Iraq: Dying by Starvation and Chinese Drones

Posted on June 7, 2016June 7, 2016 by Denise Simon

Falluja refugees say Islamic State uses food to enlist fighters

Reuters: Iraqis who fled Islamic State-held Falluja as government and allied forces advanced on the city said they had survived on stale dates and the militants were using food to enlist fighters whose relatives were going hungry.

The ultra-hardline Sunni fighters have kept a close guard on food storage in the besieged city near Baghdad that they captured in January 2014, six months before they declared a caliphate across large parts of Iraq and Syria.

The militants visited families regularly after food ran short with offers of supplies for those who enlisted, said 23-year-old Hanaa Mahdi Fayadh from Sijir on the northeastern outskirts of Falluja.

“They told our neighbor they would give him a sack of flour if his son joined them; he refused and when they had gone, he fled with his family,” she said.

“We left because there was no food or wood to make fires, besides, the shelling was very close to our house.”

She and others interviewed in a school transformed into a refugee center in Garma, a town under government control east of Falluja, said they had no money to buy food from the group.

The Iraqi government stopped paying the salaries of employees there and in other cities under Islamic State control a year ago to stop the group seizing the funds.

Fayadh escaped Sijir on May 27, four days after the government offensive on Falluja began, with a group of 15 relatives and neighbors, walking through farmland brandishing white flags.

Most of the 1,500 displaced people who found refuge in the school in Garma were women and children, because the army takes men for screening over possible ties with Islamic State. Fayadh said she was waiting for news of her two brothers who were being investigated.

HUMAN SHIELDS

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said last week the offensive had slowed to protect tens of thousands of civilians trapped in Falluja with limited access to water, food and electricity.

Fayadh said the situation in the city was very difficult. “The only thing remaining in the few shops open was dates, old, stale dates and even those were very expensive,” she said.

Azhar Nazar Hadi, 45, said the militants had asked her family to move from Sijir into Falluja itself, a clear attempt to use them as human shields.

“We hid,” she said. “There was shooting, mortars and clashes, we stayed hidden until the forces came in” and escorted them out to the refugee center.

The militants took hundreds of people, along with their cattle, with them into Falluja, Hadi said.

“Life was difficult, very hard, especially when we stopped receiving salaries and retirement pensions.

“The last seven months we ran out of everything and had to survive on dates, and water,” she said. “Flour, rice and cooking oil were no longer available at an affordable price.”

A 50 kg (110 lb) sack of flour cost 500,000 dinars ($428.45), almost half an average Iraqi employee’s month salary.

Abadi ordered the offensive on Falluja, which lies 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, after a series of bombings claimed by Islamic State hit Shi’ite districts of the capital, causing the worst death toll this year.

Between 500 and 700 militants are in Falluja, according to a U.S. military estimate. The Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia coalition that is supporting the Iraqi army offensive on the city says the number of IS fighters there is closer to 2,500.

The United Nations says about 50,000 civilians remain trapped in Falluja, which has been under siege since December, when the Iraqi army recaptured Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province to the west.

When Hadi was asked what Islamic State militants had been telling civilians in Falluja, it was her six-year old child who answered, reciting the Koranic verse: “Be patient, God is with those who are patient.”

The Iraqi Army Is Flying Chinese-Made Killer Drones

Can China’s unmanned aircraft match the U.S.-made Predator and Reaper?

PopularMechanics: Last year the Iraqi military took delivery of three Chinese CH-4 Cai Hong drones, an aircraft that, according to its creators, is better than the American MQ-1B Predator. That claim is now being put to the test as the drones carry out strikes against ISIS with bombs and laser-guided missiles.

The CH-4s are flying from Al-Hayy airbase in support of operations in Anbar province, site of Ramadi and Fallujah, where heavy fighting has been taking place. A recent Iraqi video (warning: graphic combat footage) shows four drone strikes, and claims that the drones destroyed one suicide car bomb before it could be used, two other vehicles carrying fighters, and a covered trench occupied by ISIS.

The Cai Hong-4 ( “Rainbow 4”) was developed by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the nation’s leading military drone makers. It first flew in 2011. While it bears some resemblance to the Predator, it is larger, with a wingspan of 60 feet and a maximum take-off weight of 3,000 lbs., compared to the 50-foot wingspan and 2,250 lbs. of the Predator. This gives it a payload 750 lbs. and an endurance of 38 hours, compared to 450 pounds and 24 hours for the Predator.

The CH-4s in Iraq are armed with a mixture of missiles and bombs. The laser-guided AR-1 is China’s answer to the Hellfire, but is slightly faster—it’s supersonic rather than subsonic, so it cannot be heard until it hits. The FT-9 is a 100-lb. satellite-guided bomb with a claimed accuracy of better than 15 feet. The makers deny that it relies on the American-built GPS system, so the weapons may use the Russian GLONASS or even the new Chinese Beidou navigation satellites.

The CH-4 may indeed be superior to the Predator, but the U.S. moved several years ago to production of the MQ-9 Reaper (also known as Predator B) which is more than three times the size of the original. It has a 14-hour endurance and carries almost 4,000 lbs. of bombs, making it much more like a manned aircraft in capability. In 2015 CASC unveiled the CH-5, which is closer to the Reaper in scale.

Perhaps the real test of the CH-4 will be whether it is cheap enough to be replaced every time one is lost. One of the main advantages of unmanned aircraft is losing one carries none of the political consequences of losing a pilot, so they can be flown on hazardous missions. At about $5 million a pop, the Predators were regarded as more or less expendable, something which does not apply to the $30 million Reaper.

If CASC can produce efficient, low-cost combat drones, then they may come to dominate the military market the way that DJI have dominated the civilian drone market. The U.S. may have invented drone warfare, but the field may end up being owned by someone else. And CASC are already offering small tactical drones for export.

June 6, D-Day Normandy Invasion Anniversary

Posted on June 3, 2016June 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

Defense: On June 6, 1944, nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed along a heavily fortified, 50-mile stretch of French coastline in the historic operation known as D-Day. More than 9,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded on the beaches of Normandy, but by day’s end, the Allies had gained a foothold to begin liberating Europe.

U.S. Marines Tour Hallowed Ground in France

More than 70 enlisted Marines with Headquarters and Service Company, Headquarters Marine Corps, Henderson Hall, and Marine Barracks Washington, D.C., toured U.S. military historical sites in advance of the 72nd anniversary of D-Day. Story

D-Day by the Numbers

Allied Troops: 160,000; Allied Aircraft: 113,000; Naval Vessels: 5,000

5 Things You May Not Know About D-Day

D-Day is one of the most famous dates in history, but there are a lot of things you may not know about the WWII invasion. Story

Some of their stories, click here.

As a reminder, note the American cemeteries in Europe.

France

England

Omaha Beach

Luxembourg

‘Extremist Islamic Movement’ in Latin America

Posted on June 3, 2016June 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

US military eyes ‘extremist Islamic movement’ in Latin America

TheHill: The top U.S. military commander in Latin America said he and his regional counterparts are growing more concerned about radical Islamic extremists using the region as a pathway into the U.S.

“Radicalization is occurring,” said Adm. Kurt Tidd, commander of U.S. Southern Command, at a roundtable with reporters on Wednesday.

“We just have to recognize that this theater is a very attractive target and is an attractive pathway that we have to pay attention to,” he said.

Tidd, who became Southcom commander in January, said the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has attracted between 100 and 150 recruits from Latin America, and a “small number” have attempted to return to the region.

“Or — and the one that I find much more worrisome — if they can’t get there, they’ve been told to engage in lone-wolf attacks where they’re located,” he said. “Those are the ones that have most of our regional security partners concerned because they’re so difficult to detect.

“It’s the extremist Islamist movement, and that very corrosive engagement that you’re seeing on the internet that they’ve demonstrated an effectiveness in,” he added.

He also said there is some movement of migrants from the Middle East to Latin America.

“I think we are beginning to see people coming into this hemisphere who have very, very questionable backgrounds, and our law enforcement agencies are paying close attention to that,” he added.

Tidd said leaders acknowledged at a regional security conference in January that Islamic radicalization is a problem.

“All of the countries recognize that this is something that — in the past they would say, ‘This is not a problem in my country,’ ” he said.

He said terrorists are attracted to illicit smuggling networks in Latin America.

But, he said, the U.S. and its partners should focus on the networks rather than exactly what they are smuggling, such as animals, drugs, weapons and people.

“It’s the ability that these networks have to pretty much be able to move anything that I think should give us all concern,” he said.

“If we focus on the networks we may have a better chance of catching things moving through,” he said.

*******

Radical Islam in Latin America and the Caribbean: Implications for U.S. National Security

by: Dr. R. Evan Ellis, PhD1

An estimated 1.5 million Muslims live among Latin America and the Caribbean’s approximately 600 million inhabitants, with approximately 2/3 of them concentrated in Argentina and Brazil.16 Although sometimes mistakenly called “turcos” (turks) the region’s Muslims are a diverse subset of persons who immigrated from Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and other Middle Eastern countries from the beginning of the 20th Century and before.

This ethnic group, both muslim and non-muslim, is well-established, including some of the most politically and economically successful persons in the region. Indeed eight Latin American and Caribbean heads of state have been of Arabic origin: Antonio Saca (President of El Salvador from 2004 to 2009), Jamil Mahuad (President of Ecuador from August 1998 to January 2000), Carlos Flores (President of Honduras from 1998 to 2002), Carlos Menem (President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999), Abdalá Bucaram (President of Ecuador from August 1996 to February 1997), Jacobo Majluta (President of the Dominican Republic from July to August 1982), Julio Turbay (President of Colombia 1978 to 1982), and Julio Salem (leader of Ecuador May 1944).17

Other prominent citizens of Middle Eastern ancestry in the region include Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, the actress Salma Hayek, and the pop music star Shakira.

To date, Iran has been the principal, but not the only Middle Eastern state pursuing interests in the region. Other state actors from the region have also played a modest role in the region in the past; Libya, prior to the fall of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, was a significant partner for Bolivia.18 There is no reason why other Middle Eastern states could not also expand their profile in the region, including Syria, whose current regime has a long working relationship with Hezbollah, 19 currently the most powerful Islamic radical group in Latin America.

Iran’s agenda in the region in recent years has generally focused on using sympathetic regimes such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Suriname to escape international isolation and circumvent international sanctions, develop missiles and perhaps weapons of mass destruction, and to gain influence within Muslim groups and communities so as to potentially use them for actions against the United States, Jewish, or other Western interests if Iran’s regime perceives itself as gravely threatened in the future.20

While Iran seeks to mobilize and influence non-state Islamic actors in the region such as Hezbollah for its own purposes, the interests of such groups and the potential challenges they pose to hemispheric security are not limited solely to Iran’s agenda.

The combined challenges of both state and other radical Islamic actors in Latin America and the Caribbean may be grouped into three categories:

• Generation of resources for islamic radicals fighting in other parts of the world;

• Formation of logistics networks for and launching attacks on targets in the Western Hemisphere;

and

• Collaboration between radical Islamic actors and Latin American allies in evading international controls and developing weapons. The full report here.

DHS Approves/Admits 4700 Syrians + 7900?

Posted on June 2, 2016June 2, 2016 by Denise Simon

4,700 Syrian refugees approved resettlement to U.S.: Homeland Security chief

Reuters: The United States has approved 4,700 Syrian refugees who are awaiting resettlement to the country, while an additional 7,900 are awaiting security review, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Thursday.

Syrian refugee children play as they wait with their families to register their information at the U.S. processing centre for Syrian refugees, during a media tour held by the U.S. Embassy in Jordan, in Amman, Jordan, April 6, 2016. Reuters/Muhammad Hamed

Johnson, speaking to a homeland security advisory panel at the Department of Homeland Security, was defending against critics who say the Obama administration is falling behind meeting its goal of bringing in 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country by the end of fiscal year 2016.

Meanwhile:

Sanctioned Syrian Official Invited To D.C. Event Delivers Outrageous Defense Of Assad

There is no moderate opposition and nobody is starving in Syria, according to Bouthaina Shaaban.

HuffPo: WASHINGTON — A panel discussion that had been billed as an effort to create a global alliance to defeat the so-called Islamic State spiraled downward Thursday into a tense two-and-a-half hour event dominated by a top Syrian official who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government. She insisted that her country’s brutal crackdown on its own people is just part of the war on terrorism.

Khaled al-Hariri/Reuters

Bashar Assad spokeswoman Bouthaina Shaaban was invited to speak via Skype despite facing U.S. sanctions.

“There is no such thing as moderate opposition,” Bouthaina Shaaban, spokeswoman for Syrian President Bashar Assad, said during the event hosted by an obscure group called the Global Alliance for Terminating ISIS/al-Qaeda (GAFTA).

In a lengthy pre-recorded speech, which was aired at the National Press Club event, Shaaban blasted Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Western countries for backing Syrian opposition fighters in her country’s civil war. She accused them of directly aiding both the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda offshoot.

During a subsequent question-and-answer session, Shaaban sparred with reporters via Skype, dismissing accusations that the Assad regime had blocked humanitarian groups from delivering food to besieged areas of Syria and had aided ISIS by releasing its members from prison and purchasing oil from the terrorist group.

“It is a very fertile land. Nobody is starving in Daraya,” Shaaban said, despite well-documented reports of the Assad regime’s “surrender or starve” tactics in areas like Daraya and Madaya.

In 2011, the U.S. sanctioned Shaaban, along with Assad and a handful of other regime officials, in response to the Syrian government’s violent repression of its people. The sanctions froze any assets the officials had in the U.S. and prohibited Americans from providing “financial, material, or technological support” to them.

It is unclear whether GAFTA, a Florida-based nonprofit, violated the sanctions by hosting Shaaban electronically. Ghassan Mansour, GAFTA’s treasurer, claimed that the group did not know about the sanctions until the day before the event.

A Treasury spokeswoman declined to comment on the specific case, only vaguely suggesting that the arrangement could be problematic. “Transactions with designated persons are generally prohibited,” she told The Huffington Post.

GAFTA founder Ahmad Maki Kubba, speaking at the event, defended the invitation to Shaaban as part of an effort to hear from all parties involved in the fight against ISIS and claimed that the group has no allegiance to either side. But the Thursday discussion was decidedly one-sided, and there are indications that GAFTA itself is sympathetic to Assad and his allies.

The organization’s Facebook page contains numerous news stories that frame the Assad regime and its ally Russia in a flattering light. Mansour himself was previously accused by the U.S. Department of Justice of participating in a money-laundering operation to aid the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah, which has fought on behalf of Assad in Syria. Mansour denies the 2011 allegation.

“We are not associated with [Shaaban] or anybody,” he told HuffPost in a phone interview. “We’re trying to fight an evil. Is there sanctions against that?”

In the lead-up to the panel discussion, critics of the Assad regime accused GAFTA of providing a propaganda platform for a top-level Syrian official in violation of the spirit of the sanctions, if not the law itself.

“The point of sanctioning someone is to change their behavior, isolate them and force them to reconsider the actions they were taking. This is not in line with that,” one House Republican aide said of inviting Shaaban.

Mansour said his group has reached out to members of Congress but has had little luck securing meetings in Washington.

Others accused GAFTA of undermining the United Nations-led peace process by giving Assad’s spokeswoman a direct line to a U.S. audience. “She is regularly the one who speaks for the regime,” said Joseph Bahout, a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “She’s been propagandizing, denying the use of chemical weapons, denying massacres.”

Bahout rejected GAFTA’s argument that hearing from the Syrian regime at Thursday’s event was part of an effort to resolve the civil war.

“I’m sorry to be blunt, but this is the classical, usual bullshit used every time someone is trying to open a channel with the regime. If you want to negotiate with the regime, there are proper channels in Geneva,” Bahout said, referring to the U.N.-led talks.

The Syrian American Council, a U.S.-based group that has lobbied for more support for the Syrian opposition, said that it had pushed the National Press Club to remove Shaaban from the event, but as of Wednesday evening, had not heard back from Bill McCarren, executive director of the club. McCarren also did not respond to a request for comment from HuffPost.

“This is supposed to be about combating ISIS, and the Assad regime is directly responsible for not only fueling the rise of ISIS, but for supporting it financially through lucrative oil deals,” said Mohammed Ghanem, director of government relations for the Syrian American Council. “It’s unacceptable for a prestigious venue such as the National Press Club to be turned into a platform to spew propaganda.”

When and How do Preezy Candidates Get Briefings?

Posted on June 2, 2016June 2, 2016 by Denise Simon

MICHAEL MORELL
FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, CIA

Once the Democratic and Republican parties officially nominate their Presidential candidates at their political conventions this summer, the nominees will be offered intelligence briefings before the general election. We asked Michael Morell, the former Deputy Director and twice Acting Director of the CIA, to explain how these briefings work.

The Cipher Brief: Can you tell us why the sitting President offers those briefings to the nominee from each party?

Michael Morell: There is a great deal of confusion about these briefings in the media. After a candidate has been formally nominated by her/his national convention, she/he is offered a one-time intelligence briefing (sometimes over multiple days if there are time constraints or if a candidate wants to go deeper on a particular topic). They do not receive a daily briefing. They do not receive regular update briefings during the campaign. They do not receive the President’s Daily Briefing. Those only come for the president-elect, after the election in November.

There is also confusion in the media as to why every post-war president has offered these one-time, post-convention briefings to the candidates. The objective is not to start preparing the candidate to deal with the myriad national security issues that they will face six months down the road, if they win the election. The objective is to protect national security during the campaign by giving the candidates a deep sense of the national security landscape. Let me explain: both our adversaries and our allies and partners will be listening closely, extremely closely, to what the candidates say about the issues during the campaign, and saying the wrong thing could damage our national security. The briefings are meant to help prevent that.

Let me be clear, though: during the initial, one-time briefing, the candidates are not advised on what to say or what not to say about national security issues on the campaign trail. The hope is that by simply giving them an objective, unbiased understanding of the issues, the dialogue on those issues during the campaign will be carried out in a way that does not undermine U.S. interests.

TCB: Who is actually involved in the briefings?

MM: On the government side, the briefing teams are usually composed of senior leaders from the analytic arms of the Intelligence Community agencies, along with senior analysts who, on a day-to-day basis, cover the issues to be discussed. I played the former role in a number of briefings for candidates over the years.

On the candidate’s side, they are permitted to bring their closest national security aides. In my experience, that has ranged from just one person to two-to-three people. But there is no just showing up. The IC (Intelligence Community) must approve in advance all of the attendees.

TCB: Are there any limits to what the nominees can be told? For instance, will they be provided with classified information or details of ongoing operations? Are the candidates in essence given security clearances?

MM: Absolutely, there are limits on what candidates are told. The briefings are classified Top Secret, but the candidates are only provided the analytic judgments of the IC and the information used to support those judgments. They are not provided with the details of how that information was collected-what the IC calls sources and methods. They are not provided with any information on any ongoing covert actions programs related to the issue being discussed. They are not provided with any operational information. Those only come after a candidate wins the election.

TCB: How does the IC prepare for the briefings? Will the briefings be the same for each candidate? What issues would you emphasize in the briefings?

MM: The leadership of the IC, most likely the DNI (Director of National Intelligence), will decide on the topics, perhaps to be approved by the White House. If I were putting the list together, I would include the threat to the U.S. Homeland and to U.S. interests abroad posed by ISIS and al Qaeda; the threat posed by a variety of actors in cyber space; the political and military situation in Iraq and Syria; the situation in Afghanistan; as well as national security issues related to Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China.

The briefing team will go into the room with the goal of providing the same analytic judgments to both candidates, but I would expect the two briefings to be very different. I would expect the briefing for Secretary Hillary Clinton (the presumptive Democratic nominee) to delve into issues more deeply and to be more of a dialogue than the briefing for Donald Trump (the presumptive Republican nominee), which I would expect to be more of a tutorial, more of a first cut at the issues, with the need to provide the history and background on issues. This is simply because the Secretary is starting at much greater level of understanding based on her experience working these issues, her experience working with the IC, and her knowledge of the IC judgments (she was a daily and engaged consumer of both IC collection and analysis). Trump, most likely, will be starting at square one. No value judgments here; just the reality of the situation.

TCB: Any personal observations about a nominee’s response to a briefing you provided? Without getting into names, has a nominee seemed surprised by the information? Has it altered a position on an issue or impacted how the nominee publically presented a view?

MM: In general, candidates who have not been involved in national security are surprised by the number of threats facing the U.S., by the seriousness of those threats, by the complexity of the threats, and by just how difficult they are to mitigate. They quickly realize that there are not simple solutions. They quickly realize that their sound bites on the campaign simply don’t fit realty. And, they quickly realize just how important intelligence is going to be keeping the country safe.

Not surprisingly, the briefing team will get a sense of a candidate. Does the candidate know what they don’t know, are they trying to understand the issue, do they want to learn, are they open-minded, are they able to grasp complexity, do they ask good questions? Or do they try to convince the analysts of their point of view, are they just trying to find facts to fit their world view or their policy views, do they look at the issues through the lens of national security or through the lens of politics?

The IC knows the Secretary well, and its expectation will be that she will fall into the first category because that is what she demonstrated as Secretary of State. I’m sure the analysts will be very interested to see where Donald Trump falls – largely because they will want to know what he would be like if he were to become their “First Customer,” as some analysts at CIA like to call the president. And they will be interested simply because of the nature of the campaign so far, the nature of the candidate so far.