The Indian Coastguard: A Non Performing Asset?

ByCommodore KP Mathew

22 Feb , 2014

Achieving maritime safety would entail ensuring that the laws and regulations which govern the operations of sea-borne craft are adhered to. The Indian Coast Guard has so far not been seen to play any role in this area. It has been the exclusive preserve of the Director General of Shipping who operates through the regional Maritime Marine Departments. The situation is quite different with the US Coast Guard which actively monitors this aspect in the US waters. The US Coast Guard boards vessels for wide ranging inspections including the conduct of safety drills. Vessels found deficient in any area are liable to be detained. Serious infringement can lead to imposition of penalties. They also keep a historic record of such inspections which classifies ships according to country of registry, the company to which she belongs and the result of inspections. When a higher than normal proportion of ships of a country or a particular company are found to be deficient, the rest of the ships of the country or company are highlighted for more intensive scrutiny.

The very idea of the Indian Coast Guard drew heavily on the well-established model of the US Coast Guard…

In the pre-liberalised era of the 1960s of strict import and foreign exchange controls, extensive seaborne smuggling was a way of life that was a threat to the domestic economy. The Customs with its limited resources could hardly cope and had to call for Navy’s help for patrols and interception. This scenario spawned the formation of a separate paramilitary coastal protection force in the form of the Indian Coast Guard, the very idea of which drew heavily on the well-established model of the US Coast Guard.

The interim Coast Guard came into being on February 01, 1977 with two corvettes and five patrol boats transferred from the Indian Navy and manned by its personnel. The duties and functions of the Coast Guard were formally defined in the Coast Guard Act which was passed by the Parliament on August 18, 1978, and came into immediate effect.

The Indian Coast Guard’s motto is the Sanskrit phrase, “वयम रक्षाम: ” (Vayam Rakshamah) which, in English translates to “We Protect”.

India-Pakistan: Multiple Fail With Peace Talks

Source Link

February 18, 2014: There is growing unrest in the northwestern Pakistani tribal territories because ten years of military operations against the Taliban has disrupted life for over two million people there. Travel is more difficult because of army roadblocks and Taliban attacks. Students are organizing a growing number of protests and demanding that the army end its operations in the territories. Before 2004 the army had rarely entered the territories and a special law governed how the territories were run. In effect, tribal laws prevailed but the tribal elders were unable to contain the Islamic terrorist groups in the territories. 

Pakistani diplomats and trade officials blame the military in Pakistan (especially) and India for opposing increased trade between the two countries. The Pakistani generals see fear of India as a major asset, enabling the military to justify a large chunk of the national budget and control over many economic enterprises. Less tension with India would weaken that popular and financial support. Military intelligence (ISI) is particularly afraid of reduced hostility with India because the fear generated by that protects ISI members from prosecution for the many illegal operations they carry out inside Pakistan. The Indian military is less of a problem because they fear increased trade and more open borders because it would make it easier for ISI-backed Islamic terrorists to get into India. 

From 2008 to 2012 China exported $11.2 billion (in 2012 dollars) worth of weapons. Pakistan was the major customer (getting 55 percent of this stuff). China, like Russia before it, got sales by selling to outcast nations (Pakistan for developing nukes and supporting terrorism, Burma for being a brutal dictatorship for decades). Russia still does that but with higher quality second-rate stuff. Plus, Russia has had India as a major customer for decades. Both Russia and China will tolerate bribe requests and all manner of bad behavior to get a sale. That often makes a difference in many countries. 

February 17, 2014: In eastern India (Andhra Pradesh state) 21 Maoists surrendered, saying they were disillusioned with the life of a communist rebel. 

In the Pakistani tribal territories (North Waziristan) masked gunmen kidnapped a polio vaccination team (a doctor, two technicians and three guards). In the last 15 months more than 40 people associated with the polio eradication teams have been killed by the Taliban. The Islamic terrorists believe the polio vaccination is really intended to poison Moslem children, despite the fact that kids who are vaccinated do not get polio. As a result of these attacks there were 91 cases of polio in Pakistan during 2013 and 58 in 2012. 

U.S. examines Afghanistan option that would leave behind 3,000 troops

By Karen DeYoung

February 23, 2014

Source Link

One of the four options President Obama is considering for a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan beyond this year would leave behind 3,000 troops, based in Kabul and at the American installation at Bagram, U.S. officials said. 

Military commanders have recommended 10,000 troops, with more installations across the country. But the military has spent the past several months studying what kind of reduced counterterrorism and training operations it could conduct under the smaller option, which some in the White House favor. 

The option, one of four examined, would mean a far more reduced presence than commanders urge.

Sinaloa cartel chief “El Chapo” Guzmán was captured early Saturday in the resort town of Mazatlán.

Government says it will notify news organizations to give them chance to challenge its actions in court.

Read all of the stories in The Washington Post’s ongoing coverage of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to brief his NATO counterparts in Brussels this week on the status of U.S. decision making. A senior administration official said that no announcement of specific troop numbers was planned but added that “we’ll have to tell people where we stand in our thinking and planning.” 

During a December visit to Kabul, Hagel suggested that the late-February NATO meeting was a “cutoff point” for Afghan President Hamid Karzai to sign the bilateral security agreement that sets the terms for a post-2014 U.S. presence. Although the accord was finalized in the fall, Karzai has since refused to sign it, leaving the administration to delay its decision on numbers while threatening a complete pullout when the last combat troops leave at the end of the year. 

Why the Durand Line Matters

It is time for Kabul to accept the legality of the border.

By Arwin Rahi

February 21, 2014

Source Link

Afghan officials have at times accused Pakistan of being less than honest in pushing the Afghan Taliban for talks with Kabul. Before making such statements, those same officials should also try to understand Pakistan’s deep concerns about Afghanistan’s stance on their common border. At present, Afghanistan does not officially recognize the international border with Pakistan. Instead, it has territorial claims on areas stretching from the Afghan-Pakistan border to the Indus River, all told comprising nearly 60 percent of Pakistani territory.

This border dispute has its roots in the nineteenth century, when Pakistan was part of India and India was a British colony. The British imposed the 2640 km borderline on the Amir of Afghanistan in 1893 in a bid to strengthen the former’s control over the northern parts of India. The agreement was signed between Sir Mortimer Durand, the Indian Foreign Secretary at the time, and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan in Kabul. The line is thus known as the Durand Line, and runs through Pashtun territory.

According to the Durand Line agreement, Afghanistan relinquished a few districts, including Swat, Chitral and Chageh, although it gained other areas, Nuristan and Asmar, for instance, which it had historically not controlled. The agreement, at least on paper, for the first time demarcated where the Indo-Afghan border started and ended. Before the Durand Line agreement, both India and Afghanistan would make incursions into each other’s domain of influence, frequently sparking border tensions.

In contrast to many historical accounts, Afghanistan did recognize the Durand Line as an international border. Abdur Rahman Khan’s successor, Amir Habibullah Khan, in 1905 signed a new agreement with Britain confirming the legality of the Durand Line. More importantly, article 5 of the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919, on the basis of which Afghanistan reclaimed its independence, says that Afghanistan accepted all previously agreed border arrangements with India. Unlike the previous two agreements, the Anglo-Afghan Treaty was not imposed by Britain. Afghanistan as an independent state agreed to recognize the Durand Line as an international border.

After the founding of Pakistan in 1947, Afghanistan demanded that Pashtuns living on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line be given the right to self-determination. Unsurprisingly, both Britain and Pakistan refused. In response, the Afghan government then began to ignore the Durand Line and instead assert claims over territories that lay between the line and the Indus River.

You Think YOU’RE Cold? The Siachen Glacier War Will Make You Feel Differently

The world’s most frigid battlefield is also home to the planet’s highest phone booth

Mitch Swenson in War is Boring

For close to 30 years, a war has raged over a few yards of frozen rock in the Himalayas, 22,000 feet above sea level.

Sometimes called the “Third Pole,” the Siachen Glacier stretches nearly 50 miles along the eastern Karakoram Range in the Kashmir region between India and Pakistan, where national borders can get … blurry.

The glacier’s craggy landscape, paper-thin air, heavy snowfall and bone-chilling temperatures make it one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. For armies, this is a place where mountaineering is more important than marksmanship.

Indian troops on the Siachen. Via Indian Defense Forum

In April 1984, the Indian army launched Operation Meghdoot, which sought to claim sovereignty over the treacherous glacier. The goal was to demarcate Siachen ahead of the Pakistani military, which was also trekking in the region.

India deployed a battalion of specially-trained infantrymen called the Ladakh Scouts, also known as the Snow Tigers. The scouts traveled on foot through the frozen Zoji La Pass until, on April 13, they were able to reach the critical areas surrounding the Siachen.

The expedition resulted in a brand-new word—“oropolitics,” which means mountaineering for political purposes.

After 1984, Pakistan launched several attempts to overtake the Indian army. The most famous came in 1987 when special U.S.-trained Pakistani troops infiltrated so deeply into Indian territory that the two sides fought hand-to-hand. But neither side was able to gain much ground.

Indian artillery on the Siachen. Via Indian Defense Forum

In the following years, both armies continued to dig themselves into strategic positions around the Siachen Glacier and along the Saltoro Ridge. Further skirmishes broke out in 1990, 1995, 1996 and 1999.

The Taliban Are Winning the War on Polio

A nearly eradicated disease has cropped up everywhere from Jerusalem to Kabul. You can thank Pakistani terrorists for that. 

BY Laurie Garrett 

FEBRUARY 12, 2014 

This week's tragic reappearance of polio in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, after 13 years, poses serious questions about the future of health in the country following the scheduled withdrawal of United States military personnel at the end of 2014. Without their military escorts and protection, humanitarian and non-governmental aid organizations are expected to draw down foreign personnel as well. 

Although the polio vaccine is safe, vaccination remains a sensitive topic in the region and aid workers face a mounting wave of cultural challenges. Some militants believe the common misconception that vaccinations are against Islamic law or are administered as part of a broader American plot to sterilize children or infect them with HIV. Taliban in Pakistan have been attacking polio workers and their security teams since it was revealed in 2011 the CIA used a fake Hepatitis B vaccine campaign in Abbottabad as part of an attempt to obtain blood samples from Osama bin Laden's children in order to confirm the al Qaeda chief's location. 

Despite the Pakistani government's efforts to provide police protection, at least 31 polio vaccination workers have been killed in Pakistan since July 2012. (Police and security personnel working with them have also been shot at, wounded, and killed.) These attacks, unfortunately, have had their desired effect. Along with systemic problems in supply chains and personnel management, the intimidation and violence have increasingly led mothers to opt out of all kinds of vaccines, and have stymied health efforts; outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, have increased. And as a result, polio remains unchecked in several provinces, particularly in the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. 

The 3-year-old Afghan girl named Sakina who was diagnosed with polio in Kabul comes from one of these tribal communities, the Kuchi nomadic tribe. Although her family currently resides in east Kabul, they regularly cross the border between the two countries. According to Kaneshka Baktash, a spokesman for Afghanistan's Ministry of Public Health, it is likely that Sakina contracted the virus while in Pakistan. The strain of polio she has is identical to the one circulating in Pakistan, further evidence that the case was imported. Sakina is paralyzed as a result of the disease; her family brought her to Pakistan where she is receiving treatment. 

Backgrounder on the Afghan Taliban’s Political and Military Command Structure

Abubakar Siddique
February 21, 2014

The Quetta Shura: Understanding the Afghan Taliban’s Leadership

Terrorism Monitor

The Afghan Taliban, formally called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, has proved to be resilient in its commitment to imposing its own version of Islam. The hardline movement is steered by a dozen veteran leaders collectively called the Rahbari Shura, better known as the Quetta Shura. The Shura (consultative council) directs a multi-pronged insurgency from sanctuaries in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan Province, of which Quetta is the capital. 

Quetta Shura members are veterans of the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s. A majority are mullahs, or Islamic clerics, who adhere to Deobandism – a puritanical sect of Sunni Islam in South Asia. The death of senior leaders such as Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani (in 2006), Mullah Dadullah (2007) and the arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (2010) has led to less senior leaders assuming their places in the hierarchy. 

Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Amir al-Mumineen (Commander of the Faithful), during the Taliban’s time in power (1996 – 2001), remains the movement’s undisputed leader. All important political and strategic decisions are taken in his name. His biannual statements, issued during the Muslim festivals of Eid-ul Fitr and Eid-ul Adha, are considered authentic Taliban policy pronouncements and outline the movement’s response to important events and issues. 

No-one in the current Taliban hierarchy seems to have personally met Omar for at least a decade. Mullah Gul Agha Akhund, a Quetta Shura member and longtime aide to the Taliban leader, is the only figure considered to be in active contact with the reclusive leader and is seen as the sole credible source through which Omar transmits orders.

Obama and the Lama: Shaky prospects for the Tibetan movement

C. Raja Mohan 

February 22, 2014 

US President Barack Obama met with the Dalai Lama in Washington. (AP) 

Summary

Although Barack Obama met with the The Dalai Lama, it's unlikely to have any positive effects on the status of Tibet. 

U.S. President Barack Obama met with the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, this weekend in Washington amidst protests from China. But it appears unlikely that the meeting will help reverse the international fortunes of the Tibetan movement. 

Unlike his predecessor George W. Bush, Obama has not been too enthusiastic about demonstrating American warmth towards the Dalai Lama. His priority is to improve relations with China and does not want the Tibetan question complicate his effort to build a sustainable partnership with Beijing. At the same time, Obama does not want to appear abandoning the human rights issues in China and alienate a significant section of domestic elite opinion.

During his first year in office, Obama did not meet the Dalai Lama for he ruled against irritating Beijing before his scheduled visit to China at the end of 2009. Obama’s visit to Beijing, however, did not meet the White House expectations as China sought to define its own terms for the bilateral relations. 

Obama did meet the Dalai Lama in 2010. But in deference to Chinese sensitivities, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people was escorted out of the back door of the White House to avoid encounters with the press. 

China's Little Secret

Beijing wants people to forget the Sino-Vietnamese War. 

BY Rachel Lu

FEBRUARY 19, 2014 

On Feb. 17, the 35th anniversary of the Sino-Vietnamese War, Chinese online news portal Sina released a patriotic slideshow of historical photos to commemorate the date. The text accompanying the images called the war the Defensive Counterattack War Against Vietnam, its official name in China, and insisted that "Vietnamese forces repeatedly provoked" their Chinese opponent. But the article is noteworthy not for what it says, but that it existed at all. The images attracted more than 8,400 shares and 1,800 comments on Sina Weibo, China's popular microblogging platform, with one young woman wondering why Chinese mainstream media "almost never mention this period in history." 

She was not exaggerating: China's state-owned media remained almost completely silent on the anniversary of the nearly monthlong conflict, which ended with no clear victor, and was the most recent war fought by China. (The war began after Deng Xiaoping, China's then-paramount leader, promised the newly friendly United States that he would "spank" the Soviet-backed Vietnamese regime for sending troops to Cambodia to topple the genocidal Khmer Rouge government.) Recent articles on Vietnam in People's Daily, the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece that essentially declared war on its southern neighbor with an editorial on Feb. 16, 1979, lacked any mention of the conflict. A Jan. 21 People's Daily article about anti-Chinese feelings in Vietnam avoided mention of any armed tussle between the two countries in the late 20th century, instead blaming the negative sentiment on Vietnamese's "sour" and "contradictory" attitude toward historical Chinese cultural influences and current economic dominance. Another People's Daily piece from Feb. 13 profiled the bustling town of Mong Cai on the eastern Chinese-Vietnamese border, which cleared over $2.6 billion worth of import and export goods in 2013, without mentioning that it was the scene of fierce fighting 35 years ago. 

A U.S.- China Summit Diplomacy Rivalry

With a new summit this year, the U.S. can begin to compete with China for influence in Africa.

By Istvan Tarrosy

February 21, 2014

Source Link

To date, U.S. diplomacy has not extended to high-level summits to manage state-to-state relations with countries on the African continent. That is in stark contrast to the approach China has been taken, with its triennial Forum on China-African Cooperation (FOCAC). Now, however, the situation looks ready to change, as President Barack Obama prepares to host the leaders of 47 African countries at a landmark summit, the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, in Washington, D.C. on August 5 and 6 this year.

China has long maintained a very intensive dialogue with African states, managed basically on a daily basis. As a multilateral platform, FOCAC is not just a diplomatic talkfest; it is a major tool for fostering and developing Sino-African cooperation. FOCAC represents a Chinese model for cooperation that goes well beyond the summit itself, to include frequent exchanges and follow-up commitments. It can also be seen as a decisive soft power tool to help Beijing develop an attractive image across the African continent and even elsewhere.

Since the first FOCAC was held in 2000 in Beijing, China has done much to engage with Africa in a deep and continuous dialogue, and its pragmatic approach has produced some significant results. Can the U.S. catch up, especially when it comes to winning “hearts and minds” so that other policies might be implemented? As Joshua Kurlantzick, author of Charm Offensive, noted, this rise of China by the second half of 2000 was coinciding with a “sharp decline in America’s soft power,” reflecting factors such as “cuts in American public diplomacy, scandals in American corporations, misguided trade policies, [or] a retreat from multilateral institutions.”

In this increasingly multilateral and multipolar age, emerging powers attempt to pierce the center of gravity and redraw the map of influence in international affairs. China is the most likely challenger to America as the “lonely superpower,” to borrow from Samuel Huntington’s 1999 article in Foreign Affairs. It is not surprising, then, that the U.S. president finally issued an invitation to slightly more than four-fifths of the leaders of the African continent. Also not surprising, he was clear on those whom he would not welcome. Presidents Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Omar al Bashir of North Sudan are pariahs for the U.S., while the representatives of Madagascar, Egypt and Guinea-Bissau will also be staying home.

No, President Obama, International Politics Is a Chessboard

And Ukraine is one of the most important pieces.

By Fred Kaplan

Source Link

President Obama needs to play the game, or he risks being played by Vladimir Putin.

What’s happening in Ukraine is a very big deal, for reasons that are obvious and inspiring—but also for reasons that are knotty and frightening.

It started last fall, with protests in Kiev’s Independence Square, which swelled and turned violent after the government cracked down. A familiar pattern, but things have taken a twist in just the past 24 hours. President Viktor Yanukovych waved the white flag and, alongside the three main protest leaders, signed a deal that meets nearly all their demands, including the restoration of the 2004 constitution (which he had repealed to give himself more power) and the holding of elections at the end of the year.

FRED KAPLAN

Fred Kaplan is the author ofThe Insurgents and the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Almost at once, the Ukrainian parliament assumed its restored powers and passed laws firing the interior minister, granting amnesty to protesters, and freeing Yulia Tymoshenko, a reform politician who, after just barely losing to Yanukovych in the 2010 election, was sentenced to prison for seven years on dubious corruption charges.

But the crisis in the Ukraine is far from over. The day’s events mark not its resolution but the start of its political phase. And what’s going on isn’t a clash of democracy versus dictatorship—or, it’s not only that. It is, fundamentally, a struggle for power—not only within Ukraine but also between Russia and the West.

Take a closer look at the genesis of this crisis. It was Yanukovych’s decision in November to back out of a thickening association with the European Union and instead get back in bed with Russia, lured by Vladimir Putin’s offer of a $15 billion bailout. The first protesters came to Independence Square because they wanted to become Europeans, and not just economically; they were protesting their president’s retreat from the Western future to the Eastern past.

** Is Russia's Destiny Autocratic?

February 20, 2014

by Robert Kaplan

In 1967, the late British historian Hugh Seton-Watson wrote in his epic account, The Russian Empire, 1801-1917, "If there is one single factor which dominates the course of Russian history, at any rate since the Tatar conquest, it is the principle of autocracy." He goes on to explain how the nations of Western Europe were formed by a long struggle between "the monarchial power and the social elite." In England, the elite usually won, and that was a key to the development of parliamentary democracy. But in Russia it was generally agreed that rather than granting special privileges to an elite, "It was better that all should be equal in their subjection to the autocrat."

This profound anti-democratic tradition of Russian political culture has its roots in geography, or as Seton-Watson prefers to explain it, in military necessity. Between the Arctic ice and the mountains of the Caucasus, and between the North European Plain and the wastes of the Far East, Russia is vast and without physical obstacles to invasion. Invasion of Russia is easy, and was accomplished, albeit with disastrous results, by Napoleon and Hitler, as well as by the armies of the Mongols, Sweden, Lithuania and Poland. As Seton-Watson argues, "Imagine the United States without either the Atlantic or the Pacific, and with several first-rate military powers instead of the Indians," and you would have a sense of Russia's security dilemma. Whereas in America the frontier meant opportunity, in Russia, he says, it meant insecurity and oppression.

Because security in Russia has been so fragile, there developed an obsession about it. And that obsession led naturally to repression and autocracy.

Russia's brief and rare experiments with democracy or quasi-democracy were failed and unhappy ones: Witness the governments of Alexander Kerensky in 1917 that led to the Bolshevik Revolution and of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s that led to Vladimir Putin's neo-czardom. Truly, Russia's fare has been autocracy, and given the utter cruelty of czars and communists, Putin is but a mild dictator. When Western pundits and policymakers say they are unhappy with his autocratic arrangement, they are basically making a negative judgment on Russian history. For by Russia's historical standards, Putin is certainly not all that bad.

Putin now represents an autocrat in crisis, a familiar story in Russia. His problems are, for the most part, unsolvable, like those faced by Russian autocrats before him. And there are many of them.

Britannia Rues the Waves

FEB. 17, 2014

Roger Cohen

Source Link

LONDON — Pity poor Scotland. Within days it has been warned that if it has the temerity to vote for independence in September it can forget about a currency union with the pound and forget about becoming a member of the European Union, two ideas Scottish nationalist leaders have presented as entirely feasible.

The first warning came from George Osborne, the British chancellor of the Exchequer, who declared that, “If Scotland walks away from the U.K. it walks away from the U.K. pound.” He added that “there’s no legal reason why the rest of the U.K. would need to share its currency with Scotland.”

The second was delivered by José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, who told the BBC it would be “extremely difficult, if not impossible,” for Scotland to join the European Union because it would require the unanimous approval of other member states. That was a remote possibility given the dim view taken by some countries, notably Catalonia-fearing Spain, on secession. Spain, Barroso noted, had not recognized Kosovo, which broke away from Serbia.

“Bluff, bluster and bullying” was the verdict of Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National Party and the campaign for independence, to Osborne’s apparent threat. John Swinney, Scotland’s finance minister, called Barroso’s remarks “pretty preposterous.” Scots, both men suggested, would not be cowed.

The battle for Scotland is heating up 307 years after the union of 1707. A pretty successful union it has been, too, but, unthreatened and restless, Scots troop off to Norway, another small country with oil, and think, hey, why not? Some are more inclined to recall the victory over the English at the Battle of Bannockburn 700 years ago than Englishmen and Scots together in the trenches of World War I a century ago.

Recent polls suggest a close outcome, with the plurality that favors staying inside the union eroding fast. The refusal of David Cameron, the British prime minister, to debate Salmond has not helped the union’s cause.

Robert Fulford: Islamism’s unfolding war for the Middle East

Robert Fulford
February 22, 2014

Source Link

KARAM AL-MASRI/AFP/Getty Imagesn Islamist rebel fighter looks on as he holds weapons in the Salaheddin district of the war-battered northern Syrian city of Aleppo on October 2, 2013.

In Qamishli, a northeastern Syrian city of 200,000, members of the country’s ethnic Kurd minority are working on a constitution. They are unrecognized by the UN or any national government; but amidst the centrifugal chaos of Syria’s civil war, they are managing to act a lot like a small state.

Syria’s Kurdish population is tiny compared to its Arab majority. Yet they are creating an autonomous government. Their police, the People’s Protection Units, authorized by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, keep the streets comparatively safe. Their municipal government issues building permits. Schools teach Kurdish. They expect democracy will come to Syria as a federal system, with a Kurdish province. Looking farther, they dream about a pan-Kurdish nation, uniting them with Kurds from Iraq, Iran and Turkey.

Kurds are now effectively running parts of Syria and Iraq — even if no one else recognizes their authority

The Syrian Kurds and their quasi-state are one of the striking recent developments in the Middle East. Under pressure from the Syrian civil war and the fallout from the Arab Spring, borders in the region have grown porous, national identities weaker. Refugees and jihadist warriors crowd the roads, the distressed and those who hope to cause distress.

As a result, the Middle East seems to be heading toward the first change in its national boundaries since the European colonial powers drew the map of the region nine decades ago

THE ARAB SPRING MODEL OF PROTEST, SYMBOLIZED BY TAHIR SQUARE, IS NOW DESTABILIZING DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED LEADERS

February 21, 2014 · by Fortuna's Corner

PATRICK COCKBURN

Are protesters overthrowing a brutal despot, or merely bad losers at the polls?

World View: The Arab Spring model of protest, symbolised by Tahrir Square, is now destabilising democratically elected leaders

Source Link

In the spring of 2011 I was in Benghazi, standing in a crowd of anti-Gaddafi demonstrators protesting outside the hotel of a visiting delegation. Most of the protesters were waving banners with slogans written in English in front of the cameras of foreign television companies, but, when I talked to them, many spoke only Arabic. The slogans were politically sophisticated and left the impression that the rebels in eastern Libya were liberally minded secular democrats rising up to overthrow a demonic dictator.

I was a little uneasy about reporting this because the demonstration gave a misleading idea of the people, in reality Islamic fundamentalists of different types, who were the driving force behind the Libyan uprising. But at the same time I thought it quite right that the revolutionaries should use every PR trick available. There was no doubt the uprising had massive support in Benghazi and who was Gaddafi to complain when he had denied Libyans freedom of expression for 42 years? So what if the protesters had concocted a version of reality shaped for television and western viewers. Didn’t the Republican and Democratic Parties in the United States invariably do the same?

At this time, revolutionaries in the Arab world believed they had hit on a winning formula in confronting a repressive state. Peaceful protesters would take over a square or central space in a capital city, such as Tahrir Square in Cairo or the Pearl Roundabout, Bahrain, which became the symbol of resistance and the rallying point for demonstrators. It was also the stage where every charge by the police and counter-charge by protesters would be played out before the cameras. A simple narrative of peaceful people resisting a brutal despotic regime could be established.

The More You Talk, the Less You Know

The real experts don't want your retweets, likes, or shares. 

BY Micah Zenko Micah 

Zenko is the Douglas Dillon fellow in the Center for Preventive Action (CPA) at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Previously, he worked for five years at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and in Washington, DC, at the Brookings Institution, Congressional Research Service, and State Department's Office of Policy Planning.

FEBRUARY 20, 2014 

"The smartest folks I know in just about every academic or policy field, don't tweet, blog, or actively appear in the media." I tweeted that line recently; I meant it as an innocuous observation, neither intended to slander any prominent intellectuals nor to challenge lesser-known, media-shy experts or academics. Nevertheless, I received several objections to my comment from individuals who are the tops in their fields and are unafraid of self-promotion and publicity. But I stand by what I wrote. Since Twitter does not provide adequate space, please allow me to clarify. 

The vast majority of my own research is based on first-person interviews with practitioners. This approach is founded on two assumptions: (1) U.S. foreign policymaking and implementation options and outcomes cannot be analyzed without understanding their processes, and (2) the best way to obtain process-related information is to speak with serving or retired U.S. government staffers and officials, as well as analysts, academics, and activists both in and out of the United States. Over time, I have found that the most-informed and thoughtful people -- from whom I learn about foreign policy or national security issues -- are private intellectuals, who are totally unknown to the general public. For these wise people, this is the logical result of a dearth of incentives to engage with the public and a glut of misperceptions about social media. 

I have spent much of the past seven years researching and writing on the U.S. policy of targeted killings, especially by unmanned aerial vehicles. In doing so, I have been fortunate enough to speak with more than 200 people in and out of government who have worked on the issue. The four people who provided the most insights are a U.S. Air Force colonel, an aerospace industry analyst, a former human rights investigator from a country that is frequently bombed by U.S. drones, and a retired CIA operations officer. 

Not Your Grandfather's Insurgency — Criminal, Spiritual, and Plutocratic

February 20, 2014 

Dr. Robert J. Bunker

The U.S. Army is facing both ongoing and projected austere economic times with deep troop and budget cuts. As a result, a concomitant rise in soul searching over the Army’s “strategic Landpower” contribution to national defense is increasingly evident. This is a natural and expected occurrence for a Service that has been in the spotlight for over a decade in ground campaigns—albeit very much anti-insurgent focused—in Iraq and Afghanistan that, respectively, has and is coming to an end. This is taking place at the same time as two other major events. The first event is the continuing U.S. congressional disagreements associated with the federal budget, debt levels, sequestration, and sporadic governmental closures. The second event is that of the United States ramping up its engagement and containment posture in its relations with China, with the other Services now in the forefront. China will hopefully be a cooperative, rather than intransigent, power in this bilateral relationship, but it is an authoritarian great power rising nonetheless.

Still other globalization outcomes are in play and are of great strategic importance to both U.S. national security and the Army’s relationship to it. These outcomes, derived from the rise of globalized capitalism, the migration of humanity to cyberspace, and related 21st-century advances and changes in the post-Cold War world are challenging not only our perceptions of the separation of crime and war, but of insurgency itself. Quite possibly, while it now finds itself in a reflective mood, the corporate Army will be more receptive to some of the insights provided herein, concerning the new forms of insurgencies. But first, before delving into how new insurgency forms are “new,” we must ask the question what insurgencies were like in your grandfather’s day.

Your Grandfather’s Insurgency.

Old school insurgency or “people’s war” was typically dominated by Leninist, Trotskian, Maoist, and related revolutionary thought. Such insurgencies are ideological in nature and may also draw upon nationalistic underpinnings, as was utilized in Vietnam. Specific characteristics of this type of insurgency are: it is premeditated, driven by the political, established by a parallel (shadow) government, utilizes violence—typically targeted and instrumental in nature, with the desired end state being political control over a nation-state.

Depending on the relative sophistication of the insurgents, a phased approach to insurgency—initially based on sequential and later on simultaneous phases—is utilized. The conditions influencing an insurgency, i.e. the popular grievances, may also be artificially accelerated. Seminal works in your grandfather’s insurgency literature include: Guerrilla Warfare (1937); People’s War, People’s Army (1962); and the Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla (1969). These revolutionary-based insurgencies include those that took place in China, Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, and El Salvador.

How America’s Soldiers Fight for the Spectrum on the Battlefield

By Brendan I. Koerner

Dan Winters

An electromagnetic mystery in northern Iraq changed the course of Jesse Potter’s life. A chemical-weapons specialist with the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division, Potter was deployed to Kirkuk in late 2007, right as the oil-rich city was experiencing a grievous spike in violence. He was already weary upon his arrival, having recently completed an arduous tour in Afghanistan, which left him suffering from multiple injuries that would eventually require surgery. In the rare moments of peace he could find in Kirkuk, Potter began to contemplate whether it was time to trade in his uniform for a more tranquil existence back home—perhaps as a schoolteacher. Of more immediate concern, though, was a technical glitch that was jeopardizing his platoon: The jammers on the unit’s armored vehicles were on the fritz. Jammers clog specific radio frequencies by flooding them with signals, rendering cell phones, radios, and remote control devices useless. They were now a crucial weapon in the American arsenal; in Kirkuk, as in the rest of Iraq, insurgents frequently used cell phones and other wireless devices to detonate IEDs. But Potter’s jammers weren’t working. “In the marketplaces, when we would drive through, there’d still be people able to talk on their cell phones,” he says. “If the jamming systems had been effective, they shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

A self-described tech guy at heart, Potter relished the chance to study the jammers. It turned out that, among other problems, they weren’t emitting powerful enough radio waves along the threat frequencies—those that carried much of the city’s mobile traffic. Once the necessary tweaks were made, Potter was elated to witness the immediate, lifesaving results on the streets of Kirkuk, where several of his friends had been maimed or killed. “To see an IED detonate safely behind our convoy—that was a win for me,” he says. It was so thrilling, in fact, that when Potter returned from Iraq in 2008, he dedicated himself to becoming one of the Army’s first new specialists in spectrum warfare—the means by which a military seizes and controls the electromagnetic radiation that makes all wireless communication possible.

Israel Electric Opens Cyber-War Room to Defend Against Power-Grid Hacks

By Gwen Ackerman 
Feb 19, 2014

Source Link

Israel's Electric Corp staff watch a cyber team work at the "CyberGym" school in the... Read More
Israel's main power company opened a cyber "war room" this week to defend its systems around the clock from hackers. Technicians at Israel Electric will monitor as many as 400 million cyber-attacks and hacking attempts a day.

"There are hundreds of thousands of attempts to infiltrate Israel Electric's networks every day," Israel Electric Chairman Yiftach Ron-Tal said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. "We are talking here about a threat on a national level."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that one goal of his government is to turn Israel into a world leader in cyber-technologies. In 2012, Netanyahu formed the National Cyber Bureau, which said last month that it plans to establish an emergency-response team for cyber-attacks. President Shimon Peres has spent the last month making public appearances to promote Israeli technology, including cyber-security.

In the past three years, the country's cyber-security industry has grown from a few dozen companies to about 220 that have raised more than $400 million, according to the Tel Aviv-based IVC Research Center. Twenty multinational companies now operate online-security development centers in Israel.

"There is no doubt that cyber is and will be the most significant battlefield of the present and the future," Ron-Tal said.

Israel Electric is a visible target for cyber-attacks. The state-owned utility generates, transmits and distributes nearly all of the electricity used in the country. The company operates 17 power stations. Last year, Israel Electric began developing a "cyber gym" to sell its expertise in combating hackers. The threat shows no sign of diminishing.

Israel’s “Cyber Gym” Trains Hackers for Warfare

 19 FEBRUARY 2014 

Training on how to defend against the possibility of cyber warfare is under way at a new state-of-the-art “Cyber Gym,” located behind the Orot Rabin power station.

“Israel, we believe, is the most-attacked country,” Cyber Gym director Ofir Hason told AFP. ”And as the most-attacked civilian company in Israel, this gives us the unique capabilities to train other companies around the world to defend against system hacking

CEO Eli Glickman said IEC is subject to some 10,000 attacks per hour, making the Cyber Gym’s instructors well-versed in the dark arts of cyber warfare. “We’re a group of professionals from the army, security services and (straight) from university,” said an instructor who asked to remain anonymous. His role is to launch simulated attacks against the computer systems used by the trainees, who work from an adjacent building that models the isolation they would endure during an attack, without any inkling of how it was being perpetrated.

“It’s a playground to simulate real cyber attacks,” the trainer told the press agency while seated in the “attack room,” which AFP describes “as a computer nerd’s paradise, decorated with Star Wars and Pac-Man murals and lines of code running off wall-mounted screens that show the hacking taking place live.”

“If the hackers succeed, the lights go off and the system shuts down,” he said, emulating what Israeli Defense Forces leadership believe to be a likely outcome from a foreign hacker attack.

In October, IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz described a future war where physical attacks against Israel are combined with cyber warfare. “It is possible that there will be a cyber attack on a site supplying the daily needs of Israeli citizens; that traffic lights would stop working or the banks would be paralyzed,” Gantz told a security conference.

The Indian Coastguard: A Non Performing Asset?

By Commodore KP Mathew
Issue Vol. 29.1 Jan-Mar 2014 | Date : 22 Feb , 2014


Achieving maritime safety would entail ensuring that the laws and regulations which govern the operations of sea-borne craft are adhered to. The Indian Coast Guard has so far not been seen to play any role in this area. It has been the exclusive preserve of the Director General of Shipping who operates through the regional Maritime Marine Departments. The situation is quite different with the US Coast Guard which actively monitors this aspect in the US waters. The US Coast Guard boards vessels for wide ranging inspections including the conduct of safety drills. Vessels found deficient in any area are liable to be detained. Serious infringement can lead to imposition of penalties. They also keep a historic record of such inspections which classifies ships according to country of registry, the company to which she belongs and the result of inspections. When a higher than normal proportion of ships of a country or a particular company are found to be deficient, the rest of the ships of the country or company are highlighted for more intensive scrutiny.

The very idea of the Indian Coast Guard drew heavily on the well-established model of the US Coast Guard…

In the pre-liberalised era of the 1960s of strict import and foreign exchange controls, extensive seaborne smuggling was a way of life that was a threat to the domestic economy. The Customs with its limited resources could hardly cope and had to call for Navy’s help for patrols and interception. This scenario spawned the formation of a separate paramilitary coastal protection force in the form of the Indian Coast Guard, the very idea of which drew heavily on the well-established model of the US Coast Guard.

The interim Coast Guard came into being on February 01, 1977 with two corvettes and five patrol boats transferred from the Indian Navy and manned by its personnel. The duties and functions of the Coast Guard were formally defined in the Coast Guard Act which was passed by the Parliament on August 18, 1978, and came into immediate effect.

The Indian Coast Guard’s motto is the Sanskrit phrase, “वयम रक्षाम: ” (Vayam Rakshamah) which, in English translates to “We Protect”.

It has the following responsibilities:-
Maritime safety, search and rescue
Protection of offshore installations and assets
Law enforcement in territorial as well as international waters
Protection of marine ecology and environment
Scientific data collection and support
Maritime defence support

The True Forever War

BY Micah Zenko 

JANUARY 24, 2014

Technology, not policy, will make it easier for U.S. leaders to kill people, blow things up, and disrupt computer networks around the world. 

Micah Zenko is the Douglas Dillon fellow in the Center for Preventive Action (CPA) at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Previously, he worked for five years at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and in Washington, DC, at the Brookings Institution, Congressional Research Service, and State Department's Office of Policy Planning.

In preparation for a recent talk, I spoke to a range of thinkers and practitioners in and out of government about the current relevance and applicability of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). The AUMF, which was passed by the House and Senate just three days after 9/11, gave the president a narrow mandate to use all necessary and appropriate force against those responsible for the terrorist attacks and to prevent future acts of international terrorism against the United States. Two points of agreement were repeated in my conversations: First, the legislation does not accurately reflect either the military or the political objectives for current counterterrorism operations, nor does it accurately reflect the intention of those who originally drafted and approved the measure in 2001. Second, it is unlikely that the AUMF will be repealed, and any congressional efforts to update its language would most likely result in an even more expansive mandate. 

Many correctly highlight that the AUMF does not reflect the scope of the conflict that the United States is now engaged in, and that its elasticity assures that America will remain on a war footing in perpetuity. However, those concerned with the prospects of a "forever war" should be concerned less about the irrelevant post-9/11 legislative mandate, and more about the revolutionary expansion of military assets that have been made available to the president since then. These technologies and processes that have reduced the costs and risks of using force have permanently changed how Americans conceive of military operations. As killing people, blowing things up, and disrupting computer networks will only get easier, it is worthwhile to take stock of where we are today. 

The Military Has Cataloged Its Ethical Failures, and They're Kind of Awesome

BY Gordon Lubold

JANUARY 30, 2014

Gordon Lubold is a national security reporter for Foreign Policy. He is also the author of FP's Situation Report, an e-mailed newsletter that is blasted out to more than 50,000 national security and foreign affairs subscribers each morning that includes the top nat-sec news, breaking news, tidbits, nuggets and what he likes to call "candy." Before arriving at FP, he was a senior advisor at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, where he wrote on national security and foreign policy. Prior to his arrival at USIP, he was a defense reporter for Politico, where he launched the popular Morning Defense early morning blog and tip-sheet. Prior to that, he was the Pentagon and national security correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, and before that he was the Pentagon correspondent for the Army Times chain of newspapers. He has covered conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries in South Asia, and has reported on military matters in sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and Latin America as well as at American military bases across the country. He has spoken frequently on the sometimes-contentious relationship between the military and the media as a guest on numerous panels. He also appears on radio and television, including on CNN, public radio's Diane Rehm and To the Point, and C-SPAN's Washington Journal. He lives in Alexandria with his wife and two children. 

Did you hear the one about the first lieutenant who had to pay $120,000 in fines for accepting bribes from contractors he'd awarded with lucrative Defense Department deals? Or the Navy civilian working who asked a fence contractor for a $5,000 payment so the contractor could be "recommended" for a $153,000 contract? What about the four senior officials, including two Air Force generals, a Marine general and a Navy admiral, who extended their stay in Tokyo to play golf at an illegal cost of $3,000 to the government? 

The Future of War (no. 4): We need to protect our personnel from the moral fallout of drone and robotic warfare

BY Thomas E. Ricks

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

By Lt. Col. Douglas Pryer, U.S. Army 

Best Defense guest columnist 

Until last year, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders required "actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others" for a diagnosis of PTSD. How is it that drone operators can suffer PTSD without experiencing physically traumatic events? The answer lies in the concept of "moral injury." 

Dr. Jonathan Shay popularized the term "moral injury" in his book Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. To Shay, it is the moral component -- the perceived violation of "what's right" -- that causes the most harmful and enduring psychological effects from PTSD-inducing events. Dr. Tick, another psychologist who has counseled hundreds of combat veterans, holds a similar view. Tick contends that PTSD is best characterized not as an anxiety disorder, but as an identity disorder stemming from violations of what you believe that you yourself (or other people that you identify with) could or should have done. 

Other mental health practitioners describe moral injury as something distinct from PTSD, which they see as caused by physical reactions to physical stressors. But moral injury, as Dr. Brett Litz and other leading experts in the field recently defined it, is "perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations." Moral injury may follow a physical event, but it can also follow events that are not physically traumatic at all.

Litz and his colleagues agree that, while PTSD and moral injury share symptoms like "intrusions, avoidance, numbing," other symptoms are unique to moral injury. These other symptoms include "shame, guilt, demoralization, self-handicapping behaviors (e.g., self-sabotaging relationships), and self-harm (e.g., parasuicidal behaviors)." They also advocate different treatments for moral injury. While PTSD sufferers may be helped via such physical remedies as drugs and the "Random Eye Movement" treatment, those who suffer from moral injury require counseling-based therapies. 

Empty Chair? Top Officer Seen As Slow to Respond To Ethics Issues Roiling Military

BY Gordon Lubold

FEBRUARY 14, 2014 

The Pentagon's response to the recent spate of ethical lapses rocking the entire U.S. military has been devoid of the kind of dramatic moves that Washington craves: there have been no high-profile firings, no generals publicly rebuked, and no announcements of far-reaching punishments that would indicate that the top officials are taking it all seriously. 

Those types of measures would typically be carried out by the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel took a small step last week when he announced he would assign a senior officer to his own front office to investigate exactly what has gone wrong recently and to help suggest ways of fixing those issues. Hagel's top military adviser, Army Gen. Marty Dempsey, meanwhile, has been largely invisible. That's raised questions about why the Chairman hasn't been more heavily involved in addressing the cheating scandals rocking the Department, including the Air Force and Navy's nuclear forces and the embarrassing recent release of emails in which top Army commanders crudely discussed the sexual attractiveness of a female congresswoman 

The Pentagon's response to the recent spate of ethical lapses rocking the entire U.S. military has been devoid of the kind of dramatic moves that Washington craves: there have been no high-profile firings, no generals publicly rebuked, and no announcements of far-reaching punishments that would indicate that the top officials are taking it all seriously. 

Those types of measures would typically be carried out by the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel took a small step last week when he announced he would assign a senior officer to his own front office to investigate exactly what has gone wrong recently and to help suggest ways of fixing those issues. Hagel's top military adviser, Army Gen. Marty Dempsey, meanwhile, has been largely invisible. That's raised questions about why the Chairman hasn't been more heavily involved in addressing the cheating scandals rocking the Department, including the Air Force and Navy's nuclear forces and the embarrassing recent release of emails in which top Army commanders crudely discussed the sexual attractiveness of a female congresswoman.