Testimony: Hezbollah Threat Against U.S. National Security

Posted on March 22, 2016March 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

TITLE I–PREVENTION OF ACCESS BY HIZBALLAH TO INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS

(Sec. 101) The President shall report to Congress on: (1) satellite, broadcast, Internet, or other providers that have knowingly entered into a contractual relationship with al-Manar TV and its affiliates; and (2) the identity of those providers that have or have not been sanctioned pursuant to Executive Order 13224 (relating to blocking property and prohibiting transactions with persons who commit or support terrorism).

Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee.

Badran: The Syrian uprising constitutes one of the greatest challenges that Iran and Hezbollah have faced in decades. The collapse of the Assad regime would have, in the words of then-Commander of U.S. Central Command General James Mattis, dealt Iran “the biggest strategic setback in 25 years.” It would have cut Iran’s only land bridge to Lebanon, and deprived Hezbollah of its strategic depth.

Unfortunately, the situation in Syria has resulted in the opposite effect. While many, perhaps most, observers have tended to view Syria as a bloody quagmire that will erode Iranian ambitions, Tehran has deftly exploited the conflict, turning the strategic challenge it faces into an opportunity to expand its influence throughout the region.

In doing so, Iran has followed a well-developed template. It is building up Shiite militias, which it recruits from around the Greater Middle East, on the model of Hezbollah. This means it places the militias under the operational command of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and demands from them full allegiance to the Iranian regional project. The template goes back to the earliest days of the Islamic Revolution, but in recent years Iran has expanded its use to an extent never-before seen, with the biggest growth being in Iraq. Hezbollah, however, is the crown jewel of this region-wide network, with nodes in Syria, the Arab Gulf states, and, of course, Yemen.

This is arguably the most significant and most under-appreciated development in the region over the past five years. Iran’s expansionist drive, through its legion of Shiite militias based on the model of Hezbollah and often trained by the group, has not been opposed by the U.S. If anything, Washington has effectively acquiesced to it, viewing it as a means to affect a new regional “equilibrium.”

This has forced traditional U.S. regional allies – from Israel to Saudi Arabia – to look for measures to try and stop this emerging shift in the regional balance of power, which directly impacts their national security interests.

Although the effects are region-wide, this Iranian strategy has played out most consequentially in Syria. Five years into the uprising against the Assad regime, Iran and Hezbollah have secured their core interests in Syria. Hezbollah has taken significant losses at the tactical level but those have been offset by significant gains: Hezbollah is now better equipped and more operationally experienced than ever before.

The first-order priority for Hezbollah and Iran was to secure Assad’s rule in Damascus and Western Syria. Maintaining control over key real estate in order to ensure territorial contiguity with Lebanon was essential. In fact, the Iran-Assad-Hezbollah axis showed a willingness to forgo ancillary territory relatively early in the conflict in order to secure the corridor between what might be called Assadistan and Hezbollahstan. Specifically, Hezbollah and Iran were determined to hold the areas adjacent to Lebanon’s eastern border and secure the routes to Damascus. This is essential for safeguarding arms transfers from Iran to Lebanon, as well as for protecting weapons storage depots on Syrian soil. Hezbollah is now reportedly also working to ethnically cleanse these areas.

The campaign to create the security corridor has ensured that Hezbollah’s supply lines have remained open and uninterrupted. In fact, shipments into Lebanon from Syria may have even accelerated, and they may have included the transfer of certain strategic weapons systems that were kept on Syrian soil, as evident from the list of reported Israeli airstrikes over the last three years.

As part of its effort to secure the border, Hezbollah deepened its partnership with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), whose cooperation has been vital – and not only on the Syrian front. As Hezbollah began to face backlash in the form of car bombs in Beirut over its involvement in Syria in 2013, it looked to the LAF for support in protecting its domestic flank.

The partnership between the LAF and Hezbollah has grown to such an extent that it is now meaningful to speak of the LAF as an auxiliary force in Hezbollah’s war effort. Indeed, in explaining the recent decision by Saudi Arabia to pull its $3 billion grant to the LAF, Saudi columnist Abdul Rahman al-Rashed wrote, “Hezbollah has started to use the army as its auxiliary in the war against the Syrians, which protects its lines and borders.”

In certain instances, LAF troops and Hezbollah forces have deployed troops jointly, such as during street battles with the followers of a minor Sunni cleric in Sidon in 2013. The LAF routinely raids Syrian refugee camps and Sunni cities in Lebanon, rounding up Sunni men and often detaining them without charges. In a number of cases, it has arrested defected Syrian officers in the Free Syrian Army, either handing them back to the Assad regime, or, in some cases, delivering them to Hezbollah, which then uses them in prisoner swaps with the Syrian rebels.

The LAF-Hezbollah synergy is broadly recognized in the region, with strategic implications that have been only dimly perceived in the United States. The Saudis, as I noted above, have reacted by withdrawing their aid to the LAF – and they are by no means alone. The Israelis have no choice to but expect that if war should break out between them and Hezbollah, the LAF will come to the direct aid of the latter. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have therefore warned that in the next war, they will certainly target the LAF. In contrast to the policies of Israel and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. is not making its aid to the LAF contingent on it severing its operational ties with Hezbollah – a policy which many in the Middle East see as facilitating the partnership between the two.

Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon is by no means limited to its partnership with the LAF. Hezbollah exploits the weak and dysfunctional Lebanese state in order to advance its interests. It exerts direct influence over, for example, the Lebanese customs authority and the financial auditor’s office in order to protect its criminal enterprises, and uses Lebanese territory for the training of Shiite militias in the Iranian network. As Lebanon’s Interior Minister observed earlier this month, Lebanon is now the IRGC’s “external operations room for training and sending fighters all over the world.” Through Hezbollah, Iran has made the Lebanese state complicit in its activities.

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly last October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that despite Israel’s interdiction efforts, and in violation of UNSCR 1701, Iran had managed to bring advanced weapons systems into Lebanon, specifically the Russian-made Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles, SA-22 (Pantsyr-S1) air defense system, and precision-guided surface-to-surface missiles – which presumably includes the upgraded Iranian Fateh-110 missiles with integrated GPS navigation.

The Yakhont and the precision-guided missiles pose serious threats to Israel because they are capable of hitting strategic installations and targets deep inside the country as well as offshore. These advanced systems are, of course, in addition to the estimated 100,000 rockets and missiles that Hezbollah has already stored in Lebanon – mainly in civilian areas. When one considers that Hezbollah has the capability to rain down 1,500 rockets a day on Israel, it becomes clear that civilian casualties in the next war will be much higher on both sides than in any of the previous wars.

IDF officers believe that Hezbollah has amassed valuable tactical experience in Syria. The military capabilities of the Syrian opposition do not compare to those of the IDF; nevertheless, Hezbollah’s units are mastering the use of diverse weapons systems, in both urban and rural settings. Over the past year, this experience has included working together with the Russian military, which has introduced new weapons systems and combined arms operations to the Syrian theater. In fact, Hezbollah, Iranian, and Russian officers have worked together on planning operations, and a joint operations room was reportedly also established in Iraq last year.

Iran and Hezbollah clearly intend to leverage their success in Syria to change the balance of power with Israel. Specifically, they have set their sights on expanding into the Golan Heights, and on linking it to the south Lebanon front. They signaled the importance they attached to this effort by sending a group of high-ranking Iranian and Hezbollah officers on a mission to Quneitra in January 2015. The Israelis destroyed that particular group, but we can be certain that they will resume their push there at a later date.

Iran and Hezbollah have invested in local Syrian communities to create a Syrian franchise of Hezbollah. Besides developing Alawite militias, they have also invested in Syria’s Shiite and Druze communities. The Druze, by virtue of their concentration in southern Syria, are particularly attractive as potential partners. Hezbollah has cultivated recruits from the Druze of Quneitra and has used them in a number of attacks in the Golan over the past couple of years. In addition to recruitment to Syrian Hezbollah or other Shiite militias in Quneitra, there have also been some efforts with the Druze of Suwayda province near the Jordanian border.

As a result, the IDF is preparing for offensive incursions by Hezbollah into northern Israel in the next conflict. For Israel, Hezbollah’s use of Lebanon as an Iranian forward missile base, its expansion into Syria with an aim to link the Golan to Lebanon, and the prospect of this reality soon getting an Iranian nuclear umbrella, creates an unacceptable situation which, under the right circumstances, could easily trigger a major conflict.

It is hardly surprising, then, that Israeli officials have been loudly voicing the position that any settlement in Syria cannot leave Iran and Hezbollah in a position of dominance, and certainly not anywhere near the Golan. Unfortunately, this position is directly at odds with current U.S. policy. President Obama has stated that any solution in Syria must respect and protect so-called Iranian “equities” in Syria. When one actually spells out what these “equities” are – namely preserving the Syrian bridge to Hezbollah in Lebanon – it becomes clear that U.S. policy in Syria inadvertently complicates Israel’s security challenge.

It also complicates the challenges of other critical U.S. allies, such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Indeed, Hezbollah’s expansion has also spurred a Saudi-led campaign targeting the group, culminating in its designation as a terrorist organization by the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League. The Saudis have also announced measures to freeze the accounts of any citizen or expatriate suspected of belonging to or supporting Hezbollah. Supporters would be prosecuted, jailed, and deported. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have followed suit, deporting a number of Lebanese expatriates with connections to Hezbollah.

There is talk – or perhaps a threat – that the Saudis might go after not just Shiite supporters, but also Christian businessmen who support the group or are part of its financial schemes, and who are seen as weak links because of their financial interests in the Gulf. The potential impact of Saudi measures against Hezbollah could be significant if followed through. However, as noted earlier regarding Hezbollah’s relationship with the LAF, the Saudis have come to recognize that the Lebanese state itself is in Hezbollah’s grip.

This is a bleak picture, but there are steps that Congress can take to help steer U.S. policy in the right direction.

First, Congress should push the administration on the implementation of H.R. 2297, targeting Hezbollah’s criminal and financial activities. It’s important not to be dissuaded by the argument that pushing too hard would break Lebanon’s economy. It is critical to realize that Hezbollah’s position in the Lebanese state and economy increasingly resembles that of the IRGC in the Iranian state. Moreover, it would be worthwhile to use the Arab League and Gulf Cooperation Council designation of Hezbollah to encourage the European Union to follow their lead in designating all of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

Second, security assistance to the LAF should be, at a minimum, reviewed. Although the Obama administration is said to be unhappy with the Saudi decision to suspend its aid to the LAF, it is a sound decision and should push the U.S. to reconsider its own policies. The United States cannot, under the pretext of combating Sunni jihadism, align with Iranian assets and Iranian-dominated “state institutions.” Using this pretext, the U.S. has looked the other way from, if not condoned, the partnership between the LAF and Hezbollah. The result has been that U.S. military support and intelligence sharing has helped Hezbollah, if only indirectly.

Finally and more broadly, the United States must conduct comprehensive realignment in the Middle East away from Iran and back towards its traditional allies. The place to begin that realignment is Syria. Instead of pushing for an endgame in Syria which preserves so-called Iranian “equities,” or which creates cantons that function as Iranian protectorates, the United States should be working with its allies to impose severe costs on Hezbollah for its Syrian adventure.

Obviously, the White House holds the keys to such a realignment, but Congress can certainly help. It can, for example, hold the administration to its promise to “push back” against Iranian regional expansionism. Our Israeli, Jordanian, and Saudi allies have voiced their deep concerns about how a Syrian endgame that leaves Iran entrenched in Syria threatens their security. The U.S. response should not be to tell them to “share the region” with Iran. Rather, it should be to help them roll back the threat posed by Iran and Hezbollah. Full testimony here.

Paris/Brussels: Terrorists Names Emerge

Posted on March 22, 2016March 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

suspects Brussels

In its al-Naba newspaper, #\ISIS reported on the Brussels attacks: “The Islamic State Shakes Crusader Europe Again”

Third bomb ‘failed to explode’

A regional governor has said that the third bomb found in the airport, which has now been destroyed, malfunctioned.

“Three bombs were brought into the building, of which one failed to explode,” Lodewijk De Witte, the governor of Flemish Brabant province, told a press conference at the airport, adding that it was later destroyed in a controlled explosion.

*****

Belgium police are seeking the public’s help in finding Najim Laachraoui, a Syrian-trained fighter they say assisted alleged Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam. Belgium is also tracking a person designated as a key suspect in the Brussels airport attack. These two included in the manhunt may be one in the same and a name of interest is Soufiane Kayal. There’s a new suspect: Najim Laachraoui — who may have been group’s bomb-maker. His DNA was found on the explosives used in the gun and suicide attacks in Paris. His whereabouts are unknown, and prosecutors admitted they aren’t close to solving the puzzle. Yet another named suspect is believed to be known as Amine Choukri, who spent time in Syria.

Choukri also reportedly used a forged Syrian passport under the assumed name of Monir Ahmed Alaaj, in order to travel across Europe to reach Belgium.

*****

House to house searches are going on now in Brussels.

In part from Time: Molenbeek’s first deputy mayor Ahmed al-Khannouss told TIME local officials had the names of 85 residents who they believe have fought with jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq since 2012, and returned to Europe. “We need to figure out who is dangerous and who is not,” al-Khannouss said. On Monday Belgian officials named two accomplices of Abdeslam who were still on the run, plus a third who was killed in a shootout with police last Tuesday, in a separate part of Brussels.

In recent interviews with TIME, some intelligence experts said they feared that Europe could face further coordinated attacks like Paris, which killed 130 people and for which ISIS claimed responsibility. “What we expect is a multicity, multitarget attack at the same moment, and it will have terrible consequences,” Claude Moniquet, a retired agent for France’s external intelligence service DGSE, who now runs a private intelligence company in Brussels, told TIME in a recent interview.

Officials have centered their scrutiny on those who have been battle-trained abroad, and who might be under instructions to return to Europe to fight at home; several of the Paris attackers had returned from ISIS training in Syria, and had hatched the Paris plot from a rear base in Molenbeek.

But in recent days, E.U. leaders have warned that the number of people who could potentially wage terror appears larger than they previously estimated.

While police celebrated Abdeslam’s capture last Friday, their relief was tempered by the fact that a web of supporters and accomplices had apparently helped hide him for months—a group that still remains at large. “This is not over,” French President François Hollande told a press conference in Brussels on Friday night, adding that there the “wide, extensive” network of jihadists was bigger than French and Belgian investigators had believed in the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks more than four months ago.

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders told a public panel discussion in Brussels on Monday that police had uncovered “many weapons, heavy weapons” during police raids last week that culminated in Abdeslam’s arrest. He said at least 30 jihadists remained at large in the city, and that Abdeslam had told interrogators in custody that he had been “ready to resume something in Brussels,” after apparently backing out at the last minute from his plan to blow himself up during the Paris attacks.

But despite Belgium’s maximum terror-alert level, tracking down the remnants of the jihadist network will not be easy—in part because the outlines of the network are becoming more and more blurred. Since the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in January, 2015, intelligence experts have warned that jihadists have tapped into Mafia-type organized crime, with highly sophisticated smuggling operations, for logistics support like transporting people, issuing fake identity papers or selling weapons. “Where there is money to be made, there is always a business opportunity for organized crime,” says Yan St-Pierre, CEO and counter-intelligence advisor for the Modern Security Consulting Group, a private intelligence company in Berlin. “If they sell weapons to terrorists or someone else, it makes no difference, and often they are in the position to have access to smuggling,” he told TIME on Tuesday.

The mingling of two entirely separate worlds—organized crime and violent Islamic extremism—has hugely complicated the task of tracking down suspects. “This makes the situation extremely difficult for intelligence, because it is two different networks with two different logics,” Moniquet said by phone on Saturday. “And there is a clannish mentality, where if a friend comes and says ‘help me,’ you will do it without question.”

The deep budget cuts during Europe’s economic recession this decade presents another major challenge in dismantling terror networks, according to St-Pierre. He says E.U. governments are increasingly relying on high-tech surveillance methods, which are less costly than hiring people who can monitor every possible terror suspect. “Because of the cuts over the last five or six years, there are less and less people involved” in surveilling terror suspects, St-Pierre says. “They have to play catch-up, so it creates massive problems. The terrorists have adapted.”

****

The Brussels bombers are thought to have used an explosive nicknamed “Mother of Satan” that was also used in the July 7 at tacks in London in 2005.

Acetone peroxide can be made from household items like hair bleach and nail polish remover, and has been used in numerous previous terrorist bombs and suicide attacks.

Terrorists particularly like it because it does not contain nitrogen, and therefore can pass through security screening devices that rely on a nitrogenous presence to detect explosives.

The deadly substance – which forms highly unstable crystals – was also used in the suicide vests worn by the men involved in the Paris terror attacks in November.

One of the men who allegedly made the vests – named by Belgian police last week as Najim Laachraoui – is still on the run, and is regarded as a likely suspect in the Brussels bombings.

How Bad is it in Europe with Militant Jihad?

Posted on March 22, 2016March 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

suicide bombers Brussels

Perspective:

Islamic State operatives and sympathizers deploy guerilla warfare beyond the borders of Iraq and Syria. The military in Belgium deploys on the streets.

Amaq Agency for ISIS Say that ISIS claim responsibility for Brussels attacks.

From airport security camera.

The known suicide bombers in Brussels above.

Brussels terror attacks: David Cameron calls emergency Cobra meeting to determine UK response to explosions

Security heightened at Heathrow and Gatwick airports as all flights to and from the Belgian capital are cancelled

At Least 31 Dead in Brussels Terror Attacks; Belgium Raises Terror Alert to Highest Level

Allowing 77 million Turks on a Visa Free with porous Syria borders makes Brexit an imperatice for National Security measures in Brussels and all corners in Europe. Further, the United States has a 37 country visa free waiver system including most countries in Europe.

Even the United Nations has a dispatch explaining the concerns.

Nearly 600 EU personnel are deployed to train Mali’s security forces. Their headquarters in Bamako came under attack. “Gunmen on Monday attacked a hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako, that had been converted into the headquarters of a European Union military training operation, but there no casualties among the mission’s personnel. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which began at around 6:30 p.m. local time (1830 GMT), but Mali and neighboring West African countries have increasingly been the target of Islamist militants, some of them affiliated with al Qaeda. One of the assailants was killed and two suspects were arrested and were being interrogated, the country’s internal security minister said. A witness said the attack targeted Bamako’s Nord-Sud Hotel, headquarters for the mission of nearly 600 EU personnel deployed to Mali to train its security forces.” (Reuters http://reut.rs/1Se6q9i)

A Landmark ICC Ruling…”War crimes judges Monday found former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba guilty of a deliberate campaign of widespread rapes and killings by his private army in Central African Republic over a decade ago. In a landmark verdict, the judges from the International Criminal Court (ICC) found Bemba guilty on five charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, saying he had retained “effective command and control” over the forces sent in to CAR to quell an attempted coup against the then president. It was the first case before the ICC to focus on sexual violence as a weapon of war, as well as to find a military commander to blame for the atrocities carried out by his forces even though he did not order them.” (AFP http://yhoo.it/1pFCNoj)

EU deal not slowing down migrant flow…More than 1,600 migrants have landed in Greece since a landmark EU-Turkish deal on curbing the influx took effect, officials said Monday, highlighting the challenges still facing efforts to tackle the crisis. (AFP http://yhoo.it/1LBveZn) And Greece made an appeal for help dealing with migrant influx. (Reuters http://yhoo.it/1LBvbwG)

*** Because of the European coalition and that of the United States taking more aggressive actions in Mosul in recent weeks and other targets in Iraq, the jihadis are watching this carefully and responding by attacks such as that at the Brussels airport and on the Metro system.

Brussels Terror Attacks Bring Guerrilla War to the Heart of Europe

Coordinated attacks on Brussels this morning may signal the start of an ISIS-led guerrilla warfare campaign in the West.

DailyBeast: PARIS — As explosions rocked the airport and the metro in Brussels this morning, fears grew that the threat of terrorism is morphing into the threat of guerrilla war in Europe.

The attacks, which killed more than 20 people, came four days after the arrest in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam, a member of the terrorist cell that attacked Paris cafés, a sports stadium, and a concert hall in November, slaughtering 130 people. On Sunday, the Belgian foreign minister warned that Abdeslam was planning a new attack.

Emmanuel Dunand/Getty

Some reports suggest that this attack, clearly coordinated in the style of the Paris carnage, was what was in the works, and went ahead without Abdeslam. It was known that at least two of his associates were still on the run.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said it was clear Europe was no longer simply the victim of a series of isolated terror attacks. “We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war,” he said. “We are at war.”

As French scholar Gilles Kepel has pointed out, the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, which carried out the Paris attacks and which presumably was involved in today’s bombings, is following a playbook written more than a decade ago: The Call for an International Islamic Resistance by Abu Musab al Suri, a Syrian jihadist.

Suri knew Europe well. He had lived for a while in Britain, in the community of Arab and Muslim exiles there. His core idea was that Muslims in the West, though increasingly numerous, felt themselves isolated and under pressure, and this could be exploited to create a breakdown of society, develop insurgency, and launch a civil war where the forces of Islam eventually would be victorious.

Acts of terror, dubbed “resistance,” would heighten the already existing “Islamophobia,” and “exacerbate the contradictions,” as communist revolutionaries used to say, until hatred and suspicion ran high and integration became impossible.

Since the Nov. 13 atrocity, that process has been taking shape, with increased resentment and fear linked to the coincidental mass influx of refugees from the Middle East. Indeed, the impact of these atrocities has reached the United States political scene and has been exploited extensively by presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Today’s attack began near the check-in desks at Brussels Airport. Two explosions in the departure hall killed at least 13 people and injured more than 30 others. The public prosecutor in Brussels has confirmed that one of those two blasts was detonated by a suicide bomber.

Video footage from the scene showed chaos as survivors scrambled to safety. Zach Mouzoun, who had just arrived at the airport on a flight, told local television that the second explosion cracked pipes, mixing water with victims’ blood as the ceiling fell in. “It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed,” he said. “There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere.”

“We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene,” he said.

Soon after, a bomb blast interrupted the morning commute at Maalbeek metro station, which is close to the headquarters of the European Union and NATO. Belgian subway officials said 15 people were killed and another 55 injured in the subterranean attack.

Brussels shut down public access to its entire rail and air transport networks and raised the terror threat level to its highest. “What we feared has happened, we were hit by blind attacks,” said the Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel.

Multiple U.S. and European officials in Brussels last weekend said they had been warned by their security and intelligence teams of the possibility of a follow-on attack in retaliation for the arrest of Paris attack fugitive Salah Abdesalam.

Officials were in town for the German Marshall Fund’s Brussels forum where Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said they’d discovered Abdesalam had stockpiled weapons and built a new network to launch potential violence, news that chilled the already tense city even as officials there celebrated capturing the terror suspect alive after a four-month manhunt.

“He was ready to start something from Brussels,” Reynders told officials and diplomats on Sunday.

“We found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons in the first investigations, and we have seen a new network of people around him in Brussels,” the minister said, adding that they’d been searching for 10 people, but found more than 30 people connected to the Paris attacks.

While there had been security throughout the city, both visible police and military presence, a Daily Beast reporter noticed little or no security at the main terminal of the airport yesterday morning.

Whether or not it was directly linked to Abdesalam’s arrest, U.S. intelligence officials said that early signs pointed to ISIS as being the likely culprit of the attacks.

The bombings “bear all the hallmarks of an ISIS-inspired, or ISIS-coordinated, attack,” Rep. Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. “Europe is facing a real threat from the thousands who have traveled abroad to Syria and Iraq to train with ISIS, and have returned home. It is enormously difficult to track all of them, or defend soft targets like those attacked in Brussels and previously in Paris,” Schiff said.

A senior U.S. intelligence official, speaking on background, said that “the intelligence community continues to assess the situation in Brussels and is staying in close contact with our Belgian and European partners.”

Bombs at the Brussels airport were apparently set off in the departures terminal prior to security screening. Marsha Catron, the spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department, which oversees airport security in the U.S., said the department “will not hesitate to adjust our security posture, as appropriate, to protect the American people.” Catron said that the department “is closely monitoring the unfolding events in Brussels and we remain in contact with our counterparts in the region.”

Pentagon: Social Media Charting Maps on Syrian Exodus

Posted on March 21, 2016March 21, 2016 by Denise Simon

Harvesting posts on social media platforms has become necessary to track all kinds of human conditions. There was once a time it was a scandal when Edward Snowden revealed NSA platforms but now it is widely accepted apparently.

When it comes to tracking people movement, medical and humanitarian issues and patterns, the Pentagon is working social media. If there are protests, intermittent battles or hostilities or airstrikes, social media is the go to immediate source.

It is so valuable, the United Nations is now passing out phones and or sim cards to migrants and refugees. Question is who is paying the full connectivity access and to what wireless company?

Pentagon Mapmakers Are Using Social Media to Chart Syrians’ Exodus

Officials admit the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s approach has its limitations

DefenseOne: Streams of Facebook, Instagram, and other social media posts shared by smartphone-toting children and families at border crossings are providing U.S. intelligence analysts with a real-time map of the Syrian exodus. It’s not picture perfect, but it fills in gaps for the nation’s spy cartographers, a top Defense Department official says.

By searching public posts, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency fulfills its duty to provide decision-makers with past, present and future insights into locations during a global emergency.

Viewing Defense Department satellite imagery from “space isn’t a great way to sense human activity of that magnitude, but people talking on the ground and people tweeting about lack of food, or pictures about lines at gates at borders is really incredibly useful,” Sue Gordon, the spy map agency’s deputy director, tells Nextgov. “You will have the ability to see what’s going on from an intelligence perspective, but social media will give you that on-the-ground look to help you correlate disparate activities or to get a different view of what is real.”

Photos and vignettes that refugees and relief workers publish depict the kindnesses and bloodshed arising from a civil war that has torn an estimated 14 million people from their homes.

The images are made possible, in part, by governmental organizations. As of August, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had distributed 33,000 mobile SIM cards to displaced Syrians in Jordan alone.

Geotags on posts — metadata indicating where and when messages were sent — can be searched or plotted on a map.

For example, one government vendor that specializes in the marriage of geographic data and social media pins refugee-related items from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social networks on a map of the Middle East and Europe. (Here is a map of posts filtered by the keywords, “Hamah, Syria.”)

By clicking on a marker, federal analysts can see when and where the messages were sent, as well as their images and words. (Here are a few tweets, containing Instagram links, that depict a blocked Hungary-Serbia border.)

The firm, Canada-based Echosec, uses maps from geospatial software provider Esri. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency spokeswoman Don Kerr told Nextgov the agency does not currently contract with Echosec but it does use Esri’s technology.

While declining to identify specific federal clients, Echosec marketing executive Kira Kirk said that as the Syrian conflict has escalated, the company’s tools have followed the growing numbers of displaced civilians moving into countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Greece and Hungary.

At the Za’atari Syrian Refugee Camp in Jordan, 86 percent of the young refugees owned mobile handsets and 83 percent owned SIM cards, according to a March 2015 paper presented by Pennsylvania State University scholars Carleen Maitland and Ying Xu for the 43rd Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet.

Last month, Defense One contributor Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, reporting from the Turkish Border, said: ”Russian air strikes are among the first things you hear when spending any time among Syrians constantly monitoring what is happening to family and friends via What’sApp and Facebook. YouTube videos are played and the carnage people are witnessing is discussed.”

Unlike law enforcement authorities or covert operatives, NGA personnel do not engage social media users they follow online.

“We’re not out there interacting with it and trying to influence it,” said Gordon, during an interview at Esri’s FedGIS conference in Washington. Rather, analysts subscribe to various feeds, open accounts and watch YouTube videos,

This passive approach to social media monitoring has its limitations, including spin.

Intelligence analysts can get the wrong impression from trolls, propagandists or other users with selective memories, just as Facebook stalkers sometimes feel down when bombarded with pictures of parties and achievements on their friends’ timelines.

“They get depressed because they see all these people having this great life, but I think it makes the point that all this stuff that is produced by humans comes with a perspective and you may perceive it to be true but you still have to think about what it is” indicating, Gordon said. “And then you have other truths that can help out.”

To her point, Jill Walker Rettberg, a University of Bergen digital culture professor, said of a Vocativ Instagram narrative showing one Syrian man’s journey to Germany, ”The absence of women and children is striking.”

Still, localized data points can make life a little easier for an agency dealing with information overload.

“It has a real lovely temporal quality to it because it’s always being captured by somebody who cares about that event and that event in time,” Gordon said. ”The Syrian migration is just a really great example, or any humanitarian crisis or migratory crisis, because we have overhead assets but the real intelligence is on the ground.”

Nigeria: It Was not 80 Girls, Was 250+, We Knew Their Location

Posted on March 20, 2016March 20, 2016 by Denise Simon

Western governments KNEW where 80 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram were – but no-one tried to rescue them

DailyMail: The US and British governments knew where at least 80 of the Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram were but failed to launch a rescue mission, it has been revealed.

Terrorists stormed a secondary boarding school in the remote town of Chibok in Borno state, northern Nigeria in April 2014, and seized 276 girls who were preparing for end-of-year exams.

Although 57 of the girls managed to escape the rest have remained missing and have not been heard from or seen since apart from in May that year, when 130 of them appeared in a Boko Haram video wearing hijabs and reciting the Koran.

Dr Andrew Pocock, the former British high commissioner to Nigeria, has now revealed that a large group of the missing girls were spotted by British and American surveillance officials shortly after their disappearance, but experts felt nothing could be done.

He told The Sunday Times that Western governments felt ‘powerless’ to help as any rescue attempt would have been too high risk – with Boko Haram terrorists using the girls as human shields.

Dr Pocock said: ‘A couple of months after the kidnapping, fly-bys and an American eye in the sky spotted a group of up to 80 girls in a particular spot in the Sambisa forest, around a very large tree, called locally the Tree of Life, along with evidence of vehicular movement and a large encampment.’

He said the girls were there for at least four weeks but authorities were ‘powerless’ to intervene – and the Nigerian government did not ask for help anyway.

He said: ‘A land-based attack would have been seen coming miles away and the girls killed, an air-based rescue, such as flying in helicopters or Hercules, would have required large numbers and meant a significant risk to the rescuers and even more so to the girls.’

He added: ‘You might have rescued a few but many would have been killed. My personal fear was always about the girls not in that encampment — 80 were there, but 250 were taken, so the bulk were not there. What would have happened to them? You were damned if you do and damned if you don’t.’

In an investigation by Christina Lamb for the Sunday Times Magazine, Dr Pocock said the information was passed to the Nigerians but they made no request for help.

The Magazine has also seen brutal rape videos which show schoolgirls are being used as sex slaves by the terrorists.

Ms Lamb reports: ‘They film schoolgirls being raped over and over again until their scream become silent Os.’

Some of the girls who managed to escape told Ms Lamb they were kept in ‘women’s prisons’ where they were taught about Islam. Boko Haram fighters would visit and pick their wives.

The girls were powerless to resist as even then the men would be heavily armed. They were shown videos of people being raped, tortured and killed as a threat of what would happen to them if they tried to run away.

Dr Stephen Davis, a former canon at Coventy Cathedral who has spent several years attempting to negotiate with the terror group said Boko Haram ‘make Isis look like playtime’ and said it is ‘beyond belief’ that the authorities both in Nigeria and the West do not know where the schoolgirls are.

He insists the locations of the camps where the girls are being kept are well known and can even be seen on Google maps. He added: ‘How many girls have to be raped and abducted before the West will do anything?’

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau previously claimed that all the girls, some of whom were Christian, had converted to Islam and been ‘married off’.

The mass abduction brought the brutality of the Islamist insurgency to worldwide attention and prompted the viral social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls which was supported by everyone from Michelle Obama to Malala Yousafzai.

Boko Haram violence has left at least 17,000 dead and forced more than 2.6 million from their homes since 2009. The Global Terrorism Index ranks the group as the word’s deadliest terror organisation.

The group, now officially allied to the Islamic State fighters who control much of Iraq and Syria, has responded with suicide bombings and hit and run attacks against civilians.

In recent months the insurgents have turned away from direct confrontation with the military in favour of suicide attacks, increasingly carried out by women and girls – raising fears that they are kidnap victims.

Just last week two female suicide bombers killed at least 24 worshippers and wounded 18 in an attack during dawn prayers Wednesday on a mosque on the outskirts of the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri, officials said from the birthplace of Boko Haram.

One bomber blew up inside the mosque and the second waited outside to detonate as survivors tried to escape, said coordinator Abba Aji of the civilian self-defense Vigilante Group.

The mosque is on the outskirts of Maiduguri, the city that is the military command center of the war against Boko Haram.

Several suicide bombers have exploded recently at roadblocks leading into the city, preventing attackers from reaching crowded areas.