Category Archives: Military

In Other News, al Qaeda an Ally of United States?

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When a president is rudderless as Barack Obama is, all ships, soldiers and strategy fall silent as the enemy fills the gaps with successful terror. Retired General Petraeus announced a option of perhaps peeling off al Nusra (al Qaeda) fighters and enlisting their resources as allies to take on the fight against Islamic State. This raised some real eyebrows. Is there reality in this plan or is it desperation?

Petraeus’s Plan to Defeat Islamic State Won’t Work

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Bloomberg: Former CIA Director David Petraeus today confirmed that he is urging Obama administration officials to try to peel off some fighters from the radical al-Nusrah group, to join the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS. But Petraeus’s explanation does not account for the fact that U.S. policy in Syria has been alienating the “reconcilable” Islamists for over four years.

“We should under no circumstances try to use or coopt Nusrah, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, as an organization against ISIL,” Petraeus told CNN. “But some individual fighters, and perhaps some elements, within Nusrah today have undoubtedly joined for opportunistic rather than ideological reasons: They saw Nusrah as a strong horse, and they haven’t seen a credible alternative, as the moderate opposition has yet to be adequately resourced.”

It sounds like the “Sunni Awakening” from his time in Iraq, but there’s little to no chance of repeating that in Syria today. Recent U.S. action, and inaction, shows why.

Just last week, the commander of Division 30, the Syrian “moderate” opposition group that hosts a few dozen U.S.-trained fighters, sent out a worrying notice: His troops had just been bombed by planes from Assad’s air force. The U.S. military did not respond.

“We have no information on whether Assad forces targeted Vetted Syrian Opposition Groups or the New Syrian Force specifically,” Lieutenant Commander Kyle Raines, U.S. Central Command spokesman, told me, using the official term for the 54 Syrian soldiers who were trained and armed by the U.S. and sent back into Syria to fight the Islamic State.

Only three weeks earlier, the U.S. military did respond with force to an attack on Division 30, this time coming from al-Nusrah, the Syria rebel group affiliated with al-Qaeda.  Nusrah had kidnapped some of the U.S.-trained fighters and killed others, and the U.S. military sent drones to exact retribution. But Division 30 itself was opposed to the U.S. attacks on al-Nusrah and pledged never to fight the group, only the Assad regime and the Islamic State.

In 2012, when he was C.I.A. director, Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed significantly arming the Syrian opposition, a plan supported by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey. But the White House rejected the plan, and U.S.-supported opposition groups were routed.

Now Petraeus is proposing to separate the “reconcilables” from al-Nusrah to fight against the Islamic State. He compared the plan to the Sunni Awakening in Iraq in 2007 and 2008.

“In Iraq, during the Surge, Sunni tribes and insurgent groups that were previously aligned with AQI (al Qaeda in Iraq) switched sides because they concluded that there was a better alternative — namely, partnership with us and, ultimately, the government of Iraq — and because they saw that AQI was a losing bet,” Petraeus said. “The process of ‘reconciliation’ contributed significantly to the defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq in 2007-2008, a situation sustained for 2-3 more years.”

He acknowledges that the Sunni Awakening in Iraq broke down after most of the agreements with Iraqi Sunni tribes were broken by the Iraqi government. He also acknowledges that Syria and Iraq are not the same. But Petraeus concludes that the U.S. should work to defeat radical groups in Syria “by splintering their ranks by offering a credible alternative.”

The key problem with Petraeus’s idea is that the U.S. may no longer have any chance of being “credible” in Syria. Four years after the crisis began, U.S. support for groups fighting the Assad regime has slowed. Those moderate groups that haven’t been crushed or coopted by Islamic groups feel abandoned by Washington.

The $500 million program to train and equip fighters in Syria has been hampered by the fact that new recruits are compelled to pledge not to fight Assad. Obama administration officials are pursuing a de facto policy of regime preservation while paying lip service to the unfounded hope for a political process whereby Assad would negotiate his own departure.

Petraeus was not wrong in 2012 when he called for robust American support for moderate opposition forces in Syria. But in 2015, that plan has been overtaken by events. Unless the Obama administration completely reverses course — creating a Syria policy that is about more than quashing the Islamic State — the Petraeus plan can’t work.

All Syrian groups fighting the Islamic State derive their credibility from the Syrian people in the lands they control. Petraeus is right that Syrian tribes can be persuaded to break from al-Nusrah and join a U.S.-backed cause.

“U.S. regaining credibility wouldn’t take much; it would take stopping barrel bombs from falling on civilians,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a nongovernmental organization that works with rebel groups on the ground. “The reason that the U.S. does not have any credibility with armed groups on the ground is because it is seen as supporting Iran, Russia and the Assad regime.”

There are other reasons Petraeus’s plan has little chance. In Iraq, the U.S. had over 100,000 troops, tens of billions of dollars to spend, a relationship with the host government that could be leveraged, and the political will to commit U.S. attention to the matter. None of those things exist in Syria today.

The Obama administration appears content to contain the Islamic State in Syria, and after years of missed opportunities, Obama seems unlikely to confront Assad. Syrians remember when Obama last year said that the entire idea that a group of “former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth” could defeat the Assad regime and its supporters has “always been a fantasy.”

The nature of the American commitment in Syria is not likely to change. Not even the hawkish leading Republican presidential candidates are supporting a dramatic increase of American resources or personnel to turn Syria around. The only Syrian “awakening” will be when Assad does fall — and the U.S. realizes it has no friends there to represent its interests.

Come the F*ck On: al Qaeda Is Not Our Ally!

DailyBeast: A new argument among jihad analysts has it that the makers of 9/11 are now a handy bulwark against ISIS. Um, no.

Enemies becoming friends is seemingly all the rage these days. First Cuba. Then Iran. Now, there are those arguing that al Qaeda must also be brought into the fold. That’s right: the same group which fly planes into our buildings, blows up our tube networks, embassies and longs for the return of the Caliphate.

The argument seems to be catching on. The journalist Ahmed Rashid has recently taken to the pages of the New York Review of Books (“Why we need al Qaeda”) and the front cover of The Spectator (“Al Qaeda to the rescue”) to question whether al Qaeda “might be the best option left in the Middle East for the US and its allies.” The argument goes that the U.S., regional Arab powers, and Turkey have a shared enemy in Bashar al-Assad, Iran and its proxies. Al Qaeda not only shares these enemies, it is at the frontline of this fight in Syria and Yemen.

Rashid also says that al Qaeda is going through “dramatic changes” and is now taking a “soft line” on certain issues. Charles Lister from Brookings has also explored potential al Qaeda moderation—with the headline used in his May article for the Huffington Post, “An Internal Struggle: Al Qaeda’s Syrian Affiliate is Grappling with its Identity,” making the group sound more like a 16 year-old goth from Portland than a murderous terrorist organization.

Other, less savory figures have spoken out on other ways in which al Qaeda may be useful. Moazzam Begg—the former Guantanamo Bay detainee—cites Rashid while arguing that “the most credible voices against IS have been Islamic clerics traditionally associated with al Qaeda”: Abu Qatada and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. These two jihadist theologians’ fatwas have been used to justify barbaric violence for decades. Yet Begg laments the UK government’s reluctance to reach out to such figures, arguing that it would help avert a repeat of the massacre of British tourists that just occurred in Tunisia.

This is largely unsurprising coming from Begg, who has long argued the Islamist cause. Yet as others view al Qaeda as a potentially constructive partner, it is worth exploring this thesis on its merits.

The examples of moderation cited by the likes of Rashid are anything but. A statement from Abu Mohammed al-Joulani, the head of al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, saying that he was under instructions not to use Syria “as a base to launch attacks on the West or Europe” is highlighted as a sign of progress. However, even this concession—as deeply generous as it is—is not because of a lack of desire to kill more Westerners; it is “so as not to muddy the current war” in Syria. A change in tactics should not be confused for a change in strategy.

The al-Nusra Front also remains proud of al Qaeda’s past successes when it comes to mass murder. A propaganda video they just released is heavy on video footage from 9/11—an attack described in the video as “the most effective solution”—and speeches by Osama bin Laden.

Russian Connection with Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and OPM?

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Pvt. Bradley Manning describes as noted by Gawker in part:

The story begins with Manning’s own disillusionment with U.S. foreign policy and its wars, sparked by his wide-ranging research as an analyst. “I began to become depressed with the situation that we found ourselves increasingly mired in year after year,” he said. He wanted to give the public access to some of the same information he had seen, so they might come to a similar conclusion. Manning said he leaked a massive database of incident reports from Iraq and Afghanistan because he believed they might “spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as it relates to Iraq and Afghanistan.” He hoped people who saw the dramatic video of a 2007 Apache helicopter strike in Iraq he leaked would be outraged by the “delightful bloodlust” of the pilots. The U.S. State Department cables he gave to Wikileaks detailed shady deals and backroom intimidation and were “a prime example of a need for a more open diplomacy.” 

But Manning’s ideas and actions did not develop in a vacuum. In walking us through the genesis of and rationale behind each leak, Manning’s statement emphasizes they were not hit-and-run jobs. Wikileaks plays a pivotal role in this story, and not just as a passive leaking “platform.” As Manning tells it, his relationship with Wikileaks was not unlike the relationship between a traditional journalist and their source. Manning said he was originally drawn to Wikileaks after their release in 2009 of half a million pager messages from 9/11. In January, 2010, Manning joined a chatroom linked on Wikileaks’ official site out of curiosity. He wanted to know how Wikileaks got the pager messages. “I am the type of person who likes to know how things work,” he said in his statement. “And, as an analyst, this means I always want to figure out the truth.”

Over the years I’ve periodically visited that same, now-defunct chatroom to try to figure out how Wikileaks works. Whenever I dropped by it seemed pretty dead, a few Wikileaks fanboys idling during the work day. But in early 2010 Manning found a lively collection of geeks discussing stimulating topics.

Later the official investigation and charges were brought against Bradley Manning. The charge sheet is here describing his full actions.

As noted in this blog yesterday, the Chinese and the Russians are in fact cultivating and applying the stolen data (hacked) and are working against the West.

Enter Julian Assange and the Russians.

Hat tip to John:

Wikileaks is a Front for Russian Intelligence

August 31, 2015

The part played by Wikileaks in the Edward Snowden saga is an important one. The pivotal role of Julian Assange and other leading members of Wikileaks in getting Snowden from Hawaii to Moscow, from NSA employment to FSB protection, in the late spring of 2013 is a matter of record.

For years there have been questions about just what Wikileaks actually is. I know because I’ve been among those asking. Over two years ago, little more than two weeks after Snowden landed in Moscow, I explained my concerns about Wikileaks based on my background in counterintelligence. Specifically, the role of the Russian anti-Semite weirdo Israel Shamir, a close friend of Assange, in the Wikileaks circle merited attention, and to anyone trained in the right clues, the Assange group gave the impression of having a relationship with Russian intelligence. As I summed up my position in July 2013, based on what we knew so far:

It’s especially important given the fact that Wikileaks is playing a leading role in the Snowden case, to the dismay of some of Ed’s admirers and even members of his family. Not to mention that Snowden, as of this writing, is still in Moscow. One need not be a counterintelligence guru to have serious questions about Shamir and Wikileaks here. It may be a much bigger part of the story than it appears to the naked eye.

Evidence that Wikileaks is not what it seems to be has mounted over the years. Assange’s RT show didn’t help matters, neither did the fact that, despite having claimed to possess secret Russian intelligence files, Wikileaks has never exposed anything sensitive, as they have done with the purloined files of many other countries. To say nothing of Assange & Co. taking unmistakably pro-Russian positions on a host of controversial issues. Questions logically followed.

Now answers are appearing. It’s long been known that Wikileaks, by their own admission, counseled Ed Snowden in June 2013 to leave Hong Kong and head to Moscow. Contrary to the countless lies propagated by Snowden Operation activists, Snowden’s arrival in Russia was his choice; it had nothing to do with  canceled passports in Washington, DC.

An important gap has been filled this week by Julian Assange, who admitted that Snowden going to Moscow was his idea. Ed wanted to head to Latin America, Julian asserted, especially Ecuador, whose London embassy Assange has been hiding out in for years on the lam from rape changes in Sweden. As Assange explained, “He preferred Latin America, but my advice was that he should take asylum in Russia despite the negative PR consequences, because my assessment is that he had a significant risk he could be kidnapped from Latin America on CIA orders. Kidnapped or possibly killed.”

Only in Russia would Ed be safe, Julian counseled, because there he would be protected by Vladimir Putin and his secret services, notably the FSB. One might think that seeking the shelter of the FSB — one of the world’s nastiest secret police forces that spies on millions without warrant and murders opponents freely — might be an odd choice for a “privacy organization.” But Wikileaks is no ordinary NGO.

Why Assange knew Russia would take in Snowden — it could be a big political hassle for Moscow — is a key question that any counterintelligence officer would want answered. Was Julian speaking on behalf of the FSB or did he just “know” Ed could obtain the sanctuary plus protection he sought?

Just as telling is the recent report on Assange’s activities in Ecuador’s London embassy, where it turns out Ecuadorian intelligence has been keeping tabs on him. Which is no surprise given the PR mess Assange has created for Ecuador with his on-going antics.

Especially interesting is the revelation that, while holed up in London, Assange “requested that he be able to chose his own Security Service inside the embassy, suggesting the use of Russian operatives.” It is, to say the least, surpassingly strange that a Western “privacy advocate” wants Russian secret police protection while hiding out in a Western country. The original Spanish is clear: Assange “habría sido la elección de su propio Servicio de Seguridad en el interior de la embajada, llegando a proponer la participación de operadores de nacionalidad rusa.”

Why Assange wants FSB bodyguards is a question every journalist who encounters Julian henceforth should ask. Until he explains that, Wikileaks should be treated as the front and cut-out for Russian intelligence that it has become, while those who get in bed with Wikileaks — many Western “privacy advocates” are in that group — should be asked their feelings about their own at least indirect ties with Putin’s spy services.

P.S. For those familiar with espionage history, there is a clear precedent for such an arrangement. In 1978 the magazine Covert Action Information Bulletin appeared to expose the secrets of US and Western intelligence. Its editor was Phil Agee, a former CIA officer who had gotten into bed with Cuban and Soviet intelligence; think of Agee as the Snowden of the pre-Internet era. CAIB was in fact founded on the direction of the KGB and for years served as a conduit for Kremlin lies and disinformation that seriously harmed Western intelligence. While CAIB presented itself as a radical truth-telling group, in actuality it was a KGB front, though few CAIB staffers beyond Agee knew who was really calling the shots. One suspects much the same is happening with WikiLeaks.

Destruction by Foreign Hackers Cannot be Measured

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The job of the future appears to be cyber soldiers, warriors trained to protect America from cyber-terrorism.

US Army Looks Inward for Next Batch of Cyber Specialists

The Army has turned to its own ranks in hopes of satisfying its growing need for talented cybersecurity professionals.

In June, the agency announced that all E-1- through E-8-ranked soldiers, regardless of their technical background, could apply to participate in a yearlong cyber training program, according to a recent Army press release.

Those successful candidates who complete the program would then be reclassified into the 17C military occupational specialty – also known as cyber operations specialist.

As cyber operations specialists, these soldiers will be tasked with supporting the military through offensive and defensive cyber operations.

China and Russia are using hacked data to target U.S. spies, officials say

LATimes:

Foreign spy services, especially in China and Russia, are aggressively aggregating and cross-indexing hacked U.S. computer databases — including security clearance applications, airline records and medical insurance forms — to identify U.S. intelligence officers and agents, U.S. officials said.

At least one clandestine network of American engineers and scientists who provide technical assistance to U.S. undercover operatives and agents overseas has been compromised as a result, according to two U.S. officials.

The Obama administration has scrambled to boost cyberdefenses for federal agencies and crucial infrastructure as foreign-based attacks have penetrated government websites and email systems, social media accounts and, most important, vast data troves containing Social Security numbers, financial information, medical records and other personal data on millions of Americans.

 

Counterintelligence officials say their adversaries combine those immense data files and then employ sophisticated software to try to isolate disparate clues that can be used to identify and track — or worse, blackmail and recruit — U.S. intelligence operatives.

Digital analysis can reveal “who is an intelligence officer, who travels where, when, who’s got financial difficulties, who’s got medical issues, [to] put together a common picture,” William Evanina, the top counterintelligence official for the U.S. intelligence community, said in an interview.

Asked whether adversaries had used this information against U.S. operatives, Evanina said, “Absolutely.”

Evanina declined to say which nations are involved. Other U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal assessments, say China and Russia are collecting and scrutinizing sensitive U.S. computer files for counterintelligence purposes.

U.S. cyberspying is also extensive, but authorities in Moscow and Beijing frequently work in tandem with criminal hackers and private companies to find and extract sensitive data from U.S. systems, rather than steal it themselves. That limits clear targets for U.S. retaliation.

The Obama administration marked a notable exception last week when a U.S. military drone strike near Raqqah, Syria, killed the British-born leader of the CyberCaliphate, an Islamic State hacking group that has aggressively sought to persuade sympathizers to launch “lone wolf” attacks in the United States and elsewhere.

Junaid Hussain had posted names, addresses and photos of about 1,300 U.S. military and other officials on Twitter and the Internet, and urged his followers to find and kill them, according to U.S. officials. They said he also had been in contact with one of the two heavily armed attackers killed in May outside a prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas. Hussain is the first known hacker targeted by a U.S. drone.

The Pentagon also is scouring the leaked list of clients and their sexual preferences from the Ashley Madison cheating website to identify service members who may have violated military rules against infidelity and be vulnerable to extortion by foreign intelligence agencies.

Far more worrisome was last year’s cyberlooting — allegedly by China — of U.S. Office of Personnel Management databases holding detailed personnel records and security clearance application files for about 22 million people, including not only current and former federal employees and contractors but also their families and friends.

“A foreign spy agency now has the ability to cross-check who has a security clearance, via the OPM breach, with who was cheating on their wife via the Ashley Madison breach, and thus identify someone to target for blackmail,” said Peter W. Singer, a fellow at the nonprofit New America Foundation in Washington and coauthor of the book “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar.”

The immense data troves can reveal marital problems, health issues and financial distress that foreign intelligence services can use to try to pry secrets from U.S. officials, according to Rep. Adam B. Schiff of Burbank, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

“It’s very much a 21st century challenge,” Schiff said. “The whole cyberlandscape has changed.”

U.S. intelligence officials have seen evidence that China’s Ministry of State Security has combined medical data snatched in January from health insurance giant Anthem, passenger records stripped from United Airlines servers in May and the OPM security clearance files.

The Anthem breach, which involved personal data on 80 million current and former customers and employees, used malicious software that U.S. officials say is linked to the Chinese government. The information has not appeared for sale on black market websites, indicating that a foreign government controls it.

U.S. officials have not publicly blamed Beijing for the theft of the OPM and the Anthem files, but privately say both hacks were traced to the Chinese government.

The officials say China’s state security officials tapped criminal hackers to steal the files, and then gave them to private Chinese software companies to help analyze and link the information together. That kept the government’s direct fingerprints off the heist and the data aggregation that followed.

In a similar fashion, officials say, Russia’s powerful Federal Security Service, or FSB, has close connections to programmers and criminal hacking rings in Russia and has used them in a relentless series of cyberattacks.

According to U.S. officials, Russian hackers linked to the Kremlin infiltrated the State Department’s unclassified email system for several months last fall. Russian hackers also stole gigabytes of customer data from several U.S. banks and financial companies, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., last year.

A Chinese Embassy spokesman, Zhu Haiquan, said Friday that his government “firmly opposes and combats all forms of cyberattacks in accordance with the law.” The Russian Embassy did not respond to multiple requests for comment. U.S. intelligence officials want President Obama to press their concerns about Chinese hacking when Chinese President Xi Jinping visits the White House on Sept. 25.

After the recent breaches, U.S. cybersecurity officials saw a dramatic increase in the number of targeted emails sent to U.S. government employees that contain links to malicious software.

In late July, for example, an unclassified email system used by the Joint Chiefs and their staff — 4,000 people in all — was taken down for 12 days after they received sophisticated “spear-phishing” emails that U.S. officials suspect was a Russian hack.

The emails appeared to be from USAA, a bank that serves military members, and each sought to persuade the recipient to click a link that would implant spyware into the system.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the hack shows the military needs to boost its cyberdefenses.

“We’re not doing as well as we need to do in job one in cyber, which is defending our own networks,” Carter said Wednesday. “Our military is dependent upon and empowered by networks for its effective operations…. We have to be better at network defense than we are now.”

Carter spent Friday in Silicon Valley in an effort to expand a partnership between the Pentagon, academia and the private sector that aims to improve the nation’s digital defenses. Carter opened an outreach office in Mountain View this year to try to draw on local expertise.

U.S. intelligence officers are supposed to cover their digital tracks and are trained to look for surveillance. Counterintelligence officials say they worry more about the scientists, engineers and other technical experts who travel abroad to support the career spies, who mostly work in U.S. embassies.

The contractors are more vulnerable to having their covers blown now, and two U.S. officials said some already have been compromised. They refused to say whether any were subject to blackmail or other overtures from foreign intelligence services.

But Evanina’s office, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, based in Bethesda, Md., has recently updated pamphlets, training videos and desk calendars for government workers to warn them of the increased risk from foreign spy services.

“Travel vulnerabilities are greater than usual,” reads one handout. Take “extra precaution” if people “approach you in a friendly manner and seem to have a lot in common with you.”

Asylum Seekers Die Across the Globe

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The United Nations Refugee Agency’s solution to global unrest appears to be the same as that of world leaders, report the crisis and force other countries to accept refugees and asylum seekers. Meanwhile, death tolls mount.

Between the fact that the Obama White House never had a strategic plan for the Middle East, nor one for Central and Latin America, while as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry do not have one either. Meanwhile people suffer and the whole consequence threatens national security, healthcare, education, taxpayers, crimes and more.

Germany

Poland

United Kingdom

Italy

United States

There is more for sure….

Bodies found dead in a truck near border, while asylum seekers flow into Hungary

GENEVA, Aug 28 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency said it was “deeply shocked and saddened” at the grim discovery yesterday of the bodies of 71 people inside a truck abandoned near the Austrian border with Hungary.

“This tragedy underscores the ruthlessness of people smugglers who have expanded their business from the Mediterranean sea to the highways of Europe. It shows they have no regard for human life and are only after profit,” UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming told a press briefing in Geneva.

Austrian police said that they believed the truck came from Hungary and entered Austria on Wednesday night or early on Thursday morning, and that the victims might have been dead for one or two days. Their identity is still unknown but it is presumed that they were being transported by smugglers.

After establishing that there were no survivors, the truck was closed again by the police and moved to another location for further investigations. Police said that they counted at least 20 bodies but the actual number is likely to be much higher.

“This tragedy also highlights the desperation of people seeking protection or a new life in Europe. UNHCR hopes this incident will result in strong cooperation among European police forces, intelligence agencies and international organisations to crack down on the smuggling trade while putting in place measures to protect and care for victims,” Fleming said.

UNHCR has reiterated its call to European countries to approach the refugee crisis in a spirit of solidarity and cooperation and to provide those seeking safety in Europe with safe legal alternatives to dangerous irregular voyages. These legal avenues include resettlement or humanitarian admission programs, flexible visa policies and family reunification.

“This week, the Hungarian border police have been intercepting more than 2,000 people crossing the border from Serbia every day. On Wednesday, police reported 3,241 new arrivals, including 700 children. This is the highest number in a single day so far this year,” Fleming detailed.

She added that these people, a majority of whom are refugees from Syria, including many women and children, are coming in large groups of over 200 people, walking along the rail tracks or crawling under barbed wire, as work continues on a 175 kilometres long wall at the border between Hungary and Serbia.

“Fear of police detection makes many of them rush through the razor wires, sustaining cuts and injuries in the process. UNHCR staff at the border report that many people are arriving on wheelchairs pushed by relatives, while others are in need of urgent medical assistance,” Fleming explained.

Police take the new arrivals to a pre-registration centre in Röszke in southern Hungary, near the Serbian border and some 184 kilometres away from the capital, Budapest. The centre in Röszke does not offer adequate conditions for the exhausted, hungry and thirsty asylum-seekers who have spent many days on the road.

In Röszke, new arrivals are searched by the police and their details recorded, before being sent to registration centres, further inland. Asylum-seekers are kept in mandatory detention between 12 and 36 hours, and then handed over to the Office of Immigration and Nationality to process their asylum claims. Hungary’s four reception centres have a maximum capacity of 5,000 people.

“Overcrowding and long waits result in frustration for the asylum-seekers. The Hungarian police do not have social workers or enough interpreters in Arabic, Dari, Pashto and Urdu, which makes it hard to communicate with asylum-seekers,” Fleming continued.

Over 140,000 people have sought asylum in Hungary so far this year, according to the latest official statistics, compared to 42,000 people last year. Most of those lodging asylum applications this year are nationals from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan and they include around 7,000 unaccompanied children or separated from their parents.

Many refugees and migrants choose to leave Hungary for other countries in Europe. Every day up to 500 people sleep at the two main train stations in Budapest where volunteers look after their basic needs, including food, clothing and urgent medical attention, and where the city authorities give them access to sanitation facilities. In order to provide more adequate accommodation, the city authorities are planning to open a transit facility, with UNHCR’s technical advice.

Human smuggling network dismantled

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One must keep in mind that this is yet a result of the Obama White House backdoor Dreamer program.

A human smuggling network that operated in Central America, Mexico and the United States was dismantled in a multinational operation.

Eleven members of the network, that used sea routes to transport undocumented immigrants trying to reach the United States, were arrested in three Mexican states: Oaxaca, Puebla and Guerrero.

The Attorney General’s Office said that the migrants arrived to the port of Salina Cruz, Oaxaca and were taken from there to the U.S. border by land. It added that cash, credit cards, weapons, ammunition, mobiles and five cell phones were seized as part of the operation, for which Mexico shared information and coordinated with authorities in the United States, El Salvador and Guatemala.

***

FoxLatino: “As a result of actions against a transnational criminal organization dedicated to trafficking in people, including unaccompanied minor migrants, that operates in Central America with the United States of America as its destination via Mexico, 11 members of said group have been detained,” the AG’s office said in a statement.

The suspects were arrested in Oaxaca and Guerrero states, both in southern Mexico, and in the central state of Puebla, the AG’s office said.

The arrests were made as part of an investigation that started several months ago and is being coordinated with officials in El Salvador and Guatemala, the SEIDO organized crime unit said.

The people trafficking network used maritime routes on Mexico’s Pacific coast to move the migrants, the Special Unit for Investigations of Trafficking in Minors, People and Organs, or UEITMPO, said.

Migrants were taken to Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, and later moved by land via several other states to northern Mexico, the UEITMPO said.

Investigators searched 10 properties, including a bar, in Oaxaca, as well as one property in Puebla and two in Guerrero.

Cash, bank cards and documents, firearms, ammunition, cell phones and five vehicles were seized, the AG’s office said.

The suspects were turned over to federal prosecutors, who plan to charge them with people trafficking and organized crime.

How bad is this human trafficking?

InSight: Authorities in Mexico have uncovered a web of human trafficking alliances stretching across 17 states and involving groups from the biggest cartels down to family-run crime clans, in an illustration of the scale of the trade and the pressure on major criminal organizations to move into new businesses.

Based on testimony from victims, the Attorney General’s organized crime unit (SEIDO) linked crime families in the small central state of Tlaxcala to drug cartels including the Zetas, the Familia Michoacana, the Knights Templar and the Gulf Cartel, reported Excelsior.

One of the routes used by the networks is to bring minors from the southeast states of Oaxaca, Veracruz, Hidalgo and Chiapas and transport them by truck to safe houses in Tlaxcala, from where victims are either moved to Tijuana near the US border or to Mexico City.

The tactics used to obtain victims have reportedly developed over time, with criminal groups now often using social networking sites rather than kidnapping to recruit victims, found SEIDO.

According to Excelsior, 70,000 people become victims of human trafficking every year in Mexico. The crime earns criminal groups an estimated $42 million annually — which amounts to about $600 per victim — and 47 criminal organizations are involved.

InSight Crime Analysis

In 2010, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean (CATW-LAC) reported that an estimated 1.2 million people in Mexico were victims of human trafficking. The National Refuge Network has reported that 800,000 adults and 20,000 children are trafficked for sexual exploitation in the country each year.

As highlighted by Excelsior, the human trafficking business model is sophisticated, with the work divided between a range of criminal groups responsible for different aspects of the trade, such as recruitment or transport.

Human trafficking in the country used to be dominated by small, independent networks, but drug cartels have taken an increasingly important role in the crime as they seek to diversify their revenue streams in the face of pressure on the drug business. In 2013, the regional head of CATW-LAC stated that 70 percent of sex trafficking cases reported to the organization involved drug gangs.

The importance of Tlaxcala in the human trafficking networks may be due to the state’s central location and proximity to Mexico City. Between January 2010 and July 2013, Tlaxcala saw the greatest number of convictions for human trafficking and tied with Baja California for the largest number of cases opened for this crime. The state was also the site of a major sex trafficking network dismantled in 2011.