Q&A: ”I Can’t Be a Lifelong Suspect”

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Ángel Páez interviews imprisoned Bolivarian Committee leader ROQUE GONZÁLES LA ROSA

LIMA, Nov 27 (IPS) – The prosecution in Peru has asked for a 20-year prison sentence for Roque Gonzáles La Rosa, a member of the now dismantled Peruvian chapter of the Continental Bolivarian Committee (CCB), inspired by the policies of left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

Gonzáles La Rosa and six other activists were arrested by the National Anti-Terrorism Directorate (DIRCOTE) at the border between Peru and Ecuador on Feb. 29, on their way back from Quito where they had attended the Second Congress of the CCB, which is alleged to have links with Colombia’s FARC guerrillas.

DIRCOTE informed the justice system that Gonzáles La Rosa, the leader of the delegation, had served nine years in prison for belonging to the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), the smaller of the two guerrilla groups involved in Peru’s 1980-2000 civil war (the larger group was the Maoist Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path).
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Popularity: 18% [?]

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: When Terror Wears a Uniform

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Constanza Vieira

SOACHA, Colombia, Nov 21 (IPS) – Herminia Lizarazo did not know what to respond when her seven-year-old grandson told her ”Grandma, I want to know what the army is for.” The boy, whose two uncles belong to the army in Colombia, wanted to wear a military costume for Halloween.

”My uncles dress like that, and they look really good,” he commented to her, arguing in favour of the costume he had chosen for the Oct. 31 holiday, which originated in the United States and has spread to many Latin American countries.

Lizarazo gave a brief personal account of her life, which she called ”a mother’s story,” at a special hearing on human rights in Ciudad Bolívar, Altos de Cazucá and Soacha — vast slum neighbourhoods that line the hills on the southern edge of Bogotá — held Thursday by the Senate Human Rights Commission.

In 1984, she fled the southern department (province) of Huila because of the leftist guerrillas. ”I had four little ones, and we came to Bogotá to try our luck,” she said. ”But four months later, my husband died, and I became a widow.”
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Popularity: 24% [?]

SRI LANKA: Gov’t Celebrates Battle Gains in Tamil Areas

Global Intelligecnce News / IPS

IPS Correspondents

COLOMBO, Nov 19 (IPS) – Sri Lankan national flags hoisted at important locations and posters depicting army offensives against the Tamil rebels are part of week-long celebrations ordered by the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse to mark its latest battlefield victories in the north of the island.

”The nation salutes our brave soldiers who once again linked north and south by their victory at Pooneryn,” one such poster, with silhouetted images of soldiers, read.

”We join all peace-loving people of this country in saluting the security forces and the police for the brave and patriotic roles they have played in regaining the strategically and political important Pooneryn,” the ‘Daily Mirror’ said in a Nov. 17 editorial titled ‘Heroic Achievement’.

”The political leadership led by President Mahinda Rajapakse that pursued the aim of ridding the country of the curse of terrorism undoubtedly deserves the people’s encomiums,” the editorial said.
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There Is No MacCounter-Terrorism

Global Intel Net

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

by B. Raman

(This article incorporates my extempore remarks and subsequent interventions during a four-day conference on terrorism held at Tokyo from November 11 to 14, 2008, under the joint auspices of the Institute of Defence Analyses (IDA) of Washington DC and the Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society (RISTEX) of the Japan Science and Technology Agency)

Insurgents seek territorial control and try to establish the paraphernalia of a State such as an Army with professional ranks, an administrative set-up in the territory controlled by them etc. They fight like a conventional army in classical set-piece formations as well as like a guerilla army. This requires a large cadre strength.

2. Terrorists, on the other hand, avoid territorial control and the paraphernalia of a State. They use unconventional methods of struggle. The avoidance of territorial control and State paraphernalia enables them to spread death and destruction with a small cadre strength organised into penetration-proof cells. The smaller the strength of a terrorist organisation, the more difficult for the intelligence agencies to penetrate it.
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DRC: Aid Agencies Fear Humanitarian Disaster in North Kivu

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Thursday, October 30, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Ulrich Knapp

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 30 (IPS) – The situation in the strategic city of Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was relatively calm Thursday after a night of fierce shooting and widespread looting, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported.

However, tens of thousands of Congolese fleeing the latest fighting between government forces and armed opposition groups is straining the already overburdened system of camps for North Kivu province’s estimated one million internally displaced persons.

”The humanitarian situation at the moment is terrible,” said Jaya Murthy, the spokesperson for the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF in the eastern DRC. ”We have about between 40,000 and 50 000 people that are in a couple of small camps five kilometres outside of [the provincial capital of] Goma.”

UNHCR also reported that many Congolese were heading towards Uganda looking for safety. Its team at the border said that on Thursday, some 8,000 entered Uganda at the Busanza border crossing.

Most of them are staying with host families and in public buildings, such as schools and churches. But around 2,000 of the refugees have opted to be transferred to the Nakivale refugee settlement further inside Uganda.

Most of the refugees in Uganda are dispersed over a large area, and the first major challenge, besides water and sanitation, will be the provision of food, as the area generally depends on local food imports from the DRC, UNHCR says.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said that it was able to distribute food to key nutritional centres and hospitals inside Goma on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes has called on the government and all armed groups in the area to protect civilians and to facilitate the work of humanitarian organisations.

”We all hope that Wednesday’s ceasefire will quickly help to restore minimum security conditions and allow humanitarian actors to work with civilian authorities to assess needs and mount emergency operations to address them,” Holmes said. ”Unconditional access, and respect for the independence, impartiality and neutrality of humanitarians as they go about their essential work have to be a top priority.”

The Security Council, in a presidential statement on Wednesday night, condemned the recent offensive of the Congrès national pour la défense du peuple (CNDP) in the eastern DRC, and demanded its immediate end.

In the statement read by Security Council President, Ambassador Zhang Yesui of China, the Council also welcomed the announcement of a ceasefire by the group’s leader, Laurent Nkunda.

The Council called on the U.N. mission in the country (MONUC) to take robust actions to protect civilians at risk and to deter any attempt to threaten the political process by any armed group.

Expressing concern at reports of heavy weapons fire across the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, the Council also called on the authorities in both countries to take concrete steps to defuse tensions and restore stability in the region, and called on all regional governments to cease all support to armed groups.

In regard to beefing up the MONUC force, the Council said it would ”expeditiously study” the request of the Secretariat in view of developments on the ground.

Rights groups say it is clear that more U.N. peacekeeping troops must be quickly sent to the region.

”We’re calling for the United Nations Security Council to take immediate and urgent steps to make sure that MONUC…is reinforced and provided with the military hardware in order to enable it to discharge its mandate of protecting civilians in eastern DRC,” Tawanda Hondora, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Africa programme, told Voice of America news.

”There are countries obviously that provide both moral and material support to some of these armed groups operating in eastern DRC. They need to be leaned upon to stop these attacks. They’re killing civilians, women and children. And if not checked, we will see a situation where neighbouring countries also begin to be destabilised.”

The DRC government has accused Rwanda of supporting the CNDP, while Rwanda accuses the DRC army of siding with the Rwandan Hutu armed group, the FDLR.

”We cannot wait to see another situation develop in eastern DRC, which is similar to the one witnessed between 1998 and 2002, where more than three million people died. It has to be stopped,” Hondora said.

The United Nations has less than 6,000 of its 17,000-strong DRC peacekeeping mission in the east, because of unrest in other provinces. In a video-link conference on Tuesday, Alan Doss, special representative of the secretary-general in DRC, said the force was badly overstretched and urgently needed reinforcement.

Earlier this month, Doss asked the Security Council for more peacekeepers, air support and other equipment. The Council has not yet responded to his request.

MONUC said on Wednesday rebels loyal to General Laurent Nkunda had fired five rockets on a U.N. convoy assigned to protect civilians on a road near Goma on Tuesday. The U.N. Mission emphasised that it will continue to intervene to protect civilians and urban centres across North Kivu.

DRC’s 1998-2003 war and an ongoing humanitarian crisis have killed more than five million people. With 17,000 troops deployed, MONUC is currently the U.N.’s biggest mission.

Popularity: 17% [?]

BLEEDING ASSAM CRIES OUT FOR ATTENTION

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO 464

Global Geopolitics Net Sites – Global Intel News
Thursday, October 30, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

B.RAMAN

Available police statistics of incidents involving explosions and civilian casualties caused by the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) since 2002 are given below:

The figures of civilians killed in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 include civilians killed by explosions as well as in attacks not involving IEDs.The figures for 2006 and 2007 refer to only civilians killed by IEDs. While there was a large number of incidents involving IEDs, the number of civilians killed per incident was low as compared to incidents involving IEDs caused by jihadi terrorists in other parts of India. This could be attributed to the fact that the explosive material used by the ULFA—-much of it procured from Bangladesh— was of low quality as compared to the material available to the jihadi terrorists — whether procured from Pakistan or Bangladesh— and the expertise in the use of IEDs imparted to the ULFA in the training camps in Bangladesh was also of inferior quality as compared to the expertise imparted to the jihadi terrorists—whether in Pakistan or Bangladesh.

A defining characteristic of the incidents involving the use of IEDs targeting civilians in Assam was that many of the incidents specifically targeted non-Assamese civilians while taking care not to target Assamese-speaking civilians and illegal Bangladeshi migrants. Jihadi terrorists in other parts of India make no distinction. They kill civilians indiscriminately—- without worrying about their religion, ethnic or linguistic origin.

Jihadi terrorism, as distinguished from the ethnic terrorism of the ULFA kind, has also started making inroads in Assam. According to the Assam Police, the following jihadi organisations are now active in Assam: The Muslim Liberation Tigers of Assam (MULTA); the Independent Liberation Army of Assam (ILAA); the People United Liberation Front (PULF); the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), whose Pakistani counterpart is a founding member of Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front (IIF); and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), whose Pakistani counterpart is also a member of the IIF. According to them, the activities of all these organisations are co-ordinated by the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen (JUM) of Bangladesh, which organised hundreds of simultaneous explosions of crude devices all over Bangladesh on August 17, 2005.

Some HUM cadres, along with two Pakistani nationals, were arrested in August, 1999. Forty-two HUM cadres, including some trained in the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), surrendered till 2006-end. Four HUJI cadres trained in Bangladesh surrendered in August, 2004. One HUJI cadre was arrested in February, 2004. Till 2006-end, 370 jihadi terrorists belonging to different organisations had been arrested and 128 had surrendered.

The Security Forces in Assam have been putting up a determined fight against the ULFA killing 1,128 cadres since 1991 and till 2006-end and arresting 11,173 during the same period. 8,465 others surrendered. The result: decrease in cadre strength; erosion of its support base in the population; decrease in recruitment and fund collection; and shortage of arms and ammunition. In view of these developments, the ULFA started following a new modus operandi with the following features: decrease in specific targeted violence; increase in
indiscriminate violence directed at soft targets; targeting of vital installations in remote areas; attacks on security forces when and where possible; and use of unconscious third persons not suspected by the Police for having the IEDs planted in public places. The use of such unconscious third persons has been increasing.

However, the ULFA still has an estimated hardcore of 800 trained cadres and another 1,500 untrained cadres. There are no signs of any weakening of its morale and motivation. Its command and control orchestrated from Bangladesh is intact.

Any effective counter-terrorism strategy in Assam has to have the conventional components such as improving intelligence collection, analysis and assessment and co-ordinated follow-up action; improving the capability and resources of the police; strengthened physical security; and a well-tested crisis management drill. In addition, it must have a strong anti-illegal immigration component—to prevent any further illegal immigration from Bangladesh and the identification, arrests and deportation of those, who have already illegally entered India. Obviously for electoral reasons, there is a reluctance on the part of the Government to deal effectively with illegal immigration. This is likely to prove suicidal. Muslims constitute about 32 per cent of the population of Assam today. If the problem of illegal immigration from Bangladesh is not tackled, there is a real danger that in another 50 years, Assam might turn into a Muslim majority State.

Pakistan, Bangladesh and China have an interest in keeping Assam destabilised—each for its own reason. The interest of Pakistan and Bangladesh is in facilitating the emergence of a Muslim majority State and its ultimate secession from India. The interest of China is in weakening the Indian capability to protect Arunachal Pradesh in the likelihood of the unresolved border dispute over Arunachal Pradesh one day leading to a confrontation between India and China.

The previous Government headed by Shri A. B. Vajpayee was strong in rhetoric relating to terrorism, but weak in action. Its successor Govt. is weak in rhetoric as well as action. It seems to believe that confidence-building measures with neighbours who are sponsoring terrorism against India and the peace process would pay dividends in improving the terrorism situation on the ground. This is unlikely to happen. Lack of determination to act strongly and in time is already costing us heavily and will cost even more heavily in future.

—Extract from the Chapter titled ASSAM: TERRORISM & “SILENT UNARMED INVASION” in my book titled “Terrorism: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow” published by the Lancer Publishers (www.lancerpublishers.com) of Delhi in June,2008

———————————————————————————————

More than 50 persons are feared to have died and more than a hundred injured in over 10 blasts that were simultaneously orchestrated in Guwahati, the capital of Assam, and in the Districts of Barpeta and Kokrajhar on the night of October 29,2008. The picture regarding the exact number of explosions and the places where they took place is still confusing. Some reports put the number of explosions as high as 18. At least four of the blasts took place in Guwahati.

2. The people of Assam are not strangers to serial blasts carried out from time to time by the ULFA and jihadi organisations of Pakistani and Bangladeshi vintage, which have made inroads into the State by taking advantage of the uncontrolled illegal immigration of Muslims into the State from Bangladesh They have been operating separately of each other when possible and in co-ordination with each other, when necessary.

3. Assam has been the nerve-centre of a cocktail of terrorist organisations—-ethnic and jihadi— who have been systematically eating at the vitals of this State, which is key for protecting the integrity of India from the designs of Pakistan, Bangladesh and China.But nobody has had the time to pay attention to the alarming ground situation in this key State—-neither the Congress (I) nor the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nor any other party. Taking advantage of the lack of serious attention from the Government of India and the mainstream political parties, this cocktail of terrorists has been spreading havoc in the State.

4. “My heart goes out to the people of Assam,” said Jawaharlal Nehru in a broadcast to the people of Assam as the Chinese troops were marching in in 1962. He did nothing to protect them before the Chinese invaded. His Government and its successors did precious little to protect this right arm of India and its people either from the Chinese in the event of another war or from the terrorist organisations of various hues which have come up in the State since the 1980s. Who is whose surrogate? Who is the surrogate of Pakistan? Who is the surrogate of Bangladesh? Who is the surrogate of China? Is there a joint co-ordination by Pakistan, Bangladesh and China to undermine the control of the Indian State? Nobody knows the answer.

5. Everyone is clueless—- the intelligence agencies, the police, the security forces, the political class. There is hardly any realisation of the seriousnress of the situation in Assam. One can even understand inadequacies and even incompetence, but one is alarmed by the total disinterest in Delhi in what is going on in Assam.

6. It is too early to say who was involved in the explosions of October 29—- the ULFA only or ULFA plus? One has to wait for the results of the investigation, but from the large number of casualties and the widespread nature of the attacks, one thing is already clear—-there has been a worrisome increase in the lethality of the explosives available to the terrorists and their ability to use them effectively.

7. Public opinion has to force the Governments at the Centre and in the State and the political class as a whole to act before it is too late. (30-10-08)

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

Guwahati, Assam
Image Source:
Wikipedia Commons
Author: Rituraj Bhuyan

Popularity: 17% [?]

RENEWED SUPPORT FOR SRI LANKAN TAMIL CAUSE IN TAMIL NADU

Global Intel Net
Friday, October 10, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

B.RAMAN

There have been signs of renewed support for the cause of the Sri Lankan Tamils across the political spectrum in Tamil Nadu, except from the Congress (I), which continues to adopt an ambivalent attitude. This support has come not only from the traditional supporters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), but also from other parties such as the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) of M.Karunanidhi and J.Jayalalitha of the Anna DMK, the main opposition party. Even the Tamil Nadu branch of the Communist Party of India (CPI) has come out in support of the Sri Lankan Tamils.

2.Karunanidhi, who is generally not given to using strong or emotional language, has given emotional expression to his anguish over what he perceives as the continuing policy of the Government of Mahinda Rajapaksa of suppressing the Tamils. He has conveyed his concerns to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and stressed upon him the need to take up the matter strongly with Rajapaksa in order to stress upon him the importance of finding a political solution to the problems of the Tamils. He has convened an all-party meeting in Chennai on October 14,2008, to work out a common political approach to the Government of India.Jayalalitha has expressed her support to the right of self-determination of the Sri Lankan Tamils, but made it clear at the same time that her support to the Tamil cause should not be misconstrued to mean any change in her policy of strong opposition to the LTTE as a terrorist organisation.

3. It would be incorrect to view this renewed support as dictated by electoral considerations in view of the elections to the Lok Sabha which are expected in the next few months. Despite the increasing concern in Tamil Nadu over what is perceived as the anti-Tamil policies of the Rajapaksa Government, the Sri Lankan Tamil issue is unlikely to play any role in influencing the voters. Economic and internal security issues are likely to play a predominant role in the elections .

4. It would be equally incorrect for the LTTE leadership to view this as indicating a softening of the hostility to the LTTE after its role in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May,1991. The attitude towards an LTTE led by Prabhakaran continues to be as negative as it has always been since 1991. Any wishful-thinking by Prabhakaran that he and others who were responsible for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi are likely to be rehabilitated in the eyes of vast sections of the people of Tamil Nadu, who are now hostile to them, will be belied. All political leaders except some die-hard supporters of the LTTE, who have taken up the cause of the Sri Lankan Tamils with the Government of India, have made it clear that their support is for the cause of the Sri Lankan Tamils and not for the LTTE headed by Prabhakaran.

5. The LTTE has been gratified by this renewed support for the Tamil cause and has been playing it up. However, there is no evidence to show that either the LTTE or its supporters in Tamil Nadu, who are in a small minority, had any role in this renewed support. This support has been triggered off spontaneously by heightened concerns over the policies of the Rajapaksa Government and by the statements of some officials serving under him such as Lt.Gen.Sarath Fonseka, the Chief of the Sri Lankan Army, Gothbaya Rajapakse, his brother, who is also the Defence Secretary, and Rohitha Bogollagama, the Foreign Minister, as well as by sorrow over what is perceived in Tamil Nadu as the double-faced policy of the Government of India on the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils and over the lack of interest shown by Manmohan Singh in taking up the issue more vigorously with the Rajapaksa Government.

6. The continuing use of indiscriminate air strikes by the Rajapaksa Government against the Tamil civilian population in order to intimidate it into stop supporting the LTTE has come in for strong criticism. The closing of the doors by it for a political solution reached through talks with the LTTE has added to the anger in Tamil Nadu against the Rajapaksa Government. As the Sri Lankan Army presses its offensive to re-capture the territory still under the control of the LTTE in the Northern Province, increasingly disturbing statements have been coming from officials such as Fonseka highlighting the rights of the Sinhalese majority and playing down the legitimate rights of the Tamil minority. All these developments have caused concern in Tamil Nadu that under the pretext of crushing the LTTE as a terrorist organisation, the Rajapaksa Government, whose policies are seen as largely influenced by Sinhalese hawks, is seeking to crush the Tamils as a community by exploiting the favourable ground situation and the lack of interest in the international community in the developments in Sri Lanka. Very few in Tamil Nadu take seriously the assurances of Rajapaksa that after neutralising the LTTE as a terrorist organisation, his Government will initiate political measures for meeting the legitimate aspirations of the Tamil people.

7. At the same time, there has been a perceptible disenchantment in Tamil Nadu over what is seen as the lack of interest shown by Manmohan Singh in the problems of the Sri Lankan Tamils. He is being compared unfavourably with Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, who took a keen interest in the problems of the Tamils and did not hesitate to take up the matter strongly with the Governments then in power in Colombo. This disenchantment has turned into shock following reports of two Indian radar technicians being injured when two planes of the LTTE’s air wing bombed on September 9, 2008, a Sri Lankan military base in Vavuniya, which has been co-ordinating the military operations against the LTTE.

8. The Government of India had repeatedly assured the Government of Tamil Nadu that it would give only non-lethal military equipment to the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, which could not be used in offensive operations against the LTTE. It had justified its supply of radars to the Sri Lankan Air Force on the ground that these radars were meant for use to protect strategic targets in Colombo against LTTE air strikes. There was initial opposition in Tamil Nadu’s political circles to the supply of even the radars, but ultimately they were reconciled to it.

9. The information that the radars supplied by the Government of India were actually being used in the frontline areas and that two Indian technicians were helping the SLAF in their maintenance added to the concerns in Tamil Nadu and created a suspicion that New Delhi was not telling the truth to the Government of Tamil Nadu about the extent of the Indian assistance to the Sri Lankan Armed Forces in their operations against the LTTE.

10. The fact that despite the entreaties of Karunanidhi, who has been a loyal supporter of the Manmohan Singh Government, the Prime Minister did not directly take up the concerns of the people and the political leaders of Tamil Nadu with the Rajapaksa Government and that he left it to M.K.Narayanan, his National Security Adviser, to handle the matter has further damaged the image of Manmohan Singh in the eyes of sections of the political class of Tamil Nadu.

11. The revival of support for the cause of the Sri Lankan Tamils is still largely confined to the political class. This has not yet found vigorous articulation among large sections of the public. It would be unwise to interpret this as indicating that public support for the Sri Lankan Tamil cause remains limited and can be managed.

12. Any fresh humanitarian disaster consequent upon the military offensive in the Northern Province could create in Tamil Nadu a situation similar to what had prevailed in the 1980s when Tamil Nadu became a rear base for supporting the struggle of the Sri Lankan Tamils against the Sinhalese. If this happens, any success of the Sri Lankan Army in its current operations to crush the LTTE might see only the end of one phase of the Tamil struggle and the beginning of another.

13. It is important for the Government of India to show a more visible and vigorous interest in working for ending at least the ruthless air strikes against the Tamils and for ensuring that the Tamil cause is not lost sight of. The Sri Lankan Government has every right to press ahead with its counter-insurgency operations in order to restore the Government writ in the areas now under the control of the LTTE, but its use of air strikes and its perceived indifference to the legitimate concerns of India and other members of the international community should not be accepted. (10-10-08)

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

Popularity: 19% [?]

POLITICS-US: Bush Had No Plan to Catch Bin Laden after 9/11

Global Intel Net – Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, September 30, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Sep 29 (IPS) – New evidence from former U.S. officials reveals that the George W. Bush administration failed to adopt any plan to block the retreat of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders from Afghanistan to Pakistan in the first weeks after 9/11.

That failure was directly related to the fact that top administration officials gave priority to planning for war with Iraq over military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

As a result, the United States had far too few troops and strategic airlift capacity in the theatre to cover the large number of possible exit routes through the border area when bin Laden escaped in late 2001.

Because it had not been directed to plan for that contingency, the U.S. military had to turn down an offer by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in late November 2001 to send 60,000 troops to the border passes to intercept them, according to accounts provided by former U.S. officials involved in the issue.

On Nov. 12, 2001, as Northern Alliance troops were marching on Kabul with little resistance, the CIA had intelligence that bin Laden was headed for a cave complex in the Tora Bora Mountains close to the Pakistani border.

The war had ended much more quickly than expected only days earlier. CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks, who was responsible for the war in Afghanistan, had no forces in position to block bin Laden’s exit.

Franks asked Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, commander of Army Central Command (ARCENT), whether his command could provide a blocking force between al Qaeda and the Pakistani border, according to David W. Lamm, who was then commander of ARCENT Kuwait.

Lamm, a retired Army colonel, recalled in an interview that there was no way to fulfill the CENTCOM commander’s request, because ARCENT had neither the troops nor the strategic lift in Kuwait required to put such a force in place. ”You looked at that request, and you just shook your head,” recalled Lamm, now chief of staff of the Near East South Asia Centre for Strategic Studies at the National Defence University.

Franks apparently already realised that he would need Pakistani help in blocking the al Qaeda exit from Tora Bora. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld told a National Security Council meeting that Franks ”wants the [Pakistanis] to close the transit points between Afghanistan and Pakistan to seal what’s going in and out”, according to the National Security Council meeting transcript in Bob Woodward’s book ”Bush at War”.

Bush responded that they would need to ”press Musharraf to do that”.

A few days later, Franks made an unannounced trip to Islamabad to ask Musharraf to deploy troops along the Pakistan-Afghan border near Tora Bora.

A deputy to Franks, Lt. Gen. Mike DeLong, later claimed that Musharraf had refused Franks’s request for regular Pakistani troops to be repositioned from the north to the border near the Tora Bora area. DeLong wrote in his 2004 book ”Inside Centcom” that Musharraf had said he ”couldn’t do that”, because it would spark a ”civil war” with a hostile tribal population.

But U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, who accompanied Franks to the meeting with Musharraf, provided an account of the meeting to this writer that contradicts DeLong’s claim.

Chamberlin, now president of the Middle East Institute in Washington, recalled that the Pakistani president told Franks that CENTCOM had vastly underestimated what was required to block bin Laden exit from Afghanistan. Musharraf said, ”Look you are missing the point: there are 150 valleys through which al Qaeda are going to stream into Pakistan,” according to Chamberlin.

Although Musharraf admitted that the Pakistani government had never exercised control over the border area, the former diplomat recalled, he said this was ”a good time to begin”. The Pakistani president offered to redeploy 60,000 troops to the area from the border with India but said his army would need airlift assistance from the United States to carry out the redeployment.

But the Pakistani redeployment never happened, according to Lamm, because it wasn’t logistically feasible. Lamm recalled that it would have required an entire aviation brigade, including hundreds of helicopters, and hundreds of support troops to deliver that many combat troops to the border region — far more than was available.

Lamm said the ARCENT had so few strategic lift resources that it had to use commercial aircraft at one point to move U.S. supplies in and out of Afghanistan.

Even if the helicopters had been available, however, they could not have operated with high effectiveness in the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border region near the Tora Bora caves, according to Lamm, because of the combination of high altitude and extreme weather.

Franks did manage to insert 1,200 Marines to Kandahar on Nov. 26 to establish control of the airbase there. They were carried to the base by helicopters from an aircraft carrier that had steamed into the Gulf from the Pacific, according to Lamm.

The marines patrolled roads in the Kandahar area hoping to intercept al Qaeda officials heading toward Pakistan. But DeLong, now retired from the Army, said in an interview that the Marines would not have been able to undertake the blocking mission at the border. ”It wouldn’t have worked — even if we could have gotten them up there,” he said. ”There weren’t enough to police 1,500 kilometres of border.”

U.S. troops probably would also have faced armed resistance from the local tribal population in the border region, according to DeLong. The tribesmen in local villages near the border ”liked bin Laden,” he said ”because he had given them millions of dollars.”

Had the Bush administration’s priority been to capture or kill the al Qaeda leadership, it would have deployed the necessary ground troops and airlift resources in the theatre over a period of months before the offensive in Afghanistan began.

”You could have moved American troops along the Pakistani border before you went into Afghanistan,” said Lamm. But that would have meant waiting until spring 2002 to take the offensive against the Taliban, according to Lamm.

The views of Bush’s key advisers, however, ruled out any such plan from the start. During the summer of 2001, Rumsfeld had refused to develop contingency plans for military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan despite a National Security Presidential Directive adopted at the Deputies’ Committee level in July and by the Principles on Sep. 4 that called for such planning, according to the 9/11 Commission report.

Rumsfeld and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz resisted such planning for Afghanistan because they were hoping that the White House would move quickly on military intervention in Iraq. According to the 9/11 Commission, at four deputies’ meetings on Iraq between May 31 and Jul. 26, 2001, Wolfowitz pushed his idea to have U.S. troops seize all the oil fields in southern Iraq.

Even after Sep. 11, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney continued to resist any military engagement in Afghanistan, because they were hoping for war against Iraq instead.

Bush’s top secret order of Sep. 17 for war with Afghanistan also directed the Pentagon to begin planning for an invasion of Iraq, according to journalist James Bamford’s book ”Pretext for War”.

Cheney and Rumsfeld pushed for a quick victory in Afghanistan in NSC meetings in October, as recounted by both Woodward and Undersecretary of Defence Douglas Feith. Lost in the eagerness to wrap up the Taliban and get on with the Iraq War was any possibility of preventing bin Laden’s escape to Pakistan.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, ”Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

Popularity: 25% [?]

US STRIKES IN FATA: CHANGE IN CONTINUITY

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.447

Global Intel Net – Global News Blog – Global Geopolitics Net Sites
Friday, September 19, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

B.RAMAN

The rules of engagement relating to Pakistan’s tribal belt followed by the US forces in Afghanistan before July,2008, were that while Pakistan had agreed to deniable air strikes by unmanned Predator aircraft of the US on suspected terrorist hide-outs in Pakistani territory adjoining the Pakistan-Afghan border in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), it had not agreed to any unilateral ground strikes by the US forces based in Afghanistan either in exercise of the right of hot pursuit or to pre-empt planned attacks by Al Qaeda and the Taliban on the NATO forces in Afghanistan from sanctuaries in Pakistani territory.

2. According to leaks to sections of the US media by unidentified US officials, in the middle of July President George Bush approved some changes in the rules of engagement relating to ground strikes under which he authorised the US special forces to undertake unilateral ground strikes in Pakistani territory under certain circumstances. In this connection, reference is invited to my previous article titled PAK-US SNAFU of 13-9-08 at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers29/paper2843.html .
Read more

Popularity: 18% [?]

US STRIKES IN FATA: CHANGE IN CONTINUITY

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.447

Global Politics Online – Global Geopolitics Net Sites
Friday, September 19, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

B.RAMAN

The rules of engagement relating to Pakistan’s tribal belt followed by the US forces in Afghanistan before July,2008, were that while Pakistan had agreed to deniable air strikes by unmanned Predator aircraft of the US on suspected terrorist hide-outs in Pakistani territory adjoining the Pakistan-Afghan border in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), it had not agreed to any unilateral ground strikes by the US forces based in Afghanistan either in exercise of the right of hot pursuit or to pre-empt planned attacks by Al Qaeda and the Taliban on the NATO forces in Afghanistan from sanctuaries in Pakistani territory.

2. According to leaks to sections of the US media by unidentified US officials, in the middle of July President George Bush approved some changes in the rules of engagement relating to ground strikes under which he authorised the US special forces to undertake unilateral ground strikes in Pakistani territory under certain circumstances. In this connection, reference is invited to my previous article titled PAK-US SNAFU of 13-9-08 at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers29/paper2843.html .
Read more

Popularity: 21% [?]

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