Category Archives: Military

Due to N. Korea, Hawaii Calls for Emergency Response

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CAMP H.M. SMITH, Hawaii — The U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) detected and tracked what we assess was a North Korean missile launch at 11:42 a.m. Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time, April 4. The launch of a single ballistic missile occurred at a land-based facility near Sinpo.

The missile was tracked until it landed in the Sea of Japan at 11:51 a.m.

Initial assessments indicate that the type of missile was a KN-15 medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM).

USPACOM is fully committed to working closely with our Republic of Korea and Japanese allies to maintain security.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) determined that the missile launch from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America.

Specialists Think North Korea Poses Nuclear Threat to Hawaii

Nuclear arms experts think North Korea already has, or soon will have, the ability to target Hawaii with a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile with possibly about the same destructive force as the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Warnings are mounting apace with that growing threat.

“North Korea’s unprecedented level of nuclear testing and ballistic missile development offers a sobering reminder that the United States must remain vigilant against rogue nation-states that are able to threaten the homeland,” Air Force Gen. Lori Robinson, who heads the North American Aerospace Defense Command, told a congressional committee Thursday.

In Hawaii a profusion of four-star military commands — including U.S. Pacific Command, which oversees U.S. military activity over half the globe — makes Oahu a strategic and symbolic target. The threat from an unpredictable North Korea, in turn, is prompting a revisitation of some old Cold War practices that until recently seemed laughable.

Duck and cover? Still there in the form of “shelter in place,” state officials say.

Nuclear fallout shelters? In 1981, Oahu had hundreds of them. The Prince Kuhio Building could hold 14,375 people — not because it has a secret underground bunker, but because its concrete parking structure could be used as shelter.

“Each one of those facilities had to be surveyed for how much concrete density [was present],” said Toby Clairmont, executive officer of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, the successor to Civil Defense. “And they had to be equipped, so they put medical kits in them, food, sanitary kits, all that kind of stuff.”

As time went on, funding for those provisions stopped, and the stocks were disposed of because they became too old, Clairmont said. In the majority of cases, existing fallout shelter markings are out of date and no longer applicable.

Alternatively, the U.S. military would try to shoot down an incoming North Korean ICBM with ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California, although the $36 billion system was rated by the Pentagon in December as having low reliability.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, ICBMs in the late 1990s came off Hawaii Emergency Management’s threat list of mostly natural hazards. Terrorism was added, and in 2006 the state practiced for a half-kiloton explosion in Honolulu Harbor that resulted in up to 8,000 casualties with injuries or radiation.

A new threat

President Donald Trump, who met last week with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida, has warned that the United States might take unilateral action against North Korea unless China does more to rein in its pugnacious neighbor. He did not mention a pre-emptive first strike per se.

Such a first strike presumably would take out the fixed launch sites at Sohae and Tonghae, but North Korea is also believed to have road-mobile launchers that could survive to retaliate — if they actually work.

With North Korea emerging as a new threat, state Emergency Management Administrator Vern Miyagi said it’s time to update the previous plans.

“If you were to ask me what is the status of North Korea, and is [a missile attack] a high probability — no, it’s a low probability,” said Miyagi, a retired Army two-star general who served at the Pacific Command as senior adviser for military support to civil authorities operations and Reserve and National Guard affairs.

“But then, so, we have to keep a lookout for that [threat]. That’s why we’re talking about updating the plan. It’s an awakening. Maybe we should get involved with” fallout shelters again and identify where still-usable shelters are located, he said.

Fallout protection exists to some degree in any building, but it is most effective in heavy concrete buildings and underground structures, he said.

The agency does monthly tests with the Pacific Command using secure communications, Miyagi said. The advice in the event of a missile attack is still to duck and cover and “get into a substantial building,” he said.

“The bottom line in our plan right now is close coordination with Pacific Command, the military side, so that we understand what’s happening, and we can prepare for it with what we have — and what we have right now is very thin,” Miyagi said.

Looking for a solution

During the Cold War, the state envisioned moving hundreds of thousands of Oahu residents to the neighbor islands if things heated up with the Soviet Union. However, a North Korean ICBM could reach Hawaii in under 20 minutes with no warning, experts say.

Robinson, the North American Aerospace Defense commander, said 2016 was “one of North Korea’s most active years in terms of nuclear weapon and missile program development in pursuit of weaponizing a nuclear ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States.”

Riki Ellison, chairman of the nonprofit Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, is among a growing number of voices calling for “operationalizing” the Aegis Ashore facility on Kauai in emergencies to be able to shoot down North Korean missiles. Right now, it’s used for missile defense testing only.

Ellison said the new SM-3 Block IIA missile, which is expected to have ICBM shoot-down capability, is a “critical asset required for the region and Hawaii.”

“For U.S. homeland defense, the emergency operational activation of the Aegis Ashore site, to include the AN/TPY-2 radar at the Pacific Missile Range Facility,” is needed in the short term, Ellison said in a release.

In 2015, Adm. Bill Gortney, then commander of North American Aerospace Defense, said, “Our assessment is that they [North Korea] have the ability to put … a nuclear weapon on a KN-08 [missile] and shoot it at the homeland.”

Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program and founding publisher of Arms Control Wonk.com, said the road-mobile KN-08 hasn’t been flight-tested yet.

“This is a very important caution because an ICBM that has never been tested is very unreliable,” he said in an email. If it works, it can probably hit targets throughout the U.S., he said.

North Korea claimed that its last nuclear test validated a standardized warhead of at least 10 kilotons for its long-range missiles, but it “may be significantly more than that,” Lewis added. Ellison, with the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, maintains North Korea might have a miniaturized warhead around 20 kilotons.

The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was 15 kilotons, while a 20-kiloton device was detonated over Nagasaki.

This article is written by William Cole from The Honolulu Star-Advertiser and was legally licensed via the Tribune Content Agency through the NewsCred publisher network.

Answer to Those Missile Failures of N. Korea

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The author of this site has mentioned for several months the reason for the recent failed missile launches of North Korea. There are two distinct causes and both point to the United States. They are cyber operations and electronic warfare.

Over the past decade of conflict, the U.S. Army has deployed the most capable communications systems in its history. U.S. forces dominated cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) in Afghanistan and Iraq against enemies and adversaries lacking the technical capabilities to challenge our superiority in cyberspace. However, regional peers have since demonstrated impressive capabilities in a hybrid operational environment that threaten the Army’s dominance in cyberspace and the EMS.

The Department of Defense information network-Army (DODIN-A) is an essential warfighting platform foundational to the success of all unified land operations. Effectively operating, securing, and defending this network and associated data is essential to the success of commanders at all echelons. We must anticipate that future enemies and adversaries will persistently attempt to infiltrate, exploit, and degrade access to our networks and data. A commander who loses the ability to access mission command systems, or whose operational data is compromised, risks the loss of lives and critical resources, or mission failure. In the future, as adversary and enemy capabilities grow, our ability to dominate cyberspace and the EMS will become more complex and critical to mission success.

Incorporating cyberspace electromagnetic activities (CEMA) throughout all phases of an operation is key to obtaining and maintaining freedom of maneuver in cyberspace and the EMS while denying the same to enemies and adversaries. CEMA synchronizes capabilities across domains and warfighting functions and maximizes complementary effects in and through cyberspace and the EMS. Intelligence, signal, information operations (IO), cyberspace, space, and fires operations are critical to planning, synchronizing, and executing cyberspace and electronic warfare (EW) operations. CEMA optimizes cyberspace and EW effects when integrated throughout Army operations. More here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can be assured there is acute cooperation between the military and other Federal agencies including the CIA and NSA when it comes to North Korea. What do we know that media is not sharing?

North Korea’s proliferation of missile technology and expertise is another serious concern for the United States. Pyongyang has sold missile parts and/or technology to several countries, including Egypt, Iran, Libya, Burma, Pakistan, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.53 Sales of missiles and telemetric information from missile tests have been a key source of hard currency for the Kim regime.

North Korea and Iran have cooperated on the technical aspects of missile development since the 1980s, exchanging information and components.54 Reportedly, scientific advisors from Iran’s ballistic missile research centers were seen in North Korea leading up to the December 2012 launch and may have been a factor in its success.55 There are also signs that China may be assisting the North Korean missile program, whether directly or through tacit approval of trade in sensitive materials. Heavy transport vehicles from Chinese entities were apparently sold to North Korea and used to showcase missiles in a military parade in April 2012, prompting a U.N. investigation of sanctions violations.56  More here.

Security experts and U.S. officials have voiced increasing concern about North Korea’s improving cyberattack capabilities. In March 2013, an attack on the computer systems of several South Korean media and financial institutions disrupted their functioning for days, in one of the most significant cyberattacks in the country’s history; cybersecurity analysts identified North Korean hackers as the culprit.68 The FBI determined that North Korean hackers were responsible for the November 2014 cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, an intrusion that disrupted the company’s communication systems, released employees’ personal information, and leaked yet-to-be released films. (Some reports speculate that the cyberattack on Sony Pictures could have been an attempt to punish the company for its production of a comedy in which American journalists assassinate Kim Jong-un at the instigation of the Central Intelligence Agency.) Perhaps in response to doubts about the attribution of the cyberattack to North Korea, U.S. officials revealed that the National Security Agency had penetrated North Korean computer networks years in advance of the Sony hacking.69

*** Much has been printed in recent months, the WikiLeaks release of the CIA/NSA toolkit that demonstrates abilities of both agencies ability to intrude and intercept adversaries and allies in the cyber realm. Due to private citizens fear of unauthorized and possible access to personal data and internet activities, many Americans are angry. That anger is not misplaced, however, consider, do we want our agencies to have cyber skills to penetrate such rogue regimes as North Korea, Syria, Iran or militant factions such as al Qaeda and Islamic State? The answer is likely yes.

The UK Sunday Times reports: ”

A missile test by North Korea that failed seconds after launch may have been sabotaged by a US cyber-attack, a former foreign secretary has said.

The US said a ballistic missile “blew up immediately” after firing near the port of Sinpo on the east coast early today.

“It could have failed because the system is not competent enough to make it work, but there is a very strong belief that the US through cyber methods has been successful on several occasions in interrupting these sorts of tests and making them fail,” Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former foreign and defence secretary, told the BBC.”.

*** The UK Telegraph tells us in part: U.S. Pacific Command detected and tracked what it assessed to be a North Korean ballistic missile launch at 11:21 a.m. Hawaii time (2121 GMT) on Saturday, said U.S. Navy Commander Dave Benham, a spokesman for  Pacific Command.

“The missile blew up almost immediately. The type of missile is still being assessed,” he said.

It was launched  from a base at Sinpo, a port city on the North Korean east coast. The North’s previous attempted missile launch, on April 5, also suffered an in-flight failure before the weapon crashed into the Sea of Japan. Experts have suggested that the United States may be carrying out “left-of-launch” attacks on the missiles using electromagnetic propagation or cyber attacks, including through infected electronics aboard the weapon that confuse its command and control or targeting systems. More here.

*** So, while we tend to panic and push back on the cyber toolkit of Federal agencies which WikiLeaks tells us to do, perhaps we should look wider and deeper to the positive affects of those operations as Japan and S. Korea are most at risk if North Korea is remotely successful. Can and do Federal agencies exploit cyber tools and electronic warfare against American citizens and is there evidence of abuse? Not so much yet, but this site does invite readers to offer evidence.

*** Some other items of interest with regard to North Korea:

  1. Chinese troops are always stationed in the northeast near North Korea, and Yun Sun, a senior associate with the East Asia Program at the Stimson Center, told Business Insider that “Chinese troop movements happen often along that border” when North Korean nuclear and missile provocations seem imminent.

    “When North Korea acts up with some sort of provocation, the Chinese in the past have moved their troops to reinforce their deployments in the northeast for military preparedness,” Yun said.

    “On the other hand,” Yun said, “I think it does signal that the Chinese are concerned about a potential escalation, or even potential conflict” between the US and North Korea, as North Korea plans a nuclear test and the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier pulls up to Korea’s coast.

  2. North Korea forces citizens to work outside the country in often slave labor conditions and the regime keeps 85% of the revenue. “150,000 N.Koreans Sent to Slave Labor Abroad,” Chosun Ilbo, November 13, 2014.  This often amounts to $1 billion a year in revenue.
  3. North Korea selling arms to Hamas and advises on tunnel systems.
  4. North Korea has a sizeable inventory and robust program in both chemical and biological weapons. While the DPRK possesses considerable capabilities to deliver CW agents, it is unclear whether comparable munitions are available to deliver BW agents. Although the DPRK has advanced missile technology, the fragile nature of biological agents complicates the task of using missiles as a means of delivery and dispersal. While the ROK government has estimated that half of the DPRK’s long-range missiles and 30 percent of its artillery pieces are capable of delivering chemical or biological warheads, it is not known whether biological payloads would survive and be effectively dispersed by these missiles. More here.

 

 

 

Just Released Afghanistan MOAB Strike Video

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KABUL, Afghanistan (April 13, 2017) – A GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb strikes ISIS-K cave and tunnel systems in the Achin district of the Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan at 7:32 p.m. local time Thursday. The strike was designed to minimize risk to Afghan and U.S. Forces conducting clearing operations in the area while maximizing the destruction of ISIS-K fighters and facilities and eliminate any perceived safe haven for ISIS-K in Afghanistan

***

So what do those caves and tunnels look like that have been used by al Qaeda, bin Ladin and Islamic State?

Meanwhile, Russia and Iran are in meetings regarding Afghanistan. Russia is bragging too about their weapons that is bigger than the U.S. MOAB.

The 21,600-pound MOAB was developed in 2003 as a weapon to attack against elite Republican Guard units during the invasion of Iraq. But the bomb, which replaced the Vietnam-era 15,000-pound BLU-82 Daisy Cutter, was not used in that conflict because of the rapidity of Saddam Hussein’s army.

Soon after the Pentagon announced the new weapon, Russia began working on a counterpart. In 2007, it successfully tested the massive thermobaric weapon.

The bomber-dropped bomb is designed to explode midair by ignition of a fuel-air mixture that produces massive blast effects comparable to small tactical nuclear weapons.

“All that is alive merely evaporates,” Gen. Alexander Rukshin, deputy chief of the Russian general staff, was quoted as saying at the time.

Thermobaric devices detonate in two stages, with an initial blast dispersing explosive materials in a cloud that is then ignited by a secondary charge. The explosion generates a much bigger pressure wave than conventional explosives, followed by a vacuum effect that compounds damage and injuries caused by the blast.

Russian sources have claimed their weapon has a power equivalent to 44 tons of TNT – or four times that of the MOAB – despite being somewhat lighter than the U.S. munition at 16,650 pounds. Because of its yield and the extremely high temperatures it generates, it is slated to replace smaller battlefield nukes currently in the Russian arsenal.

When the Russian air force began bombing rebel positions in Syria in September 2015, smaller thermobaric bombs were used against Islamic State positions, but the FOAB was never deployed. More here.

MOAB Dropped in Astan, where Green Beret was Killed

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U.S. Bombs, Destroys Khorasan Group Stronghold in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 13, 2017 — At 7:32 p.m. local time today, U.S. Forces Afghanistan conducted a strike on an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria-Khorasan tunnel complex in Achin district, Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, as part of ongoing efforts to defeat ISIS-K in Afghanistan, according to a U.S. Forces Afghanistan news release

ISIS-K, also known as the Korasan group, is based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and is composed primarily of former members of Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban.

Image result for gbu-43/b blast radius

The strike used a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb dropped from a U.S. aircraft. The strike was designed to minimize the risk to Afghan and U.S. forces conducting clearing operations in the area while maximizing the destruction of ISIS-K fighters and facilities.

“As ISIS-K’s losses have mounted, they are using [improvised bombs], bunkers and tunnels to thicken their defense,” said Army Gen. John W. Nicholson, commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan. “This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against ISIS-K.”

U.S. forces took every precaution to avoid civilian casualties with this strike and will continue offensive operations until ISIS-K is destroyed in Afghanistan.

*** President Trump did not authorize this strike as several weeks ago, he told the Pentagon he was not going to micromanage Generals in the field, meaning in theater. This was a major complaint by top flag officers and Pentagon officials of Barack Obama and Susan Rice. Rice often negated protocol and directly called military officers at forward operating bases.

***

‘Wilayat Khurasan’: Islamic State Consolidates Position in AfPak Region

Jamestown: Amid a series of government denials from Pakistan and Afghanistan regarding the presence of the Islamic State militant group in these countries and its ongoing outreach activities there, its expansion was corroborated by none other than the Islamic State’s spokesperson, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, on January 26, 2015 (The Nation [Lahore] September 5, 2014; Dawn [Karachi], November 11, 2014; Pajhwok, February 5). Al-Adnani, who is believed to be in Iraq or Syria, formally announced the establishment of Wilayat Khurasan (literally Khurasan Province, hereafter IS Khurasan), a reference to a historical region broadly centering on Afghanistan and Pakistan. This claim was made, in an audio statement entitled “Say, ‘Die In Your Rage,’” which was released by al-Furqan media foundation, one of the Islamic State’s media arms. [1] He also endorsed a former Taliban commander, Hafiz Saeed Khan, as its governor (wali) in the same speech. Khan had previously pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State, along with a network of other disgruntled Taliban commanders and foot soldiers.

Previously, on January 10, in an indication of their growing extremism, Khan and his followers had released a video pledging allegiance to IS which also featured the beheading of a captive Pakistani soldier (Dunya News TV [Lahore] January 12). This was considered to be the Islamic State’s first violent action against the Pakistani state. Since then, two senior commanders of IS Khurasan have been killed in NATO-led actions in Afghanistan. The first to be eliminated, on February 9 in the Kajaki district of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, was Abdul Rauf Khadim, the “deputy governor” of Khorasan (Express Tribune [Karachi], February 10). Khadim had previously rejected the Afghan Taliban movement under Mullah Omar for being too moderate and had preached Salafism in Afghanistan. A few weeks later, his successor, Hafiz Wahidi, was killed by Afghan national security forces in Helmand, along with nine other fellow Islamic State militants (Khaama Press, March 16).

In response to these setbacks, IS Khurasan’s shura (leadership council), for now dominated by Pakistani Taliban members, quickly issued threats to avenge Khadim, eulogizing the slain leader. The 12-minute long homage video, released by “Khurasan Media” on March 17, featured a statement from Hafiz Saeed Khan entitled “Departure of Shaykh Khadim and Revenge is Coming.” [2] Sooner afterwards, on March 20, a deadly VBIED (vehicle borne improvised explosive device) attack on a Shi’a mosque in Karachi killed at least two people and left many injured. The attack was reportedly claimed by IS Khurasan?. [3]

Afghanistan: Islamic Emirate vs. Caliphate

These developments suggest that the Islamic State has found a conducive social and political environment in which to gain a foothold in the AfPak region, where several Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked Islamist groups, both violent and non-violent, already have similar sectarian and caliphate-centric worldviews. Underlining this, before his death in February’s drone strike, Khadim was reportedly actively engaged in recruiting Afghan fighters for the Islamic State, mostly in the country’s Helmand region (IBTimes, January 14). This recruitment drive and open campaigning for IS apparently led to direct confrontations with the followers of local Taliban warlord Abdul Rahim Akhund, a supporter of Mullah Omar’s self-declared “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” At one point, as a result of these tensions, Khadim was even briefly apprehended for his pro-Islamic State activities along with his 45 followers by supporters of Mullah Omar (Afghan Zariza, February 1).

In addition, Islamic State flags have been seen hoisted in Afghanistan’s Ghazni and Nimroz provinces, following which large numbers of Taliban fighters reportedly switched allegiance from Mullah Omar to al-Baghdadi (Khaama Press, February 1). Dabiq, the official Islamic State publication, further listed a number of alleged strongholds of support, including Nuristan, Kunar, Kandahar, Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Ghazni, Wardak, Kunduz, Logar and Nangarhar. [4] Furthermore, in January, information about an Islamic State training center in Afghanistan’s Farah province raised speculation about increasing Islamic State activities there (Pajhwok, January 14). Furthermore, other armed confrontations between the Islamic State and the Taliban underscores the increasing clout of IS Khurasan, especially in Charakh in Logar province where IS Khurasan militants killed Abdul Ghani, a senior Taliban commander loyal to Mullah Omar, and wounded his three associates in February (Pajhwok, February 2).

That Islamic State influence is quickly gaining ground in Afghanistan, the current seat of famed Taliban Emirate led by Mullah Omar, is not necessarily surprising. For instance, al-Baghdadi’s public questioning of the spiritual and political credibility of the Taliban’s supreme leader, and description of him as “fool” and “illiterate warlord,” has certainly found some resonance in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaeda have not been able to decisively consolidate their position after decades of struggle (Khaama Press, January 29).

Footprints in Pakistan

Before its existence was formally announced, IS Khurasan’s presence was felt across Pakistan in the form of occasional unfurling of the black flag, graffiti on the walls supporting the Caliphate and the appearance of Islamic State stickers, mostly in Karachi, Lahore and the Punjab city of Taxila in late 2014 (Dawn [Karachi], November 13, 2014; Dawn [Karachi], November 30, 2014). At around the same time, the provincial government of Balochistan uncovered massive Islamic State recruitment drives in Hangu district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and in the Kurram tribal agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). It also reportedly discovered secret official communications between long-established Pakistani militant Salafist groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Ahl-e-Sunnat wal Jamat (ASWJ) and the Islamic State, which showed the groups planning attacks on military installations and government buildings in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and on the region’s Shi’a minority (Dawn [Karachi], November 8, 2014). In addition, this January, the Pakistani security services arrested Yousaf al-Salafi, a Syrian of Pakistani origin, and his local associate Hafiz Tayyab in Lahore for allegedly recruiting youths and sending them abroad for jihad. Al-Salafi was reportedly involved in an Islamic State recruitment campaign and was charging the group about $600 for every person he recruited (Express Tribune [Karachi], January 28).

In addition, leaflets and propaganda materials in support of the Islamic State have been distributed in several parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and South Waziristan. There have also been verbal endorsements from pro-Taliban clerics like Maulana Abdul Aziz, chief of Islamabad’s Red Mosque (Lal Masjid), which was the epicenter of anti-government violence in July 2007. However, the most brazen support came from women students and teachers of the Jamia-e-Hafsa madrassa, which is part of the Red Mosque and led by the principal of the seminary, Umme Hassan, who is Abdul Aziz’s wife (Kashmir Observer, December 8, 2014; Express Tribune [Karachi], December 14, 2014). The students of Jamia-e-Hafsa offered an oath of fealty to al-Baghdadi in late November of last year, and invited al-Baghdadi to “avenge” the 2007 Pakistan army raid and loss of life at the then-besieged Red Mosque. However, Umme Hassan maintained that they still considered Mullah Omar of the Afghan Taliban as their supreme leader. It should be noted that the Lal Masjid has been at the forefront in supporting al-Qaeda and Taliban causes in the region for over a decade.

These developments suggest that similar oaths of allegiance from sectarian militant groups like Ansar ul-Khilafa wal Jihad (formerly, Tehrik-e-Khilafat Jihad) and Jundullah in support of the Islamic State and al-Baghdadi have made it relatively easy for the Islamic State to find traction and a foothold in Pakistan. These militant groups also remain active. For instance, in January, Ansar ul-Khilafa wal Jihad claimed responsibility for killing security personnel in Karachi, Multan and Hyderabad (ARY News, January 22). Jundullah meanwhile claimed responsibility for targeting Shi’a mosques across the country, including the deadly Shikarpur imambargah blast on January 30 (Dawn [Karachi], January 31). This indicates that it would likely be relatively easy for the Islamic State members working with these groups to begin conducting attacks of their own in Pakistan. Unsurprisingly, as with Afghanistan, Dabiq, has claimed that the Islamic State has influence in a number of places in Pakistan, including in Peshawar, Swat, Marwat, Kuki Khel, Tor Dara, Dir, Hangu, Bajaur, Orakzai, Kurram and Waziristan, although some of these claims should probably be seen as propaganda. [5]

Outlook

The Islamic State’s formation of “Wilayat Khurasan” and its endorsement by the organization’s central leadership reveals at least two changing aspects of militant Islamism in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Firstly, it shows militants rejecting al-Qaeda and Taliban, and secondly, for the first time in decades, it involves militants clearly rejecting Mullah Omar himself, the spiritual leader of most of the Deobandi-inspired militant groups in the region, and even openly challenging of him over his (alleged) lack of authority and lack of visible achievements in comparison to al Baghdadi and the Islamic State in the Middle East region. On the other hand, the emergence of IS Khurasan, combined with Pakistan’s ongoing anti-militant Operation Zarb-e-Azb, have encouraged fragmented Taliban units to unite once again under the Pakistani Taliban’s umbrella group, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). This was evidenced in mid-March when the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan Jamaat ul-Ahrar (TTP-JA), a powerful splinter group of TTP, and independent militant group Tehrik-e-Lashkar-e-Islam (TLeI), led by Mangal Bagh, called for a united Taliban conglomerate to fight the Pakistani state, including the army and the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence. [6] Even though such a scenario seems distant at present, these anti-state objectives, which are partly shared by both the IS Khurasan and TTP groups, suggest a potential merging point between these two powerful jihadist movements in due course.

***

Florida-based Green Beret identified as US soldier killed in Afghanistan

  WASHINGTON — Staff Sgt. Mark R. De Alencar has been identified by the Pentagon as the Green Beret killed Saturday fighting Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan.

The Florida-based soldier died in Nangarhar Province when his unit was attacked by enemy small arms fire during combat operations against ISIS, according to a Pentagon statement Monday. The 37-year-old was assigned to 1st Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group at Eglin Air Force Base. De Alencar was from Edgewood, Maryland.

American forces in Afghanistan are primarily charged with advising and assisting Afghan security forces as part of NATO’s Resolute Support mission, but the U.S. military also conducts counterterrorism combat operations against groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida under its unilateral Freedom’s Sentinel operation. Pentagon officials have said destroying the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan is among the top goals for the United States in the country for 2017.

De Alencar recently joined Special Forces as a weapons sergeant after completing the Qualification Course in September 2016, according to Army Special Operations Command. He joined the Army in 2009 and had served previously as an infantryman, including deployments to Iraq.

His awards and decorations included the Ranger Tab, Special Forces Tab, the Purple Heart, Six Army Commendation Medals, Combat Infantryman Badge and Expert Infantryman Badge.

The soldier was a 1998 graduate of Joppatowne High School in Joppa, Maryland. He and his wife Natasha had five children, according to a Facebook page for the high school’s alumni. Several alumni on the page offered condolences to De Alencar’s family and some of them noted he had long sought to join Special Forces.

De Alencar came from a military family, according to Army Special Operations Command. He was born in a military hospital in Germany where his father was stationed. He later lived in Texas before moving to Maryland.

De Alencar was the first American killed in action in Afghanistan in 2017. Ten U.S. servicemembers were killed in hostile situations in Afghanistan in 2016, according to the website icasualties.org, which tracks those numbers. Since U.S. troops first invaded Afghanistan in 2001, 2,217 American have been killed there and some 20,000 more have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon.

“On behalf of all of U.S. Force -Afghanistan, I offer our deepest condolences to the family and friends of our fallen comrade,” Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said Saturday in a statement. “We will always remember our fallen comrades and commit ourselves to deliver on their sacrifice.”

The United States and Afghan special forces are battling ISIS in the small portion of Nangarhar Province that the terrorist group still controls. Pentagon officials said ISIS is confined to only a few district centers and has lost nearly half its fighters in Afghanistan in the last year.

Have you met Professor Tim Anderson?

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Still Che-zy after all these years You think American universities are Marxist? Check out this professor. If you can stand it, check out the video below.

Note the shirt and poster..

Sydney, April 12, 2017:

Australian university students really need Hezbollah’s take on the Syrian conflict. Because Hezbollah will totally give them the inside scoop.

Why are we paying this idiot?

Assad-loving academic Tim Anderson uses his human rights lectures to spruik his book and hand out pamphlets urging students to attend a conference on Syria which includes a seminar on the war from Hezbollah’s perspective.

The Sydney University academic, who has repeatedly visited Syria as a guest of Bashar al-Assad’s government, used his food security lecture yesterday to take aim at the media as part of a conspiracy involving three US administrations.

He also handed students information on the conference which promoted a talk by his colleague Jay Tharappel, who met with a senior Assad cabinet minister in 2015.

‘Syria hoax’: Sydney University at centre of pro-Assad push

One of Australia’s most prestigious universities has become the centre of a movement that believes Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has been framed by the West for last week’s chemical weapons attack.

The University of Sydney is standing by a controversial senior lecturer, Tim Anderson, who has dismissed the sarin gas attack in the Idlib Province as a “hoax” and called Syria’s six-year civil war a “fiction” perpetrated by the US “to destroy an independent nation”.

Fairfax Media can reveal Dr Anderson is just one among a number of Australian academics who have formed a pro-Assad outfit called the Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies, based in Sydney, to counter “censorship” by their universities.

The centre was formed “after concern that many Western academic bodies constrain, censor and marginalise counter-hegemonic or anti-imperial research and discussion, due to their close ties with government and corporate sponsors”.

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad meets with Australian ...In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad meets with Australian professor Tim Anderson and a delegation including academics, researchers and activists in Damascus in 2013.  Photo: HOPD

As well as Dr Anderson, its editorial board consists of Luis Angosto-Ferrandez, another Sydney University senior lecturer, Drew Cottle from Western Sydney University, Rodrigo Acuna at Macquarie University and a number of other academics, including two from East Timor.

Next week the Centre will hold a two-day conference at the University of Sydney, including a discussion of the Syrian conflict “from Hezbollah’s perspective”. The event is endorsed by the University of Sydney Union-funded Political Economy Society.

An enthusiastic supporter of the Syrian state and lifetime radical, Dr Anderson was convicted in 1990 over the 1978 Hilton Hotel bombing in Sydney, but acquitted the following year. He has travelled to Syria several times to meet with Assad.

After his most recent pro-Assad tweets were reported by the ABC’s Media Watch and News Corp’s Daily Telegraph, Dr Anderson and his supporters labelled the reports “fake news” and launched extraordinary personal attacks on a journalist involved.

Sydney University senior lecturer Tim Anderson (centre) believes Bashar al-Assad has been framed.Sydney University senior lecturer Tim Anderson (centre) believes Bashar al-Assad has been framed. Photo: Facebook

Jay Tharappel, who tutors human rights in the same Sydney University department as Dr Anderson, called News Corp journalist Kylar Loussikian “traitorous scum who desperately wants a second Armenian genocide”. Loussikian is of Armenian background.

Mr Tharappel defended the remarks when contacted by Fairfax Media on Tuesday. “If people like him wage war on our post-colonial homeland then I will wage war against them,” he said. “They can choose to fight me and I will fight them … with words.”

The University of Sydney said it was aware the CCHS was due to host next week’s conference on campus, and noted it did not provide financial or administrative support to the centre.

Dr Anderson told Fairfax Media the CCHS had “zero budget” and its mission was to create a “virtual library” of literature in support of sovereignty and self-determination.

A spokeswoman said the university did not endorse Dr Anderson’s statements but was committed to free speech for academic staff in their area of expertise.

“This means tolerance of a wide range of views, even when the views expressed are unpopular or controversial,” she said. In a statement, the student-run Political Economy Society also said it would continue to endorse the event “at this time”.

Dr Anderson has stated on Twitter that US presidents George Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump are the real “masterminds of Middle East terrorism”. He stood by those comments on Tuesday. “Absolutely. The evidence is overwhelming,” he said.

Dr Anderson has also written a book, The Dirty War on Syria, published by the Montreal-based Centre for Research on Globalisation. The centre has been dismissed by PolitiFact and the Associated Press as a website that promotes conspiracy theories.

Mr Trump last week authorised the US firing 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Syrian airfield from which he said the deadly chemical attack was launched. The Assad regime has denied responsibility, while ally Russia said the Syrian army hit rebel-owned chemicals on the ground.

Asked about the matter while in India on Tuesday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he had not been briefed on Dr Anderson’s activities, but reiterated his support for the US air strikes and condemned the Assad regime’s “horrendous criminal conduct”.