Archive for the 'Syria' Category

As expected, there is world wide buzz over the involvement of the international intelligence community in the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh.  In addition to the public claims by Hezbollah that the Mossad directed the event, there is the assertion that the U.S. masterminded the plan.

A Kuwaiti newspaper reports that Hizbullah terrorist chief Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in a car-bomb attack in Damascus on Tuesday, was in the midst of planning major terrorist attacks in moderate Arab countries when he was killed. 

Al-Watan reports that American intelligence had learned that Mughniyeh arrived in Damascus three days earlier with instructions from, and in coordination with, the Iranians.  His objective was to meet with Hizbullah leaders and coordinate a mass attack, for which he was to receive help from Syrian intelligence.

The American involvement in the killing is explained as being in retaliation for a recent car bomb attack that targeted a U.S. Embassy vehicle; three passersby (sic).

Another Kuwaiti newspaper, Al-Siasa, reports that Mughniyeh took part, shortly before he was killed, in a secret meeting in the Iranian School in Damascus.  Also participating in the meeting were Syrian Intelligence Chief Gen. Aisaf Shwackath, Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, and an Islamic Jihad representative.  On the agenda: planned attacks in Arab countries that refuse to take part in the coming Arab League summit in Damascus.  The newspaper entertains the possibility that the meeting was merely a camouflage for Syrian involvement in Mughniyeh’s killing.

In addition to Mughniyeh’s atrocities against America and her interests there is no question that the U.S. administration was desirous of his demise.  Mughniyeh trained Moqtada al Sadr’s forces in Iraq, the Mahdi Army.  In fact, in case there was any remaining doubt as to the inclinations of Sadr and his followers, al Sadr declared three days of mourning after learning of the assassination of Mughniyeh.  As I stated in Assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, I continue to believe that the U.S. was not involved in the assassination plan, at least not directly.  The report of American involvement is possibly disinformation.  If the CIA was involved, it is a good sign of the resurgence of the field capabilities and human intelligence of the CIA.  This report sweeps from blaming the U.S. to Syria.  But Syria either looks inept or complicit.

A Western diplomat based in Damascus said the incident was a double embarrassment for Syria — “on account of (Mughniyeh) being here and because they could not protect him.”

“The Syrian security agencies have a lot of explaining to do as to how a hit like this could be carried out in a city that’s remarkably secure,” said Jon Alterman, head of the Middle East program at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Some in the security services were either caught unaware or are complicit in the killing,” he said.

Kuwait also had reason to want him dead.

The Interior Ministry confirmed Mughnieh’s role. Interior Minister Sheikh Jaber Khaled al-Sabah was quoted Wednesday that “all of Kuwait is pleased by Mughnieh’s killing.” He was also quoted as saying that “The killing of the criminal Imad Mughniyeh was divine vengeance from those who killed the sons of Kuwait and threw them from planes at Limasol Airport in Cyprus,” the minister said.

Most Kuwaiti dailies welcomed his assassination and recalled the hijackings, the killing of two Kuwaiti passengers and the series of bombings. The 17 prisoners consisted of 12 Iraqis who belonged to the Dawa party of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, and five Lebanese, one of them Ilyas Saab, the brother-in-law of Mughnieh, according to Kuwaiti dailies. Kuwaiti courts convicted three of them to death and the rest to various jail terms. Three others were sentenced to death in absentia, allegedly including Iraq lawmaker Jamal Jafaar Mohammed of the Dawa party.

Yet it doesn’t end there.  Internal Lebanese politics and civil war (due to actions by Hezbollah) has taken its toll on the balance of power in the Middle East, and sabers are rattling.

There was alarm when Walid Jumblatt used the word “war” in a statement on Sunday in Baaqlin. The Druze leader’s words were harsh, even if he did not say that he welcomed war, but only made his willingness to fight one conditional on the opposition’s wanting war. But Lebanon has been split by a cold civil war for over a year now, and as the country commemorates the third anniversary of Rafik Hariri’s assassination today, Jumblatt’s rhetoric may have, paradoxically, helped stabilize the situation - even if stabilization remains a relative concept.

The assassination in Damascus of Imad Mughniyeh, whatever its larger implications, may actually bolster this modest stability. Hizbullah’s leadership will likely need time to assess where it is, and what Mughniyeh’s killing means for the party and its relations with Tehran.

Syrian security forces have arrested several Palestinian suspects in connection with the assassination, but this may be for show.  The smoke still hasn’t cleared concerning this assassination.  However, one thing is clear.  Mughniyeh was considered untouchable and to most unrecognizable,” a senior intelligence source said. “This is a monumental intelligence achievement.”

At this point it is not news that someone has assassinated the chief military commander of Hezbollah, Imad Mughniyeh.

Mughniyeh was killed late Tuesday night after a bomb, planted inside the seat of his car, exploded in Damascus’s upscale Kafar Soussa neighborhood. Security forces quickly sealed off the area and removed the destroyed car, which had its driver’s seat and the rear seat blown away by the blast.

Considered Hizbullah’s operations chief, Mughniyeh co-founded the group in 1982 together with Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah, and was a member of its ruling Shura Council. He was in charge of all overseas operations, and as the chief operations officer, coordinated Hizbullah relations with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Not only was he a very bad actor, he was perhaps the smartest terrorist in the Middle East, and getting inside his daily habits is an incredible feat.

As Robert Baer, who hunted Mugniyeh for years as a CIA officer, describes Mughniyeh, ““He is the most dangerous terrorist we’ve ever faced. He is probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we’ve ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else. He enters by one door, exits by another, changes his cars daily, never makes appointments on a telephone, never is predictable. He only uses people that are related to him that he can trust. He doesn’t just recruit people. He is the master terrorist, the grail that we have been after since 1983.”

Haaretz is carrying a short list of his accomplishments (also here), one of which is masterminding the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983.  Mughniyeh was a major player in the world of terror, and was probably more important than Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah.  The U.S. is welcoming the news of his demise.  Israel is denying any involvement in the assassination, and perhaps the most interesting assessment of who might have done this is given to us by Michael Ledeen.

There will be a lot of speculation about his killers. Hezbollah has already accused the Israelis, which is what you’d expect them to say. But there are many others who hated Mughniyah, ranging from various Lebanese and Saudi groups who held him responsible for the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, to anti-Iranian and anti-Syrian groups, especially some of the Kurds, to our very own spooks and soldiers, who have long yearned for revenge against the man who organized the brutal murder of Robert Stethem, the suicide bombings against the U.S. Marines in Beirut, similar acts against U.S. diplomats and spooks at our Embassies in the same city, and of course Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and the dreadful death-by-torture of our top spy in Beirut in the mid-1980s.

I doubt we did it. Indeed, I rather suspect that CIA was bound and determined NOT to go after Mughniyah, even though there was a bounty on his head. I know of several instances in which CIA vetoed proposals from well-placed people who claimed to be able to kill or capture Mughniyah, and I have spoken to government officials in Washington who were astonished at the Agency’s lack of vigor. Nonetheless, I have no doubt we will hear from several “experts” that it was a CIA operation.

Israel is more likely, and has a proven ability to operate in Damascus, although Olmert has denied any Israeli involvement. On the other hand, it may have been a joint operation involving a European intelligence service (the French, who were big supporters of Hariri, come to mind) and a local group, perhaps Lebanese Druse, perhaps Syrian and/or Iranian Kurds.

There are a number of possibilities, but I agree with Ledeen - the U.S. didn’t do it.  President Gerald R. Ford signed Executive Order 11905 on February 18, 1976, which in part states that “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.”  Whether this was wise is beside the point.  This, in addition to two administrations under President Clinton, stripped the CIA of its human intelligence and also its capability to effect change within the international intelligence community.

In a national atmosphere in which CIA employees are at risk of prosecution for waterboarding - something that wasn’t illegal when it was done, is not illegal now, and only recently received a vote from the Senate - to believe that a CIA employee would either be involved in such a plan or even hire operatives who would be involved in such a plan, is not credible.  This is especially true given that, like the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, there are CIA employees who are actively working for the loss of the global war on terror and would willingly turn over fellow employees if it was found out that an executive order had been violated.

Still, I will observe that this order hamstrings the CIA.  It was succinctly stated by one Israeli commando officer that in order to fight people like this the U.S. needs to “adopt Israel’s assassination policy.”  I am in agreement, and have called for the assassination of both Hassan Nasrallah and Moqtada al Sadr.  Too much can be made of individuals and personalities.  As I have pointed out before, the focus on high value targets can take the focus off of the necessity for kinetic operations against the enemy holistically.  Yet replacing this individual will be difficult for Iran, and the world is a far better place because he is dead.

Much discussion has ensued on Eastern Anbar in and around Fallujah, but RCT-2 is seeing steady improvement in Western Anbar Province.

Marines have seen a 75 percent plunge in “enemy incidents�? since the beginning of the year, Regimental Combat Team 2 commander Col. Stacy Clardy said Monday.

RCT-2’s area of operations in western Iraq, which encompasses 30,000 square miles of Anbar province, was once considered some of the toughest ground in the battle-torn country. But since January, Marines have tracked the return of urban activities, such as open markets, banks and municipal governments, the commander told reporters via teleconference from Iraq.

The development is “a significant crippling of the al-Qaida in Iraq and the Sunni insurgent capability, and a real opportunity for progress,�? said Clardy, who credits the presence of more than 4,000 Iraqi soldiers in the area of operations.

“The [Iraqi] army brigades have grown 200 percent in the last seven months with the support of the sheiks and are now responsible for their own security areas and missions across the province, but particularly around the urban areas,�? he said.

The Iraqi police force has grown 40 percent, to 5,200 officers, he said.

This is a meaningful metric, and the 75 percent drop in enemy incidents happens to be exactly the same as the three-fold decrease in enemy attacks in the Fallujah area of operations resulting from Operation Alljah.  Nibras Kazimi, who was touting the victory long ago, weighs in on what he believes to be the end of the insurgency.

Now that the insurgency—the war that Al-Qaeda and the enemies of the New Iraq had launched—is over, we can start dealing with the trauma of what has happened to us over the last four years, in addition to the pain and suffering of the preceding Ba’athist nightmare.

Yet there’s one thing I will never get over: how the anti-Bush crowd and the insurgents have overlapped in rhetoric and fantasy.

So when dilettantes claiming to be Iraq “experts” still obsessively adhere to the “Iraq is a disaster�? line, I begin to imagine that their wounded egos—since they’re wrong, so utterly wrong—would secretly cheer whenever the bad guys strike again in Iraq, because that may generate a bad headline with a Baghdad byline thus prolonging the shelf-life of the myths they’ve constructed (bold original).

I have been somewhat more moderate, saying that al Qaeda can still perpetrate spectacular attacks and must be rooted out completely, and also that reconstruction must proceed apace.  Yet there is no denial of the successes in Anbar.  But for all of the success in the West, there are still big questions for the Shi’a South.  In the same spirit as Basra and Anbar Reverse Roles, The Rise of the JAM and Calamity in Basra and British Rules of Engagement, Richard Fernandez wrote a superb article at Pajamas Media entitled Has the British Strategy in Southern Iraq Failed?  In this article he laments the soft British tactics, concluding that hard times may yet be on the horizon for the Iraq South:

The “softly-softly” strategy was a political check backed by the currency of force. The safety of every Iraqi who accepted the check; who cooperated with the Coalition and believed in their promises depended on the full faith and confidence in the British Army. When the British Army could not provide security for those who trusted it the political check bounced.  The new Iraqi Army being formed under American tutelage is the new gold reserve against which checks will be issued after the British have gone. And despite the recent success in Anbar, Diyala and south of Baghdad it may be some time before the residents of Basra find the willingness to trust someone else after the bitter disappointment of the past.

The Sunni and Shi’ite tribal leaders are cooperating to oust al Qaeda in both the Anbar and Qadissiya Provinces, but where the Shi’a militia have had free reign there are deep problems.  Translators are now too afraid to work for the British due to the lack of ability to protect them, so there is no communication between British troops and the people of Basra.  Thus, the British are no longer even patrolling Basra.  The Basra police chief has just survived the second assassination attempt in less than a week, and militia gangs are still active in Basra, engaging in kidnapping and dumping of dead bodies in the streets and at the city square.

These gangs follow in the footsteps of their masters, the Iranian elite.  Iran weighed in on their own Iraq solution, with plans for Iranian and Syrian troops openly patrolling and in charge of security for Iraq.  Of course, it was snubbed by Iraqi authorities.  The Stratfor analysis is correct on the what Iran wanted and why Iraq rejected the plan.

The two land mines in the Iranian proposal are the inclusion of militias in the Iraqi security forces and the exclusion of any group that has cooperated with terrorists. What the Iranians mean by this is that the Sunni insurgents who have cooperated with al Qaeda should be excluded, while Shiite militants who might have engaged in terrorism but not collaborated with al Qaeda should be included. Just as important, implicit in the Iranian proposal is the idea that these fighters would be admitted to the Iraqi military and police forces as distinct units. This would mean they would retain their identities, and that their primary loyalty would be to their former organizations — guaranteeing continuing instability. By putting off the question of regionalism and adding Shiite militia members to the army, the Iranians are attempting to place their Shiite partners in control.

This is exactly right, but later the Stratfor analysis falls off of the wagon.

The Iraqis have said Iran has no place defining the future of Iraq. But the reality is that, given Iran’s influence among the Shia, it will have a role — as will the Americans. Iran and the United States cannot impose a reality on Iraq, but either one could prevent the other from imposing a reality that it doesn’t like. Therefore, as unlikely as it has appeared for a while, U.S.-Iranian negotiations are logical, especially in a war in which logic has not always predominated.

After acknowledging the real intentions of Iran in Iraq, Strafor suggests that negotiations are in order - the same negotiations that have brought us to the brink of a nuclear Iran, the same negotiations that sees Iranian Revolutionary Guard killing Americans in Iraq, and the same negotiations that allows factories in Iran to build EFPs (explosively formed projectiles) to kill Americans.  Negotiations like this have been ongoing for twenty or more years, and yet Iran has become hardened because of the world view of her radical leaders.  Stratfor is confused, as are all proponents of talking to Iran who believe that our conversation with her will change anything.  Regime change remains the only wise option.

The Anbaris have said that they want the U.S. to stay.  The British cannot find translators anymore because they all get killed.  We are left with a very questionable Southern Iraq, with teenage thugs, gangs, militia, and Iranian forces present and involved in a fight for supremacy.

Former Commander of CENTCOM General John Philip Abizaid, born to a Christian Lebanese-American father and fluent in Arabic and knowledgeable in Middle Eastern culture, coined the phrase long war to describe the conflict with extremist Islamic groups such as al Qaeda.  This phrase was dropped by Admiral William J. Fallon, but the idea is the same and the conflict will not go away because the phrase isn’t used at CENTCOM any more.

Michael Yon has posted an interesting and well-supported article entitled Al Qaeda is Defeated.  He documents the perspective of a powerful South Baghdad tribe concerning al Qaeda violence in their city.

Sheik Omar, who has gained the respect of American combat leaders for his intelligence and organizational skills, said the tough line against al Qaeda is also enforced at the tribal level. According to Sheik Omar, the Jabouri tribe, too, is actively committed to destroying al Qaeda. So much so, that Jabouri tribal leaders have decided they would “kill their own sons�? if any aided al Qaeda. To underscore the point, he went on to say that about 70 Jabouri “sons�? had been killed by the Jabouri tribe so far.

This perspective is not dissimilar from the Anbar tribes after the assassination of Awakening leader shiekh Abdul Sattar Abu Reesha by a roadside bomb.  His brother Ahmed vowed to fight al Qaeda to the last child in Anbar.  Soon after this The Captain’s Journal discussed the idea that Iraq was al Qaeda’s quagmire, a title line that was later used for an editorial by the New York Post.  But we also pointed out that al Qaeda would be able to pull off spectacular bombings, and the battle was not yet finished.  This moderation seems to coincide with comments by General Petraeus, when he said that al Qaeda was reeling and their presence was significantly reduced, but also that “al-Qaida remains a very dangerous and very lethal enemy of Iraq. We must maintain contact with them and not allow them to establish sanctuaries or re-establish sanctuaries in places where they were before.�?

The flux or movement of fighers not only within Iraq but within the region suggests that there is mutual cooperation, communication and support within the network of jihadists throughout the region.  In fact, as al Qaeda is gradually defeated in Iraq, this same class of fighters is seen entering Afghanistan to conduct combat against coalition forces.

Afghan police officers working a highway checkpoint near here noticed something odd recently about a passenger in a red pickup truck. Though covered head to toe in a burqa, the traditional veil worn by Afghan women, she was unusually tall. When the police asked her questions, she refused to answer.

When the veil was eventually removed, the police found not a woman at all, but Andre Vladimirovich Bataloff, a 27-year-old man from Siberia with a flowing red beard, pasty skin and piercing blue eyes. Inside the truck was 1,000 pounds of explosives.

Afghan and American officials say the Siberian intended to be a suicide bomber, one of several hundred foreign militants who have gravitated to the region to fight alongside the Taliban this year, the largest influx since 2001.

The foreign fighters are not only bolstering the ranks of the insurgency. They are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than even their locally bred allies, officials on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border warn.

They are also helping to change the face of the Taliban from a movement of hard-line Afghan religious students into a loose network that now includes a growing number of foreign militants as well as disgruntled Afghans and drug traffickers.

Foreign fighters are coming from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, various Arab countries and perhaps also Turkey and western China, Afghan and American officials say.

Fighters of Chechen, African and Far Eastern descent have also been recently killed in Fallujah, and if any have lived through the Iraq campaign, there is no doubt that there is some relocation from Iraq to Afghanistan.  This isn’t to say that the Iraq campaign is finished, but that the battle space is fluid and dynamic.  Taliban commanders in Afghanistan say that they communicate with al Qaeda leadership in Iraq.

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published a sobering commentary for the prospects of the region when the U.S. withdraws.

This is the main problem. America will leave the region and we will find ourselves opening a new chapter that is no better than where we are today. After Iraq and Lebanon are devoured by Iran and Syria, the Gulf region will [find itself] under the siege of the Islamic revolution and under pressure from Syrian meddling. In this case, [our only option will be] to welcome the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups, which will establish their own branches in many Arab countries with Iranian sponsorship and Syrian support.

It is then that we will see many Khaled Mash’als, Hassan Nasrallahs, and Rustum Ghazalis, as well as [numerous] armed forces whose names will begin with ‘Jerusalem,’ and we do not know where all this will end. Therefore, in light of the American withdrawal and the lack of Arab action, the region will witness its second downfall - but this time, it will be at the hand of Tehran and Damascus.

Further West, Afghan forces could be as many as ten years from being able fully to take over security for their nation.  It is important to report and analyze the positive news, and as we have stated here before, al Qaeda is in a quagmire in Iraq.  But it is just as important not to prematurely declare victory and stand down.  Al Qaeda still has life in Iraq and must be completely rooted out.  Afghanistan is the forgotten war which must be re-engaged, and sooner rather than later.  Finally, Syria and Iran are bitter roots within the region and there will be no stability as long as their current regimes are in power.  The long war is not finished.

“The enemy must not know where I intend to give battle.  For if he does not know where I intend to give battle he must prepare in a great many places.  And when he prepares in a great many places, those I have to fight in any one place will be few,” Sun Tzu, The Art of War, VI.14.

“He who intimidates his neighbors does so by inflicting injury upon them,” Sun Tzu, The Art of War, VIII.14.

At the moment, the enemies of the United States are fighting us within the borders of Iraq.  It is a global war, but it has been confined by U.S. policy strictly to the contiguous Iraqi territory.   It has been noted that although talks occurred between Iran and the U.S. over Iraq and the U.S. position has been made abundantly clear, rather than a reduction in Iranian influence, there has been a marked increase in Iranian influence and activity within Iraq.

[Maj. Gen. Rick] Lynch said he gave the order on Wednesday for the division’s 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade to begin Marne Husky — the latest in a series of offensives in the capital and surrounding areas.

The new operation is aimed at disrupting insurgents who fled a recent crackdown on the rural areas of Arab Jubour and Salman Pak in a predominantly Sunni area south of the capital.

Lynch also noted a “marked and increasing Iranian influence” in weapons and the training of Shiite extremists in restive areas south of Baghdad.

“There’s three pots of bad guys in my battle space. One’s the Sunni extremists, one’s the Shia extremists and the other is marked and increasing Iranian influence,” he said. “They’re all anti-Iraq, they’re all against the government of Iraq, they’re all against the Iraqi people.”

The presence and role of Saudi Arabia in Iraq (while the U.S. has been reluctant to admit it) has also been noted by the administration.

Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia’s counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.

We have discussed the fact that organizations (not necessarily associated with al Qaeda) in Syria sell suicide bombers and foreign fighters across the Syrian border to the insurgency in Iraq.  These borders serve as a sieve for not just Saudi or Syrian fighters.  On July 31, 2007, sixty six Pakistani nationals were arrested in Karbala using forged visas.  The influx of suicide bombers from countries around the world is well known (Saudi Arabia (53), Iraq (18), Italy (8), Syria (8), Kuwait (7), Jordan (4), Libya (3), Egypt (3), Tunisia (3), Turkey (3), Belgium (2), France (2), Spain (2), Yemen (3), Lebanon (1), Morocco (1), Britain (1), Bengal (1), Sudan (1) and Unknown (18), and this list is likely short on bombers from Morocco).

Iraq has a long border: 1458 km with Iran, 181 km with Jordan, 814 km with Saudi Arabia, 240 km with Kuwait, 605 km with Syria, and 352 km with Turkey (some sources have slightly different values).  Leaking borders has been a problem since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and three years ago Iraq was “calling on” Iran and Syria to help seal the borders.  How does a country with such porous and long borders seal them?  More than a year ago Saudi Arabia invited bids for the construction of a fence along its border with Iraq.  And while this is interesting (and may ultimately succeed to slow the flow of terrorists across the border), it is not the immediate solution needed, while also possibly pointing the way forward.

The solution is not for Iraq to seal the borders.  The solution involves intimidation of Iraq’s neighbors into sealing the borders.  While the U.S. and Iraq are involved in talks with Iran and other neighbors, tried and tested military strategy suggests that bullying is the order of the day.

This bullying and intimidation might take the form of financial pressure (or conversely rewards for good behavior), market sanctions, air assets used against foreign fighters flowing in from across the borders, small incursions across the borders to destroy the sanctuaries of foreign fighters, or even larger air power involvement to destroy those sanctuaries and other supporting infrastructure.

The alternative is leaving these sanctuaries and flow paths in place, with no hope of the Iraqi security forces or U.S. forces being able to stop them (due to force size).  Tested military strategy aims for the right target.  In the case of the borders, the target is the offending country, not the Iraqi border proper.  At the moment, the offending countries know that U.S. forces have restricted the battle space to Iraq proper.  Either this changes — causing confusion and disaggregation among the foreign elements who wish to destabilize Iraq — or the borders will remain porous.