Category Archives: Military

Obama’s Parting Gift? Lots more Money to Iran

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 Business Insider

Meanwhile,

CBS: WASHINGTON — A U.S. Navy destroyer fired multiple warning shots at Iranian patrol boats as they sped toward the destroyer at the entrance to the Persian Gulf “with their weapons manned,” U.S. defense officials said.

The crew of the USS Mahan fired the warning shots after attempting to establish contact with the Iranians and after dropping smoke flares, the officials said. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly as so spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. Navy occasionally has confrontations with Iranian naval forces in the Persian Gulf but they do not usually reach the point of prompting warning shots by the U.S.

A U.S. Navy official told CBS News the Mahan was transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday when the Iranian boats sped toward it and failed to halt despite U.S. cautionary moves.

S0….  

Iran: U.S. Surrendered More Than $10 Billion in Gold, Cash, Assets

Obama admin lowballs cost of dealing with Iran

FreeBeacon: The Obama administration has paid Iran more than $10 billion in gold, cash, and other assets since 2013, according to Iranian officials, who disclosed that the White House has been intentionally deflating the total amount paid to the Islamic Republic.

Senior Iranian officials late last week confirmed reports that the total amount of money paid to Iran over the past four years is in excess of $10 billion, a figure that runs counter to official estimates provided by the White House.

The latest disclosure by Iran, which comports with previous claims about the Obama administration obfuscating details about its cash transfers to Iran—including a $1.7 billion cash payment included in a ransom to free Americans—sheds further light on the White House’s back room dealings to bolster Iran’s economy and preserve the Iran nuclear agreement.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi confirmed last week a recent report in the Wall Street Journal detailing some $10 billion in cash and assets provided to Iran since 2013, when the administration was engaging in sensitive diplomacy with Tehran aimed at securing the nuclear deal.

Ghasemi disclosed that the $10 billion figure just scratches the surface of the total amount given to Iran by the United States over the past several years.

“I will not speak about the precise amount,” Ghasemi was quoted as saying in Persian language reports independently translated for the Washington Free Beacon.

The $10 billion figure is actually a “stingy” estimate, Ghasemi claimed, adding that a combination of cash, gold, and other assets was sent by Washington to Iran’s Central Bank and subsequently “spent.”

“This report is true but the value was higher,” Ghassemi was quoted as saying.

“After the Geneva conference and the resulting agreement, it was decided that $700 million dollars were to be dispensed per month” by the U.S., according to Ghassemi. “In addition to the cash funds which we received, we [also] received our deliveries in gold, bullion, and other things.”

Regional experts who spoke to the Free Beacon about these disclosures said that the $10 billion figure offered by the Obama administration should be viewed “as a conservative estimate for what Iran was paid to stay at the table and negotiate.”

“Iran does have incentives to overstate this figure,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Free Beacon. “But given the recent state-sponsored narrative in Iran about a Western and particularly American failing to offer sanctions relief, this reads much more as fact rather than another instance of disinformation from Tehran.”

It is likely Iran spent a portion of this money to fund its regional terror operations and military enterprise to bolster embattled Syrian President Bashar al Assad, Ben Taleblu said.

“Given the nature of some of this sanctions relief (through the provision of gold and unfrozen assets), this money likely underwrote some of the Islamic Republic’s more destabilizing regional activities,” he explained. “At the macro level, all of this continues to prove one larger point: The way the Iran deal was handled and the provision of sanctions relief during and after the talks that led to the nuclear accord continues to create problems for those interested in defending the integrity of the international financial system.”

One veteran foreign policy insider familiar with the administration’s outreach to Iran told the Free Beacon that the White House has a history of deflating these figures in order to obfuscate details about its contested diplomacy with the Islamic Republic.

“This is how it always happens when the Obama administration secretly sends money to Iran,” said the source, who would only speak on background when discussing the outgoing administration’s strategy. “They deny it until they’re caught, then they lowball it until they’re caught again, then they say it’s old news. In every single case where Iranian officials confirms these transfers while Obama officials denied them, it later turned out the Iranian officials were the ones telling the truth.”

U.N. chief concerned Iran may have violated arms embargo: report

The United Nations chief expressed concern to the Security Council that Iran may have violated an arms embargo by supplying weapons and missiles to Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah, according to a confidential report, seen by Reuters on Sunday.

The second bi-annual report, due to be discussed by the 15-member council on Jan. 18, also cites an accusation by France that an arms shipment seized in the northern Indian Ocean in March was from Iran and likely bound for Somalia or Yemen.

Most U.N. sanctions were lifted a year ago under a deal Iran made with Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia, the United States and the European Union to curb its nuclear program. But Iran is still subject to an arms embargo and other restrictions, which are not technically part of the nuclear agreement.

The report was submitted to the Security Council on Dec. 30 by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon before he was succeeded by Antonio Guterres on Jan. 1. It comes just weeks before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has threatened to either scrap the nuclear agreement or seek a better deal, takes office.

“In a televised speech broadcast by Al Manar TV on 24 June 2016, Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, stated that the budget of Hezbollah, its salaries, expenses, weapons and missiles all came from the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Ban wrote in the report.

“I am very concerned by this statement, which suggests that transfers of arms and related materiel from the Islamic Republic of Iran to Hezbollah may have been undertaken contrary (to a Security Council resolution),” Ban said.

When asked by the United Nations to clarify the issue, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said “measures undertaken by the Islamic Republic of Iran in combating terrorism and violent extremism in the region have been consistent with its national security interests and international commitments.”

Under a Security Council resolution enshrining the deal, which came into effect a year ago, the U.N. secretary-general is required to report every six months to the council on any violations of sanctions still in place. More here from Reuters.

Cruz: Obama ‘rolled over’ on hacking and Trump gets Advice

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He is right and the proof most recently was in February of 2016, with the posted Executive Orders.

WASHINGTON — Through two executive orders signed Tuesday, President Obama put in place a structure to fortify the government’s defenses against cyber attacks and protect the personal information the government keeps about its citizens.

The orders came the same day as Obama sent to Congress a proposed 2017 budget that includes $19 billion for information technology upgrades and other cyber initiatives.

In September of 2015, Obama held a meeting on cyber with China’s Xi. Perhaps there was no formal sanction or punishment of China due in part to the U.S. debt they hold. Obama also held meetings with key Congressional leaders in 2015 on the issue of cyber. Going back to 2013, Obama held sessions with corporate CEO’s to discuss efforts to improve cybersecurity amid growing concerns within the administration over attacks from China targeting American businesses.

The president will discuss efforts to address the cyber threat facing the country and get the executives’ feedback on how the government and private sector can forge a relationship to improve cybersecurity in the United States, according to The White House. The meeting will be held in the Situation Room and attendees include AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and Northrup Grumman CEO Wesley Bush.

Not until February of 2016, did Obama launch the Cybersecurity National Action Plan which was headed by Tom Donilon, his National Security Advisor and Sam Palmisano, former CEO of IBM. There was no traction and given the recent cyber intrusions, there is likely a LOT of ‘ooops’ coming from the White House and should. No corporation, bank, government agency or other private entity ever wants to publically announced they have been hacked or their vulnerability, as it only invites more cyber chaos but the United States including top government agencies and the White House along with the State Department have all been victim of both Russian and Chinese cyber attacks of various forms.

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Sen. Ted Cruz says he hopes the incoming Trump administration is tougher on dealing with cyberattacks than the “weakness” he saw from President Obama on hacking by Russia and other foreign adversaries.

“One of the reasons these cyberattacks are so prevalent is that Barack Obama and his administration have rolled over for eight years,” Cruz said Thursday on “The Mike Gallagher Show.”

“They have shown nothing but weakness and appeasement in the face of those attacks. This is something I hope and believe will change with the new administration,” he said.

Cruz insisted neither Russian hacking nor WikiLeaks revelations last year about the Democratic Party significantly influenced Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election.

“I think that there’s no evidence whatsoever that Russia’s efforts against us, which have been longstanding, did anything to affect the campaign,” said Cruz, who competed against Trump in last year’s GOP primaries.

“It’s, frankly, patently absurd,” Cruz added of claims Russia or WikiLeaks helped Trump win. “You can’t credibly argue that [WikiLeaks’] disclosures impacted the election because most voters never heard it.” More here from TheHill.

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Task Force Issues Cybersecurity Advice to Donald Trump

‘From Awareness to Action: A Cybersecurity Agenda for the 45th President’

A task force co-chaired by two U.S. lawmakers and a former federal CIO is issuing a 34-page report recommending a cybersecurity agenda for the incoming Trump administration. The report recommends the new administration jettison outdated ways the federal government tackles cybersecurity, noting: “Once-powerful ideas have been transformed into clichés.”

The report from the CSIS Cyber Policy Task Force – From Awareness to Action: A Cybersecurity Agenda for the 45th President – will be formally unveiled on Jan. 5. It comes from the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, which sponsored the Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency that made recommendations to then-President-elect Barack Obama in 2008.

“In the eight years since that report was published, there has been much activity, but despite an exponential increase in attention to cybersecurity, we are still at risk and there is much for the next administration to do,” the new report’s introduction states.

Cybersecurity Goals for Trump Administration

The task force outlined five major issues President-elect Donald Trump and his administration should address, including:

  1. Deciding on a new international strategy to account for a very different and dangerous global security environment.
  2. Making a greater effort to reduce and control cybercrime.
  3. Accelerating efforts to secure critical infrastructures and services and improving cyber hygiene across economic sectors. As part of this, the Trump administration must develop a new approach to securing government agencies and services and improve authentication of identity.
  4. Identifying where federal involvement in resource issues, such as research or workforce development, is necessary, and where such efforts are best left to the private sector.
  5. Considering how to organize the U.S. effort to defend cyberspace. Clarifying the role of the Department of Homeland Security is crucial, and the new administration must either strengthen DHS or create a new cybersecurity agency.

Ditching Outmoded Security Practices

Task force members recommend the new administration should get rid of outdated ways the federal government tackles cybersecurity. The report notes: “Statements about strengthening public-private partnerships, information sharing or innovation lead to policy dead ends. … Once-powerful ideas have been transformed into clichés. Others have become excuses for inaction.”

As an example, the task force cites the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, a government initiative unveiled in 2011, which envisioned a cyber-ecosystem that promotes trust and security while performing sensitive transactions online. The task force contends NSTIC “achieved little,” asserting that such initiatives fail because they aren’t attuned to market forces. “There are few takers for a product or service for which there is no demand or for which there are commercial alternatives.”

The task force makes recommendations on dozens of policies and technologies.

On encryption, for instance, it suggests that the president develop a policy that supports the use of strong encryption for privacy and security while specifying the conditions and processes under which assistance from the private sector for lawful access to data can be required. It also states that the president should direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology to work with encryption experts, technology providers and internet service providers to develop standards and ways to protect applications and data in the cloud and provide secure methods for data resiliency and recovery.

“Ultimately,” the report says, “encryption policy requires a political decision on risk. Untrammeled use of encryption increases the risk from crime and terrorism, but societies may find this risk acceptable given the difficulty of imposing restrictions. No one in our groups believed that risk currently justifies restrictions.”

Battling Cybercrime

In battling cybercrime, the task force sees “active defense,” a term it says has become associated with vigilantism, hack back and cyber privateers, as only a stopgap measure to address the private sector’s frustration over the apparent impunity of trans-border criminals. The Trump administration should seek ways to help companies move beyond their traditional perimeter defenses and focus on identifying federal actions that could disrupt cybercriminals’ business model or expand the work of federal agencies and service providers against botnets, according to the report.

To make cybercrime less profitable, the task force recommends the new administration identify actions that would impede the monetization of stolen data and credentials. Other recommendations include accelerating the move to multifactor authentication and identifying better ways to counter and disrupt botnets, a growing risk as more devices become connected to the internet. The task force says this could be done by expanding the ability to obtain civil injunctions for use against botnets and raising the penalties for using botnets against critical infrastructure.

The role of the military to protect civilian critical infrastructure turned out to be among the most contentious issues the group debated. A few task force members said that the Defense Department should play an expanded and perhaps leading role in critical infrastructure protection, according to the report. Most members, though, believed that this mission must be assigned to a civilian agency, not to DoD or a law enforcement agency such as the FBI.

“While recognizing that the National Security Agency, an element of DoD, has unrivaled skills, we believe that the best approach is to strengthen DHS, not to make it a ‘mini-NSA,’ and to focus its mission on mitigation of threats and attacks, not on retaliation, intelligence collection or law enforcement,” the report states.

Organizing Government Cybersecurity

DHS is the focal point in cybersecurity protection among civilian agencies as well as civilian-led critical infrastructure. The task force recommends that an independent agency be established within DHS focused exclusively on cybersecurity.

The task force says Trump should quickly name a new cybersecurity coordinator and elevate the White House position two notches to assistant to the president from special assistant to the president. Also, the group says Trump should back away from his pledge to conduct a cybersecurity review, as was done at the beginning of the Obama administration.

The task force co-chairs are:

  • Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and co-founder of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus;
  • Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., sponsor of legislation to require federal law enforcement and national security agencies to account for cyberattacks;
  • Karen Evans, a cybersecurity adviser to the Trump transition team who’s national director of the U.S. Cyber Challenge and formerly served as White House administrator for e-government and information technology, a position now known as U.S. CIO; and
  • Sameer Bhalotra, co-founder and CEO of the cybersecurity startup Stackrox and a senior associate at CSIS.

CSIS Senior Vice President James Lewis, the think tank’s cybersecurity expert, served as the task force project director.

How bad is it?

USAToday:

Exhibit A: The Social Security Administration system still runs on a platform written in the 1960s in the COBOL programming language, and takes 400 people just to maintain, Obama said.

“If we’re going to really secure those in a serious way, then we need to upgrade them,” Obama told reporters Tuesday after meeting with advisers on the issue. “And that is something that we should all be able to agree on. This is not an ideological issue. It doesn’t matter whether there’s a Democratic President or a Republican President. If you’ve got broken, old systems — computers, mainframes, software that doesn’t work anymore — then you can keep on putting a bunch of patches on it, but it’s not going to make it safe.”

To implement those upgrades, Obama created two new entities Tuesday: The first, a Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, will be made up of business, technology, national security and law enforcement leaders who will make recommendations to strengthen online security in the public and private sectors. It will deliver a report to the president by Dec. 1.

The second, a Federal Privacy Council, will bring together chief privacy officers from 25 federal agencies to coordinate efforts to protect the vast amounts of data the federal government collects and maintains about taxpayers and citizens.

Obama’s cybersecurity adviser, Michael Daniel, said the structure allows the administration to move forward even without additional authority from Congress by “driving our executive authority to the limit.”

The administration’s plan will look at cybersecurity both inside and outside the government. There will be more training and shared resources among government agencies, 48 dedicated teams to respond to attacks, and student loan forgiveness to help recruit top technical talent.

But the will plan also promote better security practices throughout the economy, by encouraging through multi-factor authentication that uses additional information in addition to a password. The government is also looking to reduce its use of Social Security numbers the unique identifier for all Americans.

Across the government, the Obama administration wants to spend $19 billion on cybersecurity in 2017, a 35% increase over 2016. But the plan does not rely on an increase in funding. “We can do quite a bit of it even without the additional resources,” Daniel said.

The White House said it also plans to create the new position of Chief Information Security Officer to coordinate modernization efforts across the government, including a a $3.1 billion Information Technology Modernization Fund. “That’s a key role that many private-sector companies have long implemented, and it’s a good practice for the federal government,” said Tony Scott, the U.S. Chief Information Officer.

The president is expected to meet with national security advisers Tuesday morning to launch the new effort.

Bill to Freeze $$ to State Dept, Until Embassy in Jerusalem

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Read the proposed legislation here.

 Currently in Tel Aviv

Congress to Freeze State Department Funds Until U.S. Embassy Moves to Jerusalem

Bill seeks to counter Obama admin refusal to call Jerusalem Israel’s capital

FreeBeacon: A delegation of Republican senators is moving forward with an effort to freeze some funding to the State Department until the U.S. embassy in Israel is formally moved to Jerusalem, according to new legislation.

The legislation comes as the Obama administration continues to face criticism over its behind-the-scenes effort to forward a United Nations resolution condemning Israel.

The Obama administration, like previous administrations, does not formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city and has worked to stymie efforts to move the U.S. embassy there.

While Congress first approved legislation to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 1995, the new bill threatens to cut State Department funding until the relocation is complete.

The effort is being spearheaded by Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), and Dean Heller (R., Nev.), all of whom support efforts by the incoming Trump administration to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem after years of debate.

“Jerusalem is the eternal and undivided capital of Israel,” Cruz said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s vendetta against the Jewish state has been so vicious that to even utter this simple truth—let alone the reality that Jerusalem is the appropriate venue for the American embassy in Israel—is shocking in some circles.”

“But it is finally time to cut through the double-speak and broken promises and do what Congress said we should do in 1995: formally move our embassy to the capital of our great ally Israel,” Cruz said.

The legislation orders the White House to identify Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which the Obama administration has refused to do. The bill will freeze a significant portion of the State Department’s funding until it completes the relocation.

In the past, the Obama White House has been caught scrubbing captions on official photographs that labeled Jerusalem as part of Israel. The administration also was entangled in a Supreme Court case when it refused to permit an American family to list its child’s birthplace as “Jerusalem, Israel.”

Heller said the legislation could help repair America’s relationship with Israel, which has become strained under the Obama administration.

“For years, I’ve advocated for America’s need to reaffirm its support for one of our nation’s strongest allies by recognizing Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel,” Heller said in a statement. “It honors an important promise America made more than two decades ago but has yet to fulfill. While administrations come and go, the lasting strength of our partnership with one of our strongest allies in the Middle East continues to endure.”

Rubio also championed the bill in a statement, saying it will finally close loopholes that have permitted the Obama administration to ignore congressional calls to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s official capital.

“Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish state of Israel, and that’s where America’s embassy belongs,” Rubio said. “It’s time for Congress and the president-elect to eliminate the loophole that has allowed presidents in both parties to ignore U.S. law and delay our embassy’s rightful relocation to Jerusalem for over two decades.”

Russia Sides with the Taliban, ‘Just a Local Nuisance’

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Note, that no NATO country was in attendance, note any American representation was not even consulted. This continues  Russia’s hybrid-warfare tactics. Obama in mid-2015 announced a drawdown of troops in Afghanistan to an estimated 5500. That objective was delayed permanently. An investigation is underway that includes Tajikistan as being the weapons route for the Taliban from Russia.

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AFP: Allegations over Russia and Iran’s deepening ties with the Taliban have ignited concerns of a renewed “Great Game” of proxy warfare in Afghanistan that could undermine US-backed troops and push the country deeper into turmoil.

Moscow and Tehran insist their contact with insurgents is aimed at promoting regional security, but local and US officials who are already frustrated with Pakistan’s perceived double-dealing in Afghanistan have expressed bitter scepticism.

Washington’s long-time nemesis Iran is accused of covertly aiding the Taliban, and Russia is back to what observers call Cold War shenanigans to derail US gains at a time when uncertainty reigns over President-elect Donald Trump’s Afghanistan policy.

***

The US will slow its troop drawdown in Afghanistan, leaving a force of 8,400 when President Barack Obama completes his term, the president announced on Wednesday in a blunt acknowledgment that America will remain entangled there despite his aspirations to end the war.

In a statement at the White House,  Mr Obama said the security situation in Afghanistan is “precarious” and the Taliban remain a threat roughly 15 years after the US invaded in the aftermath of 9/11. He said he was committed not to allow any group to use Afghanistan “as a safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again.”

“It is in our national security interest – especially after all the blood and treasure we’ve invested in Afghanistan over the years – that we give our Afghan partners the very best opportunity to succeed,” Mr Obama said, flanked by top military leaders.

Mr Obama has been under pressure from US allies to make a decision following a NATO announcement last month that the alliance would maintain troops in regional locations around Afghanistan. NATO’s future involvement in the fight is to be a major topic when Mr Obama attends a NATO summit later this week in Warsaw, Poland.

Mr Obama said boosting the planned troop levels would help other countries prepare their own contribution to the fight. He said his decision should help the next president make good decisions about the future of US involvement.

“l firmly believe the decision I’m announcing is the right thing to do,” Mr Obama said. More here. 

Russia’s New Favorite Jihadis: The Taliban

In its latest ploy to undermine NATO, Russia is urging cooperation with the Afghan extremists even as their ties to al Qaeda grow deep.

More than 15 years into America’s war in Afghanistan, the Russian government is openly advocating on behalf of the Taliban.

Last week, Moscow hosted Chinese and Pakistani emissaries to discuss the war. Tellingly, no Afghan officials were invited. However, the trio of nations urged the world to be “flexible” in dealing with the Taliban, which remains the Afghan government’s most dangerous foe. Russia even argued that the Taliban is a necessary bulwark in the war against the so-called Islamic State.

For its part, the American military sees Moscow’s embrace of the Taliban as yet another move intended to undermine NATO, which fights the Taliban, al Qaeda, and the Islamic State every day.

After Moscow’s conference, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova spoke with reporters and noted that “the three countries expressed particular concern about the rising activity in the country of extremist groups, including the Afghan branch of IS [the Islamic State, or ISIS].”

According to Reuters, Zakharova added that China, Pakistan, and Russia agreed upon a “flexible approach to remove certain [Taliban] figures from [United Nations] sanctions lists as part of efforts to foster a peaceful dialogue between Kabul and the Taliban movement.”

The Taliban, which refers to itself as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, quickly praised the “Moscow tripartite” in a statement posted online on Dec. 29.

“It is joyous to see that the regional countries have also understood that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is a political and military force,” Muhammad Sohail Shaheen, a spokesman for the group’s political office, said in the statement. “The proposal forwarded in the Moscow tripartite of delisting members of the Islamic Emirate is a positive step forward in bringing peace and security to Afghanistan.”

Of course, the Taliban isn’t interested in “peace and security.” The jihadist group wants to win the Afghan war and it is using negotiations with regional and international powers to improve its standing. The Taliban has long manipulated “peace” negotiations with the U.S. and Western powers as a pretext for undoing international sanctions that limit the ability of its senior figures to travel abroad for lucrative fundraising and other purposes, even while offering no serious gestures toward peace.

The Obama administration has repeatedly tried, and failed, to open the door to peace. In May 2014, the U.S. transferred five senior Taliban figures from Guantanamo to Qatar. Ostensibly, the “Taliban Five” were traded for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, an American who reportedly deserted his fellow soldiers and was then held by the Taliban and its jihadist allies. But the Obama administration also hoped that the exchange would be a so-called confidence-building measure and lead to more substantive negotiations. The Taliban’s leaders never agreed to any such discussions. They simply wanted their comrades, at least two of whom are suspected of committing war crimes, freed from Guantanamo.

Regardless, Russia is now enabling the Taliban’s disingenuous diplomacy by pretending that ISIS is the more worrisome threat. It’s a game the Russians have been playing for more than a year.

In December 2015, Zamir Kabulov, who serves as Vladimir Putin’s special representative for Afghanistan, went so far as to claim that “the Taliban interest objectively coincides with ours” when it comes to fighting ISIS head Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s loyalists. Kabulov even conceded that Russia and the Taliban have “channels for exchanging information,” according to The Washington Post.

The American commanders leading the fight in Afghanistan don’t buy Russia’s argument—at all.

During a press briefing on Dec. 2, General John W. Nicholson Jr., the commander of NATO’s Resolute Support and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, discussed “the malign influence of external actors and particularly Pakistan, Russia, and Iran.” Gen. Nicholson said the U.S. and its allies are “concerned about the external enablement of the insurgent or terrorist groups inside Afghanistan, in particular where they enjoy sanctuary or support from outside governments.” Russia, in particular, “has overtly lent legitimacy to the Taliban.”

According to Nicholson, the Russian “narrative” is “that the Taliban are the ones fighting the Islamic State, not the Afghan government.” While the Taliban does fight its jihadist rivals in the Islamic State, this is plainly false.

The “Afghan government and the U.S. counterterrorism effort are the ones achieving the greatest effect against Islamic State,” Nicholson said. He went on to list the U.S.-led coalition’s accomplishments over the past year: 500 ISIS fighters (comprising an estimated 25 to 30 percent of the group’s overall force structure) were killed or wounded, the organization’s “top 12 leaders” (including its emir, Hafiz Saeed Khan) were killed, and the group’s “sanctuary” has been reduced from nine Afghan districts to just three.

“So, this public legitimacy that Russia lends to the Taliban is not based on fact, but it is used as a way to essentially undermine the Afghan government and the NATO effort and bolster the belligerents,” Nicholson concluded. While Nicholson was careful not read too much into Russia’s motivation for backing the Taliban, he noted “certainly there’s a competition with NATO.”

There’s no doubt that ISIS’s operations in Afghanistan grew significantly in the wake of Baghdadi’s caliphate declaration in 2014. However, as Nicholson correctly pointed out, Baghdadi’s men are not adding to the territory they control at the moment. Their turf is shrinking. The same cannot be said for the Taliban, which remains the most significant threat to Afghanistan’s future. At any given time, the Taliban threatens several provincial capitals. The Taliban also controls dozens of Afghan districts and contests many more. Simply put, the Taliban is a far greater menace inside Afghanistan than Baghdadi’s men.

Regardless, the Russians continue to press their case. Their argument hinges on the idea that ISIS is a “global” force to be reckoned with, while the Taliban is just a “local” nuisance.

Kabulov, Putin’s special envoy to Afghanistan, made this very same claim in a newly-published interview with Anadolu Agency. Kabulov contends that “the bulk, main leadership, current leadership, and the majority of Taliban” are now a “local force” as a “result of all these historical lessons they got in Afghanistan.”

“They gave up the global jihadism idea,” Kabulov adds. “They are upset and regret that they followed Osama bin Laden.”

Someone should tell the Taliban’s media department this.

Earlier this month, the Taliban released a major documentary video, “Bond of Nation with the Mujahideen.” The video included clips of the Taliban’s most senior leaders rejecting peace talks and vowing to wage jihad until the end. It also openly advertised the Taliban’s undying alliance with al Qaeda. At one point, an image of Osama bin Laden next to Taliban founder Mullah Omar is displayed on screen. Photos of other al Qaeda and Taliban figures are mixed together in the same shot.

An audio message from Sheikh Khalid Batarfi, an al Qaeda veteran stationed in Yemen, is also played during the video. Batarfi praised the Taliban for protecting bin Laden even after the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackings. “Groups of Afghan Mujahideen have emerged from the land of Afghans that will destroy the biggest idol and head of kufr of our time, America,” Batarfi threatened.

A narrator added that the mujahideen in Afghanistan “are the hope of Muslims for reviving back the honor of the Muslim Ummah [worldwide community of Muslims]!” The Afghan jihadists are a “hope for taking back the Islamic lands!” and a “hope for not repeating defeats and tragedies of the last century!”

The Taliban’s message is, therefore, unmistakable: The war in Afghanistan is part of the global jihadist conflict.

All of this, and more, is in one of the Taliban’s most important media productions of 2016. There is no hint that the Taliban “regrets” allying with al Qaeda, or has given “up the global jihadism idea,” as Kabulov claims. The exact opposite is true.

There is much more to the Taliban-al Qaeda nexus. In August 2015, al Qaeda honcho Ayman al Zawahiri swore allegiance to Mullah Mansour, who was named as Mullah Omar’s successor as the Taliban’s emir. Mansour publicly accepted Zawahiri’s fealty and Zawahiri’s oath was prominently featured on the Taliban’s website. After Mansour was killed earlier this year, Zawahiri pledged his allegiance to Mansour’s replacement, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada. Zawahiri and other al Qaeda leaders regularly call upon Muslims to support the Taliban and reject the Islamic State’s Afghan branch.

In his interview with Anadolu Agency, Kabulov concedes that not all of the Taliban has “given up” the global jihadist “ideas.” He admits that within the Taliban “you can find very influential groups like the Haqqani network whose ideology is more radical, closer to Daesh [or ISIS].”

Kabulov is right that the Haqqanis are committed jihadi ideologues, but he misses the obvious contradiction in his arguments. Siraj Haqqani, who leads the Haqqani network, is also one of the Taliban’s top two deputy leaders. He is the Taliban’s military warlord. Not only is Siraj Haqqani a “radical” ideologue, as Kabulov mentions in passing, he is also one of al Qaeda’s most committed allies. Documents recovered in Osama bin Laden’s compound show that al Qaeda’s men closely cooperate with Siraj Haqqani on the Afghan battlefields.

Kabulov claims that ISIS “operates much more smartly” than al Qaeda and has “learned from all the mistakes of al Qaeda.” He says Baghdadi’s enterprise has “brought more advanced and sophisticated people to design, plan, and [execute] policy.” Once again, the exact opposite is true.

Al Qaeda has long known the pitfalls of ISIS’s in-your-face strategy, and has smartly decided to hide the extent of its influence and operations. Zawahiri and his lieutenants have also used ISIS’s over-the-top brutality to market themselves as a more reasonable jihadi alternative. And both the Taliban and al Qaeda are attempting to build more popular support for their cause as much of the world remains focused on the so-called caliphate’s horror show.

Al Qaeda’s plan has worked so well that the Russians would have us believe that the Taliban, al Qaeda’s longtime ally, should be viewed as a prospective partner.

Kabulov says that Russia is waiting to see how the “new president, [Donald] Trump, describe[s] his Afghan policy” before determining what course should be pursued next.

Here’s one thing the Trump administration should do right away: Make it clear that the Taliban and al Qaeda remain our enemies in Afghanistan.

Obama, from Hawaii Issued Formal Sanctions Against Russians

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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released a Joint Analysis Report (JAR) that details Russian malicious cyber activity, designated as GRIZZLY STEPPE. This activity by Russian civilian and military intelligence services (RIS) is part of an ongoing campaign of cyber-enabled operations directed at the U.S. government and private sector entities.

DHS recommends that network administrators review the Security Publication for more information and implement the recommendations provided.

Barack Obama says US shutting down two Russian compounds in Maryland and New York and declaring 35 Russian intelligence operatives “persona non grata.”

Issuance of Amended Executive Order 13694; Cyber-Related Sanctions Designations
12/29/2016

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Today, the President issued an Executive Order Taking Additional Steps To Address The National Emergency With Respect To Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities.  This amends Executive Order 13694, “Blocking the Property of Certain Persons Engaging in Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities.”  E.O. 13694 authorized the imposition of sanctions on individuals and entities determined to be responsible for or complicit in malicious cyber-enabled activities that result in enumerated harms that are reasonably likely to result in, or have materially contributed to, a significant threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States.  The authority has been amended to also allow for the imposition of sanctions on individuals and entities determined to be responsible for tampering, altering, or causing the misappropriation of information with the purpose or effect of interfering with or undermining election processes or institutions.  Five entities and four individuals are identified in the Annex of the amended Executive Order and will be added to OFAC’s list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN List).  OFAC today is designating an additional two individuals who also will be added to the SDN List.

 

Specially Designated Nationals List Update
The following individual has been added to OFAC’s SDN List:  
ALEXSEYEV, Vladimir Stepanovich; DOB 24 Apr 1961; Passport 100115154 (Russia); First Deputy Chief of GRU (individual) [CYBER2] (Linked To: MAIN INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORATE).
 
BELAN, Aleksey Alekseyevich (a.k.a. Abyr Valgov; a.k.a. BELAN, Aleksei; a.k.a. BELAN, Aleksey Alexseyevich; a.k.a. BELAN, Alexsei; a.k.a. BELAN, Alexsey; a.k.a. “Abyrvaig”; a.k.a. “Abyrvalg”; a.k.a. “Anthony Anthony”; a.k.a. “Fedyunya”; a.k.a. “M4G”; a.k.a. “Mag”; a.k.a. “Mage”; a.k.a. “Magg”; a.k.a. “Moy.Yawik”; a.k.a. “Mrmagister”), 21 Karyakina St., Apartment 205, Krasnodar, Russia; DOB 27 Jun 1987; POB Riga, Latvia; nationality Latvia; Passport RU0313455106 (Russia); alt. Passport 0307609477 (Russia) (individual) [CYBER2].
 
BOGACHEV, Evgeniy Mikhaylovich (a.k.a. BOGACHEV, Evgeniy Mikhailovich; a.k.a. “Lastik”; a.k.a. “lucky12345”; a.k.a. “Monstr”; a.k.a. “Pollingsoon”; a.k.a. “Slavik”), Lermontova Str., 120-101, Anapa, Russia; DOB 28 Oct 1983 (individual) [CYBER2].
 
GIZUNOV, Sergey (a.k.a. GIZUNOV, Sergey Aleksandrovich); DOB 18 Oct 1956; Passport 4501712967 (Russia); Deputy Chief of GRU (individual) [CYBER2] (Linked To: MAIN INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORATE).
 
KOROBOV, Igor (a.k.a. KOROBOV, Igor Valentinovich); DOB 03 Aug 1956; nationality Russia; Passport 100119726 (Russia); alt. Passport 100115101 (Russia); Chief of GRU (individual) [CYBER2] (Linked To: MAIN INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORATE).
 
KOSTYUKOV, Igor (a.k.a. KOSTYUKOV, Igor Olegovich); DOB 21 Feb 1961; Passport 100130896 (Russia); alt. Passport 100132253 (Russia); First Deputy Chief of GRU (individual) [CYBER2] (Linked To: MAIN INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORATE).
 
The following entities have been added to OFAC’s SDN List:
 
AUTONOMOUS NONCOMMERCIAL ORGANIZATION PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION OF DESIGNERS OF DATA PROCESSING SYSTEMS (a.k.a. ANO PO KSI), Prospekt Mira D 68, Str 1A, Moscow 129110, Russia; Dom 3, Lazurnaya Ulitsa, Solnechnogorskiy Raion, Andreyevka, Moscow Region 141551, Russia; Registration ID 1027739734098 (Russia); Tax ID No. 7702285945 (Russia) [CYBER2].
 
FEDERAL SECURITY SERVICE (a.k.a. FEDERALNAYA SLUZHBA BEZOPASNOSTI; a.k.a. FSB), Ulitsa Kuznetskiy Most, Dom 22, Moscow 107031, Russia; Lubyanskaya Ploschad, Dom 2, Moscow 107031, Russia [CYBER2].
 
MAIN INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORATE (a.k.a. GLAVNOE RAZVEDYVATEL’NOE UPRAVLENIE (Cyrillic: ГЛАВНОЕ РАЗВЕДЫВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УПРАВЛЕНИЕ); a.k.a. GRU; a.k.a. MAIN INTELLIGENCE DEPARTMENT), Khoroshevskoye Shosse 76, Khodinka, Moscow, Russia; Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, Frunzenskaya nab., 22/2, Moscow 119160, Russia [CYBER2].
 
SPECIAL TECHNOLOGY CENTER (a.k.a. STC, LTD), Gzhatskaya 21 k2, St. Petersburg, Russia; 21-2 Gzhatskaya Street, St. Petersburg, Russia; Website stc-spb.ru; Email Address [email protected]; Tax ID No. 7802170553 (Russia) [CYBER2].
 
ZORSECURITY (f.k.a. ESAGE LAB; a.k.a. TSOR SECURITY), Luzhnetskaya Embankment 2/4, Building 17, Office 444, Moscow 119270, Russia; Registration ID 1127746601817 (Russia); Tax ID No. 7704813260 (Russia); alt. Tax ID No. 7704010041 (Russia) [CYBER2].
****

 

Waging a guerrilla war

One announcement came from Berlin. Another came from Washington. And they came weeks apart.

German intelligence warned in late November that Russia had launched a campaign to meddle in upcoming elections to the Bundestag. And in early December, the CIA said it concluded that Moscow had already interfered in the U.S. presidential election.

In any other year, either of these claims would probably have been astonishing, sensational, and even mind-blowing.

Not in 2016.

This was the year such things became routine as the Kremlin took the gloves off in its nonkinetic guerrilla war against the West.

It was the year Russia’s long-standing latent support for the xenophobic and Euroskeptic far right became manifest, open, and increasingly brazen.

It was the year cyberattacks moved beyond trolling and disruption and toward achieving specific political goals.

It was the year long-cultivated networks of influence across the West were activated.

It was the year the Kremlin expanded its disinformation campaign beyond Ukraine and the former Soviet space and aimed it at destabilizing the West itself.

It was the year Moscow turned Western democracy into a weapon — against Western democracy.

And most importantly, with the West suffering from one of its worst crises of confidence in generations, 2016 was the year Moscow began to see results.

It was the year of the perfect storm, when the Western angst and malaise from the 2008 financial crisis, the eurozone crisis, and the migrant crisis crested and dovetailed with a concerted Kremlin campaign to undermine Western institutions.

And with the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, with the election of Donald Trump in the United States, with one pro-Moscow candidate or another likely to win the presidency in France, and with antiestablishment populism on the rise throughout Europe, this perfect storm has produced a markedly more favorable environment for the goals of Vladimir Putin’s autocratic regime.

It has left the independence of countries seeking to escape Moscow’s orbit — like Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova — more precarious than at any moment since the Soviet collapse.

Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, wrote recently in The Atlantic that the Kremlin has launched “an opportunistic but sophisticated campaign to sabotage democracy and bend it toward his interests, not just in some marginal, fragile places but at the very core of the liberal democratic order, Europe and the United States.”

“We stand now at the most dangerous moment for liberal democracy since the end of World War II,” Diamond added.

An Early Harbinger

The warnings that 2016 would be different came early, in January, when Moscow escalated its information war against the West with the infamous case of Lisa F. in Germany.

By relentlessly pushing a false story that an ethnic-Russian teenage girl was sexually assaulted by migrants in Berlin at a time when Germans were getting increasingly nervous about the mounting migrant crisis, the Kremlin appeared to be actively attempting to undermine the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Incited by Russian-language media reports, thousands of Russian-speaking protesters took to the streets carrying banners with slogans like “Our Children Are In Danger.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave the “scandal” an official stamp, accusing the German authorities of “sweeping problems under the rug.”

The story was soon proven false, but the damage was done — and a message was sent that the Kremlin intended to play hardball.

And play hardball it did, with a dizzying and almost nonstop barrage of hacking, doxing, fake news, support for fringe political forces, and other mischief.

The most high-profile example of this, of course, was the emerging consensus that Russia hacked the U.S. presidential election with the apparent goal of harming Hillary Clinton and/or helping Trump.

But while the hacking of the U.S. election garnered the most attention and headlines, it was far from the only case of Russia seeking to destabilize Western democracies.

“Putin is not done yet. He seeks to promote anti-establishment candidates in next year’s elections in the Netherlands, France, Italy and Germany,” Michael Khodarkovsky, a professor at Loyola University Chicago and author of the forthcoming book Russia’s Twentieth Century, wrote in The New York Times.

And Then We Take Berlin

In a letter to EU foreign-relations chief Federica Mogherini, 51 lawmakers from the European Parliament warned that more than $200 million of Russian black cash has been laundered through Europe and “there is information that shows that the money has been used to influence European politics, media, and civil society.”

In the United Kingdom, Russia’s propaganda machine worked overtime to cheerlead for the Brexit campaign and its leader Nigel Farage.

In Italy, Kremlin-funded news outlets RT and Sputnik fed a barrage of fake news to a network of websites run by the far left Five Star Movement, spreading Euroskepticism, and anti-Americanism, and undermining a constitutional referendum that led to Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s resignation.

The Kremlin also continued to support Marine Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigrant National Front in France which was granted a 9 million euro loan from a Russian bank in 2015.

And Le Pen’s likely opponent in the second round of next year’s presidential elections, former prime minister Francois Fillon, is also openly pro-Moscow.

And in December, the ruling United Russia party signed a cooperation agreement with Austria’s far-right Freedom Party.

“Despite being much weaker than the Soviet Union, Russia today nevertheless has a greater ability to provoke mischief than the communist empire ever did, while western debates on how to contain (or engage) Russia have an air of helplessness,” political analyst Lilia Shevtsova wrote in The Financial Times.

The legacy of 2016 is a weakened, divided, and disillusioned West; and an emboldened Kremlin.

“If December 7, 1941, is a date which will live in infamy,” Brian Frydenborg wrote on the blog War Is Boring, in reference to the attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II, “then 2016 is a year which will live in infamy.”