biggest scam perpetrated on U.S. intelligence," one U.S. source acknowledged. "But it's such a large body of documents and such strong indications of nuclear weapons intent, and nothing seems so inconsistent."
Despite the possibility of Iran developing a long-range ballistic missile in time, Mr. Forden says that they likely still have a long way to go. ArmsControlWonk.com, a blog on WMDs and national security, cites Forden's observations about the flaws revealed by the February launch .
Iran's February 4th launch of a Shahab-3 just keeps on getting more and more interesting; that is if you are interested in just how good of a missile the Shahab/No'dong is. Video from Iran's television show that there is a failure of the missile's thrust vector control system nineteen seconds into its powered flight. At that point, there is a brief flaring at the very end of the missile and an object is seen flying off for several seconds, until it leaves the video's frame as the camera continues to follow the missile. Tellingly, it doesn't just drop off the missile but is given quite a transverse boost.
Forden says that the debris indicates that the missile's graphite jet vanes, used to steer the rocket in flight, are being "eaten away" by the rocket exhaust. Such a problem can knock a missile severely off course, he adds.
So what does this mean for missile proliferators in general and Syria and Iran (and North Korea since they are all involved in the development of these missiles) in particular? It means that they are still having a hard time producing graphite tough and pure enough to be used in large missiles. It also indicates that a top priority for their missile engineers will be to develop other thrust vector control mechanisms.
Al Qaeda mastermind believed dead
Abu Obaidah al-Masri, a senior militant planner for Al Qaeda and the alleged mastermind behind the 2005 London transportation bombings, has reportedly died last year in Afghanistan. Although Mr. Masri has been noted as a key Al Qaeda figure, security analysts say that his position will likely be swiftly filled as the network appears to be regrouping in the remote Afghan-Pakistani border region.
While there have been several prior attempts on his life, Reuters quotes a US intelligence figure as being confident that Masri recently died of natural causes:
"There is compelling reason to believe that Abu Obaidah is dead," a U.S. counterterrorism official said on condition of anonymity.
McClatchy newspapers reported that Masri died of hepatitis in Pakistan.
Still, questions persist about the secretive operative, reported the Los Angeles Times last week.
Recent intelligence suggests that Masri died too, officials say. But they say they have no confirmation, no Internet eulogies of the kind that celebrated [Libyan chief Abu Laith al] Libi.
Cultivating the art of survival through anonymity, Masri may have beaten the odds once again. Or it may be that, for strategic reasons, both sides want to keep his fate ambiguous as a successor emerges.
Mr. Libi, who was linked to an assassination attempt on Vice President Dick Cheney last year in Afghanistan, was killed in a US airstrike in January.
According to the Counterterrorism Blog, responding to an earlier – and apparently false – report of his death, Masri was a major player in Osama bin Laden's organization:
If reports of his death are accurate, Al-Qaida has no doubt suffered a significant blow to its top leadership and has lost the resources of a truly innovative and highly skilled terror mastermind.
The New York Times reports that Masri had significant and valuable experience in planning attacks and that in addition to the 2005 London bombing, he was also involved in a failed plot to blow up commercial planes flying over the Atlantic Ocean in 2006:
Mr. Masri, a veteran of wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya, was responsible for planning attacks against the West and recruiting operatives to carry them out, the official said.
American officials say that having Masri out of the picture diminishes Mr. bin Laden's ability to strike western targets, reports The Washington Post:
"Basically, he was the one heading up al-Qaeda's efforts to launch attacks against the West," said the U.S. counterterrorism official. Masri had many contacts in Europe and is believed to have traveled widely there in the 1990s before returning to Afghanistan about 2000, the official said.
The official said Masri's death would mean "a serious blow to al-Qaeda in terms of his key role and participation and plotting attacks against the West. It will disrupt those efforts at the very least."
Indeed, according to the Los Angeles Times, Masri's death could be even more important than bin Laden's capture:
Anti-terrorism officials consider operations chiefs more urgent prey than even Osama bin Laden because they are front-line figures in attacks on the West.
In recent years, Masri is said to have concentrated on the domestic fight in Afghanistan says The Washington Times:
Obeida al Masri, operating out of the mountainous Afghan province of Kunar, is thought to have been in charge of planning attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces. Violence in southern and eastern Afghanistan spiked last year, leaving about 1,600 people dead, including a surge in suicide attacks — a change of tactics by the militants.
Over the years, Masri faced several attempts on his life reports the Independent of England:
The Egyptian has twice before been declared to be dead after attempts to kill him. His first escape came after a US missile was fired at the village of Damadola in January 2006. It killed 18 people, including four alleged al-Qa'ida operatives, along with women and children. In the second, Pakistani helicopters attacked a religious school in the same area in October that year, killing a further 80 people.
But the BBC says he was an elusive figure and very hard to track down:
He was such a mysterious figure that even his real name was a carefully veiled secret – Abu Obaidah al-Masri is an Arabic nom de guerre meaning "Father of Obaidah the Egyptian."
According to the Los Angeles Times, Al Qaeda's senior leadership is likely to have quickly replaced al-Masri with a new operational head:
It is likely that Masri has already been replaced, experts say. Potential successors include Khalid Habib, an Egyptian who, according to expert Rohan Gunaratna, author of "Inside Al Qaeda," has overseen Al Qaeda "internal" operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Others who worked with Masri and may have replaced him include Hamza al Jawfi, a Gulf Arab, and Midhat Mursi, an Egyptian chemist who has allegedly overseen Al Qaeda's efforts to develop unconventional weapons. Mursi was present while recruits from Northern Europe were trained in Pakistan last spring, according to investigators.
And even as Masri's death is being publicized, senior terrorist experts warned in congressional hearings Wednesday that the fight against Al Qaeda is continuing to fare badly and that the group is growing in strength, reports Voice of America:
Author and journalist Peter Bergen says more than six years after the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States, the hunt for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is going poorly, and his terrorist organization is showing signs of resurgence...
Bergen said he believes it is unlikely that al-Qaida will stage an attack in the United States in the next five years, but says the group could bring down a commercial airliner or attack a European city.
Legal teams took a break outside the High Court in Harare, Zimbabwe on Monday. The opposition has called a High Court judge to speed up the publication of the March 29 presidential election results; a second day of hearings on the polls began Wednesday. (Mujahid Safodien/AP)
Vote results delayed for fear of violence, Zimbabwe says
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) said Wednesday that the release of results from the country's disputed March 29 presidential election could precipitate dangerous tensions. This comes as international calls for the release of the results broadened amid growing concerns that President Robert Mugabe is trying to delay the result announcement to give him time to prepare for a probable runoff against top opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Lawyers for the ZEC hinted at escalating violence in the conflict-torn state, where a week's delay in critical election results has led to widespread fears of clashes between opposition and government supporters, reports Reuters. International human rights activists say Zimbabwe's recent history of political violence has been fostered by militias backed by Mr. Mugabe, a charge the government denies.
Mugabe's ZANU-PF party apparently lost control of Parliament, according to results released April 3. But Mugabe is disputing the results, and some electoral officials have been arrested.
Opposition figures have warned that government-backed militias are campaigning to intimidate voters with violence ahead of a possible run-off election, the Los Angeles Times reports, and on April 4, one opposition leader said Mugabe had been "preparing a war against the people," reported The Christian Science Monitor.
International calls for the release of delayed results from the vote also increased on Wednesday. The United Nations, European Union, Australia, and Jacob Zuma, the leader of South Africa's ruling party, all issued calls for the release of election results, Reuters reports.
Tendai Biti, spokesman for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) opposition party, said more violence in the conflict-torn state was imminent unless two regional groups – the African Union and the Southern African Development Community – intervened.
The opposition has called on a High Court judge to speed up publication of the results. A Zimbabwe court began a second day of hearings on the polls on Wednesday, Agence France-Presse reported, spurring opposition hopes of a release of the results. Justice Tendai Ucheni could, however, go on hearing the case for days.
Last week, official parliamentary results released by the ZEC appeared to confirm the end of Mugabe's 28-year rule. He's widely considered responsible for the collapse of Zimbabwe's once-prosperous economy and has been widely accused of human rights abuses, reported the Associated Press. Official results showed that the MDC won 105 seats compared with Mugabe's 93 seats in the 210-seat Parliament.
The MDC also announced last week that Mr. Tsvangirai won 50.3 percent of the presidential vote compared with 43.8 percent for Mugabe.
Zimbabwe's ruling party, the ZANU-PF, however, appears to be disputing the results. At least seven officials from the electoral commission have been arrested for manipulating the results in favor of the opposition, the AllAfrica.com website reports.
The ZANU-PF has also called for a total recount of the votes. The signs from Mugabe contradict international reports from a week ago indicating that the long-time ruler of Zimbabwe was preparing to stand down, Australia's state-supported SBS news reports.
Australia's Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said the international community would have to place increasing pressure on Mugabe.
Zimbabwe's state-sponsored Herald newspaper claimed Tsvangirai had pleaded with the ruling ZANU-PF party to appoint him in a new government, claiming he "begs for Vice President post." The Herald also claimed that former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was trying to contact Zimbabwean authorities about a power-sharing deal.
Amid the disputed polls, there are increasing concerns of widespread violence, the BBC reports. Opposition figures say activists have been attacked in a campaign of violence since the elections.
There have also been reports of invasions of white-owned farms, according to the Commercial Farmers' Union President Trevor Gifford. Mr. Gifford told the BBC that some 60 farmers had fled their homes in fear of attack by mobs. The MDC also says 80 Zimbabwean opposition activists have been attacked by government-backed militias in recent days.
Convicted terrorists escape Moroccan jail
Authorities in Morocco said Monday they were searching for nine escaped prisoners who had been convicted of terrorist offenses. The prisoners were convicted in connection with multiple suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003. The nine men were among hundreds of Islamist suspects rounded up after the terrorist attacks, but were not considered to be among the masterminds.
News of the Moroccan militants' jailbreak came on the third day of a closely watched trial in London of eight men accused of plotting to bomb several passenger planes bound for the US in 2006, reports Agence France-Presse. The alleged plot, which was disrupted by British security forces, involved disguising homemade bombs as soda bottles. That prompted the global clampdown on liquids carried onto flights.
Both the trial and the escape relate to an apparent escalation of terror-related activity in Europe. In early March, US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said, "One of the reasons we're seeing more attacks in Europe is because they think it's easier," reported the Washington Post.
Moroccan Muslims were reportedly among the extremists that bombed a train station in Madrid in 2004 and have also been recruited to fight in Iraq, says the BBC. Authorities there have sought to crack down on militants to show Western allies that Morocco is a reliable partner in the US-led efforts to combat Islamist violence. The escaped prisoners apparently dug a tunnel out of the jail after protesting their innocence and saying the legal system had failed them. Human rights groups are skeptical of the soundness of some criminal convictions in the wake of the Casablanca bombings.
The 2003 Casablanca attacks were blamed at the time on the banned Islamist group Salafia Jihadia, which Moroccan security officials have accused of links to Al Qaeda, reports London's The Guardian. Bombs detonated at five locations in the city, including a Jewish community center and the Belgian consulate, killing 45 people. The attacks were a huge blow to Morocco, a fairly liberal Islamic country in North Africa with a substantial foreign tourist industry.
About 700 people were put on trial for offenses linked to the bombings. Four men were sentenced to death for their involvement in the attacks.
The alleged mastermind, Abdelhaq Bentassir, died in custody, prompting an outraged response from civil rights groups.
Most of the suspected bombers came from a Casablanca shantytown, with the attacks highlighting the lack of opportunities for poor Casablanca residents.
Morocco continues to grapple with militant violence, reports the Associated Press. Last year, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside an Internet cafe in Casablanca, which authorities linked to an alleged plot against tourist sites across the country. The following month, two brothers strapped on explosives that they detonated near the US consulate in Casablanca, killing themselves but nobody else.
Last week, a court in London began the trial of eight suspects accused of what prosecutors say was a plot in August 2006 to blow up seven transatlantic flights in midair using liquid explosives. Prosecutors said the alleged attack, had it succeeded, would have caused a tragedy that the "world was unlikely ever to forget." The suspects, mostly British Muslims of Pakistani origins, have all denied charges of murder and conspiracy to commit an act of violence likely to endanger aircraft.
The trial follows Britain's largest-ever counterterrorism operation to thwart what authorities categorized as the most ambitious terrorist plot since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US, says The Washington Post. The targeted flights from London's Heathrow Airport to destinations in the US and Canada were due to leave within hours of each other.
Perhaps the most dramatic courtroom moment came when [prosecutor Peter] Wright screened a computer animation of the flight paths of the seven planes that showed how the planes would all have been airborne over the Atlantic Ocean at the same time at the height of the summer vacation season.
Once the first bomb went off, "the authorities would be unable to prevent the other flights from meeting a similar fate as they would already be in midair and carrying their deadly cargo," he said.
On Monday, the court heard that alleged ringleader Mohammed Yasar Gulzar used a false passport to fly to Britain in August 2006, triggering a flurry of activity by the other defendants who were under police surveillance, reports Britain's Daily Telegraph. Mr. Gulzar, who claimed to be a Muslim missionary on a honeymoon to Britain, was arrested at an unfurnished apartment in London where police found Pakistan-made batteries and a mobile phone with the number of another suspect, Assad Sarwar.
When police raided Mr Sarwar's home they found a computer memory stick hidden in the garage which contained the suicide videos of six of the eight defendants and information on bomb-making an[d] possible targets, which Mr Gulzar had accessed on his laptop.
Last week, prosecutors alleged that Salwar had gathered detailed information on other targets that included a European gas pipeline, Britain's electricity grid and nuclear power stations, says the Associated Press. Salwar had allegedly decided not to join the other defendants in carrying out their suicide attacks on transatlantic flights, indicating that he had other terrorist plots in mind, prosecutors told the court.
The BBC reports that authorities believe the suspects may have been inspired by the 2005 suicide attacks on London's transport network. One of the suspect carried photos of the four London bombers. Other extremist materials were also recovered from raids on suspects' homes, said the lead prosecutor.
Prosecutor Peter Wright QC said every one of the eight men played a vital role in the conspiracy to detonate homemade bombs aboard flights bound for north America.
"From commanding officer through quartermaster to foot soldier, each of them was a necessary component part; of those who had assembled in the UK ready, able and willing to play their part in this plot to try and bring terror to the skies in a way that the world was unlikely to ever forget," he said.
Several members of the group played tennis together as they allegedly prepared their attacks, says the Press Association (UK). The jury was shown surveillance footage of the apartment in London where the prosecution said bombs were assembled and suicide videos taped. Undercover police also watched some of the men play tennis near the top-floor apartment, the court was told.
The bombmakers allegedly sought to inject liquid explosives into 500 ml bottles of sports drinks that appeared to be unopened, reports Reuters. After smuggling the bottles onto the flight, the suspects would have used a detonator hidden in a hollowed-out battery and powered by a disposable camera or another electronic device to trigger them.
President George W. Bush greeted Croatian soldiers that served in the NATO mission in Afghanistan at Zagreb airport, Croatia before his departure. As hearings on Iraq open in Washington, DC on Tuesday, there are questions about the adequacy of ISAF troop levels in Afghanistan, in the wake of NATO members' commitment to increase deployment in the region. (Nikola Solic/AP)
Counterterror debate turns to troop levels in Afghanistan, Iraq
As hearings on Iraq open in Washington Tuesday, US lawmakers are questioning the adequacy of troop levels in Afghanistan. Their comments come in the wake of NATO members' commitment to increase deployment in the region and a renewed skepticism at home about the effectiveness of the recent troop buildup in Iraq.
"Democrats have called on President George W. Bush to refocus US counterterror efforts to Afghanistan and Pakistan, saying that overemphasis on Iraq has allowed Islamic extremists to regroup along the Afghan-Pakistan border," Agence France-Presse reports.
'The negligent policies of the last half-decade have permitted al-Qaeda and the Taliban to regenerate, and to pose a greater threat to the national security of the United States than at any point since September 11, 2001,' Democratic lawmakers wrote in a letter to Bush Sunday.
The Baltimore Sun's politics blog, The Swamp, quotes Sen. Joseph Biden (D) Delaware as warning that Afghanistan and Pakistan should not be overlooked:
While we look forward this week to hearing from Ambassador Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan must also be an urgent priority. Afghanistan is slipping toward failure and the instability in Pakistan continues. As a result, the border area between the two remains a freeway of fundamentalism, where those who actually attacked us on 9/11 have regrouped. Afghanistan's fate is directly tied to Pakistan's future and America's security. This Administration cannot continue to treat the region as an afterthought.
The letter comes just days after "President Bush promised NATO allies at a summit that ended in Bucharest, Romania, on Friday that the United States will increase forces in Afghanistan next year no matter what happens in Iraq," The Washington Post reports. The announcement could signal an Iraq-style buildup.
The pledge comes as violence and insurgent activity is spiking in parts of Afghanistan. The administration's promise of more troops could indicate the beginnings of a push, similar to the buildup of forces in Iraq over the past year, to step up counterinsurgency operations next year.
Associated Press more troops are needed
"General McNeill has said that he needs three more brigades, two for combat and one for training. That translates to roughly 7,500 to 10,000 additional troops."
The commitment comes as President Bush last week lobbied a European summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to send more troops to Afghanistan, Voice of America reports. And Bush's call seems to been answered:
NATO leaders, at their summit in Bucharest, have pledged to dispatch more than 1,800 additional troops for the allied force in Afghanistan.
France committed an additional 700 soldiers. Georgia, which hopes to become a NATO member, offered 500 and Poland will send 400 more soldiers and eight badly-needed helicopters. Italy, Romania and Greece agreed to add training teams for the Afghan army.
The Czech Republic, Hungary, and non-NATO-members Azerbaijan and New Zealand offered to send more modest numbers.
Poland and Georgia each will split their units between southern and eastern Afghanistan – areas where Taliban insurgents are most active.
And Uzbekistan said it is ready to sign a deal to allow NATO to transport non-military supplies to troops in Afghanistan through the Central Asian nation.
Britain has also pledged more troops, London's The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Monday:
Britain is poised to send another 450 troops to Afghanistan and take control of its most war-torn region for at least the next two years following pressure from the United States, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
It's not only southern Afghanistan that's in trouble. The elevated troop deployments come as Afghanistan's eastern provinces, once considered safe, are experiencing an uptick in violence, The Washington Post reports.
…more than six years into the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, efforts to stabilize the country increasingly focus on the rugged frontier area straddling the border with Pakistan. Over the past 18 months, Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters have exploited peace deals by Pakistan's government to create an unprecedented haven in the region, U.S. officials said. From there, insurgents have escalated attacks in Pakistan and in eastern Afghanistan, leading the United States last year to double its troop presence along more than 600 miles of frontier.
Observers in Pakistan, meanwhile, watched the NATO summit and the possible troop deployment with dismay. An opinion piece in Pakistan's The News, an English-language daily, warns:
In plain words, all this suggests that the US and ISAF forces are getting increasingly bogged down in the quagmire that is Afghanistan today, and are making little headway in their efforts to defeat what they call the "insurgency".
What they are actually facing, however, is not an "insurgency" but a resistance movement made up of Afghans who want to get rid of the foreign forces that have occupied their country.
New Zawahiri tape suggests Al Qaeda PR shift
The latest public message released by No. 2 Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri may signal a change in public-relations moves by the terrorist group in the face of growing doubt about its tactics among Muslim supporters, experts say.
Reuters reports that in an audiotape released Wednesday, Mr. Zawahiri responded to unusually pointed questions submitted earlier by users of Al Qaeda-linked online forums. The fact that Zawahiri answered the forum posts, which challenged Al Qaeda's policies on attacks against innocents, the United Nations, and Iran, suggests that dissent among its supporters may be forcing Al Qaeda to change tactics, according to an anonymous US counterintelligence official.
The US official, interpreting the questions and the answers given by Ayman al-Zawahiri, said: "They've been taken to the online woodshed on a number of things."
"Some of the questioners are raising tough issues, such as the legitimacy of murdering innocent civilians and the effectiveness of Al Qaeda's overall strategy," the US official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters. "Since Al Qaeda chose what questions to address, it suggests Al Qaeda's tactics have raised serious concerns – even among potential sympathizers – and that the group's leadership recognizes that it has some serious explaining to do," he said.
ABC News reports that the medium by which Zawahiri's latest message was released also suggests a tactical change.
One terrorism expert who studies jihadist websites says the audio message may signal a shift in Al Qaeda's media operations. The expert cites the fact that both Zawahiri's message and top Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's last address were both released without video. The expert also says the recent files uploaded to jihadist websites have appeared in Arabic, rather than their usual format in English.
The Daily Telegraph of London reports that in the tape – which bore the logo of Al Qaeda's media arm, Al Sahab – Zawahiri denied that the terrorist group targeted innocents in its operations.
"We haven't killed the innocents, not in Baghdad, nor in Morocco, nor in Algeria, nor anywhere else," he said, according to the transcript, in response to the question: "Excuse me, Zawahiri, but who is it who is killing with Your Excellency's blessing the innocents in Baghdad, Morocco, and Algeria?"
"If there is any innocent who was killed in the Mujahideen's operations, then it was either an unintentional error or out of necessity," Zawahiri added, saying that it was Al Qaeda's enemies who killed the innocent, "intentionally [taking] up positions in the midst of the Muslims for them to be human shields for him."
Agence France-Presse reports that Zawahiri said that 18 United Nations staff members who were killed in December suicide attacks in Morocco were not innocents, however, and accused the UN of double standards.
[The UN] "is the one which considers Chechnya an inseparable part of Crusader Russia, and considers Ceuta and Melilla inseparable parts of Crusader Spain," he said, referring to two Spanish enclaves in North Africa claimed by Morocco. The UN had agreed to the presence of outsiders, dubbed "Crusaders" by Zawahiri, in Afghanistan and Iraq and had approved the separation of East Timor from Indonesia. Yet "it doesn't recognize that right for Chechnya, nor for all the Muslim Caucasus, nor for Kashmir, nor for Ceuta and Melilla, nor for Bosnia", he said.
The BBC writes that Zawahiri also denied reports that Mr. bin Laden is in poor health. "The ill-intentioned always try to circulate false reports about him being sick," he said.
Noah Shachtman, a national security blogger for Wired.com, writes that Zawahiri addressed Al Qaeda's hostile stance toward Iran, saying that a protracted struggle between Iran and the US would be "in the interest" of the terrorist group, and that Al Qaeda would strike against the winning party.
Al Qaeda, a Sunni organization, has long regarded Iran, a Shiite nation, as an enemy. Mr. Shachtman emphasizes a particular passage of the Zawahiri transcript (translated by IntelCenter):
The dispute between America and Iran is a real dispute based on the struggle over areas of influence, and the possibility of America striking Iran is a real possibility. As for what might happen in the region, I can only say that major changes will occur in the region, and the situation will be in the interest of the Mujahideen if the war saps both of them.
If, however, one of them emerges victorious, its influence will intensify and fierce battles will begin between it and the Mujahideen, except that the Jihadi awakening currently under way and the degeneration state of affairs of the invaders in Afghanistan and Iraq will make it impossible for Iran or America to become the sole decision-maker in the region.
The questions Zawahiri answered were submitted between December and January on Islamist militant web sites at the prompting of Al Sahab, writes The Associated Press.
AP notes that the questioners "appeared to be as much in the dark about the terror network's operations and intentions as Western analysts and intelligence agencies," and "appeared uncertain whether Al Qaeda's central leadership directly controls the multiple, small militant groups around the Middle East that work in its name, or whether those groups operate on their own."
Pentagon overspent budget by $295 billion
The Pentagon has gone hundreds of billions of dollars over budget in recent years on key weapons systems, including aircraft, ships, and satellite, said a government audit. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said for the sixth year in a row that the Pentagon had significantly gone over budget, but according to a report presented to Congress this week, the problem is getting worse.
The Government Accountability Office found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion, and are delivered almost two years late on average. In addition, none of the systems that the GAO looked at had met all of the standards for best management practices during their development stages.
Auditors said the Defense Department showed few signs of improvement since the GAO began issuing its annual assessments of selected weapons systems six years ago. "It's not getting any better by any means," said Michael Sullivan, director of the GAO's acquisition and sourcing team. "It's taking longer and costing more."
The GAO said that Pentagon spending on weapons programs has rocketed to a 20-year high of $1.6 trillion, Agence France-Presse reports. The GAO said a total of 72 programs, including combat ships, fighter jets, and satellites, were over budget.
The spending on new weaponry continued to rise despite funding competition from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a decline in discretionary spending in other areas of the US government budget, the GAO said.
"Every dollar spent inefficiently in developing and procuring weapon systems is less money available for many other internal and external budget priorities – such as the global war on terror and growing entitlement programs (such as social security)," Gene Dodaro, the GAO's acting comptroller general, said in the report delivered to Congress on Monday.
Government auditors said Wednesday that almost half of some 28 contracts to manufacture body armor for Army soldiers were completed without proper tests, the Washington Post reported.
According to the 195-page GAO report (links to PDF file), the Pentagon has doubled the sum pledged to new weapons systems from $790 billion in 2000 to $1.6 trillion in 2007. The GAO also concluded current programs are delivered 21 months late on average.
Commentator Robert Scheer, a journalist and editor of the website TruthDig, called the recent spending the "highest run-up in military spending since World War II."
This is not about the waste of taxpayer dollars – already pushing a trillion – in funding the Iraq war, which, while reprehensible enough, pales in comparison to the big-ticket military systems purchased in the wake of 9/11.
Another recent government audit found that the Army had gaps in its soldiers' safety standards, USA Today reports. A Defense Department audit found that the Army couldn't be sure some of its body armor met safety standards.
The inspector general reviewed $5.2 billion worth of Army and Marine Corps contracts for body armor from 2004 through 2006.
"Specific information concerning testing and approval of first articles was not included in 13 of 28 Army contracts and orders reviewed, and contracting files were not maintained in 11 of 28 Army contracts to show why procurement decisions were made," the report concluded...
"This report indicates that nearly half of the Army's contractors did not perform the most basic test on the body armor before it was sent to our troops fighting overseas," [Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, (D) of New York, who asked for the report] said. "During a time of war, it's shameful that the Army would not scrupulously ensure that every piece of equipment is properly tested, especially a fundamentally life-and-death product such as body armor."
Previous government audits have also found major waste in contracts involving reconstruction efforts in Iraq, The Christian Science Monitor reported last year. The January 2007 report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction found that about $4.2 million of $43.8 million in US State Department funds spent on a residential camp adjacent to a new Iraq police academy wasn’t properly approved.
The Pentagon said it would respond to the most recent report about alleged overspending on weapons systems.
The Defense Department programs suffering from cost overruns included a new presidential helicopter, unmanned aerial drones, and improvements to the F-22A Raptor, CNN reports.
That time lag is forcing the military to keep equipment in use longer than planned, which is itself driving up costs, the report said...
A Pentagon spokesman said the department needs time to study the report before commenting.
Previous
Become part of the Monitor community
36K on Facebook | 12K on Twitter | 2,250 on YouTube