The Coming Battle for Diyala & The Sunni Revolt Against Al Qaeda

Between the counterinsurgency operation in Baghdad and the Sunni revolt in Anbar Province, al Qaeda has largely retreated into Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, where they are preparing for a defense along the lines of that executed by Hezbollah in the fight last year with the Israelis in Lebanon. The situation is hardly static. Sunnis in Diyala are beginning their own revolt against al Qaeda, and they are getting assistance from the Anbar Sunnis. This today from Bill Rogio:

Al Qaeda's campaign of murder and intimidation [in Diyala is] beginning to anger the tribes much as it did in Anbar province. Al Qaeda's establishment of its Islamic State of Iraq, with its capital in Baqubah made the province ripe for a major Coalition operation in the region. . . Today, the speculation has become a reality, as "Arab tribesmen in Baqubah have said they will form a tribal alliance to cleanse the Diyala province of foreign fighters and those of the al-Qaeda terrorist network in Iraq."

"Tribesman Sheikh Wameed al-Jabouri told al-Hayat that a number of tribes had signed a cooperation agreement to undertake this mission and to bring the city back to how 'it used to be,'" notes DPA. "The agreement could be considered "a national charter" that proves their rejection of the actions of the terrorist groups, al-Jabouri said."

. . . Diyala has become the main hub of al Qaeda's operations. Al Qaeda in Iraq made Baqubah the capital of its rump Islamic State of Iraq. Since the inception of the Baghdad Security Plan in mid-February, the security situation, which was deteriorating after U.S. forces pulled back last fall, has markedly worsened. Al Qaeda has prepared fighting positions, supply bases, IED traps, bomb rigged buildings, and training camps in the province.

Over 2,000 hardened al Qaeda fighters fled Baghdad and are operating in Diyala. An American intelligence official and a U.S. military officer informs us that al Qaeda is operating along the lines of Hezbollah's military structure in Lebanon. Recent al Qaeda attacks in the region bear this out. Al Qaeda is organized in small military units with infantry, mortars, anti-tank and anti-aircraft teams, as well as suicide and IED cells and the accompanying logistical nodes. Al Qaeda has been conducting a terror campaign to remove tribal leaders and others who oppose them, while waging a campaign of intimidation designed to cower the local population.

The U.S. and Iraqi security forces have preparing the battlefield in Diyala until the full compliment of U.S. forces are in theater and able to finish securing the Baghdad "belts" - the regions surrounding Baghdad. The Diyala Campaign is only is its opening phase, with U.S. and Iraqi forces conducting raids, search and destroy missions, establishing forward operating bases and logistic nodes in preparation for the full assault sometime early this summer. The establishment of the yet to be named Diyala Salvation Front is a crucial element to establishing local intelligence networks and an auxiliary force to hunt al Qaeda.

The influence of Sheikh Sattar al Rishawi and his Anbar Salvation Council cannot be underestimated in the formation of the anti al Qaeda tribal alliance in Diyala. The Anbar Salvation Council has been operating outside its provincial boundaries and has sent emissaries into Diyala, Salahadin, Niwena and other provinces in an effort to expand his anti al Qaeda Awakening movement nationwide.

Read the entire story here. If there is to be the type of progress needed to sustain operations beyond September, I suspect the operations in Diyala will have to commence in mid to late June and I expect it to be a particularly aggressive and bloody offensive. There are precious few areas left where al Qaeda can fall back in Iraq, and Diyala has the potential to be a decisive operation if the terrorists have no other option then to stand and fight. The chance for a decisive success will drastically increase if, as it seems, the Sunnis in Diyala turn on al Qaeda in Iraq and provide significent intelligence in advance of full scale operations.

And on a final note, the MSM has relatively silent for the past few days on operations in Iraq. That does not mean that we are not conducting operations. To the contrary, it appears that Task Force 145, the special ops folks. have been incredibly busy doing bad things to bad people. And in Baghdad, Iraqi security forces have captured some 86 suspected insurgents and killed one during raids in Baghdad. Read the story here. I posted earlier about the capture to kill ratio as an objective indicator of enemy morale. When you get in the 86 to 1 ratio, it makes me feel fairly sanguine about the real liklihood of success of the counterinsurgency.

Read More...

Summary only...

China's Role in Weapons Proliferation

China is hardly an ally of the United States. Despite symbiotic economies, the Chinese Communist government is not only upgrading its military far beyond any defensive posture, it also plays a large role in WMD proliferation and proliferation of the missle technology used to deliver such weapons. This from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) publication "China and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles: Policy Issues:"

China has taken some steps to mollify U.S. concerns about its role in weapons proliferation. Nonetheless, supplies from China have aggravated trends that result in ambiguous technical aid, more indigenous capabilities, longer-range missiles, and secondary (retransferred) proliferation. Asthe Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) has reported to Congress, China remains a “key supplier” of weapons technology, particularly missile or chemical technology.

Read the CRS here.

Hattip: Secrecy News

Read More...

Summary only...

News From the Shadow War - Location of bin Laden & an Iranian Intel Coup

Every so often, small news of a far larger clandestine war makes it into the public eye. Such is the case now. We have learned two bits of news recently that are uniformly good. The first is that we now have actionable intelligence as to the respective locations where bin Laden and al Zarqawi are believed to be in hiding. Further, we are flooding the area, which is reportedly in Pakistan, with numerous paramilitary troops. That is wonderful news. Let us hope that this time we finally have some success.

The second bit of news is particularly promising. It seems that we now have access to a significant Iranian intelligence asset, Gen. Ali Reza Asgari:

The mysterious disappearance of an Iranian general in Turkey in early February has led to speculation he either was kidnapped or defected.

. . . One respected analyst with sources in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard says Gen. Ali Reza Asgari has defected and is now in a European country with his entire family, where he is cooperating with the U.S.
. . . .
"This is a fatal blow to Iranian intelligence," said the source, explaining that Asgari knows sensitive information about Iran's nuclear and military projects. Iran called tens of its Revolutionary Guard agents working at embassies and cultural centers in Arab and European countries back to Tehran out of fear that Asgari might disclose secret information about their identities, according to the analyst.
. . . .
Asgari's years with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Iranian defense ministry would make him an invaluable source of information. He was reportedly based in Lebanon in the 1990s and was in charge of ties with the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah.

At one point he was also in charge of military purchases at the defense ministry and exposed widespread corruption there which led to the arrest of a number of officials. Most recently, he worked as a consultant for the same ministry.

Now this one sounds very promising indeed. Either we have General and are debriefing him as fast as we can or, almost as good, the Iranians think that we have him and must proceed under the assumption that all he knows has now been compromised to the U.S. This could be a very significant event in either case.

Read More...

Summary only...

With Allies Like These, Who Needs Enemies

The Wall Stree Journal has an article discussing the Italian prosecution of 25 CIA agents involved in a joint operation with Italian intelligence to capture Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, an Islamist terrorist recruiter then living in Milan.

[This capture] . . . four years ago in an operation carried out by U.S. and Italian intelligence could have been a model for transatlantic cooperation in counterterrorism. Instead, it is becoming Exhibit A in how European politicians are working against the U.S., undermining the fight against Islamic terrorism and endangering the NATO alliance.
. . . .

. . . no one, including the Italian prosecutors, doubts that Nasr posed a security risk. In 2005, a Milan court, at Mr. Spataro's behest, issued an arrest warrant for Nasr, charging him with building a terrorist network in Europe that actively recruited terrorists, including for Iraq. Eight of his accomplices have been sentenced to up to 10 years in prison on similar charges, and Italian authorities believe more are at large
. . . .
European politicians are more at fault here than any prosecutor. Since the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., many European leaders have been playing a double game, working with the U.S. to root out terrorist plots on the sly -- and saving countless lives -- while publicly condemning "American methods" in rhetoric that has fed rising anti-Americanism. It doesn't help that many Europeans embrace the preposterous legal notion of "universal jurisdiction," the idea that an ambitious prosecutor can indict and try anyone for an alleged crime committed anywhere in the world.

This is the climate in which, for example, a German court this month issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents allegedly involved in transferring a German-Lebanese terrorist suspect, Khaled al-Masri, to Afghanistan for questioning. It made no difference that Mr. al-Masri had been arrested in Macedonia. Also in Germany, prosecutors are considering whether to bring war-crimes charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA Director George Tenet and other senior civilian and military officials. Mr. Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Dick Cheney were targeted by Belgian courts until the law there was changed. And so on.

European officials need to understand the risks they're running if they keep this up. Italy and the U.S. are NATO partners, but such an alliance is meaningless if "allies" make a habit of prosecuting each other for cooperating against a common threat. Italy's political grandstanding is endangering NATO, as well as the lives of millions on both sides of the Atlantic.

The pettiness of our alleged allies, as well as the danger they run in the face of an ever growing internal radical muslim threat, never ceases to amaze me. Their blind anti-americanism, often used for political gain, is both appalling and, in the current state of the world, potentially suicidal. At any rate, read the whole story here.

Read More...

Summary only...

The Iranian Threat

Adel Assadinia, a former career diplomat who was Iran's consul-general in Dubai and an adviser to the Iranian foreign ministry before defecting to the West, is alleging that Iran is infiltrating the Shia populations throughout the Middle East and establishing sleeper cells.

Were America or Israel to attack Iran, such cells would be instructed to foment long-dormant sectarian grievances and attack the extensive American and European business interests in wealthy states such as Dubai and Saudi Arabia. Such a scenario would bring chaos to the Gulf, one of the few areas of the Middle East that remains prosperous and has largely pro-Western governments.

Read the whole story here.

Read More...

Summary only...

A HILARIOUS GUARDIAN HIT PIECE or HOW TO TWIST THE FACTS WHEN THEY ARE ALL BAD

A few words on The Guardian before jumping in. The Guardian is the leading far left newspaper in Britain. Its politics lie somewhere in between the Communist Workers Party and the New York Times. Much of its straight reporting is some of the finest out there. The really whacky stuff comes in the Opinion pieces, but occasionally the reporters and editors can't help themselves and they let their leftist bent bleed heavily into their straight reporting. Such is the case with this gem, "US intelligence on Iran does not stand up, say Vienna sources."


The situation in Iran is nearly the polar opposite of that of Iraq prior to the invasion in 2003. Iran is openly, now at least, developing nuclear capacity. They have built a facility to make heavy water. Heavy water is necessary for making weapons grade plutonium. If Iran's goal is simply peaceful harnessing of atomic power for energy, they would use the safer and less waste producing light water reactor. Most power reactors worldwide, and all in the United States are cooled by ordinary “light” water. The question of whether Iran has a "right" to develop a full fuel cycle with heavy water is really Ahmadinejad's red herring. The penultimate question is Iran's motivation for doing so. If Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon, they have nothing to hide. There is no reason whatsoever to keep the IAEA from inspecting and documenting its nuclear development. On these facts alone, even a blind man could see that Iran is attempting to build nuclear weapons. Add in plans for ICBM's and enriched uranium spheres whose only use is in nuclear weapons . . . well, you decide.

With all of that in mind, let's dissect the Guardian article.

THE GUARDIAN SAYS:

Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by American spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, according to diplomatic sources in Vienna.

The claims, reminiscent of the intelligence fiasco surrounding the Iraq war, coincided with a sharp increase in international tension as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was defying a UN security council ultimatum to freeze its nuclear programme.

TRANSLATION: Those CIA numbnuts are at it AGAIN. Can you believe these guys. They need to put down their spy decoder rings before they hurt themselves. They got it wrong on Iraq nuclear weapons program, and this is just a repeat. Any U.S. intelligence -- and any reasonable inferences from information in the public domain -- are to be ignored. Like any good journalist, ours gets his main premise out early.

THE GUARDIAN SAYS:

At the heart of the debate are accusations, spearheaded by the US, that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons. However, most of the tip-offs about supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have led to dead ends when investigated by IAEA inspectors, according to informed sources in Vienna.

"Most of it has turned out to be incorrect," said a diplomat at the IAEA with detailed knowledge of the agency's investigations. "They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned nuclear] activities."

TRANSLATION: What actually appears to be going on here is that the U.S. is trying to turn over all the rocks where they have any suspicion that there might be problems. Sounds like the right way to do things to me. Not to our intrepid reporter and his reliable source. They spin this like Linda Blair's head in the Exorcist. Thoroughness now equals incompetence.

THE GUARDIAN SAYS:

One particularly contentious issue concerned records of plans to build a nuclear warhead, which the CIA said it found on a stolen laptop computer supplied by an informant inside Iran. In July 2005, US intelligence officials showed printed versions of the material to IAEA officials, who judged it to be sufficiently specific to confront Iran.

Tehran rejected the material as forgeries and there are still reservations about its authenticity in the IAEA, according to officials with knowledge of the internal debate inside the agency.

TRANSLATION: Hey, if Iran says its a forgery, that's good enough for me. I mean, as anyone with a tinfoil hat knows, the CIA regularly falsifies intelligence about the nuclear programs of Middle Eastern countries in order to provide BushHitler with the cover he needs to continue his imperialistic march towards world domination.

THE GUARDIAN SAYS

"First of all, if you have a clandestine programme, you don't put it on laptops which can walk away," one official said.

whoa. WHOA. WHOA-GD-WHOA. How did they keep a straight face writing that one. Secret documents in this day and age almost invariably originate from and are stored on a computer medium which, then itself becomes classified. And laptops with classified information get lost or stolen all the time, as this snippet from THE GUARDIAN'S archives of last year attests:

Secret military/intelligence documents and laptops seem to have an alarming tendency to end up accidentally left in pubs or abandoned in ditches. From such places, their next destination is often the newsrooms of national tabloid newspapers.

How embarrassing.

Damn those archives.

But then again, the author here is only quoting his highly reliable "source." So would the "source" consider the plans to be credible only if hand drawn with a crayon? For some reason, I am picturing stick figures, a mushroom cloud, and several arrows pointing out the direcions. At any rate, perhaps that is typical of security precautions in the "sources" home country, but it does not seem to hold true for the rest of the known world. Who the hell is this source, Borat?

And now for the grand finale . . .

THE GUARDIAN SAYS

One of the "outstanding issues" listed in yesterday's report involves a 15-page document that appears to have been handed to IAEA inspectors by mistake in October 2005. That document roughly describes how to make hemispheres of enriched uranium, for which the only known use is in nuclear warheads. Iran has yet to present a satisfactory explanation of how and why it has the document.

Last night Iran, which says its nuclear fuel programme is designed only to produce electricity, remained defiant.

TRANSLATION: OHHHH NOOOOOO . . . . the SMOKING GUN.

Now, to the author's credit, he did include mention of this smoking gun in his article, but he just couldn't bring himself to identify which party gave the document to the IAEA inspectors in the lead sentence. Maybe he hopes we won't notice.

Can't you feel the author's pain and anguish in the tortured language of this paragraph? I for one am sympathetic. I think it is just very fortunate that the author had a literary palliative that he could quickly pen to assuage his pain -- that of Iran explaining the true, peaceful nature of its nuclear (weapons) program to the incompent Americans.

This one has to go down as a classic of leftist literature. Our author displays an absolute refusal to draw any reasonable inferences from the facts that he must face up to, and he gets an alternate take on the facts wherever he can -- an alternate take even more reliable then the IAEA report itself, apparently. This is truly a work of art. And because of all his effort, his is able to maintain the purity of his ideological equations:

BushHitler = Evil; CIA = Incompetent; Iran = Peace Loving, Honest and Democratic Mullahs.

I have my own equation. LEFT'S POSITION ON IRAN = SUICIDE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION.

Read More...

Summary only...

ROLE OF CONGRESS IN INTELLIGENCE SHARING. The CRS just released their report on on Congress's role in sharing intelligence between law enforcement and intelligence agencies. I paroused it to see if it addressed leaks to MSM, but it was silent on that issue . . . At any rate, it is an interesting read if for naught else then background on how our intelligence sharing became so truncated in the 20th century as well as a review of FISA today.

Read More...

Summary only...