World Threats

On December 17, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il died. The state pressannounced that his youngest son, Kim Jong-Un, is the “great successor.” There’s a clear pattern where each step towards succession is accompanied with a provocation, reflecting the regime’s belief that its ills can be cured through conflict. At only 27 or 28 years old, Kim Jong-Un is out to prove himself, and the short-range missile test that followed his official takeover isn’t going to cut it.

Kim Jong-Un is largely a mystery. He wasn’t even formally mentioned in North Korea’s state press until October 2010. His age, mother and marital status aren’t even known. It is reported that British intelligence assess that he has an “explosive temper” and suffers from severe hypertension, giving little hope that his mental state is any better than his father’s.

In October 2010, he was given the rank of a four-star general, even though he has no military experience whatsoever. His young age, lack of experience and the decreasing support of the North Korean army and population make it difficult for Kim Jong-Un to ensure the stability of the regime. A cable published by Wikileaks reveals that the top national security advisor to the South Korean president believes the regime will collapse within 2 to 3 years after Kim Jong-Il’s death.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

In less than 12 hours after the announcement of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il’s death, the North has taken to provocative action. The communist state has launched a short range missile test, seemingly to ward off any action by South Korea or her allies.

This action is making an already tense situation even more so. Still, it’s a pretty clear sign of desperation.

A short-range missile test that North Korea conducted Monday – reported earlier by South Korean media – was not a surprise and is not of particular concern, Dempsey said. South Korean media have reported that South Korean government officials do not believe the test was related to Kim Jong Il’s death.

On August 13, a 70-year old Jewish-American named Warren Weinstein was kidnapped from hishome in Pakistan. Ayman al-Zawahiri has released a tape claiming he is in Al-Qaeda’s custodyand his fate will be decided by whether the U.S. gives into his demands. He’s believed to be under the control of Pakistani Taliban commander Tariq Afridi, who operates out of the tribal town of Darra Adam Khel near Peshawar, but there are reportedly no credible leads on Weinstein’s exact location. What is the United States to do?

The first thing the U.S. must do is inform Pakistan that it will be held responsible for Weinstein’s fate. This would not have happened if Pakistan lived up to the same responsibilities that all of the world’s countries are expected to. If there is any intelligence service that can find Weinstein, it’s Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service. Should it fail to do so, Pakistan should receive just as much blame as Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. There are specific, long overdue punishments that Pakistan must face if Weinstein’s life is lost.

Click here to read the rest of my FSM column.

The Pakistani military is accusing the U.S. of purposely killing its 24 soldiers on Saturday and Pakistani-American relations are, again, at a new low. It may be only a matter of time before Pakistani cooperation on counter-terrorism dwindles from little to nothing but the U.S. shouldn’t be blamed. The NATO airstrike, even if it was a case of misidentification, happened because Pakistan’s border posts allow terrorists to fire across the border.

The details of what happened on November 26 are sketchy, but it is known that U.S. and Afghan forces were attacked. Most reports say the attackers were the Taliban, while another says they belonged to a Salafi militia. The U.S. says it called the Pakistani military, which said it had no soldiers in the area. An airstrike was called in, which the Pakistanis say took place 300 yards inside their country and lasted for over an hour. It is suspected that NATO may have fallen for a Taliban ruse, and accidentally bombed a border post thinking it was a terrorist camp.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

Even as the White House is readying its exit from Afghanistan, there is still the urgent need to build the Afghan security forces. Involved in that task are ISAF trainers. Now with the withdrawal plan accelerated, NATO will need more:

Marine Gen. John R. Allen, who took command in Afghanistan last summer, wants 1,700 more military personnel — mid-level officers and senior enlisted troops leading hundreds of new advisor teams to be assigned beginning next year to Afghan units battling the Taliban insurgency, the officials said.

A similar approach worked in Iraq in 2007 and 2008. Hopefully there will be similar success here, but the situation is even more complicated.

On Saturday, Pakistan showed how dismissive it is of U.S. pressure. Only days after Secretary State Clinton’s visit to Pakistan and one day prior to her trip to Afghanistan, the Pakistan-based Haqqani network carried out the deadliest bombing in Afghanistan since the war began. Thirteen NATO personnel were killed by a suicide bomber and there is every reason to believe it will be traced back to Pakistan’s intelligence service.

The attack is a challenge from Pakistan. Haroun Mir, an Afghan analyst, said, “The Pakistanis are sending another message, too: They are not willing to abandon their support of the Taliban.” The Pentagon’s latest report on the war in Afghanistan states that the Pakistani safe havens and the weaknesses of the Afghan government present the most serious problems to the war effort. The fact that Pakistan allowed the Haqqani network to carry out such an operation shows it has no intention of changing its behavior.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

The CIA-based Open Source Center (OSC) has uncovered a disturbing link between China’s largest telecommunications company, Huawei, and Beijing’s intelligence service.  The high-tech giant is located in China’s Guangdong Province and has reportedly received nearly a quarter of a billion dollars from the Chinese government.

Though the US government continues to view Huawei as a risk and has already blocked the company from converging into the US market, three times, this has not stopped Huawei’s lobbying efforts.

In addition to the link to Chinese intel, Huawei may also be cooperating with the Chinese military.  The OSC also reports that Huawei has been active in a global campaign of large proportions to acquire classified and economic intelligence from government and private-sector computer networks.

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It’s time for some blunt speaking: Pakistan is trying to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan and that is an act of war. The Pakistanis have tried to deny it altogether or blame it on rogue elements, but 10 years after 9/11, these “rogue elements” are as active as ever. Our troops deserve to be protected, and their attackers don’t deserve taxpayer money. It’s time to treat the killers as killers.

The crisis in Pakistani-American relations reached a new height when Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused the Pakistani ISI intelligence service of being behind the attacks on the U.S. embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul in mid-September. He also said the ISI orchestrated a truck bombing on September 10 that wounded 77 American soldiers and an attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul on June 28. The U.S. learned of the truck bomb headed towards its forces in advance, and two days before the explosion, asked the top Pakistani military commander to intercept it. Unintentionally confirming that Pakistan has the power to stop such attacks, he said he’d “make a phone call” to stop it. It wasn’t.

“The Haqqani network acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency,” Mullen said. It was the first time that a top U.S. official publicly said that the ISI as an agency was masterminding attacks on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. The White House tried to walk back from his remarks, but Mullen stood firm. “I phrased it the way I wanted it to be phrased,” he said.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has signed an accord with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi. The two countries have cooperated in the fight against Islamic extremists and India is very wary about what will happen if NATO withdraws from Afghanistan. Both countries also lay blame at Pakistan’s doorstep for fomenting much of the inter-border violence.

India has played a role in training Afghan police and military forces. Prime Minister Singh has cooperated with NATO and Afghanistan for years:

He said that the people of India sympathised with Afghanistan as it sought to cope with “acts of terrorism… particularly the assassination of [peace envoy] Burhanuddin Rabbani”.

President Karzai said that he was “grateful” for India’s help as his country strives to overcome “violence and extremist activities”.

India would likely send troops to the country except for fears it could spark a conflict with Pakistan. Pakistan would be loathe to have Indian forces on both sides of its border.

South Korea believes that the North Korean regime is behind an act of cyber sabotage against a major bank in April and has profited from hacking into online gaming servers. The increasing cyber aggression should worry the West, as the North Korean regime is unpredictable and could also help other enemies of the U.S. carry out attacks of their own. Its hackers are only one order away from doing serious damage to the economy of one of its enemies.

The attack on Nonghyup Bank came through the infected laptop of a contractor. The hackers were able to use the laptop to disseminate viruses throughout the bank’s computer networks, and on April 12, half of its servers suddenly crashed. About 30 million people were unable to make online financial transactions or use the bank’s ATMs, and the bank lost important information.  Investigators traced the attack back to servers used in previous North Korean attacks, including one belonging to a regime entity in China. The sabotage was eventually linked to the North Korean regime’s Reconnaissance General Bureau. The lead South Korean investigator declared, “This was an unprecedented act of cyberterror involving North Korea.”

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

The U.S. believes it has killed Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the second-in-command of Al Qaeda, in a drone strike in Waziristan, Pakistan on August 22. It is a painful loss for Al Qaeda, as his importance is arguably even greater than that of the group’s chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Obama administration will cite his death as evidence that the “strategic defeat” of Al Qaeda is near.

There is no firm confirmation of Rahman’s death. A Pakistani intelligence official confirmed to The Independent that Rahman has been killed. However, a Taliban commander in Pakistan insists, “It’s a fake story. It’s not true.” A Pakistani official in Peshawar has expressed doubts, claiming that no informants in the area could substantiate the reports. Rahman has been falsely reported as having been killed before, but the U.S. appears confident that he has been taken out.

Rahman was one of five terrorist leaders that the U.S. told Pakistan would be unilaterally targeted if it did not locate them by July. David Ignatius argues that Rahman was the most important Al Qaeda figure because “whatever thread still held al-Qaeda together passed from bin Laden through to Rahman.” He is not believed to have dealt with the details of individual operations, but he did work with Bin Laden on the general planning for a spectacular attack on the U.S. for the tenth anniversary of 9/11. He was the overall leader for Al Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal regions, and handled communication between Osama Bin Laden and his commanders.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

The terrorists behind the three bombings in Mumbai on July 13 that killed at least 23 people obviously want to torpedo any dialogue between India and Pakistan, but the Pakistani government (or at least the ISI and other extremist factions) may want to send a message: You need us.

The attacks came around the anniversary of the July 11, 2006 train bombings that killed over 200 people in Mumbai. A leader of a group called the Indian Mujahideen (IM) confessed to his role in this attack, and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) has also been linked. The latter displayed its lethality with its sophisticated attacks on Mumbai in November 2008 that killed 164 people. Suspicion for these latest attacks is falling upon the IM, but the LET may have used the IM as a front, given their close links.

“When LET’s terrorists were arrested, ISI had a problem internationally. So their strategy was to train more and more people of Indian origin,” said New Delhi Joint Police Commissioner Karnail Singh in 2008. Top IM leaders, specifically the Bhatkal brothers, are currently sheltered by the LET in Karachi. India’s Intelligence Bureau has even suspected that IM is made up altogether by the LET and presumably, its Pakistani backers.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

Following the United States’ lead, France has announced that it is withdrawing a large portion of its forces in Afghanistan. This comes after word has leaked that France is trying to end the Libya conflict as well.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a surprise visit to Afghanistan today and announced that the country would take out 1,000 troops out of the approximately 4,000 present. This comes after the United States announced its own withdrawal plan.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said France’s withdrawal would be limited to the Surobi region, east of Kabul. “We believe this region is now secure and the time has come to pass the baton to the Afghan troops,” he told France Info radio.

Sarkozy’s visit followed a trip by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at the weekend and came two days before France’s “Bastille Day” national day, which marks the start of the 1789 revolution and will this year honor troops on foreign missions.

Too bad– it’s coming at a time when al Qaeda and the Taliban is hard hit.

Cross-posted at Pundit Press.

The U.S.-Pakistani relationship is continuing its fast downward spiral. The Pakistani government has expelled over 100 American advisors and is demanding the closure of a base used for drone strikes. The U.S., fed up with Pakistani duplicity, is now withhholding $800 million in military aid. The U.S. needs to prepare for the day when the Pakistanis fully cease their meager cooperation.

The cut equals about one-third of the $2.7 billion in military assistance given to Pakistan annually. About $300 million of it was supposed to reimburse the Pakistanis for deploying forces to the border with Afghanistan, an action any responsible government would have done on its own. The decision came after Pakistan further restricted counter-terrorism cooperation, including ending a program to train paramilitary forces in the tribal areas. The Pakistanis are also asking the U.S. to leave the Shamsi Air Base where drones are dispatched from, and have forced out over 100 U.S. trainers while limiting the visas for other personnel.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.