Category Archives: Middle East

Do you Really Know about Jake Sullivan?

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Jacob Jeremiah Sullivan is an American political advisor who serves as the United States National Security Advisor to President Joe Biden. He was previously a senior policy advisor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential election campaign and her deputy chief of staff at the Department of State when she was Secretary of State.

But we must go backwards somewhat and then forwards….

Backwards:

 

After Clinton's 2008 primary defeat, Sullivan followed her to the State Department — first as deputy chief of staff and then as State’s youngest-ever director of policy planning. | AP Photo. Jake was the secret agent man of Hillary Clinton.

It was Sept. 27, 2013, and President Barack Obama was about to place a historic phone call to the president of Iran — a conversation that would kick off the public phase of nuclear talks between two longtime adversaries.

And it was at that moment that Jake Sullivan, a 30-something aide who’d spent months secretly laying the groundwork for the talks, started to panic. Jake was part of an interesting phone call –>   a 15-minute call in which Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warmly agreed to pursue the talks.

Eighteen months later, Sullivan’s attention to detail has paid off. In Switzerland on Thursday, officials from the U.S. and five other nations reached a framework deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program — vindicating, for the moment at least, Sullivan’s deep personal involvement in the process.

And thanks to Sullivan, the deal also bears the clear fingerprints of his political mentor, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who first assigned him to the Iran file and with whom he remains extremely close. Sullivan “was at my side nearly everywhere I went” as secretary of state, Clinton wrote in her memoir, “Hard Choices.”

Sullivan has emerged as Clinton’s most trusted foreign policy adviser. It remains undecided whether he‘ll have a formal post at campaign headquarters during her all-but-certain 2016 presidential run, but Clinton allies say he’ll be in daily contact with the candidate regardless.

And should Clinton win the White House, Sullivan, now 38, is almost certain to take a top post in her administration — possibly even as the country’s youngest-ever national security adviser.

“The sky’s the limit,” says Strobe Talbott, a former top State Department official under Bill Clinton. “He is somebody of extraordinary intelligence and temperament.” More here.

G7 Rally Around Need To "Counter And Compete" With China ...

Forward: Last month Washington was rocked by the indictment of Michael Sussman, former counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, for his alleged role in spreading a false Russia conspiracy theory. Jonathan Turley writes in part:

As soon as the conspiracy theory was packaged and delivered the FBI and the media by Sussman, the indictment recounts an exchange between some of those “VIPs”: “… on or about September 15, 2016, Campaign Lawyer-1 exchanged emails with the Clinton Campaign’s campaign manager, communications director, and foreign policy advisor concerning the Russian Bank-1 allegations that SUSSMANN had recently shared with Reporter-1.” The campaign lawyer reportedly was Elias, and the “foreign policy advisor” reportedly was Sullivan.

Sullivan was quoted in an official campaign press statement as stating that the Alfa Bank allegation “could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow.” In the statement, Sullivan said: “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank. This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia … This line of communication may help explain Trump’s bizarre adoration of Vladimir Putin.”

The U.S. intelligence community ultimately rejected the Alfa Bank conspiracy. It also concluded that the Steele dossier not only relied on a suspected Russian agent but likely was used by Russian intelligence to spread disinformation through the Clinton campaign.

Yet, when Sullivan was later questioned by Congress, he went full Sergeant Schultz, claiming he basically did not have a clue about the basis or origins of the Alfa Bank controversy or other campaign-orchestrated scandals. Sullivan was adept at laying qualifiers upon qualifiers to render statements useless: “broadly speaking, at some point in the summer, and I don’t remember exactly when it was, around the convention, I learned that there was an effort to do some research into the ties between Trump and Russia.” That will make any false statement claim difficult absent direct involvement in the planning of these “campaign efforts.”

Sullivan denied knowing that Elias or Sussman were working for the Clinton campaign, despite numerous news articles identifying Elias as the campaign’s general counsel. Sullivan just shrugged and said: “To be honest with you, Marc wears a tremendous number of hats, so I wasn’t sure who he was representing. I sort of thought he was, you know, just talking to us as, you know, a fellow traveler in this — in this campaign effort.”

That seems odd, given Sullivan’s long, close involvement with Clinton and her campaigns. He advised her during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries and later became her deputy chief of staff and policy planning director at the State Department. He was one of the notable names in Clinton’s email scandal and the recipient of her controversial order to strip the classification headings on a key email.  He later rejoined Clinton again during the 2016 campaign as one of her senior-most advisers.

Yet, the lack of disclosure over those behind the “campaign effort” seems suspiciously consistent. Sussman was indicted for allegedly hiding his representation of Clinton in pushing the Alfa Bank conspiracy. Elias was accused of doing the same with reporters on the Steele Dossier. He also reportedly sat next to campaign chair John Podesta when he denied such connections to Congress. Now Sullivan denies any knowledge of the campaign’s early role in these scandals.

It is notable that, when Sullivan was Clinton campaign’s foreign policy adviser, President Obama was given a national security briefing of Clinton’s alleged plan to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” That briefing was on July 28, 2016 — three days before the Russia investigation was initiated.

This brings us back to Durham’s calendar. Sullivan reportedly gave his series of denials to Congress in December 2017. The statute of limitations for lying to Congress is five years, which means that Sullivan still would be within range for Durham if the special counsel does not buy Sullivan’s denials. He could also find himself unindicted but entirely exposed in a report that is likely to be blistering.

If so, Sullivan could find himself a “fellow traveler” with Sussman — not “in this campaign effort” but in Durham’s still-unfolding prosecution effort instead.

Chinese ‘military’ Aircraft landed in Bagram Airbase

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The Pentagon knows for sure and is not talking or doing any reporting. We have advanced technology to see the activity at Bagram including GeoSpatial systems. Anyone asking the right questions? Not so far but read on.

Ah, but the Taliban denies this story…of course they do as does the Chinese Foreign Minister.

Chinese ‘military’ aircraft landed in Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, said the Daily Mail on Sunday.

The UK newspaper’s report was based on its own sources, noting that power was restored in the airbase the US left in July.

 

The Daily Mail said unconfirmed reports suggest that the Chinese forces are the ones who “occupied the former US stronghold.”

The Daily Mail also noted that many military aircraft had been seen taking off and landing in the airbase, as images and videos circulating on social media show its floodlights in the distance amid reports of flights.

China, a country bordering Afghanistan, accused the United States of “leaving chaos” behind in Afghanistan after withdrawing from the country. This comes especially after scenes of civilians attempting to escape through the Kabul airport as the US was evacuating its nationals and embassy staff went viral.

A Chinese government spokesperson later declared that China was ready to enhance cooperation with Afghanistan after the Taliban took control of the country.

In July, ahead of the US withdrawal, a Taliban delegation met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and the Taliban pledged that Afghan territories would not be used to undermine the security of other countries. In return, China offered economic support and investments to rebuild the country torn by the 20-year US-NATO war on it.

***

The Taliban has already begun talking up plans for cooperation with Beijing.

A Taliban spokesman told an Italian newspaper that Afghanistan’s new rulers will rely primarily on financing from China as it seeks to head off a looming humanitarian crisis and begin reconstruction.

‘China is our most important partner and represents a fundamental and extraordinary opportunity for us, because it is ready to invest and rebuild our country,’ Zabihullah Mujahid told La Repubblica in an interview.

He also praised the New Silk Road – part of the Belt and Road Initiative that China is using to open up trade routes – and said Beijing investment could help reopen copper mines.

A report suggests China’s deployment might not be coming for another two years and it would not involve them taking over the base, merely sending personnel at the Taliban’s invite.

China likely achieve its latest ambitions for Bagram through help from Pakistan, Sun says, adding, ‘I am sure they would like to cut out the middleman,’ she added. ‘If the Taliban requests Chinese assistance, I think China will be inclined to send human support. Most likely, they will frame it as technical support or logistic support.’ source

***

In late September –

Chinese Delegation Visits Bagram Airbase: As soon as America is out of Afghanistan, Pakistan and China are showing their interest in almost every matter related to this country. A few days before the announcement of the interim government of the Taliban, Faiz Hameed, the chief of Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, arrived in Kabul. Now the news has come that the Chinese delegation has visited the Bagram airbase last week. This airbase was Afghanistan’s largest military base for the US during the war that lasted for two decades. It is also considered strategically very important.

According to a media report, this Chinese delegation included senior intelligence and military officials (Chinese Delegation at Bagram Airbase). It is not yet clear why they visited the airbase, but they are believed to have come here allegedly “to gather evidence and data against the US”. According to sources, it seems that China is developing a ‘facility’ here in collaboration with Taliban and Pakistan to keep an eye on Uyghur Muslims living in its Xinjiang province.

Chinese officials who came through Pakistan

The report quoted sources as saying that the most interesting thing during this period was that instead of landing at Kabul airport, Chinese officials came here via Pakistan. The arrival of Chinese officials to Bagram airbase is also a matter of concern for India (China Bagram Airfield). The report quoted senior government sources as saying, “We are confirming the news of the arrival of the Chinese group here. This is very serious… If they establish a base here with Pakistan, they will encourage terrorist activities and create instability in the region.

Earlier this month, Pakistan ISI Chief Faiz Hameed met the intelligence chiefs of Russia, China, Iran and Tajikistan. During this, Hameed informed them about the Taliban government of Afghanistan and the changes that took place there. Hameed allegedly spewed a lot of venom against India as well (Taliban Afghanistan Government). At the same time, in the internal government formed by the Taliban with the Haqqani network, terrorists have been placed in high positions. This government was announced about three days after Hameed’s visit. Talking about China, it is the first country that has established diplomatic contacts with Afghanistan after the occupation of Taliban.

$64 Million to Afghanistan Per Biden Admin but Add in $1.2 Billion

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The Taliban is swimming in significant assets, with more to come. and China is delighted.he ultimate winner of two decades of war in Afghanistan is likely China. Secretary of State Antony Blinkin confirmed that if the Taliban behaves, the $64 million will be authorized. Further, there is the matter of nations around the world and the pledges they have made in ’emergency funds’ for Afghanistan.

At the first high-level conference on Afghanistan since the Taliban took power a month ago, Western governments, big traditional donors and others announced pledges that went beyond the $606 million that the United Nations was seeking to cover costs through the end of the year for protecting Afghans from looming humanitarian disaster.

U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths announced at the close of the ministerial meeting that more than $1.2 billion in humanitarian and development aid had been pledged. He said this included the $606 million sought in a “flash appeal” but also a regional response to the Afghan crisis that U.N. refugee chief Filippo Grandi spoke about after arriving in Kabul on a previously unannounced visit.

He wrote on Twitter that he would assess humanitarian needs and the situation of 3.5 million displaced Afghans, including over 500,000 displaced this year alone.

Officials at the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, have expressed concerns that more Afghans could take refuge into neighboring Pakistan and Iran, which both already have large numbers of Afghans who fled their country during the past decades of war. sourceTaliban seen with SCAR rifle commonly carried by American ...

GovExe: The aircraft and armored vehicles left behind when U.S. forces withdrew will give China—through their eager partners, the Taliban—a broad window into how the U.S. military builds and uses some of its most important tools of war. Expect the Chinese military to use this windfall to create—and export to client states—a new generation of weapons and tactics tailored to U.S. vulnerabilities, said several experts who spent years building, acquiring, and testing some of the equipment that the Taliban now controls.

To understand how big a potential loss this is for the United States, look beyond the headlines foretelling a Taliban air force. Look instead to the bespoke and relatively primitive pieces of command, control, and communication equipment sitting around in vehicles the United States left on tarmacs and on airfields. These purpose-built items aren’t nearly as invincible to penetration as even your own phone.

“The only reason we aren’t seeing more attacks is because of a veil of secrecy around these systems,” said Josh Lospinoso, CEO of cybersecurity company Shift5. “Once you pierce that veil of secrecy…it massively accelerates the timeline for being able to build cyber weapons” to attack them.

Lospinoso spent ten years in the Army conducting penetration tests against radios, small computers, and other IT gear commonly deployed in Afghanistan.

Take the radios and communications equipment aboard the Afghan Air Force C-130 transport plane captured by the Taliban. The Pentagon has assured that the equipment was disabled. But if any of it remains on the plane an adversary with time and will could pick those apart one by one.

“You now have some or all of the electronic components on that system and it’s a representative laboratory; it’s a playground for building, testing, and iterating on cyber-attacks where maybe the adversary had a really hard time” until he obtained actual copies of the gear, Lospinoso said. “It is the playground for them to develop attacks against similar items.”

Georgianna Shea, who spent five years at MITRE helping the Pentagon research and test new technologies,  said the loss of key equipment to the Taliban “exposes everything we do in the U.S., DOD: our plans of action, how we configure things, how we protect things. It allows them unlimited time and access to go through and find vulnerabilities that we may not be aware of.”

“It’s not just a Humvee. It’s not just a vehicle that gets you from point A to point B. It’s a Humvee that’s full of radios, technologies, crypto systems, things we don’t want our adversaries getting a hold of,” said Shea, now chief technologist at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’s Transformative Innovation Lab.

Of particular concern are the electronic countermeasures gear, or ECMs, used to detect improvised explosive devices.

“Imagine the research and development effort that went into develop those ECM devices that were designed to counter IEDs,” said Peter Christensen, a former director of the U.S. Army’s National Cyber Range. “Now, our adversaries have them. They’re going to have the software and the hardware that goes with that system. But also develop capabilities to defeat or mitigate the effectiveness of those ECM devices.”

Gear that has been “demilitarized” or “rendered inoperable,” as U.S. officials described the planes and vehicles left behind, can still reveal secrets, Shea said.

“In some cases, this equipment was fielded with the assumption we would have gates and guards to protect it. When it was developed, no one thought the Chinese would have it in their cyber lab, dissecting it, pulling it apart.”

Once an attacker has physical control of a device, little can stop her from discovering its vulnerabilities—and there are always vulnerabilities, Shea said.

Under current acquisition practices, most new defense gear is not tested for vulnerabilities until late in the design process. Testers often receive far too little time to test comprehensively. Sometimes they get just two weeks, she said, and yet “they always find something. Always.”

“Regardless of the previous testing that’s been done on compliance, they always find something: always… “They’re very backlogged and don’t have an unending amount of resources,” she said. So you have to schedule development with these testers. There’s not enough resources to test it to the depth and breadth that it should be to understand all of the vulnerabilities.”

Plans to fix newly discovered vulnerabilities “were often inconsistent or inadequate,” Christensen said.

Lospinoso, who spent years conducting such tests for the Army, still performs penetration testing for the U.S. military as a contractor. He says a smart hacker can usually find useful vulnerabilities  in hardware “within hours.”

When such a network attack disables a radio or a truck, troops are generally not trained to do anything about it. They may not even realize that they have been attacked, and may chalk up problems to age or maintenance problems.

“Every time we run an attack against a system, knocked out a subcomponent or have some really devastating effect that could cause loss of an asset—every time, the operator in the cockpit says, ‘We do not have operating procedures for what you just did,’” Lospinoso said.

Little of this is new. In 2017, the Government Accountability Office highlighted many of these concerns in a blistering report.

More than just insight into network vulnerabilities, the abandoned vehicles and gear will help China understand how U.S. forces work with partner militaries, said N. MacDonnell Ulsch, the CEO and chief analyst of Phylax Analytics.

“If you were to take all of the technology that was currently deployed in Afghanistan by the [United States] and you made an assessment of that, you have a point in time and a point in place reference of what the status quo is; what technology is being used, how much it costs, what’s it capable of doing and you realize it’s going to a developing nation,” Ulsch said.

China can use the knowledge to develop their weapons and tactics, but also to give their arms-export sales team an edge, he said. The Taliban have highlighted their nascent partnership with China as perhaps their most important foreign diplomatic effort. China, meanwhile, has already begun giving millions in aid to the new regime.

Whatever vulnerabilities China does discover will likely imperil U.S. troops for years to come, Lospinoso said.

“There is a zero percent chance we will go back and re-engineer” all of the various systems with serious cyber vulnerabilities, he said. “We are stuck with billions and billions in weapon systems that have fundamental flaws.”

 

Deputy CIA Director Says Here Comes al Qaeda Again

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Leaving Afghanistan and abandoning Bagram Air Base immediately created a terror state. Did anyone contemplate that?

Meanwhile, the Taliban has named Mohammad Hassan Akhund, a longtime ally of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, to serve as the country’s acting prime minister. Akhund, who was the Taliban’s foreign minister before the U.S. invasion in 2001, told the United Nations in 1999 that “we will never give up Osama [bin Laden] at any price.”Hibatullah Akhundzada, considered the “emir” of Afghanistan by the Taliban, is a strong al Qaeda ally and proud father of a suicide bomber known as the “commander of the faithful.” Current al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri reportedly swore allegiance to him as the “emir of the believers” in 2016.

Al Qaeda could reconstitute in Afghanistan and regain the capability to threaten the U.S. in “one to two” years, intelligence chiefs said Tuesday, revising downward estimates that were previously issued by the Pentagon.

source

“The current assessment, probably conservatively, is one to two years for al Qaeda to build some capability to at least threaten the homeland,” said Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), at an annual summit hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, with panels moderated by CBS News.

“That said, DIA is not going to take…their eye off the ball of terrorism,” Berrier said.

CIA deputy director David Cohen said at the same event that the agency was keeping “a very keen watch” on the terror network’s activities in Afghanistan, adding there is evidence its militants are returning to the country.

“[W]e are already beginning to see some of the indications of some potential movement of al Qaeda to Afghanistan,” Cohen said, “but it’s early days, and we will obviously keep a very close eye on that.”

The Taliban, who seized control of Afghanistan in a stunningly rapid takeover last month, are known to have maintained close ties with al Qaeda and are suspected by analysts of harboring senior operatives.

Both U.S. officials said Tuesday that intelligence agencies were working on ways to continue intelligence collection without a troop presence or embassy in the country, acknowledging current capabilities had been meaningfully reduced by the U.S. withdrawal. Lawmakers, counterterrorism experts and former intelligence officials have expressed concern over how reliable so-called over-the-horizon capabilities can be without networks of informants to guide them.

“We’re thinking about ways how to gain access back into Afghanistan with all kinds of sources,” Berrier said. “We are prioritizing that effort.”

Cohen said the agency would seek to maintain a network of intelligence assets within Afghanistan, but that operating from a distance and absent a physical presence was not a “new” challenge for the intelligence community.

“As we work from over the horizon principally…we will also look for ways to work from within the horizon, to the extent that is possible,” Cohen said. “But we will approach this in the way that we have approached the counterterrorism mission in many places around the world for a number of years, and I think, as a community, we continue to get better and better at doing that.”

Speaking at the summit on Monday, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Afghanistan did not currently top the list of international terror threats, saying the “greatest threat” came from militant groups operating in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Syria.

The U.S. has Frozen $9.5 Billion in Assets Belonging to Afghanistan Central Bank

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The U.S. has frozen nearly $9.5 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank and stopped shipments of cash to the nation as it tries to keep a Taliban-led government from accessing the money, an administration official confirmed Tuesday.This amounts to roughly one-third of the country’s annual economic output. International aid flows represented roughly 43 percent of Afghanistan’s economy in 2020, according to the World Bank.Afghanistan Economy: Hard to recover - CGTN

The official said that any central bank assets that the Afghan government has in the U.S. will not be available to the Taliban, which remains on the Treasury Department’s sanctions designation list. Additionally, as the Taliban began their march through Afghanistan, the Biden administration cancelled a planned shipment of physical dollars due to be delivered to the country and directed the International Monetary Fund to renege on its long-planned release of funds to Afghanistan. More detail and context here. 

The United States’ principal competitors in Beijing and Moscow see a potential opening with the U.S. departure. While there is little thought that China or Russia are interested in aiding Afghanistan’s development – instead seeing the country as both a playground for great power influence and, on the part of Beijing, a mercantilist maneuver critical to clinching its Belt-and-Road initiative in South Asia – it is possible that China and Russia can actually leverage U.S. sanctions and the restrictions major financial institutions will face in dealing with Afghanistan to empower the Taliban and their own interests. The Taliban meanwhile may welcome China and Russia filling the void of western finance and aid while also taking advantage of the departure of U.S. restrictions on poppy production to return to state controlled narcotics sales, furthering enriching themselves while continuing to impoverish the Afghan people.

Beyond the reserves, the United States also sends roughly $3 billion per year in support for the Afghan military, or roughly 15 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. The funding can only be spent if the secretary of defense “certifies to Congress that the Afghan forces are controlled by a civilian, representative government that is committed to protecting human rights and women’s rights,” according to a congressional summary of the legislation. This funding is expected to stop flowing as well, along with smaller pots of money, such as $20 million for recruiting women to the Afghan national security forces.

About 80 percent of Afghanistan’s budget is funded by the United States and other international donors, John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, told Reuters in the spring. A spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget declined to comment on the status of congressionally approved funding for Afghanistan. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a news conference Tuesday that NATO has suspended aid to the Afghan government as well. “We have of course suspended all support, financial and other kinds of support, to the Afghan government, because there is no Afghan government for NATO to support,” Stoltenberg said. “No money is transferred; no support is provided.” More context here. 

Meanwhile, China, Pakistan, Iran and Russia will keep their embassies in Kabul open and functional while most other nations have shuttered and evacuated their embassy operations. China is making financial moves to support the Taliban while doing the same to takeover the now former US air base in Bagram.

The UN Secretary General held a half day conference seeking to raise the $606 million which humanitarian agencies say is urgently needed to provide life-saving aid to millions of Afghans over the four final months of the year.

Among other things, the money is needed for critical food and livelihood assistance for nearly 11 million people and essential health services for 3.4 million.

‘Starvation’

Guterres stressed that Afghans were experiencing “one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world” even before the Taliban takeover on August 15.

Some 40 percent of the country’s GDP was already drawn from foreign funding, and half of the population was already dependent on humanitarian aid, according to the UN.

Afghanistan is also facing a devastating drought and mass displacement in addition to the impact of Covid-19.

Fears now abound that other countries’ reluctance to deal with the Taliban could push Afghanistan over the edge.

Guterres announced that the UN would release $20 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund to support the humanitarian operation in Afghanistan.

Under the leadership of acting central bank governor, Haji Mohammad Idris, a Taliban loyalist who has no formal financial training, the central bank has been moving to restrict dollar outflows amid a pause in foreign aid and a scramble by some Afghanis to get savings out of the country.

Further controls are expected to hasten the afghani’s depreciation against the dollar, exacerbating inflation in a country where more than a third of the population lives on less than $2 a day.

“It’s a matter of concern that the remaining physical cash of U.S. dollars is going to reduce further,” said an Afghani banker. “With the restrictions we are predicting the dollar will reach more than 100 afghanis to the dollar.”