Pakistan and the U.S. Exit From Afghanistan

01/10/2010 in Afghanistan, Diplomacy, freedom, International Relations, Irak, Iran, Islam, Military, News, Politics, Revolution, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, UN, United States, violence, War
Tags: Afghanistan, Diplomacy, freedom, International Relations, Irak, Iran, Islam, Military, News, NT, Politics, Revolution, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, UN, United States, violence, War

Pakistan and the U.S. Exit From Afghanistan

By George Friedman

Bob Woodward has released another book, this one on the debate over Afghanistan strategy in the Obama administration. As all his books do, the book has riveted Washington. It reveals that intense debate occurred over what course to take, that the president sought alternative strategies and that compromises were reached. But while knowing the details of these things is interesting, what would have been shocking is if they hadn’t taken place.

It is interesting to reflect on the institutional inevitability of these disagreements. The military is involved in a war. It is institutionally and emotionally committed to victory in the theater of combat. It will demand all available resources for executing the war under way. For a soldier who has bled in that war, questioning the importance of the war is obscene. A war must be fought relentlessly and with all available means.

But while the military’s top generals and senior civilian leadership are responsible for providing the president with sound, clearheaded advice on all military matters including the highest levels of grand strategy, they are ultimately responsible for the pursuit of military objectives to which the commander-in-chief directs them. Generals must think about how to win the war they are fighting. Presidents must think about whether the war is worth fighting. The president is responsible for America’s global posture. He must consider what an unlimited commitment to a particular conflict might mean in other regions of the world where forces would be unavailable.

A president must take a more dispassionate view than his generals. He must calculate not only whether victory is possible but also the value of the victory relative to the cost. Given the nature of the war in Afghanistan, U.S. President Barack Obama and Gen. David Petraeus — first the U.S. Central Command chief and now the top commander in Afghanistan — had to view it differently. This is unavoidable. This is natural. And only one of the two is ultimately in charge.

The Nature of Guerrilla Warfare

In thinking about Afghanistan, it is essential that we begin by thinking about the nature of guerrilla warfare against an occupying force. The guerrilla lives in the country. He isn’t going anywhere else, as he has nowhere to go. By contrast, the foreigner has a place to which he can return. This is the core weakness of the occupier and the strength of the guerrilla. The former can leave and in all likelihood, his nation will survive. The guerrilla can’t. And having alternatives undermines the foreigner’s will to fight regardless of the importance of the war to him.

The strategy of the guerrilla is to make the option to withdraw more attractive. In order to do this, his strategic goal is simply to survive and fight on whatever level he can. His patience is built into who he is and what he is fighting for. The occupier’s patience is calculated against the cost of the occupation and its opportunity costs, thus, while troops are committed in this country, what is happening elsewhere?

Tactically, the guerrilla survives by being elusive. He disperses in small groups. He operates in hostile terrain. He denies the enemy intelligence on his location and capabilities. He forms political alliances with civilians who provide him supplies and intelligence on the occupation forces and misleads the occupiers about his own location. The guerrilla uses this intelligence network to decline combat on the enemy’s terms and to strike the enemy when he is least prepared. The guerrilla’s goal is not to seize and hold ground but to survive, evade and strike, imposing casualties on the occupier. Above all, the guerrilla must never form a center of gravity that, if struck, would lead to his defeat. He thus actively avoids anything that could be construed as a decisive contact.

The occupation force is normally a more conventional army. Its strength is superior firepower, resources and organization. If it knows where the guerrilla is and can strike before the guerrilla can disperse, the occupying force will defeat the guerrilla. The occupier’s problems are that his intelligence is normally inferior to that of the guerrillas; the guerrillas rarely mass in ways that permit decisive combat and normally can disperse faster than the occupier can pinpoint and deploy forces against them; and the guerrillas’ superior tactical capabilities allow them to impose a constant low rate of casualties on the occupier. Indeed, the massive amount of resources the occupier requires and the inflexibility of a military institution not solely committed to the particular theater of operations can actually work against the occupier by creating logistical vulnerabilities susceptible to guerrilla attacks and difficulty adapting at a rate sufficient to keep pace with the guerrilla. The occupation force will always win engagements, but that is never the measure of victory. If the guerrillas operate by doctrine, defeats in unplanned engagements will not undermine their basic goal of survival. While the occupier is not winning decisively, even while suffering only some casualties, he is losing. While the guerrilla is not losing decisively, even if suffering significant casualties, he is winning. Since the guerrilla is not going anywhere, he can afford far higher casualties than the occupier, who ultimately has the alternative of withdrawal.

The asymmetry of this warfare favors the guerrilla. This is particularly true when the strategic value of the war to the occupier is ambiguous, where the occupier does not possess sufficient force and patience to systematically overwhelm the guerrillas, and where either political or military constraints prevent operations against sanctuaries. This is a truth as relevant to David’s insurgency against the Philistines as it is to the U.S. experience in Vietnam or the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.

There has long been a myth about the unwillingness of Americans to absorb casualties for very long in guerrilla wars. In reality, the United States fought in Vietnam for at least seven years (depending on when you count the start and stop) and has now fought in Afghanistan for nine years. The idea that Americans can’t endure the long war has no empirical basis. What the United States has difficulty with — along with imperial and colonial powers before it — is a war in which the ability to impose one’s will on the enemy through force of arms is lacking and when it is not clear that the failure of previous years to win the war will be solved in the years ahead.

Far more relevant than casualties to whether Americans continue a war is the question of the conflict’s strategic importance, for which the president is ultimately responsible. This divides into several parts. This first is whether the United States has the ability with available force to achieve its political goals through prosecuting the war (since all war is fought for some political goal, from regime change to policy shift) and whether the force the United States is willing to dedicate suffices to achieve these goals. To address this question in Afghanistan, we have to focus on the political goal.

The Evolution of the U.S. Political Goal in Afghanistan

Washington’s primary goal at the initiation of the conflict was to destroy or disrupt al Qaeda in Afghanistan to protect the U.S. homeland from follow-on attacks to 9/11. But if Afghanistan were completely pacified, the threat of Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism would remain at issue because it is no longer just an issue of a single organization — al Qaeda — but a series of fragmented groups conducting operations in Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, North Africa, Somalia and elsewhere.

Today, al Qaeda is simply one manifestation of the threat of this transnational jihadist phenomenon. It is important to stop and consider al Qaeda — and the transnational jihadist phenomenon in general — in terms of guerrillas, and to think of the phenomenon as a guerrilla force in its own right operating by the very same rules on a global basis. Thus, where the Taliban apply guerrilla principles to Afghanistan, today’s transnational jihadist applies them to the Islamic world and beyond. The transnational jihadists are not leaving and are not giving up. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, they will decline combat against larger American forces and strike vulnerable targets when they can.

There are certainly more players and more complexity to the global phenomenon than in a localized insurgency. Many governments across North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia have no interest in seeing these movements set up shop and stir up unrest in their territory. And al Qaeda’s devolution has seen frustrations as well as successes as it spreads. But the underlying principles of guerrilla warfare remain at issue. Whenever the Americans concentrate force in one area, al Qaeda disengages, disperses and regroups elsewhere and, perhaps more important, the ideology that underpins the phenomenon continues to exist. The threat will undoubtedly continue to evolve and face challenges, but in the end, it will continue to exist along the lines of the guerrilla acting against the United States.

There is another important way in which the global guerrilla analogy is apt. STRATFOR has long held that Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism does not represent a strategic, existential threat to the United States. While acts of transnational terrorism target civilians, they are not attacks — have not been and are not evolving into attacks — that endanger the territorial integrity of the United States or the way of life of the American people. They are dangerous and must be defended against, but transnational terrorism is and remains a tactical problem that for nearly a decade has been treated as if it were the pre-eminent strategic threat to the United States.

Nietzsche wrote that, “The most fundamental form of human stupidity is forgetting what we were trying to do in the first place.” The stated U.S. goal in Afghanistan was the destruction of al Qaeda. While al Qaeda as it existed in 2001 has certainly been disrupted and degraded, al Qaeda’s evolution and migration means that disrupting and degrading it — to say nothing of destroying it — can no longer be achieved by waging a war in Afghanistan. The guerrilla does not rely on a single piece of real estate (in this case Afghanistan) but rather on his ability to move seamlessly across terrain to evade decisive combat in any specific location. Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism is not centered on Afghanistan and does not need Afghanistan, so no matter how successful that war might be, it would make little difference in the larger fight against transnational jihadism.

Thus far, the United States has chosen to carry on fighting the war in Afghanistan. As al Qaeda has fled Afghanistan, the overall political goal for the United States in the country has evolved to include the creation of a democratic and uncorrupt Afghanistan. It is not clear that anyone knows how to do this, particularly given that most Afghans consider the ruling government of President Hamid Karzai — with which the United States is allied — as the heart of the corruption problem, and beyond Kabul most Afghans do not regard their way of making political and social arrangements to be corrupt.

Simply withdrawing from Afghanistan carries its own strategic and political costs, however. The strategic problem is that simply terminating the war after nine years would destabilize the Islamic world. The United States has managed to block al Qaeda’s goal of triggering a series of uprisings against existing regimes and replacing them with jihadist regimes. It did this by displaying a willingness to intervene where necessary. Of course, the idea that U.S. intervention destabilized the region raises the question of what regional stability would look like had it not intervened. The danger of withdrawal is that the network of relationships the United States created and imposed at the regime level could unravel if it withdrew. America would be seen as having lost the war, the prestige of radical Islamists and thereby the foundation of the ideology that underpins their movement would surge, and this could destabilize regimes and undermine American interests.

The political problem is domestic. Obama’s approval rating now stands at 42 percent. This is not unprecedented, but it means he is politically weak. One of the charges against him, fair or not, is that he is inherently anti-war by background and so not fully committed to the war effort. Where a Republican would face charges of being a warmonger, which would make withdrawal easier, Obama faces charges of being too soft. Since a president must maintain political support to be effective, withdrawal becomes even harder. Therefore, strategic analysis aside, the president is not going to order a complete withdrawal of all combat forces any time soon — the national (and international) political alignment won’t support such a step. At the same time, remaining in Afghanistan is unlikely to achieve any goal and leaves potential rivals like China andRussia freer rein.

The American Solution

The American solution, one that we suspect is already under way, is the Pakistanization of the war. By this, we do not mean extending the war into Pakistan but rather extending Pakistan into Afghanistan. The Taliban phenomenon has extended into Pakistan in ways that seriously complicate Pakistani efforts to regain their bearing in Afghanistan. It has created a major security problem for Islamabad, which, coupled with the severe deterioration of the country’s economy and now the floods, has weakened the Pakistanis’ ability to manage Afghanistan. In other words, the moment that the Pakistanis have been waiting for — American agreement and support for the Pakistanization of the war — has come at a time when the Pakistanis are not in an ideal position to capitalize on it.

In the past, the United States has endeavored to keep the Taliban in Afghanistan and the regime in Pakistan separate. (The Taliban movements in Afghanistan and Pakistan are not one and the same.) Washington has not succeeded in this regard, with the Pakistanis continuing to hedge their bets and maintain a relationship across the border. Still, U.S. opposition has been the single greatest impediment to Pakistan’s consolidation of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and abandoning this opposition leaves important avenues open for Islamabad.

The Pakistani relationship to the Taliban, which was a liability for the United States in the past, now becomes an advantage for Washington because it creates a trusted channel for meaningful communication with the Taliban. Logic suggests this channel is quite active now.

The Vietnam War ended with the Paris peace talks. Those formal talks were not where the real bargaining took place but rather where the results were ultimately confirmed. If talks are under way, a similar venue for the formal manifestation of the talks is needed — and Islamabad is as good a place as any.

Pakistan is an American ally which the United States needs, both to balance growing Chinese influence in and partnership with Pakistan, and to contain India. Pakistan needs the United States for the same reason. Meanwhile, the Taliban want to run Afghanistan. The United States has no strong national interest in how Afghanistan is run so long as it does not support and espouse transnational jihadism. But it needs its withdrawal to take place in a manner that strengthens its influence rather than weakens it, and Pakistan can provide the cover for turning a retreat into a negotiated settlement.

Pakistan has every reason to play this role. It needs the United States over the long term to balance against India. It must have a stable or relatively stable Afghanistan to secure its western frontier. It needs an end to U.S. forays into Pakistan that are destabilizing the regime. And playing this role would enhance Pakistan’s status in the Islamic world, something the United States could benefit from, too. We suspect that all sides are moving toward this end.

The United States isn’t going to defeat the Taliban. The original goal of the war is irrelevant, and the current goal is rather difficult to take seriously. Even a victory, whatever that would look like, would make little difference in the fight against transnational jihad, but a defeat could harm U.S. interests. Therefore, the United States needs a withdrawal that is not a defeat. Such a strategic shift is not without profound political complexity and difficulties. But the disparity between — and increasingly, the incompatibility of — the struggle with transnational terrorism and the war effort geographically rooted in Afghanistan is only becoming more apparent — even to the American public.

Read more: Pakistan and the U.S. Exit From Afghanistan | STRATFOR

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Egypt intercepts shipment of 190 anti-aircraft missiles

28/08/2010 in Gaza, Hamas, Iran, Islam, Israel, Middle East, News, Security, Smuggling, Terrorism
Tags: Egypt, Gaza, Hamas, Hizbollah, Iran, Islam, Israel, Middle East, News, Security, Smuggling, Terrorism

Egypt intercepts shipment of 190 anti-aircraft missiles By JPOST.COM STAFF 28/08/2010 Authorities uncover large weapons cache hidden in Sinai, reportedly destined for smuggling into Gaza; more ammunition and explosives seized in Rafah.

Egyptian authorities intercepted a shipment of at least 190 anti-aircraft missiles in Sinai probably destined for Gaza on Saturday, Palestinian news Agency Maan reported. According to the report, the Egyptian police raided several storage areas in the area and discovered the secret cache hidden in a remote region in the center of the peninsula. RELATED: IAF targets smuggling tunnels in Gaza Hamas reopens smuggling tunnels In addition to the anti-aircraft missiles, rockets and other ammunition were seized, as well as a large supply of illegal drugs. Reports also stated that authorities raided several locations in Rafah, where they found more stores of explosives and weapons. Earlier on Saturday Kuwaiti newspaper Alrai reported that Syria’s military is on high alert for an Israeli attack on Hizbullah weapons depots located in the country. Israel and Egypt have maintained a tough blockade of Gaza since Hamas seized power in June 2007, and the hundreds of tunnels in the Rafah area are the main entry point for many basic items, as well as weapons. The Gaza-Egypt border sits at the northeastern tip of Sinai. At the beginning of August, the Israeli Air Force struck a tunnel used to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip as a retaliation for a Kassam rocket fired into Israel which struck near Sderot.

Egypt intercepts shipment of 190 anti-aircraft missiles

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A Botched Hostage Rescue in the Philippines

28/08/2010 in Asia, International Relations, Military, News, Security, Terrorism, violence
Tags: Asia, International Relations, Military, News, Philippines, Security, Terrorism, violence

A Botched Hostage Rescue in the
Philippines
Created Aug 26 2010 – 10:55
[1]
Not Limited Open Access
By Scott Stewart
On Aug. 23, Rolando Mendoza, a former senior police inspector with the Manila police
department, boarded a tourist bus in downtown Manila and took control of the vehicle,
holding the 25 occupants (tourists from Hong Kong and their Philippine guides) hostage.
Mendoza, who was dressed in his police inspector’s uniform, was armed with an M16-type
rifle and at least one handgun.
According to the police, Mendoza had been discharged from the department after being
charged with extortion. Mendoza claimed the charges were fabricated and had fought a
protracted administrative and legal battle in his effort to be reinstated. Apparently,
Mendoza’s frustration over this process led to his plan to take the hostages. The fact that
Mendoza entertained hope of regaining his police job by breaking the law and taking
hostages speaks volumes about his mental state at the time of the incident.
After several hours of negotiation failed to convince Mendoza to surrender,
communications broke down, Mendoza began to shoot hostages and police launched a
clumsy and prolonged tactical operation to storm the bus. The operation lasted for more
than an hour and left Mendoza and eight of the tourists dead at the end of a very public
and protracted case of violence stemming from a workplace grievance [2].
Hostage-rescue operations are some of the most difficult and demanding tactical
operations for police and military. To be successful, they require a great deal of training
and planning and must be carefully executed. Because of this, hostage-rescue teams are
among the most elite police and military units in the world. Since these teams are always
training and learning, they pay close attention to operations like the one in Manila and
study these operations carefully. They seek to adopt and incorporate tactics and
techniques that work and learn from any mistakes that were made so they can avoid
repeating them. Even in highly successful operations, there are always areas that can be
improved upon and lessons that can be learned.
Indeed, in the Manila case, the events that unfolded provided a litany of lessons for
hostage-rescue teams. The case will almost certainly be used in law enforcement and
military classrooms across the globe for years as a textbook example of what not to do.
Breakdown of the Incident
Shortly after 10 a.m. on Aug. 23, Mendoza commandeered the bus and its occupants (his
police inspector’s uniform was likely helpful in gaining him access to the vehicle). Within
minutes, he released two female hostages. Soon thereafter he released four hostages (a
woman and three children). Mendoza used a cell phone to call the Manila police, inform
them of the situation and make his demands: that the charges against him be dropped by
the police ombudsman’s office and that he be reinstated to the police force. These early
hostage releases would generally be seen as a positive sign by the authorities, showing
that Mendoza had some compassion for the women and children and that even if he was
reducing the number of hostages for pragmatic, tactical reasons (to allow him better
control over the group), he was at least reducing the number by releasing people and not
killing them.
The police maintained communications with Mendoza, who stayed aboard the bus and
kept the motor running. This not only kept the vehicle cool, but allowed Mendoza to watch
events unfold around the bus on the onboard television set. He had his hostages close the
curtains on the bus to make it more difficult for the authorities to determine where he was
in the bus.
Shortly after 1 p.m., Mendoza requested more gasoline for the bus and some food. He
released another hostage, an elderly man, in return for the gas and food. Two other
hostages, both Philippine photographers, were released as a 3 p.m. deadline for action set
by Mendoza came and went (one of the photographers was released before, one after).
There were also reports that Mendoza had initially set a 12:30 p.m. deadline for action.
The fact that these deadlines passed without violence would be an encouraging sign to the
authorities that the incident could be resolved without bloodshed. Food was again taken
out to the bus just before 5 p.m. During the afternoon, Mendoza could have been engaged
by snipers on at least two occasions, but since negotiations were proceeding well and
Mendoza did not appear to be close to shooting, the decision was made to try and wait
him out and not attempt to kill him. If the snipers failed to incapacitate Mendoza, it could
have risked the lives of the hostages.
During the ordeal, Mendoza continued to watch events unfold on the television inside the
bus and reportedly even talked to journalists via cell phone. Mendoza also ordered the bus
driver to park the vehicle sideways in the center of the road in an apparent attempt to
make it more difficult to approach without detection.
Things took a marked turn for the worse around 6:20 p.m., when negotiators,
accompanied by Mendoza’s brother Gregorio (who is also a police officer and who had
earlier helped convince Mendoza to extend his deadline), approached the bus with a letter
from the office of the ombudsman offering to reopen his case. Mendoza rejected the letter,
saying he wanted his case dismissed, not reviewed. At this point, there are conflicting
reports of what happened. The police negotiators told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that
Mendoza’s brother told Mendoza that the letter from the ombudsman’s office was garbage
and that he should not surrender. Other press reports indicate that the brother pleaded
with Mendoza to take him hostage and release the tourists and that his pleading was seen
as counterproductive to the negotiations.
Whatever the story, Mendoza’s brother was then arrested and his arrest was carried live
on television and seen by Mendoza in the bus. Shortly after his brother’s arrest, Mendoza
fired two warning shots and demanded in a radio interview that all the Manila Police
Department SWAT officers be removed from the scene. Shortly after 7 p.m., Mendoza
repeated his threats and refused to speak to his family members. Growing increasingly
agitated, Mendoza shot two of the hostages when his demand for the SWAT officers to
retreat was not met. He released the Philippine bus driver, who reportedly told police that
all the hostages were dead. (We are unsure why the driver said this when only two of the
passengers had been killed, but the police would have been able to tell from the volume of
fire that Mendoza had not truly killed all the hostages.)
At about 7:30 p.m., the tires of the bus were shot out and a police tactical team
approached the vehicle and began to smash its windows with a sledgehammer. The police
attempted to slowly enter the back of the bus by crawling through one of the shattered
windows from the top of a police truck but were forced back out of the window by gunfire.
At about 8:40 p.m., police deployed tear gas into the back of the bus through the missing
windows. Gunfire erupted and Mendoza was finally killed in a hail of bullets. Six additional
hostages also perished during the exchange of gunfire. It is unclear at this point if they
were intentionally shot by Mendoza or if they were caught in the crossfire.
Hostage Situations
By the time of the rescue attempt, the saga of Mendoza’s firing from the police force had
been going on for some time, and it is important to recognize that he did not make a
spontaneous decision to seize the tourist bus. Even if the bus was targeted shortly before
the attack, Mendoza’s path toward violent action would have included several significant
warning signs. As in almost any case of violence that stems from issues in the workplace,
once the chain of events are examined more closely, reports will emerge that warning
signs were either missed or ignored. Had those warning signs been noted and acted
upon, this situation might have been avoided.
Since the event was not pre-empted, once it happened and developed into a hostage
situation, the primary objective of the authorities was to resolve the incident without
violence. Skillful hostage negotiators do this by allowing the hostage-taker to vent. They
also work hard to defuse any tension that has the attacker on edge and to gently wear the
attacker down to the point of surrender. One of the essential principles in this effort is to
isolate the hostage-taker so that he or she cannot receive outside communication,
motivation, encouragement or other forms of support. Hostage negotiators seek to control
the flow of all information into or out of the crime scene. That did not occur in this case.
Mendoza was able to talk to outsiders on his cell phone and even gave media interviews.
He was also able to use the television in the bus to watch live media coverage of the
incident, including video of the deployment of police officers. This gave him a considerable
advantage and far more information than what he could have observed with his eyes from
inside the curtained bus.
As shown in the November 2008 attack in Mumbai, India, it has become more difficult to
isolate assailants from outside communications in the cell phone era, but there are ways
that such communications can be disabled. It is not known why the Manila police did not
attempt to jam the outside communication signals going to and from the bus, but that is
certainly something that will come up in the after-action review, as will their handling of the
media and onlookers (one of whom was wounded) during the incident.
As negotiations are proceeding in a hostage situation, the authorities must always be
busily preparing to launch an assault in case negotiations fail. When the assailant is
agitated or mentally disturbed, the situation on the ground can sometimes change quite
rapidly, and the rescue team needs to be prepared to act on a moment’s notice. Usually
the team will come in with an initial assault plan and then alter and refine their plan as
more intelligence becomes available, and as they become more familiar with the site and
the situation.
If the hostages are being held in a building, the rescue team will get the blueprints of the
building and collect as much information as possible in an effort to plan their assault on
the location where the hostages are being held. In this case, the hostages were being held
on a stationary bus, which made it far easier to collect that type of intelligence — a bus is a
bus. The authorities also had access to released hostages who, had they been debriefed,
could have described to authorities the situation inside the bus.
In a protracted hostage situation, the authorities will frequently employ technical measures
to gather additional intelligence on the activities of the hostage-taker. This may involve the
use of overt or clandestine video equipment, parabolic microphones or microphones
surreptitiously placed in or near the site. Even thermal imaging sets and technical
equipment to intercept cell phone communication or radio transmissions are sometimes
used.
All the information gleaned from such efforts will not only go to the negotiators, to help
them understand the hostage taker’s frame of mind, but will also be used to help the
rescue team fine-tune their assault plan.
Meanwhile, as the assault plan is being tweaked, negotiations continue and the hostage
negotiators work to wear down the hostage-taker. It appears that the negotiators in the
Mendoza case were doing a fairly good job of keeping the situation calm until the situation
flared up involving Mendoza’s brother and the letter from the ombudsman’s office.
Authorities clearly erred by not sending him a letter saying they had dropped the case
against him. (They did not need the extortion charges now that they could arrest him and
charge him with kidnapping and a host of other crimes.) It is hard to understand why the
police department quibbled over words and refused to give him the piece of paper he
expressly demanded. The police then aggravated the situation greatly with the public
arrest of Mendoza’s brother. Those two events caused the situation to deteriorate rapidly
and resulted in Mendoza’s decision to begin shooting. Once he shot the first two hostages,
the negotiations were clearly over and it was time to implement a tactical solution to the
problem.
The Use of Force
In a hostage situation, the use of force is a last resort. If force is required, however, the
rescue team needs to hit hard, hit fast and hit accurately. There is little time for hesitation
or error: Lives hang in the balance. This is where things began to get very ugly in the
Mendoza case. Not only was there a delay between the murder of the first hostages and
the launching of the first assault attempt, the assault was not hard, fast or accurate. To
succeed, an assault should be dynamic, assume control of the scene by overwhelming
force and use surprise and confusion to catch the hostage-taker off guard and quickly
incapacitate him. The rescue team needs to dominate the place where the entry is being
made and then quickly and accurately shoot the assailant. When the police began to
smash the windows of the bus with sledgehammers and then continued to beat on the
windows for more than a minute, Mendoza had ample time to kill his hostages had he
wished to do so. The only thing that saved the hostages who did survive was Mendoza’s
apparent reluctance to kill them.
It appears that the intent of the police was to smash the rear window to provide an
opening and then to continue smashing windows as they moved forward in an effort to
draw Mendoza’s attention to the front of the bus while the assault team entered from the
rear. When the police did attempt to enter the bus using the roof of the police vehicle,
however, it was a slow, clumsy attempt that was quickly repelled by Mendoza once he
opened fire on the team. They did not enter the bus quickly, and their tepid approach
caused them to lose the element of tactical surprise, denied them the opportunity to
employ overwhelming force and allowed Mendoza time to think and react and begin firing.
There was no hope of the assault team’s dominating the breaching point (or the rest of the
bus) when they entered in such a half-hearted manner. Then, instead of following through
with the assault by storming the front door while Mendoza was firing at the police in the
rear of the bus, the police withdrew and went back to the drawing board. Again, had
Mendoza wanted to kill all his remaining hostages, the withdrawal of the assault team
gave him ample time to do so.
More than an hour after the first assault, the police again approached the bus and
deployed tear gas grenades through the broken windows at the back of the bus. This
flushed Mendoza toward the front of the bus and, after a brief exchange of gunfire, he was
killed. There were some reports that he was killed by a police sniper, but we have seen no
evidence to corroborate those reports, and it appears that he was shot from a relatively
short range. Eight of the hostages survived the ordeal.
Granted, a bus does offer some challenges for a takedown operation, but is also a very
common form of transportation throughout the world, and there have been numerous
hostage situations involving buses in many different countries. Because of this,
professional rescue teams frequently practice bus takedowns in much the same way they
practice building takedowns or aircraft takedowns.
It was very apparent that the Manila SWAT unit lacked the experience, equipment and
training to conduct effective hostage-rescue operations, and we have seen this problem in
other local police departments in the developing world. We have not been able to learn
why the police did not seek the help of a national-level hostage-rescue unit for the tactical
aspect of this situation rather than leaving it to the Manila SWAT team to resolve. Given
the prolonged duration of the situation and the location in the nation’s capital, higher-level
assets should have had time to deploy to the scene.
Unlike many cases of workplace violence, this one did not involve a disgruntled employee
charging into his former office with guns blazing. Instead, Mendoza embarked on a course
of action that would, as it turned out, cause a great deal of public humiliation for his former
employer. Indeed, the head of the Manila police district tendered his resignation Aug. 24.
Four leaders of the Manila SWAT team were also placed on administrative leave.
In the past, some botched rescue attempts have spurred inquiries that have resulted in
countries creating or dramatically improving their hostage-rescue capabilities. For
example, the failed rescue attempt in Munich in 1972 led to the creation of Germany’s
GSG-9, one of the most competent hostage-rescue teams in the world. It will be
interesting to see if the Mendoza case spurs similar developments in the Philippines, a
country facing a number of security threats.
Terrorism/Security Scott Stewart China Philippines Security Portal: Featured
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Links:
[1] http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/burton_and_stewart_on_security?fn=6716995385
[2] http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20081126_workplace_violence_myths_and_mitigation?fn=7816995364
<a href=”http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100825_botched_hostage_rescue_philippines”>A Botched Hostage Rescue in the Philippines</a> is republished with permission of STRATFOR.

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Under New American Management Al-Qaida Now Poses Inner Threat – Investors.com

24/08/2010 in Afghanistan, Al-Qaida, Asia, Current Affairs, Irak, Islam, Military, News, Terrorism, United States, violence, War
Tags: Afghanistan, Al-Qaida, Asia, Current Affairs, Irak, Islam, Military, News, NT, Terrorism, United States, violence, War

Under New American Management Al-Qaida Now Poses Inner Threat

By PAUL SPERRY
Posted 08/13/2010 08:17 PM ET

Among Americans installed in al-Qaida leadership positions are propagandist Adam Gadahn, left, and Adnan Shukrijumah, believed to be directing U.S…. View Enlarged Image

If al-Qaida looks and sounds different as we approach 9/11’s ninth anniversary, it’s because it’s under new American management. No fewer than four U.S. citizens and a permanent U.S. resident have risen to senior leadership posts.
These five English-speaking leaders are actively planning or facilitating attacks against their countrymen, while recruiting and radicalizing other American turncoats to carry them out.
By remaking itself into an American enterprise, al-Qaida is now more lethal than ever. Its new generation of leaders understands the way America works, having lived here for decades. They have a better sense of our security blind spots. They also know which kinds of attacks will produce both mass panic and maximum economic damage.
Al-Qaida’s indigenous rebirth, moreover, befogs our military strategy. We’re no longer at war with just a foreign enemy, but fellow Americans recruited by the enemy. They’re supplied, in turn, by a seemingly endless stream of homegrown foot soldiers, fed by a native Muslim population once believed quiescent and nonthreatening.
Shockingly, the War on Terror has morphed into a mini-civil war, and it’s posing major new challenges to its prosecution. We’re now battling our own citizens. How do we deal with wartime traitors? Can the CIA assassinate them? Can it spy on them? What about their civil rights?
This muddies an already muddy war — and it’s all part of al-Qaida’s plan.
After 9/11, the group vowed to convert our own people against us, something once thought impossible. But it’s managed to groom a startling number of American citizens and residents and install them in top leadership slots, including:
• Adnan Shukrijumah: The long-time Florida resident, who obtained a green card while living in the U.S. for more than 15 years, has replaced 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammad as chief of al-Qaida’s terror operations.
Believed to be directing U.S. terrorist cells from Pakistan, Shukrijumah, 35, recently was indicted as a conspirator in last year’s plot to blow up the New York subway. There’s a $5 million reward for his capture.
• Adam Gadahn: The California-born Muslim convert assists Shukrijumah and Osama bin Laden as al-Qaida’s chief propagandist. He tailors the group’s message to American Muslims, as well as disaffected minorities ripe for conversion.
In 2006, Gadahn invoked U.S. Muslims to attack military bases, singling out California’s Camp Pendleton as a candidate for “a shooting spree.” Three years later, a Muslim soldier went on a shooting spree at Fort Hood. Gadahn, 31, praised the attack and urged more.
The first American to be charged with treason in 50 years, Gadahn is hiding in Pakistan with a $1 million bounty on his head.
• Anwar Awlaki: Articulate and media savvy, the American-born cleric is al-Qaida’s top recruiter of Western suicide cells.
Awlaki has recruited or radicalized countless homegrown terrorists, including the Fort Hood shooter and the Times Square bomber, both English-speaking citizens. Authorities also believe he ordered the Christmas airliner attack, which puts Awlaki in the middle of the last three major terror acts on U.S. soil.
Thought to be bin Laden’s heir, Awlaki has called on American Muslims to turn against their government, and has even justified killing American civilians. “Jihad against America is binding on every other (American) Muslim,” he said.
The 39-year-old Awlaki lived in the U.S. for 21 years before fleeing to Yemen after 9/11. Treasury last month designated him a “key leader of al-Qaida” and froze his assets. He’s also on the CIA’s terrorist hit list.
• Samir Khan: A U.S. citizen who grew up in New York and Charlotte, N.C., the Web-savvy 24-year-old is now in Yemen helping Awlaki target American audiences as al-Qaida’s newest propagandist.
Khan is editor of al-Qaida’s splashy new organ, “Inspire,” a Webzine that provides jihadists step-by-step instructions in English on making bombs that can elude bomb-sniffing dogs.
• Omar Hammami: The ex-Baptist convert to Islam grew up in the Alabama suburbs before joining al-Qaida.
He’s now, at 25, a field commander in Somalia, another key al-Qaida hot spot, where he’s recruiting and training U.S. jihadists. His trainees include dozens of Minneapolis college kids, including one who earned the dubious title, “first American suicide bomber.”
This new cadre of al-Qaida leaders is enlisting a growing faction of the U.S. Muslim community, many of them African-American and white converts who don’t fit the Arab terrorist profile. As many as three dozen U.S. converts are said to have gone through al-Qaida training in Yemen, where they’ve received Awlaki’s blessing. They reportedly include blond-haired, blue-eyed types — fitting a profile of Americans that al-Qaida in the past could only dream of recruiting.
Its recruiting effort is made all the easier by some 15,000 jihadi Web sites — 80% of which are operating off servers based inside the U.S. Across the country, moreover, mosques and Islamic bookstores sell Awlaki’s recorded sermons as CD box sets. It’s all protected “free speech.”
“Jihad is becoming as American as apple pie,” Awlaki boasts. More and more, he warns, terror attacks will come “from within” — even within our own military.
Meanwhile, the so-called moderates of the Muslim establishment are sitting on their hands. Major Muslim groups have refused to cooperate in terror probes until the FBI backs off mosques. Their cold war turned hot last fall, when a Muslim leader in Detroit died in a shoot-out with agents, triggering outcry throughout the Muslim community.
It’s just a matter of time before a homegrown nut inspired by a radical mosque or Web site overcomes their bomb-making learning curve and successfully detonates one, blowing up a building or a mall or a plane inside America. And then we’ll all wonder why more wasn’t done to shut down these sites. Of course, by then we’ll be sweeping up the remains of victims, and it will be too late.
“America cannot and will not win,” Awlaki hisses. With Washington running from the war, disengaging from an enemy that now counts our own citizens among its senior ranks, we cannot afford to dismiss his words as bluster.
• Sperry, formerly IBD Washington bureau chief, is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of “Infiltration” and “Muslim Mafia.”

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Under New American Management Al-Qaida Now Poses Inner Threat – Investors.com

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NYTimes: Broadway and the Mosque

17/08/2010 in freedom, Islam, News, Obama, Terrorism, United States, War
Tags: freedom, Islam, New York, News, Obama, Terrorism, United States, War, WTC

From The New York Times:
OP-ED COLUMNIST: Broadway and the Mosque
A concert of Broadway show tunes sung by a diverse cast brings to mind reasons why it is O.K. to build a mosque near the World Trade Center site.
I totally agree!!! This is how you show the world the meaning of liberal ideas! Through inclusion, not by outlawing it.
http://nyti.ms/cxfrqt

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How Chávez tries to hide the truth about his government

14/08/2010 in Chavez, Colombia, Diplomacy, drugs, FARC, International Relations, Latin America, Military, News, Obama, PDVSA, Terrorism, United States, Venezuela
Tags: Chavez, Colombia, Diplomacy, drugs, ETA, FARC, International Relations, Latin America, Military, News, Obama, PDVSA, Terrorism, United States, Venezuela

How Chávez tries to hide the truth about his government
Washington Post Editorial
Friday, August 13, 2010; A18

ONE OF the principal goals of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s foreign policy is preventing governments or international organizations from telling the truth about him. Over the past couple of years, captured documents and other evidence have established beyond any reasonable doubt that Mr. Chávez’s regime has provided haven and material support to the FARC movement in neighboring Colombia — a group that is known for massacres of civilians, hostage taking and drug trafficking, and that has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department and the European Union. That places Mr. Chávez in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and, at least in theory, exposes him to U.S. and international sanctions.
Luckily for Mr. Chávez, the Obama administration and other Security Council members have shown little interest in recognizing what, in terms of state sponsorship of terrorism, amounts to a smoking gun. But discussion and debate about the evidence — such as Colombia’s recent presentation to a meeting of the Organization of American States — makes this ostrich act difficult to continue. So Mr. Chávez has dedicated himself to bullying and intimidating those who dare to speak publicly about what everyone in the Western Hemisphere knows to be true.
His most conspicuous recent target was former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe, who ordered the report to the OAS shortly before leaving office. Mr. Chávez’s response to the maps, photographs, videos and other documentary evidence laid out by Colombia’s ambassador was to immediately break diplomatic relations and to threaten war. When Mr. Uribe’s successor, Juan Manuel Santos, signaled that he was ready to address the FARC problem through private discussions, the Venezuelan caudillo instantly reversed himself. On Tuesday he traveled to Colombia to meet Mr. Santos and agreed to restore relations.
Mr. Chávez also focused his attention on Larry Leon Palmer, the veteran diplomat nominated by the Obama administration as its next ambassador to Venezuela. Some Republicans question whether the United States should retain ambassadorial relations with Mr. Chávez’s government, and the nominee received a searching set of “questions for the record” from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s senior GOP member, Richard G. Lugar (Ind.).
To his credit and that of the State Department, Mr. Palmer answered truthfully. He said that he was “keenly aware of the clear ties between members of the Venezuelan government and Colombian guerrillas.” He said that he was “concerned” that two individuals designated as international drug traffickers by the Treasury Department “are high-ranking officials of the Venezuelan government.” He reported “growing Cuban-Venezuelan cooperation in the fields of intelligence services and the military” and “morale and equipment problems” in the Venezuelan army.
Mr. Chávez once again was quick to respond. On his weekly television show on Sunday, he announced that Mr. Palmer would not be allowed to take up his post in Caracas because “he has disqualified himself by breaking all the rules of diplomacy, by prejudging us.” He said that the Obama administration would have to “look for another candidate.” The State Department responded that it was sticking with Mr. Palmer. It should. If ignoring the facts about Mr. Chávez is a requirement for sending an ambassador to Caracas, then it would be better not to have one.

How Chávez tries to hide the truth about his government

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Colombia, Venezuela Agree to Restore Diplomatic Relations After Dispute – Bloomberg

12/08/2010 in Castro, Chavez, Colombia, Democracy, Economics, FARC, Latin America, Military, News, Terrorism, Trade, United States, Venezuela, War
Tags: Castro, Chavez, Colombia, Democracy, Economics, FARC, Latin America, Military, News, Terrorism, Trade, United States, Venezuela, War

Colombia, Venezuela Agree to Restore Diplomatic Relations After Dispute

By Helen Murphy – Aug 11, 2010

(Corrects date of Bolivar’s death in sixth paragraph.)

Venezuela and Colombia agreed to restore diplomatic relations and vowed to step up security along their border to prevent Marxist guerrillas and drug traffickers from mounting attacks or using dense jungle for hideouts.

The two countries will form joint committees to work on any lingering issues, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said yesterday after meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez. The nations had been locked in a dispute over Colombian accusations that Venezuela was harboring rebels.

“We are starting this relationship from zero in a frank and sincere way,” Santos, who was inaugurated as president Aug. 7, told reporters in a joint news conference with Chavez in the town of Santa Marta. “The two countries will re-establish diplomatic relations and create a roadmap so that all aspects of relations can progress, advance and deepen.”

The agreement paves the way for a restoration in trade between the countries, which plummeted during the past two years amid accusations that Chavez was aiding the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in its campaign to disrupt the government. Chavez put troops on high alert along the 1,375-mile (2,200- kilometer) border July 30 after Santos’ predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, said as many as 1,500 rebels are launching cross-border attacks from Venezuela.

Chavez, speaking after Santos, said he doesn’t allow illegal groups to operate in Venezuela. He said he examined documents that Colombia said proved the existence of rebel camps in Venezuela and found that there were no outposts.

‘Always Doubts’

“There are always doubts, but President Santos has promised to believe me when I say that Venezuela’s government does not support Colombian guerrillas,” Chavez told reporters after the meeting at the estate where his 19th-century independence hero Simon Bolivar died in 1830. “If I supported the guerrillas the results would be quite notable — they would have weapons and money.”

Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin will travel to Caracas within two weeks to jumpstart relations, Chavez said.

Venezuela gave assurances that it will pay debts to exporters dating from July 2009 when Chavez first froze commerce, Santos said. Venezuela owes some $800 million to Colombian exporters, according to the Venezuela-Colombia Chamber for Economic Integration, a Caracas-based business group.

Trade between the nations tumbled to $651 million in the first five months of this year from $2.26 billion in the same period of 2008, the last year of normal relations, according to Colombia’s statistics agency. Colombia’s central bank, while acknowledging that the ongoing row cut into trade, says the impact is being offset by the global economic recovery.

‘Kick in the Pants’

“Santos knows he needs better diplomacy with Venezuela, he knows he can’t enter office kicking Chavez in the shins, he has to open talks and look super reasonable,” said Myles Frechette, U.S. ambassador to Colombia from 1994 to 1997. “He won’t be confrontational but he will give Chavez a good kick in the pants if need be.”

Venezuela’s economy will shrink 2.6 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

“It would be convenient to reopen the border, but it’s not a matter of life or death for Colombia’s exporters,” said Rafael Mejia, president of the Colombian Agriculture Society. “The real issue is that Venezuela doesn’t pay.”

The yield on Colombia’s benchmark 11 percent bonds due 2020 has dropped to 7.2 from 7.96 since Santos’ election June 20. The peso has gained 4.7 percent over the same period, the most among major Latin American currencies tracked by Bloomberg.

Even if Chavez opens the border to trade, many exporters are wary of rushing back, said Jorge Bedoya, head of the National Federation of Colombian Poultry Farmers.

Trade Tensions

“It’s important that Chavez takes it seriously and abides by the rules,” said Bedoya, whose members lost as much as $60 million in trade to Venezuela before finding new markets locally and in Asia.

The collapse in commercial ties likely contributed to rising prices in Venezuela because of the costs of importing food and other items from longer distances, said Luis Alberto Rusian, president of the Venezuelan-Colombian Chamber for Economic Integration, or CAVECOL.

“Colombia’s natural market has always been Venezuela just as the natural market for Venezuela is Colombia,” Rusian said. “We also need to rebuild confidence between businesses and this is going to take some time.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Helen Murphy in Bogota at hmurphy1@bloomberg.net

®2010 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Colombia, Venezuela Agree to Restore Diplomatic Relations After Dispute – Bloomberg

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