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InquisitR: The United States has deployed a squadron of tactical aircraft to be used in the efforts to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group that controls regions of Syria and Iraq, military officials announced this week. The warplanes, a squadron of Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler aircraft, were sent to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey to act as tactical support for U.S. and coalition operations.
CNN reported on April 15 that the U.S. European Command announced that the Prowler squadron, part of Marine Corps Tactical Warfare Squadron 4, were deployed to attack ISIS’s ability to communicate in areas of engagement. Mission specifics were not spelled out, of course, but Prowlers not only can intercept ISIS communications but also disrupt — or jam — frequencies of communication devices and radar. Jamming capability benefits are manifold, from disrupting cell phones used in triggering Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) to blocking ISIS propaganda transmissions.
Lt. Col. David Westover Jr., spokesperson for European Command, told CNN the following “the Prowler is a force multiplier continuing to do what it has for the last 45 years: support warfighters flying in the air and fighting on the ground by giving them the electronic communications dominance to ensure a decisive win.”
The Prowler aircraft has a long and distinguished history, dating back to its first deployment in the skies over Vietnam in 1972. Besides its more recent use in Iraq and Syria against ISIS (since 2014), the aircraft has also been instrumental in peace-keeping efforts around the world, such as when it was employed to assist in maintaining the “no-fly zone” over the war-torn area of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
The deployment of the Prowler squadron to aid in the fight against ISIS is just the latest addition to the armament being sent to combat the terrorist organization. Just last week, an untold number of B-52 Stratofortress bombers were deployed to Qatar to run missions against ISIS troop concentrations and targets of strategic value. It was the first time since Operation Desert Storm that B-52s had seen service in the Middle East, although a number of the Air Force’s oldest and most reliable aircraft had been used in the war in Afghanistan.
But Prowlers and B-52s aren’t the only weapons the U.S. military is now using to fight ISIS. It was announced earlier in the week, according to Reuters, that the U.S. and its coalition partners were also using cyber attacks as part of their military strategy against ISIS. This is done using “cyber bombs” against ISIS internet capabilities, placing increased pressure on the terrorist organization, which has been quite effective in disseminating terrorist propaganda online, not to mention its use of the internet as a recruitment tool.
Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said the following on Tuesday from an aircraft headed to a Colorado air base.
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NYT: BAGHDAD — President Obama will send American military advisers closer to the front lines of the conflict against the Islamic State in Iraq, part of a series of measures that will broaden the United States military campaign against the extremist group there.
The advisers, who until now had been assisting Iraqi military divisions, which have about 10,000 troops, will now also work with units of about 2,000 soldiers who are more directly involved in day-to-day combat, according to Defense Department officials.
The officials said the advisers will not be on the actual front lines, but American and Iraqi commanders want them to move closer to the fighting so they can provide timely tactical guidance to the Iraqis as they prepare for the long-awaited assault on the northern city of Mosul, seized by the Islamic State in 2014.
Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter made the announcement in a speech to dozens of American troops at the airport in Baghdad.
To give the Iraqis more capabilities on the battlefield, the Pentagon will also deploy a handful of Apache attack helicopters, Mr. Carter said. The Apaches, known for their withering — and accurate — rocket and cannon fire, can provide strong air support to ground forces. The Pentagon will also deploy several long-range artillery units, Mr. Carter added.
“We want to have our forces there with them so they can help them and they can bring the great weight of the coalition’s enablers to this campaign,” Mr. Carter said. “It’s all consistent — these additions are consistent with our overall strategic approach which is to enable the Iraqi security forces, not to substitute for them.”
Earlier Monday, Mr. Carter flew by helicopter into the Green Zone, where he met with the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, who has been contending with Shiite leaders backed by Iran who oppose an expanded American role in the country.
“We’re on the same page as the Iraqi government,” Mr. Carter said on Monday.
The package of military aid will involve sending to Iraq more members of the Army Special Forces, or Green Berets, who specialize in advising and training foreign military forces. Mr. Obama will increase the number of American forces that commanders can use in Iraq by 217, to 4,087. That number, however, is largely symbolic because the Pentagon uses a system that has exceptions for commandos and soldiers who are supposed to be in the country less than four months. Defense Department officials have said that there are more than 5,000 service members in Iraq.
The Kurds are an important part of the anti-Islamic State campaign in the north, and Mr. Carter said the United States would give the Kurdish regional government more than $415 million.
The announcement came as the Obama administration has said that the campaign against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is gaining momentum. In recent weeks, the Iraqi military reclaimed the city of Hit. At the end of December, the Iraqis, with the help of American air power, drove the Islamic State out of Ramadi, the biggest city in western Iraq.
Yet it has been nearly two years since the United States began military operations against the Islamic State and the organization still controls a significant portion of the northern and western parts of Iraq, including Mosul, the second largest city in the country. American commanders estimate that there are 5,000 Islamic State fighters in Mosul and about 5,000 more elsewhere in Iraq and more than 10,000 in Syria.
For more than five years, Donald Trump’s new top campaign aide, Paul Manafort, lobbied for a Washington-based group that Justice Department prosecutors have charged operated as a front for Pakistan’s intelligence service, according to court and lobbying records reviewed by Yahoo News.
Manafort’s work in the 1990s as a registered lobbyist for the Kashmiri American Council was only one part of a wide-ranging portfolio that, over several decades, included a gallery of controversial foreign clients ranging from Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and Zaire’s brutal dictator Mobutu Sese Seko to an Angolan rebel leader accused by human rights groups of torture. His role as an adviser to Ukraine’s then prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, prompted concerns within the Bush White House that he was undermining U.S. foreign policy. It was considered so politically toxic in 2008 that presidential candidate John McCain nixed plans for Manafort to manage the Republican National Convention — a move that caused a rupture between Manafort and his then business partner, Rick Davis, who at the time was McCain’s campaign manager.
Manafort’s work for the Kashmiri group has so far not gotten any media attention.
But it could fuel more questions about his years of lobbying for questionable foreign interests before Manafort, 67, assumed his new position as chief delegate counter and strategist for a presidential candidate who repeatedly decries the influence of Washington lobbyists and denounces the manipulation of U.S. policy by foreign governments.
Court records show that Manafort’s Kashmiri lobbying contract came on the FBI’s radar screen during a lengthy counterterrorism investigation that culminated in 2011 with the arrest of the Kashmiri council’s director, Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, on charges that he ran the group on behalf of Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, as part of a scheme to secretly influence U.S. policy toward the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Paul Manafort, convention manager for the Trump campaign, on “Meet the Press,” April 10. (Photo: William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC NewsWire via Getty Images)
The Kashmiri American Council was a “scam” that amounted to a “false flag operation that Mr. Fai was operating on behalf of the ISI,” Gordon D. Kromberg, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, said in March 2012 at Fai’s sentencing hearing in federal court. While posing as a U.S.-based nonprofit funded by American donors sympathetic to the plight of Kashmiris, it was actually bankrolled by the ISI in order to deflect public attention “away from the involvement of Pakistan in sponsoring terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere,” Kromberg said. Fai, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax fraud charges, was then sentenced to two years in federal prison.
Lobbying records filed with the secretary of the Senate show that Manafort’s lobbying firm, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, was paid $700,000 by the Kashmiri American Council between 1990 and 1995. This was among more than $4 million that federal prosecutors alleged came from the ISI; Fai collected the money over 20 years from “straw” American donors who were being reimbursed from secret accounts in Pakistan. (The funds were in some cases delivered to Fai in brown paper bags stuffed with cash — and then the donors reimbursed with wire transfers from ISI operatives, according to an FBI affidavit.)
Manafort, who handled the Kashmiri account for his firm, was never charged in the case, and Kromberg told Yahoo News that what knowledge, if any, he had of the secret source of money from his client was not part of the Justice Department’s investigation. (While registering with Congress as a domestic lobbyist for the Kashmiri American Council, Manafort never registered with the U.S. Justice Department as a foreign agent of Pakistan, as he would have been required to do if he was aware of the ISI funding of his client.)
But a former senior Pakistani official, who asked not to be identified, told Yahoo News that there was never any doubt on Pakistan’s part that Manafort knew of his government’s role in backing the Kashmiri council. The former official said that during a trip from Islamabad in 1994 he met with Manafort and Fai in Manafort’s office in Alexandria, Va., “to review strategy and plans” for the council. Manafort, at the meeting, presented plans to influence members of Congress to back Pakistan’s case for a plebiscite for Kashmir (the largest portion of which has been part of India since 1947), he said. (Internal budget documents later obtained by the FBI show plans by the council to spend $80,000 to $100,000 a year on campaign contributions to members of Congress.) “There is no way Manafort didn’t know that Pakistan was involved with” the council, the former official said, although he added: “Some things are not explicitly stated.”
Neither Manafort nor the Trump campaign responded to requests for comment for this story. (“I’m not working for any client right now other than working for Mr. Trump,” Manafort recently said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked by moderator Chuck Todd about his past “controversial” clients.)
Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, executive director of the Kashmiri American Council, in 2007. (Photo: Roshan Mughal/AP)
But Manafort’s former partner Charlie Black, now an adviser to rival Republican presidential candidate John Kasich, said that as far as the firm was concerned, the Kashmiri council was a domestic, not a foreign, client. “Nobody was more surprised than me that the guy was taking the money from Pakistan,” Black said in a telephone interview. “We didn’t know anything about it.”
But there was no doubt on the part of the Indian government about where the money was coming from. Its officials repeatedly alleged that the Kashmiri council was a front group for Pakistan during the period that Manafort’s firm was lobbying for it. The issue blew up in September 1993 after Manafort and one of his lobbying associates, Riva Levinson, traveled to Kashmir and, according to Indian officials, posed as CNN reporters in an effort to gather video footage of interviews with Kashmiri officials.
“The whole thing was obviously a blatant operation of producing television software with a deliberate and particularly anti-Indian slant by lobbyists hired by Pakistan for this very purpose,” Shiv Shankar, then the Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a letter to CNN in Atlanta at the time. (Levinson did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo News. At the time she denied the Indian allegations, telling a UPI reporter, “We never misrepresented ourselves as journalists.”)
Exactly what Manafort did for the Kashmiri council is unclear from the sketchy lobbying reports his firm filed with the secretary of the Senate. Those reports show his firm first registered as lobbyists for the group in October 1990, the same year the group was founded by Fai. The reports list little beyond the purpose of the lobbying: to seek support for a House resolution by then-Rep. Dan Burton to sponsor a “peaceful resolution” of the Kashmir dispute. They also show payments to the firm of $140,000 a year. (During this time, Black, Manafort had a long list of other domestic clients that included the NRA, the Tobacco Institute and the Trump Organization, which paid the firm $70,000 a year to lobby Congress on casino gambling, aviation and tax issues, according to the lobbying records.)
“We went to the Hill for them to raise the profile of the [Kashmiri] cause,” said Black about the firm’s work for Fai’s council. “But nobody in Bush 41 [the administration of George H.W. Bush] or the Clinton administration wanted to touch it. We never got any real attention for it.”
The FBI came across evidence that ISI was actually not pleased with Manafort’s work. The bureau’s investigation began in 2005 with a tip from a confidential informant (who was seeking a reduced prison term) that Fai and an associate in Pakistan, Zaheer Ahmad, were agents of the ISI. As part of the probe, agents obtained secret national security warrants to wiretap Fai’s communications; they also searched his home and offices. Among the evidence they seized: a December 1995 letter from Fai’s main ISI handler, identified as a Pakistani Army brigadier general named Javeed Aziz Khan, who went by the name of “Abdullah,” that criticized Fai for renewing a contract with a public relations firm, according to the FBI affidavit from a counterterrorism agent, Sarah Webb Linden, that was filed to support Fai’s detention in July 2011.
Lobbyist Charlie Black (Photo: Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty Images)
Eight months later, at Fai’s sentencing hearing, prosecutor Kromberg for the first time identified the public relations firm as Black, Manafort, according to court records. He then detailed a dispute between Fai and his ISI handler over the Black, Manafort contract. Fai wrote back to Khan the next day insisting that the ISI official had in fact approved the renewal of the contract and noted that to “make it appear” that the council was a Kashmiri organization “financed by Americans,” there was a preexisting agreement that nobody from the Pakistani Embassy would ever contact Black, Manafort, said Kromberg. But Fai was overruled, according to Kromberg’s account. The ISI handler wrote back to Fai stating that that “‘we’ — a reference to the ISI — were unsatisfied with the performance of Black, Manafort & Stone, and advised Fai to terminate the contract immediately,” according to a transcript of Kromberg’s statement to the court.
Meanwhile, the FBI pursued even more alarming allegations relating to Ahmad, Fai’s Pakistan-based associate. According to a ProPublica account, the bureau questioned witnesses about a trip that Ahmad had allegedly made to Afghanistan with a Pakistani nuclear scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood; the scientist was suspecting of having met with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in August 2001 to discuss the terror leaders’ interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.
Manafort, for his part, appears to have expanded his business connections in Pakistan. In 2013 he acknowledged to French investigators that, in 1994, he had received $86,000 from two arms dealers involved in the sale of French attack submarines to Pakistan’s navy. The payments were part of an arrangement to compensate Manafort for political advice and polling he provided to French presidential candidate Édouard Balladur — one part of a wide-ranging French investigation into alleged kickbacks from arms sales dubbed by the French press “the Karachi affair.”
One puzzling question about the Kashmir case is why, six years after the investigation began, the FBI decided to arrest Fai in 2011. One explanation, a source familiar with the case said, is that it came during a period of mounting tensions between the United States and Pakistan, much of it due to concerns among U.S. national security officials about the “double game” being played by the ISI. In May of that year, President Obama ordered the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden without informing the Pakistani military, in part because of fears that elements of the ISI (an arm of the military) might have been protecting the al-Qaida leader. Just weeks later, federal prosecutors in Chicago presented damning testimony in federal court that an ISI handler had directed one of the confessed conspirators in the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai — which killed 164 people, including six Americans — that was perpetrated by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based group with links to al-Qaida committed to “liberating” Muslims from Indian rule in Kashmir.
Then, on July 18, after Fai returned from a trip to the United Kingdom, the FBI confronted him for the third time about whether he had any connections to the ISI — and he denied it. Fai was arrested, and he and Ahmad (who remained in Pakistan and died later that year) were charged in federal court with being unregistered foreign agents of Pakistan.
Add in more Apache helicopters so the real numbers of new deployments remain unknown. Today there is a cap of 3950 troops in Iraq but that number is hardly the real numbers in this mission creep. The real objective is taking back Mosul, a mission that will take a long time and honestly major coordination. The other truth is countless Iraqis are fleeing Mosul right now, destinations are unknown as well.
FNC: The U.S. has agreed to deploy more than 200 additional troops to Iraq and to send Apache helicopters for the first time into the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq, U.S. defense officials said Monday.
The decisions reflect weeks of discussions with commanders and Iraqi leaders, and a decision by President Barack Obama to increase the authorized troop level in Iraq by 217 forces — or from 3,870 to 4,087.
The new plan, expected for weeks, would mark the first major increase in U.S. forces in nearly a year. Last June the Obama administration announced that hundreds of troops would be deployed to help the Iraqis retake Ramadi — a goal they accomplished at the end of the year.
Of the additional troops, most would be Army special forces, who have been used all along to advise and assist the Iraqis. The remainder would include some trainers, security forces for the advisers, and more maintenance teams for the Apaches.
The increased military support comes as the U.S.-led coalition looks to better enable local Iraqi and Syrian forces to retake the key cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.
The advise-and-assist teams — made up of about a dozen troops each — would embed with Iraqi brigades and battalions, putting them closer to the fight, and at greater risk from mortars and rocket fire. They would have security forces with them.
Putting the U.S. teams with Iraqi forces closer to the battlefront will allow them to provide more tactical combat advice as the Iraqi units move toward Mosul, the country’s second-largest city. Until now, U.S. advisers have worked with the Iraqis at the headquarters level, well back from the front lines.
The Apaches are considered a significant aid to any attack on Mosul, providing precision fires in the fight.
Last December, U.S. officials were trying to carefully negotiate new American assistance with Iraqi leaders who often have a different idea of how to wage war. At that time, the Iraqis turned down a U.S. offer to provide Apache helicopters for the battle to retake Ramadi.
Speaking to U.S. troops at the airport in Baghdad, Defense Secretary Ash Carter also said that he will send an additional rocket-assisted artillery system to Iraq. The system is likely to be used by Army soldiers who replace the Marines current stationed at a small outpost outside of the Iraqi base of Mohkmour.
U.S. officials have also said previously that the number of special operations forces in Syria would be increased at some point, but Carter did not mention that in his comments. Officials spoke about the plan on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Carter’s announcement Monday came after several meetings with his commanders and Iraqi leaders about how the U.S. can best help Iraqi forces retake Mosul.
He met with Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the top U.S. military commander for the Islamic State fight, as well as a number of Iraqi leaders including, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Iraq’s minister of defense Khalid al-Obeidi.
He also spoke by phone with the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani
Late last month, U.S. Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that he and Carter believed there would be an increase in U.S. forces in Iraq in the coming weeks.
Later this week, Obama will be in Saudi Arabia to meet with Gulf leaders and talk about the fight against the Islamic State.
Carter has said the U.S. wants Gulf nations to help Iraq rebuild its cities once IS militants are defeated.
U.S. military and defense officials also have made it clear that winning back Mosul is critical, but will be challenging, because the insurgents are dug in and have likely peppered the landscape with roadside bombs and other traps for any advancing military..
A senior defense official told reporters traveling with Carter that while Iraqi leaders have been reluctant to have a large number of U.S. troops in Iraq, they also need certain capabilities that only more American or coalition forces can provide.
Iraqi leaders, said the official, back the addition of more U.S. troops if they directly coincide with specific capabilities that Iraq forces needs to fight IS and take back Mosul. The official was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.
U.S. leaders have also made it clear that ongoing political disarray and economic problems must be dealt with in order for Iraq to move forward.
This week, the country has been struggling with a political crisis, as efforts to oust the speaker of parliament failed. Al-Abadi’s efforts to get a new cabinet in place met resistance, and influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr issued a deadline, giving parliament 72 hours to vote in a new Cabinet.
At the same time, the costs of the war against IS, along with the plunge in the price of oil — which accounts for 95 percent of Iraq’s revenues — have caused an economic crisis, adding fresh urgency to calls for reform. Iraqi officials predict a budget deficit of more than $30 billion this year.
Oh, late Friday night, cloak and daggar? No White House announcement from the podium?
Since most of the remaining detainees are from Yemen, 9 were released to Saudi Arabia. Think about that for a moment. Saudi has been at war in recent months in Yemen and the United States had to literally flee during the first days of the war, terminating our CIA staff and our major drone operation against al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula, AQAP.
This is a headscratcher….unless….well nevermind.
ABC: Authorities say the U.S. has released nine prisoners from Guantanamo Bay and sent them to Saudi Arabia for resettlement.
All nine are Yemeni but have family ties to Saudi Arabia. None of the men had been charged and all but one had been cleared for release from the U.S. base in Cuba since at least 2010. One was approved for release by a review board last year.
They could not be sent to their homeland because of instability there.
The prisoners include a frequent hunger striker whose weight had dropped to as low as 74 pounds (34 kilograms) at one point.
The release announced Saturday in a Pentagon statement brings the Guantanamo prisoner population to 80, including 26 cleared men expected to leave by the end of the summer.
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Stripes: The nine Yemenis include Tariq Ba Odah, a frequent hunger striker whose weight dropped to a dangerously low 74 pounds (34 kilograms) at one point as the military fed him with liquid nutrients to prevent him from starving to death. His lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights had urged the U.S. to free him earlier due to his health.
Eight of the prisoners, including Ba Odah, had been cleared for released from Guantanamo since at least January 2009, when an Obama administration task force evaluated all of the prisoners held at that time. The ninth, Mashur Abdullah Muqbil Ahmed Al-Sabri, was cleared by a review board last year.
The other prisoners in this release were identified as: Ahmed Umar Abdullah Al-Hikimi; Abdul Rahman Mohammed Saleh Nasir; Ali Yahya Mahdi Al-Raimi; Muhammed Abdullah Muhammed Al-Hamiri; Ahmed Yaslam Said Kuman; Abd al Rahman Al-Qyati; and Mansour Muhammed Ali Al-Qatta.
The last time Barack Obama was to be with the Saudis was at a Camp David Gulf Nation Summit, where he was snubbed. Furthermore in recent days there has been other hostilities over the 28 missing pages of the 9/11 report where there is text that at least one Saudi diplomatic had met with two of the hijackers in California providing them with material and monetary support. Anyway, Obama starts this coming week with his trip to Saudi Arabia mostly to meet on the fight against Islamic State.
ABC: resident Barack Obama will strategize with his Middle Eastern and European counterparts on a broad range of issues during a weeklong trip to Saudi Arabia, England and Germany with efforts to rein in the Islamic State group being the common denominator in all three stops.
Obama, who begins traveling next week, recently said defeating IS his No. 1 priority. He paid a rare visit to CIA headquarters this week for a national security team meeting focused on countering the group.
The president is scheduled to arrive in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Wednesday, where he will hold talks with King Salman. Obama will also attend a summit hosted by leaders of six Persian Gulf countries that are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.
The summit follows a similar gathering that Obama hosted with the Gulf leaders last year at the Camp David presidential retreat. The White House arranged last year’s meeting largely to reassure Gulf leaders who were unnerved by a deal the U.S. and other world powers negotiated with Iran to ease economic sanctions in exchange for limits on its nuclear program.
The Iran deal is now in force, and the meeting next week will focus on defeating the Islamic State militants and al-Qaida, as well as regional security issues that include Iran.
Obama will spend most of his time in England. He is scheduled to meet again with Queen Elizabeth II over lunch at Windsor Castle on April 22, a visit that coincides with her 90th birthday a day earlier.
Obama will also meet with British Prime Minister David Cameron, who is campaigning for his country to continue its membership in the European Union. Britons are scheduled to vote on its EU membership in a June 23 referendum, the first vote ever by a nation on whether to leave the 28-member, post-World War II bloc.
Obama is not expected announce a position on the referendum, although aides have voiced support for a strong United Kingdom as a member of the E.U.
“He’ll make clear that this is a matter the British people themselves will decide when they head to the polls in June,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said Thursday as he outlined the trip for reporters.
Cameron has also been stung by criticism over his investment in an offshore trust run by his late father. The revelation was part of the recent dump of more than 11 million documents from a Panama law firm that is one of the leaders in setting up offshore bank accounts for the rich and powerful.
Obama also plans a town hall-style, question-and-answer session with young adults, which has become a staple of his foreign trips. Additional stops were being planned for London.
In Germany, the final stop on Obama’s three-country trip, the president will hold talks and a news conference Sunday with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel’s popularity has suffered after she angered Germans by allowing a massive resettlement of refugees from Syria and other war-torn countries. She recently helped broker a deal between the EU and Turkey to stem the refugee flow to Europe.
Obama also plans to join Merkel to open the Hannover Messe, the world’s largest trade show for industrial technology.
Before departing for Washington, Obama has scheduled a speech reviewing U.S.-European collaboration during his tenure and looking ahead to future joint efforts.
Haqqani Network map; courtesy of the National Counterterrorism Center.
NSAArchive: Less than a dozen men were running the militant Islamist Haqqani Network (HQN) by the time the State Department declared it a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2012, and this extremely small group continues to determine which illicit activities the organization engages in to fund its fight against US-led forces in Afghanistan. Defense Intelligence Agency documents dated from 2008 through 2010 recently obtained by the National Security Archive in response to a FOIA request offer a window into a transitional period for the organization, before the State Department declared the group a terrorist organization and the US Treasury designated Haqqani leaders as Specially Designated Global Terrorists in 2014, subjecting them to sanctions. The documents illuminate the group’s efforts to diversify its funding away from the foreign sources it relied on during the Cold War, including the CIA and Pakistani intelligence services, and towards more traditionally criminal activity – and show squabbles over the sharing of ransom money, dispersal of funds to suicide bombers, financial links between HQN and the Karzai government, and Taliban funding for the group’s activities.
Jalaluddin Haqqani
One of the early financial challenges for Jalaluddin Haqqani, the group’s founder, was coping with the end of the Cold War and the drying up of American resources. Barbara Elias notes in 2009’s “The Taliban File” that Haqqani received tens of thousands of dollars and weapons from the CIA between 1986 and 1994. CIA funding ended by the mid-1990s, although Haqqani’s relationship with the US only deteriorated in earnest in the late-1990s after the US bombed an HQN-linked training camp in retaliation for al-Qaida attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and Haqqani’s relationship with Osama bin Laden deepened.
A Confidential June 12, 1998, State Department cable, first published in Elias’s 2012 “The Haqqani History,” notes that Jalaluddin advocated for bin Laden within the Taliban, and that bin Laden’s increased power was due at least in part to “the growing strength of his supporters within the Taliban movement.” The US’s growing concern with bin Laden is shown in a May 24, 1999, cable summarizing a meeting between Haqqani and US officials, during which Haqqani agrees that bin Laden is “a problem,” but insists that “maybe the best solution is what is taking place now with him remaining in the country.” Haqqani also says that “he was deeply appreciative of U.S. assistance during the ‘jihad’ (holy war) against the Soviets and the (Afghan) communists,” but remains antagonistic over US destruction of a terrorist camp in Khost, Afghanistan, in August 1998. Haqqani even initiates the meeting by “joking” that it was “good to meet someone from the country which had destroyed my base, my madrassh [sic], and killed 25 of my mujahideen.”
Despite the historical ties between the groups, al-Qaida funding is not a major source of income for HQN; a September 24, 2009, DIA cable shows that when al-Qaida funding was received, it was relatively small amounts that were “generally provided by Al Qaida leader Shaykh Said al-Masri through Sirajudding Haqqani and Jan Baz Zadran, who is a HQN commander in Miram Shah, PK, in amounts of approximately 3,000 – 5,000 USD.”
West Point’s Combatting Terrorism Center (CTC) notes in a 2012 report that Jalaluddin was also motivated to decrease his organization’s dependence on Pakistani financing, and began vigorous fundraising efforts in the Gulf States in the 1990s to do so. A newly released April 8, 2010, DIA cable shows this practice continues. According to the cable, a well-connected individual “travels on behalf of the Haqqani network to a city in the vicinity of Dubai to collect charitable donations which are used to fund unspecified Haqqani network operations.”
However, a series of DIA cables (from January 11, 2010, and February 6, 2010) show that some funding for Haqqani attacks are still provided by the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, including $200,000 for the December 30, 2009, attack on the CIA facility at Camp Chapman.
Excerpt from a Feb. 6, 2010 posting on ISID funding for Haqqani attacks.
During Jalaluddin’s tenure the group also offered microloans to those living in its territory in North Waziristan, Pakistan, in a move that fostered goodwill and “really made a difference in these communities.” The attempts at public relations under Jalaluddin is not entirely unsurprising; a 1997 State Department cable reports Jalaluddin to be “more liberal” in his opinions on social policy, such as women’s rights, and seems to have understood the importance of maintaining credibility with the local community.
Jalaluddin was forced to retire in 2005, however, and his son Sirajuddin assumed the leadership, marking an increase in the group’s illicit activity.
FBI Wanted Poster – Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of Haqqani Network founder Jalaluddin Haqqani.
Protecting smuggling enterprises in the border areas under its control, as well as engaging in its own, has become an important source of income for HQN under Sirajuddin. Interestingly, according to the CTC report, HQN imports “the precursor chemicals used to process raw opium into morphine base and heroin, including lime, hydrochloric acid and acetic anhydride (AA). If true, this may indicate that the Haqqanis have a non‐competition agreement with the Kandahari Taliban in the heroin business, or it could simply suggest that Haqqani leaders have realized that smuggling precursors is less risky and often more lucrative, since a glut in poppy production drives down wholesale opium prices.”
These sustained efforts have ensured that the group remains financially autonomous from the Taliban, although it receives a monthly stipend from the Quetta branch “to cover operational costs, and the budget shifts depending on the season and the funding capacity of the Taliban leadership.”
A September 24, 2009, DIA cable notes that the Quetta branch remains a stable source of HQN funding, saying that “A large majority of the Haqqani Network (HQN) funding comes from the Quetta, Pakistan-based Taliban leadership.” The cable goes on to say that “HQN pays fighters who conduct successful attacks against coalition forces (CF) Afghan National Army (ANA) or Afghan National Police (ANP), with larger amounts paid for killing a coalition member. A key point in the dispersal and receiving of funds within the HQN is the videotaping of attacks.”
Bowe Bergdahl, held by the Haqqani network. AP photo.
One of the shifts that occurred along with the change in leadership was HQN’s increase of kidnap-for-ransom, a “growth industry” in which HQN cooperates “seamlessly” with other militant groups, but one that seems to have effected HQN’s credibility. Bowe Bergdahl is perhaps HQN’s most famous kidnapping victim, and would have undoubtedly been on HQN’s list of “legitimate targets,” which include “government officials and security personnel; those who cooperate with government; foreigners; transporters servicing NATO; and alleged spies.” New York Times journalist David Rohde and Afghan diplomat Haji Khaliq Farahi were also targets. The CTC report notes, however, that such behavior “appears to have lowered the network in the public estimation.”
Kidnapping-for-ransom, however, remains a way for unpaid Haqqani militants to make money. Low-ranking militants earn little, if any, money, and operate with a great deal of autonomy – making the occasional moonlighting – and tension over it – all but inevitable. A Secret September 29, 2009, DIA cable recounts one such ransom dispute. “As of late September 2009, Spera District Haqqani Network (HQN) commander Hamid (Rahman) had strained relations with the HQN leadership, including senior commander Siraj (Haqqani), over ransom money embezzled by Rahman. Rahman and an unidentified Iraqi Al-Qaida associate had kidnapped a road construction worker in Spera District for ransom and neglected to send the ransom money obtained to HQN leadership in Pakistan. As a result, Siraj Haqqani ordered Rahman to return to Miram Shah/[redacted] north Waziristan, PK, in order to account for the money. Rahman ignored the order and did not travel to Miram Shah due to fear that he would be killed by HQN leadership for his transgression.”
Donations and fundraising continue to be an important for HQN. A Secret March 22, 2009, DIA cable provides an example of a routine donation for HQN. It notes, “As of mid-February 2009, the Hadika ta Uloom madrassa in Dera Ismail Khan, PK was facilitating financial support for the Haqqani Network (HQN). The leader of the mosque, Maulawi din Mohammad (Khalifa), was facilitating contact between HQN commanders and local businessmen willing to donate money and assistance to the HQN.” The five businessmen contacted, all from the oil industry, provided a total of $17,000 USD.
HQN leaders also recognize the importance of a good media campaign. The CTC report finds that “Just as Jalaluddin before them, network leaders today conduct fundraising road shows, visiting large mosques around the region where they ask for alms from worshipers. As in the past, the Haqqanis appear to realize the importance of publicity materials to communicate their successes and to help to generate donations at these events. The network publishes considerable multi‐media material concerning its activities, and appears to consider publicity a core aspect of financial operations.”
HQN’s complicated relationship with the Afghan government, and its financial payoffs, are also highlighted in a Secret August 31, 2010, cable. The cable explains how a security manager in Khost province, Qabool Khan, simultaneously provides HQN with intelligence on US bases in Salerno and Chapman, while providing HQN with money and the license plate numbers of US vehicles of military personnel and contractors that serve on the two bases. Khan obtained his position with the security company – which posted private security guards on US bases – through Mahmoud Karzai, brother of Afghan president Hamid. “Khan receives $800.00 U.S. dollars per guard, per month, in which $200.00 U.S. dollars goes to the guard, $300.00 U.S. dollars to Khan, and $300.00 U.S. dollars is given to the Haqqani network… in return Khan is not attacked by Haqqani operatives leaving the American base or Khan’s personal residence. Khan leaves his window down when leaving the American base as a signal to Haqqani operatives not to attack his vehicle.”
These documents were requested under the FOIA as part of the Archive’s Afghanistan, Pakistan and Taliban project, and we will continue to post on interesting documents as they come in.
