Iran Says It’s Under Attack by ISIS

Jassem Al Salami

10.09.14 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/09/iran-says-it-s-under-attack-by-isis.html 

Suicide bombs. Captured soldiers. Guerrilla attacks. Iran claims it’s under assault by Sunni militants like ISIS. Now Tehran is making mass arrests to try to stop the onslaught. 

On May 13, 2014, a pickup truck approached a caravan of white vans moving on a road near Baqubah, east of Baghdad, in Iraq. Within few meters of the caravan, the pickup exploded, leaving five Iranian engineers and several of their Iraqi guards dead, according to local news reports. The attack came less than 24 hours after a threat by ISIS spokesperson, Abu Mohammad al Adnani. 

ISIS could—and very much wanted to—“transform Iran into pools of blood,” Adnani said. After all, Iran was the “bitterest enemy” of the Islamic State. 

But al Qaeda long has been known to have deep, complex relations with Iran. And so ISIS, which grew out of a branch of al Qaeda in Iraq, “held back its soldiers and repressed its rage over the years to preserve the unity” of al Qaeda’s ranks. 

“So let history record that Iran owes an invaluable debt to al Qaeda,” he added. 

But in May, Adnani announced a change of plans: ISIS would not respect al Qaeda requests any more. And while Adnani did not overtly threaten Iran, the May 13th attack turned out to be one in a string of purported terror attacks against Iran and Iranians. These attacks have been pinned by local media and Iranian officials to ISIS and other Sunni extremist groups. 

The American intelligence community has heard the claims. But they’re not sure whether the violence can be blamed on the Islamic State—or some other Sunni militants. “While no one is ruling out the possibility of an ISIL presence in Iran,” a U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast, using the government’s preferred acronym for ISIS, “at this time we are not able to validate reports of any activity there.” 

ISIS’s rampage through Iraq has produced collateral damage that’s been largely unnoticed in the West. Iran, on the other hand, has been paying close attention. When ISIS took over the city of Jalawlah near the Iranian border, several Iranian media outlets reported a heavy attack on a border guard post near the city of Qasr-e-Shirin—on Iranian soil. The initial toll was reported four guardsmen killed in the incident. Qasr-e-Shirin’s representative in the Iranian parliament, a hardliner conservative named Fathollah Husseini, denied any casualties. But less than two days later, Iranian media outlets reported on funerals held for privates killed in the incident. Later reports suggested at least 11 Iranian border guards were killed in the incident. 

Iranian political and military leaders tend to censor terrorist threats inside Iran, to bolster their reign over the country. But the ISIS threat is so bold inside Iran that even the highest officials have publicly acknowledged it. MohamdReza Rahmani Fazli, the Iranian interior minister and the highest ranking government official in charge of coordinating police and security efforts inside Iran, issued a warning on September 7 saying “Daesh”—a pejorative term for ISIS—“is posed to attack Iran imminently.” 

ISIS, which grew out of a branch of al Qaeda in Iraq, “held back its soldiers and repressed its rage over the years to preserve the unity” of al Qaeda’s ranks, the militant leader said. “So let history record that Iran owes an invaluable debt to al Qaeda.” 

Perhaps. But don’t expect a full-out ISIS invasion. After the extremist group took the Iraqi city of Tikrit in early July 2014, the majority of ISIS’s efforts have been concentrated on consolidating its power and eliminating pockets of resistance inside its territory. Evidently, ISIS’s current strategy is to launch guerrilla attacks and not a full invasion of Iran’s border regions. Given the history of arrangements of Iranians with sunni extremist militia that directly threatened Iran (as noted by Abu Mohamad Al Adnani), such attacks could push Iran to dial back its support for the Iraqi army and force Iran to accept ISIS’s presence in Sunni-populated regions of Iraq. 

Turkey, the Kurds and Iraq: The Prize and Peril of Kirkuk

By Reva Bhalla

October 8, 2014

In June 1919, aboard an Allied warship en route to Paris, sat Damat Ferid Pasha, the Grand Vizier of a crumbling Ottoman Empire. The elderly statesman, donning an iconic red fez and boasting an impeccably groomed mustache, held in his hands a memorandum that he was to present to the Allied powers at the Quai d'Orsay. The negotiations on postwar reparations started five months earlier, but the Ottoman delegation was prepared to make the most of its tardy invitation to the talks. As he journeyed across the Mediterranean that summer toward the French shore, Damat Ferid mentally rehearsed the list of demands he would make to the Allied powers during his last-ditch effort to hold the empire together.

He began with a message, not of reproach, but of inculpability: "Gentlemen, I should not be bold enough to come before this High Assembly if I thought that the Ottoman people had incurred any responsibility in the war that has ravaged Europe and Asia with fire and sword." His speech was followed by an even more defiant memorandum, denouncing any attempt to redistribute Ottoman land to the Kurds, Greeks and Armenians, asserting: "In Asia, the Turkish lands are bounded on the south by the provinces of Mosul and Diyarbakir, as well as a part of Aleppo as far as the Mediterranean." When Damat Ferid's demands were presented in Paris, the Allies were in awe of the gall displayed by the Ottoman delegation. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George regarded the presentation as a "good joke," while U.S. President Woodrow Wilson said he had never seen anything more "stupid." They flatly rejected Damat Ferid's apparently misguided appeal -- declaring that the Turks were unfit to rule over other races, regardless of their common Muslim identity -- and told him and his delegation to leave. The Western powers then proceeded, through their own bickering, to divide the post-Ottoman spoils.

Under far different circumstances today, Ankara is again boldly appealing to the West to follow its lead in shaping policy in Turkey's volatile Muslim backyard. And again, Western powers are looking at Turkey with incredulity, waiting for Ankara to assume responsibility for the region by tackling the immediate threat of the Islamic State with whatever resources necessary, rather than pursuing a seemingly reckless strategy of toppling the Syrian government. Turkey's behavior can be perplexing and frustrating to Western leaders, but the country's combination of reticence in action and audacity in rhetoric can be traced back to many of the same issues that confronted Istanbul in 1919, beginning with the struggle over the territory of Mosul.

The Turkish Fight for Mosul

Under the Ottoman Empire, the Mosul vilayet stretched from Zakho in southeastern Anatolia down along the Tigris River through Dohuk, Arbil, Alqosh, Kirkuk, Tuz Khormato and Sulaimaniyah before butting up against the western slopes of the Zagros Mountains, which shape the border with Iran. This stretch of land, bridging the dry Arab steppes and the fertile mountain valleys in Iraqi Kurdistan, has been a locus of violence long before the Islamic State arrived. The area has been home to an evolving mix of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Yazidis, Assyro-Chaldeans and Jews, while Turkish and Persian factions and the occasional Western power, whether operating under a flag or a corporate logo, continue to work in vain to eke out a demographic makeup that suits their interests.

At the time of the British negotiation with the Ottomans over the fate of the Mosul region, British officers touring the area wrote extensively about the ubiquity of the Turkish language, noting that "Turkish is spoken all along the high road in all localities of any importance." This fact formed part of Turkey's argument that the land should remain under Turkish sovereignty. Even after the 1923 signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, in which Turkey renounced its rights to Ottoman lands, the Turkish government still held out a claim to the Mosul region, fearful that the Brits would use Kurdish separatism to further weaken the Turkish state. Invoking the popular Wilsonian principle of self-determination, the Turkish government asserted to the League of Nations that most of the Kurds and Arabs inhabiting the area preferred to be part of Turkey anyway. The British countered by asserting that their interviews with locals revealed a prevailing preference to become part of the new British-ruled Kingdom of Iraq.

The Turks, in no shape to bargain with London and mired in a deep internal debate over whether Turkey should forego these lands and focus instead on the benefits of a downsized republic, lost the argument and were forced to renounce their claims to the Mosul territory in 1925. As far as the Brits and the French were concerned, the largely Kurdish territory would serve as a vital buffer space to prevent the Turks from eventually extending their reach from Asia Minor to territories in Mesopotamia, Syria and Armenia. But the fear of Turkish expansion was not the only factor informing the European strategy to keep northern Iraq out of Turkish hands.

The Oil Factor

Hamas’ Battle Tactics Are Getting Better

The militant group is evolving

It’s been two months since the end of the summer war between Israel and Hamas. But if the results are anything to go by, Israel will have serious problems when the next war breaks out.

That’s the conclusion of a new analysis in CTC Sentinel, West Point’s journal of counter-terrorism. “Hamas’s evolution on the battlefield presentedserious challenges to the Israel Defense Forces,” writes former defense intelligence officer Jeffrey White, the report’s author.

“And, when combined with Israeli operations, [Hamas’ evolution] made the conflict the most costly in terms of casualties and damage to Gaza since Hamas seized power in 2007,” White adds.

Sixty-six Israeli soldiers died. Hamas wounded hundreds more. More than 2,000 Palestinians died. For Israel, it was a greater loss of life than the 2006 war with Hezbollah—a conflict widely perceived within the Israeli defense establishment as a failure.

And that was against an enemy many Israeli generals view as a greaterthreat.

But this is because Hamas is a “learning organization” that has managed to successively refine its fighting skills, according to White. This might seem like an obvious thing, but it has real implications as the conflict between Israel and Hamas repeats itself in deadlier and deadlier cycles.

Even though Israel killed hundreds of Hamas fighters, the militant group is now rebuilding its armed cadres and preparing for the next war. Further, Israel’s goal is to keep Hamas contained but not destroy it, as something worse could arise in its place. Hamas wants to destroy Israel and replace it with a Palestinian state, but has no ability to do so—and won’t for the foreseeable future.

This makes small wars nearly inevitable, with Hamas evolving and improving its tactics and technology after each round.

Israeli troops in September 201 At top—an Israeli Merkava tank in a hull-down position in September 2014. IDF photos

During this summer’s fighting, it was Hamas’s defensive small-unit tactics that showed a marked improvement, reflecting that it’s a well-disciplined and clever force. “Hamas fighters appeared more effective and aggressive than in past conflicts, surprising Israeli forces and coordinating fire,” White writes.

Hamas fighters did this by using a combination of machine guns, sniper fire, mines and 120-millimeter mortars aimed at kill zones—often unleashing the weapons after luring Israeli troops into ambushes. Israeli troops had a lot more firepower, but Hamas’s tunnel system allowed for its forces to move underground and escape Israeli retaliatory attacks.

The result is a defense shaped like an onion, with the inner layers absorbing the shock of the Israeli attack.

‘Boots in the air’: US helicopters return to combat in Iraq for first time

By Mitchell Prothero and Jonathan S. Landay 

McClatchy Foreign Staff (MCT)

October 5, 2014

Source Link

AH-64 Apache helicopters, assigned to the U.S. Army's 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, Task Force Saber, prepare to take off from the flight line at Forward Operating Base Fenty, Afghanistan, Feb. 22, 2012. 

ERIC PAHON/U.S. ARMY 

Three days after U.S. warships fired 47 cruise missiles at Sunni militant targets in northern Syria last week, the Pentagon signed a $251-million deal to buy more Tomahawks from Raytheon Co., a windfall for the military giant and its many subcontractors. 

Officials in Iraq say two attacks targeting the country's military have killed nine people. 

Canada plans to launch airstrikes against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq following a U.S. request, Canada's prime minister announced Friday. 

Troops deploying in support of the fight against the Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria don’t have a campaign medal to call their own, in part because the growing set of operations has yet to be graced with a name. 

The Pentagon has been issuing dire warnings this year that the military is fast approaching a severe money crunch — a problem compounded now by the war in Iraq and Syria. So Congress will almost certainly reach for an old standby accounting solution. 

IRBIL, Iraq — The United States sent helicopters into combat against Islamic State targets west of Baghdad on Sunday, the first time low-flying Army aircraft have been committed to fighting in an engagement that the Obama administration officials has promised would not include “boots on the ground.”

The U.S. Central Command, in a statement about U.S. activities against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, provided few specifics about the helicopters. They were probably AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, which were deployed to Baghdad International Airport in June to provide protection for U.S. military and diplomatic facilities.

Until Sunday, U.S. airstrikes in Iraq have been limited to fast-moving Air Force and Navy fighter aircraft and drones. But the use of the relatively slow-flying helicopters represents an escalation of American military involvement and is a sign that the security situation in Iraq’s Anbar province is deteriorating. Last week, the Islamic State militants overran numerous Iraqi bases and towns and were becoming a widespread presence in Abu Ghraib, the last major town outside of Baghdad’s western suburbs.

Jeffrey White, a former senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who closely follows developments in Iraq, said the use of helicopter gunships by the United States means that U.S. troops effectively are now directly involved in ground battles.

Hit the Islamic State's Pocketbook

A man holds up a knife as he rides on the back of a motorcycle in celebration after Islamic State militants took over Tabqa air base, in Raqqa, Syria, August 24, 2014

by Patrick B. Johnston and Benjamin Bahney

The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is taking aim at the terrorist organization's pocketbook. The coalition has launched airstrikes on mobile oil refineries in eastern Syria that the Pentagon believes generate up to 500 barrels of petroleum each day for the group.

The Islamic State has emerged as the world's richest terrorist group, with estimated assets of $1 billion to $2 billion. Its sophisticated and strategically driven financial scheme is a key reason that U.S. officials say this fight could last years.

An examination of newly declassified financial documents the group created dating to 2005 reveals an organized criminal operation that is funded through rackets like protection, extortion and the co-opting of the region's oil industry. This makes the group a self-sustaining operation, largely free of reliance on the largesse of wealthy foreign patrons. While airstrikes may disrupt the flow of oil and profits, they will not lead to the group's financial ruin anytime soon. Based on our research, we estimate the Islamic State will bring in $100 million to $200 million this year. And that's being conservative.

Most of its profits come from Iraq and Syria, though it smuggles oil to other countries in the region. And it has to get that money from these countries back into Iraq and Syria somehow—either through money laundering or through informal financial institutions. With about a dozen oil fields and a number of refineries under its control, the Islamic State has plenty of oil to sell to the tune of millions of dollars per day.

This is not new. The documents indicate that the Islamic State raised hundreds of millions of dollars through oil smuggling and racketeering. What is new, though, is how much it has in its coffers to sustain itself in pursuit of a broader Islamic State.

The Islamic State has built its organization using a financial strategy characterized by ruthless efficiency and pragmatism. It spends money on organizational necessities such as equipment, weapons and facilities like safe houses. It pays a small, flat rate to each member, and adds a premium for each wife and child a member has.

Records show that in 2005-06, the rate in Iraq's Anbar province was $491 a year, with an additional $245 per year for each dependent. The group pays the premiums even after operatives are captured or killed, and helps its fighters with rent, medical expenses, legal costs and performance bonuses, all of which are audited to mitigate potential abuse. Taken together, its own documents show it has long invested in its organization, growing its infrastructure base and incentivizing recruits to join and existing members and their families to remain loyal.

The group is also making long-term investments in state building. This, too, requires money that can be invested in administering controlled territory and establishing institutions to implement and sustain sharia governance. In some areas, it is able to provide reliable electricity, access to clean water and serviceable infrastructure. But in the areas it controls, it invests in bureaucracies that consolidate sharia law.

While the group has hardly mastered the provision of public services, it is governing its territories to an extent, paying salaries to civil servants, facilitating trade, collecting taxes and engaging in other forms of statecraft aimed at keeping populations content and passive.

Dismantling its financial empire will take more than airstrikes and will require engagement from a new government in Iraq that includes Sunnis. Enhanced U.S.-Iraqi intelligence cooperation also can help to root out the group's financial system, including the informal network of money brokers known as hawalas.

The Middle East in chaos

Reuel Marc Gerecht

October 13, 2014, Vol. 20, No. 05

The great medieval historian Ibn Khaldun centered his understanding of history on asabiyya, which is perhaps best translated as esprit de corps mixed with the will to power. In his masterpiece, the Muqaddima, or Prolegomena, the Arab historian saw as the primary locus of asabiyya the tribe—a smaller unit than the ethnic group, and the most powerful military unit in Islamic history until the Mameluks perfected the use of slave soldiers. The concept ofasabiyya is helpful in trying to understand the Middle East today, after the second Iraq war (2003-09) and the Arab Spring (2010-12) together unhinged a dying political order throughout the region.

Today, no Muslim state in the Middle East has an asabiyya that peacefully and happily binds its citizens together. Unless new organizing ideas are embraced, we are likely to see the persistence of the Islamic militancy that has shaken the region. The prognosis isn’t good, in part because of highly counterproductive American actions. U.S. air raids against the Islamic State and other radical Islamic groups, which only stir the hornets but don’t destroy the nest, are unlikely to change the fundamental dynamic that keeps working against us. The surviving secular dictators and even the most religiously conservative kings see themselves as vulnerable to militant Islam because they know that their own legitimacy is questionable and that their rule strains against Islam’s deep current of righteous rebellion. The Islamic State’s call to the faithful is dangerous because its promise of a new conquest society appeals to young men. It offers the hope that this time the faithful might win.

As is well-known, modern Middle Eastern states, with the limited exceptions of Iran, Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey, were created intentionally or by default by Europeans and Westernized native elites who dropped older imperial or tribal ideals for more empowering modern imports. National consciousness, to the extent it existed, often wrapped around a monarch or an army or both. Even in Iran, Turkey, and Egypt, where geography, language, common culture, and shared travails forged the strongest sense of nationhood among Muslims, internal differences in ethnicity, language, and faith made the ruling elites always a little uneasy about where the people’s affections lay. Would most Kurds stay loyal to the Turkish Republic without the Turkish Army repressing them? Would Iran’s Kurds, Ba-luchis, Arabs, and Azeri Turks be attached to the Persian enterprise if Iranian armed might disappeared? Did Egyptians, searching for something beyond the tight confines of the Nile Valley to unite them, want to be pan-Arabist or pan-Islamist or both? Even in Iran, where an ancient culture put up stiff resistance to the Arab legions that conquered everything from the Pyrenees to Central Asia in the 7th and 8th centuries, the Islamic identity never lost that much ground as modern nationalism began to heat up under the Qajar (1794-1925) and Pahlavi (1925-1979) shahs. Despite the best efforts of Western or Western-inspired modernizers, everywhere in the Middle East, for everyone, religion is the primary identity—cherished and nurtured by fundamentalists and the common faithful or constrained, submerged, and coopted by nationalists and secularists. 

Secular military dictatorship among Muslims has been a double-edged sword: It helped to build nationalist consciousness; but its injustices and brutality degraded the legitimacy of the state, collapsed traditional mores and elites that had checked centralized power, and fueled the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, which inevitably questions, and often denies, nonreligious affections and loyalties. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his clerical successors, who put mullahs at Iran’s political apex, would have been unthinkable without the Pahlavis’ bulldozing of the country’s traditions. The growth of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood since its founding in 1928 wouldn’t have been possible without the Westernization and militarization of the country’s ruling elite. Ditto for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which grew as the Baathism adopted by the ruling Alawites (a minority in Syria who follow an offshoot of Shiism) became more savage and sectarian. The successes of al Qaeda and the Islamic State spring in part from the moral convulsions that have come from secular Muslim elites’ pounding the old orders into dust and conservative religious elites’ recoiling from secularism and feeling guilty about their own moral and political compromises with power and an alluring modernity (think of the oil-fed Saudi, Emirati, and Qatari religious establishments, which have done so much to propagate a stern, head-chopping faith). 

The Prophet’s Community

Fundamentalists of all stripes have done well since World War II because others have done poorly. The Islamic State can attract hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Westernized Muslims from Europe and America—something that the Sunni jihad in Iraq against the invading coalition did not do—because it has tried explicitly to re-create the community of the Prophet Muhammad. As the Michigan historian Michael Bonner has put it, fundamentalists need “to create a link with an authentic Islamic past and recover an authentic Islamic practice.” All Sunni fundamentalists are obsessed with the Prophet Muhammad and his society, the first umma or community of the faithful. The neofundamentalists are primarily concerned with ethics and the salvation of each believer, while the Islamists want to build or seize a state and push Muslims closer to God by controlling the public square. Either way, this obsession with the prophet can extend to his first four successors, the Rashidun or “rightly guided” caliphs: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali (d. 661). The centripetal eminence of the prophet and his companions in fundamentalist thought cannot be overstated. It guides the educated—Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-appointed caliph of the Islamic State, reportedly has a Ph.D. in Islamic jurisprudence—as well as those with minimal knowledge of Islamic history and the holy law, like many Western recruits of al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The prophet and his first community, which set the stage for the astonishing conquests of the Rashidun, are the spiritual and political gateway to Islam for Sunni fundamentalists. (Shiites, who view Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet, and his descendants as the only rightful heirs to Muhammad, have a different charismatic history.) 

Nukes on the High Seas: Israel's Underwater Atomic Arsenal

Robert Farley

October 9, 2014

Israeli submarines—if reports are accurate—will carry a portion of Israel’s nuclear deterrent under the sea. Can these subs provide a practical deterrent?

In a few months, the fifth “Dolphin” submarine will leave Germany and enter Israeli service. A sixth boat will arrive by 2017. Under normal circumstances, a force of six modern diesel-electric submarines would represent a large, but not outlandish, undersea commitment on the part of a country of Israel’s size and wealth. But the Dolphins apparently play a much larger role in Israel’s self-defense plans; reports indicate that they will carry a portion of Israel’s nuclear deterrent, in the form of nuclear-armed, submarine-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs). Theoretically, this gives Israel the third leg (after ballistic missiles and fighter-bombers) of the nuclear triad. But do the Dolphins provide a practical deterrent?

The Boats and Their Missiles

Israel is not the first country to attempt to manage its subsurface nuclear deterrent with conventional submarines. Early Soviet ballistic-missile submarines relied on conventional propulsion, as did the earliest Chinese prototype missile sub. However, conventional subs have distinct disadvantages relative to their nuclear kin in deterrent missions. Most importantly, they lack the range to remain on station for extended periods of time without access to supply tenders or friendly bases. This makes the submarine vulnerable to attack, potentially as part of a policy of preemption. It also means that fewer subs can conduct deterrent patrols at any given time, making the task of anti-submarine forces considerably easier.

The history of the Dolphin class is relatively well known. The first three boats (delivered starting in the late 1990s) were developed from the ubiquitous German Type 209 class, although with longer hulls and a larger displacement. The second three boats (the first of which was delivered just recently, with the next two arriving before 2017) more closely resemble the German Type 212. Germany donated the first two boats to Israel, partially in recompense for German assistance with Iraq’s chemical-weapons and ballistic-missile programs.

The Dolphins’ conventional mission is the same as any other submarine. The boats are expected to patrol Israeli waters and other areas of conflict, and have an array of weapons suitable for both anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare. They can also deliver teams of special operators, and conduct conventional cruise missile strikes on land targets.

A United Ukraine, in Photographs

By James Estrin 

Oct. 2, 2014

Arthur Bondar is not exactly the type to take orders. He gave up pursuing a military career when he realized in college that “fighting was not a good way to solve problems.” Instead, he turned to photography, working for a Ukrainian photo agency.

“I worked really hard and I tried to repeat the pictures of different photographers, but I found that uninteresting,” he said. “So I started to find my own photography.”

Unfortunately, his bosses thought his “photos were too artistic” and fired him. Yet, the very day he had to return his camera gear, he learned he had won the Pikto competition and was awarded an exhibit in Canada.

Freed from having to make pictures that were mere illustrations, he started documenting the people who still lived near the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. Over the next four years he made relationships, gained access — even staying in a house that was inside the excluded zone. The photos are a personal view of the nuclear disaster’s effects on nature and on people.

As he was finishing the Chernobyl project he realized that it was just the end of a single chapter in what would become his magnum opus — a three-part study of Ukraine, which has been riven by conflict over Crimea, among other things.

“I wanted to talk about not just Chernobyl but all of the Ukraine, and so I had to photograph the whole country,” he said. “We have huge economic, environmental and political crises in Ukraine. The war in eastern Ukraine is just a consequence of everything that has happened in the whole period of independence in Ukraine.”

CreditArthur Bondar/VII Photo Mentor ProgramFishing is prohibited in the excluded zone around Chernobyl, but people depend on it to feed their families.

Growing up in Ukraine, he remembers a country with great natural beauty whose national identity was forged during World War II after centuries of outside rule and internal dispute. It was not yet an independent nation, but a Soviet republic that had endured hardships, including a devastating, politically induced famine, in which millions of people died.

UKRAINE AND THE ART OF LIMITED WAR

Lawrence Freedman

October 8, 2014 

“You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

-Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed album 1969

In a piece published in War on the Rocks last March, and in an extended version by the journal Survival in May, I considered Ukraine and the art of crisis management. My aim was to explore the relevance of the strategic concepts of the Cold War in relation to the unfolding drama of Ukraine, particularly the challenge of securing essential interests without triggering a wider war. I judged the crisis to have been badly managed by Russia, not particularly well by the West and with great difficulty by Ukraine. The consequences of the failure of crisis management lay not so much in expanding the area of conflict but instead in continuing and unsettling violence within Ukraine and a sharp deterioration in relations between Russia and the West. The death toll is now in the region of 3,500 and still rising.

The role of Russian forces within Ukraine was evident from the start of the crisis but gradually became even more overt as indigenous separatist forces were unable to cope. This resulted in a shift in the character of the crisis over the course of 2014. It moved from an externally sponsored insurgency in eastern Ukraine to a limited war between Ukraine and Russia, albeit one with some unique features. This was not a total war: Vast armies did not move against each other. Most capabilities were held in reserve. Diplomatic communications continued throughout the fighting.. A shaky cease-fire was announced on 5 September. This was perhaps better described as a de-escalation, because the fighting did not stop. It was, however, sufficient for attention to be given to the consequential political steps.

In this essay I take up the story from early May to the start of October and consider what, if any, strategic lessons might be drawn from this most recent stage in the conflict. Like my last essay on the subject, I will expand this into a longer reflection in Survival. The next stage in the conflict over the political future of Ukraine will depend on how the issue of the governance of territory currently occupied by separatists is handled. If the conflict bursts out of its current limits then the next essay in this series will have an even more alarming topic.

Commentary on the most recent stage of the conflict has stressed the originality of Russian tactics, with regular reference to “hybrid war” – combining overt and covert operations. My argument in this essay is that once Ukraine was able to put regular forces into its “anti-terrorist operation” in East Ukraine, this approach failed. This obliged President Putin to introduce superior Russian regular forces (albeit with their status denied).

Until more is revealed about Russian decision-making during the courses of this crisis, any analysis relies on inferences about Putin’s objectives and calculations. My view is that the wider conflict with the European Union and NATO had reached an uncomfortable stage for Putin. So while he could have taken more Ukrainian territory, he chose to accept a cease-fire that enabled him to retrieve some political advantage. At the same time, by exuding menace towards Ukraine and Western Europe he sought to resist further pressure. Russia’s position depended on the possibility that it was prepared to continue escalation. The West’s response was shaped by an evident reluctance to escalate and anxiety about moving into a less contained conflict. This was despite the fact that in the end the power balances were still in the West’s favor. In terms of the theory of limited war, the case of Ukraine confirms the observation that in disputes over territory, the most effective forms of control involve regular armed forces and superior firepower. Control, however, does not ensure a functioning economy and society.

U.S. Cyber Command Recruiting 6,000 More Staff to Field 133 New Cyber Teams

U.S. Cyber Command plans to recruit 6,000 cyber professionals, as U.S. mulls offensive cyber strategy

Homeland Security News Wire

October 6, 2014

Last Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R- Michigan) told reporters that he would like to see the United States adopt a more offensive strategy in cyberspace, but added that the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, and law enforcement must first develop protocols for offensive cyber measures.The following day, U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) announced plans to recruit 6,000 cyber professionals and create 133 teams across the country to support the Pentagon in defending the nation’s cyber infrastructure.

Last Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R- Michigan) told reporters that he would like to see the United States adopt a more offensive strategy in cyberspace, but added that the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, and law enforcement must first develop protocols for offensive cyber measures. “We haven’t coordinated that policy. We have disparate levels of cyber offensive capability across the federal government. … Some are fantastic, some not so good and then [there are] some in the middle,” Roger said. The following day, U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) announced plans to recruit 6,000 cyber professionals and create 133 teams across the country to support the Pentagon in defending the nation’s cyber infrastructure. “We’ve used technology and the ability to connect people and things without even thinking about the threats,” Lt. Gen. James McLaughlin, deputy commander of USCYBERCOM, said at a Fort Meade Alliance event which gathered security industry and business leaders to discuss private-public partnerships in cybersecurity. McLaughlin, who now directs the daily activities of USCYBERCOM, previously led the Air Force Cyber Command in San Antonio, Texas.

According to Stars and Stripes, it is still unclear which military branch should respond to cyber threats, but USCYBERCOM will play a role in arranging the most effective partnerships. U.S. Cyber Command’s priority is to build and train a cyber workforce and to define who has the authority to respond to threats and vulnerabilities, McLaughlin said. The 133 teams would include soldiers and civilians working across all branches of the military. To date, each branch has performed cyber defense duties independently. “They have different ways of implementing and defending,” McLaughlin said, adding that he anticipates in five to ten years, USCYBERCOM will be independent of other agencies and will operate alone.

Representatives from regional tech companies were encouraged to continue to develop new technologies which will help the United States stay ahead of cyberattacks. McLaughlin noted that colleges and universities should promote their cybersecurity programs, as the country lags behind some other nations in producing high school and college graduates with background in science, technology, engineering, and math. “We are behind as a nation in generating the next generation of workers,” McLaughlin said, noting that technology will continue to play an increasing role in defending U.S. interests.

Manager and machine: The new leadership equation

As artificial intelligence takes hold, what will it take to be an effective executive?

byMartin Dewhurst and Paul Willmott 

September 2014 

 In a 1967 McKinsey Quarterly article, “The manager and the moron,” Peter Drucker noted that “the computer makes no decisions; it only carries out orders. It’s a total moron, and therein lies its strength. It forces us to think, to set the criteria. The stupider the tool, the brighter the master has to be—and this is the dumbest tool we have ever had.”1

How things have changed. After years of promise and hype, machine learning has at last hit the vertical part of the exponential curve. Computers are replacing skilled practitioners in fields such as architecture, aviation, the law, medicine, and petroleum geology—and changing the nature of work in a broad range of other jobs and professions. Deep Knowledge Ventures, a Hong Kong venture-capital firm, has gone so far as to appoint a decision-making algorithm to its board of directors.

What would it take for algorithms to take over the C-suite? And what will be senior leaders’ most important contributions if they do? Our answers to these admittedly speculative questions rest on our work with senior leaders in a range of industries, particularly those on the vanguard of the big data and advanced-analytics revolution. We have also worked extensively alongside executives who have been experimenting most actively with opening up their companies and decision-making processes through crowdsourcing and social platforms within and across organizational boundaries.

Our argument is simple: the advances of brilliant machines will astound us, but they will transform the lives of senior executives only if managerial advances enable them to. There’s still a great deal of work to be done to create data sets worthy of the most intelligent machines and their burgeoning decision-making potential. On top of that, there’s a need for senior leaders to “let go” in ways that run counter to a century of organizational development. 

If these two things happen—and they’re likely to, for the simple reason that leading-edge organizations will seize competitive advantage and be imitated—the role of the senior leader will evolve. We’d suggest that, ironically enough, executives in the era of brilliant machines will be able to make the biggest difference through the human touch. By this we mean the questions they frame, their vigor in attacking exceptional circumstances highlighted by increasingly intelligent algorithms, and their ability to do things machines can’t. That includes tolerating ambiguity and focusing on the “softer” side of management to engage the organization and build its capacity for self-renewal.

Missing links

The most impressive examples of machine learning substituting for human pattern recognition—such as the IBM supercomputer Watson’s potential to predict oncological outcomes more accurately than physicians by reviewing, storing, and learning from reams of medical-journal articles—result from situations where inputs are of high quality. Contrast that with the state of affairs pervasive in many organizations that have access to big data and are taking a run at advanced analytics. The executives in these companies often find themselves beset by “polluted” or difficult-to-parse data, whose validity is subject to vigorous internal debates.

Things Fall Apart: How Social Media Leads to a Less Stable World

Oct 06, 2014 

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-social-media-leads-to-a-less-stable-world/ 

While social media provides myriad benefits, the advances in connectivity and wealth may come at the expense of the state and the world’s stability, writes Curtis Hougland, CEO of Attentionusa.com, a global social marketing agency. 

James Foley. David Haines. Steven Sotloff. The list of people beheaded by followers of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) keeps growing. The filming of these acts on video and distribution via social media platforms such as Twitter represent a geopolitical trend in which social media has become the new frontline for proxy wars across the globe. While social media does indeed advance connectivity and wealth among people, its proliferation at the same time results in a markedly less stable world.

That social media benefits mankind is irrefutable. I have been an evangelist for the power of new media for 20 years. However, technology in the form of globalized communication, transportation and supply chains conspires to make today’s world more complex. Events in any corner of the world now impact the rest of the globe quickly and sharply. Nations are being pulled apart along sectarian seams in Iraq, tribal divisions in Afghanistan, national interests in Ukraine and territorial fences in Gaza. These conflicts portend a quickening of global unrest, confirmed by Foreign Policy magazine’s map of civil protest. The ISIS videos are simply the exposed wire. I believe that over the next century, even great nations will Balkanize — break into smaller nations. One of the principal drivers of this Balkanization is social media Twitter .

Social media is a behavior, an expression of the innate human need to socialize and share experiences. Social media is not simply a set of technology channels and networks. Both the public and private sectors have underestimated the human imperative to behave socially. The evidence is now clear with more than 52% of the population living in cities and approximately 2 billion people active in social media globally. Some 96% of content emanates from individuals, not brands, media or governments — a volume that far exceeds participation in democratic elections.

Social media is not egalitarian, though. Despite the exponential growth of user-generated content, people prefer to congregate online around like-minded individuals. Rather than seek out new beliefs, people choose to reinforce their existing political opinions through their actions online. This is illustrated in Pew Internet’s 2014 study, “Mapping Twitter Topic Networks from Polarized Crowds to Community Clusters.” Individuals self-organize by affinity, and within affinity, by sensibility and personality. The ecosystem of social media is predicated on delivering more of what the user already likes. This, precisely, is the function of a Follow or Like. In this way, media coagulates rather than fragments online.

Shock and Recruit

Worryingly, the more extreme the personality and sensibility of the author in relation to the affinity, the more popular he or she is on social media. Affinities such as friendship, religion, political belief and geography devolve into narrower and narrower versions of themselves. The true purpose of the ISIS videos is not to shock Westerners outraged by the savagery; their purpose is to recruit like-minded zealots to the cause and establish their brand promise under a black flag.

The ecosystem of social media is predicated on delivering more of what the user already likes. This, precisely, is the function of a Follow or Like. In this way, social media coagulates rather than fragments online.

Examining the EU's Information Security and Data Protection Frameworks

Overview

Has Brussels put its own house in order when it comes to information security and data privacy? RAND Europe research suggests that the EU institutions and agencies should review the rules that govern their information security and data privacy procedures if they want to be ahead of the ICT innovation curve.

Background

The legal and policy frameworks that govern and regulate the use of information and communication technology (ICT) within European Union (EU) institutions and agencies include varying information security and data privacy aspects. The research reportInformation Security and Data Protection Legal and Policy Frameworks Applicable to European Union Institutions and Agencies informs evolving debates about the complex range of information security and data protection obligations to which the EU institutions and agencies are increasingly subject.

At the same time, the report illustrates how these debates and actual law and policymaking within the EU institutions and agencies relate to some of the latest corporate ICT delivery and use trends, including cloud computing, the consumerisation of IT (‘bring your own device’), service-orientated architectures, and an open model of IT services mediated through cyberspace.

Methods

Our research followed a two-fold methodological approach. First, the report offers a systematic review of the existing legal and policy frameworks that govern and regulate the use of ICT by EU institutions and agencies. Second, the report analyses to what extent these frameworks are capable of governing and regulating potential EU institutional ICT delivery and use patterns associated with some of the latest developments in corporate ICT.

Findings

Examining legal and policy frameworks that govern and regulate the use of ICT across all EU institutions and agencies, the report finds that:

The overall tone of EU policy and legal frameworks governing and regulating information security resonates with a model of security based on an internally secure organisation and insecure external environment, which appears to be inconsistent with the latest evolving canon of best practice concerning inter-organisational security (as, for example, codified by the International Standards Organisation).

Strategic Partnership in the Middle East: Respecting Our Arab Allies, Realism About Ourselves

By Anthony H. Cordesman

OCT 9, 2014

It is easy to talk about a U.S. strategy based on strategic partnership and coalitions. It is far more difficult, however, to make such efforts work. This is particularly true when the U.S. fails to honestly address its own problems and mistakes, minimizes the costs and risks involved, and exaggerates criticism of its allies. Strategic partnerships need to be forged on the basis of an honest understanding of the differences between the partners, respect, and mutual tolerance of their different needs and limitations.

Some of the recent U.S. criticism of its Arab allies is justified, but much of it is exaggerated, makes sweeping generalizations, and ignores the differences between the values, priorities, and strategic interests of the U.S. and each Arab ally. At the same time, there is a false equity in U.S. criticism of allies like Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – not to mention another key regional ally, Turkey.

The worst mistakes in U.S. criticisms lie in implying that all allied states and Arabs are alike, and every ally should share our values and strategic goals Our Arab allies tend to make their worst errors in criticizing the United States in the form of conspiracy theories, a lack of attention to facts and numbers, and unrealistic expectations about the ability of the U.S. to solve their particular set of problems.

Both sides need more objectivity and transparency, more realism about the strengths and limits of any alliance, and more understanding and acceptance of the real world differences in their values and strategic interests.

An American can get very tired of the sillier Arab conspiracy theories; the notion that the U.S. has the ability to wave a magic military wand, and that the U.S. has sinister motives whenever it fails to do so. It is even easier to get tired of charges that the U.S. is somehow the helpless captive of Israel or the persistent idea in the Gulf that the U.S. is abandoning its Arab allies in favor of an alliance with Iran.

At the same time, Americans have their own conspiracy theories when they state that every Arab state which has failed to come to grips with terrorism and extremism supports Jihadist movements and Islamic extremism. Americans also need more realism about the nature of strategic partnerships. Americans should not expect Arab allies to change their regimes to become clones of the U.S., or to give up their values, priorities, and strategic interests. They should not expect to receive more than given Arab allies can credibly deliver. Like the U.S. – and our allies – every Arab government faces major limits to what it can and cannot accomplish as an ally.

The Iraq War (and its Aftermath) versus Arab Interests

One way of putting these comments into perspective is to begin with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is all too clear in retrospect that the U.S. went to war for the wrong reasons. It ignored the balance of power between Iran and Iraq. It assumed that Iraq posed a missile and weapons of mass destruction threat that did not exist.

Key policymakers felt Iraq was a sponsor of terrorism and of al Qaeda when it was not. And perhaps worst of all, the war plan simply assumed that after Saddam Hussein was driven from power, Iraq would suddenly emerge as a wealthy, stable democracy, without outside aid or any serious stability operations. And, policymakers incorrectly believed that U.S. combat units could begin leaving Iraq within 30 days of Saddam’s fall.

Forgotten Lessons of Counterterrorism

Paul R. Pillar

October 8, 2014 

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/forgotten-lessons-counterterrorism-11438?page=show

International terrorism has evolved in significant ways even just in what could be called its modern era, over the past 45 years or so. Policies and practices in responding to it also have evolved during the same period. Useful lessons have been learned and applied. Enough time has gone by, however, and there have been enough discontinuities both in preferred terrorist methods and in official responses, that some of the lessons have been forgotten. This has been especially true in the United States, where much of the public appears to believe that the whole problem of international terrorism began on a September day 13 years ago.

In the 1960s, 1970s, and on into the 1980s, international terrorists—including Middle Easterners, as well as Western leftist radicals who were still active then—periodically seized headlines and public attention, in the United States as well as Europe. They most often did so by seizing hostages and threatening to kill or otherwise harm them if certain demands, often relating to release of previously captured terrorists, were not met. Sometimes the hostage-taking occurred on the ground, such as with the takeover of a meeting of OPEC leaders in Vienna in 1975. Sometimes it was accomplished by hijacking a commercial airliner along with its passengers and crew. Some of the hostage-taking incidents became extended dramas that played out over days. One that involved Americans, for example, was the hijacking by members of Lebanese Hezballah of TWA Flight 847 in 1985. The hostages were held (and one of them killed) during three days in the plane while it crisscrossed the Mediterranean and then for another two weeks in Lebanon before they were released.

Groups that employed such tactics were using them as theater. Getting their demands, such as release of incarcerated comrades, met was surely a plus for them, but at least as important was the impact on larger audiences, in the sense either of intimidation or of getting attention for a cause. Brian Jenkins, one of America's earliest genuine experts on terrorism, summed up this principle with the observation, “Terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead.”

After enough of these incidents, there arose a general awareness among officials and the media that anything that increased attention to these incidents and enhanced their dramatic appeal was, intentionally or not, serving the purposes of the terrorists. There was much soul-searching by the press about this. There was not really a school solution that was developed and adopted; even the most responsible news organization cannot completely self-censor coverage of what is still a genuine news event. But at least there was awareness and discussion of the interests at stake, and some effort to find ways to minimize the harm of giving free publicity to terrorists.

The problem with America’s limited wars

By David Ignatius

October 9

Turkish Kurds stand on a hilltop on the outskirts of Suruc, at the Turkey-Syria border, as they watch smoke from a fire caused by the US-led coalition aircrafts in Kobani, Syria. (Lefteris Pitarakis/AP)

 at 8:24 PM Follow @ignatiuspost

What happens when an American plan for limited war against the Islamic State meets the savage reality of combat, as happened this week when the extremists pounded Kurdish fighters just inside Syria’s border with Turkey? The cry rose in Washington and abroad for more American military involvement. This is how conflicts that start off contained begin to escalate.

Here’s President Obama’s dilemma in a nutshell: He has proposed a strategy for dealing with the Islamic State that is, in the words of Harvard professor Graham Allison, “limited, patient, local and flexible.” This calibrated approach makes sense to Allison, one of America’s most experienced strategists, because it limits U.S. exposure in fighting an adversary that doesn’t immediately threaten the United States.

David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog. 

The problem is that military history, since the days of the Romans, tells us that limited war is rarely successful. Policymakers, when faced with a choice between going “all in” or doing nothing, usually choose a middle option of partial intervention. But that leads to stalemates and eventual retreats that drive our generals crazy. The warrior ethos says, “If you’re in it, win it.” The politician rounds the edges.

Allison argued recently in the National Interest that other nations should bear the brunt of this war: “If our friends and allies . . . to whom ISIS [the Islamic State] poses an imminent or even existential threat are unwilling to fight themselves, to kill and to die for their own interests and values, Americans should ask: Why should we?”

Frederic Hof, a former U.S. diplomat now with the Atlantic Council, sums up the bloody impasse on the Turkish-Syrian border as “a fine kettle of fish,” quoting a phrase used by comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. He means that it’s a “confused, awkward, messy and even intractable situation,” with Americans and Turks, supposedly allies, castigating each other for taking insufficient action.

“Don’t fight the problem. Decide it!” argued Gen. George C. Marshall, one of America’s wisest military leaders. In the Iraq-Syria case, this logic would identify the inescapable parameters of the conflict. Turkey is a difficult ally but an essential one; doing nothing against the Islamic State would be unacceptably risky, but total war isn’t a realistic option; the U.S. campaign may have begun awkwardly, but that’s no reason to panic.

Military history is usually a story of persistence and will, as commanders muddle through the bad opening months of battle. Marshall’s experience in World War II was a classic example: The North African and Italian campaigns were one disaster after another, as Rick Atkinson explains in his brilliant trilogy about the war in Europe. The United States kept stumbling forward to the D-Day landings and pushed on to eventual victory.

The Other Quiet Professionals Lessons for Future Cyber Forces from the Evolution of Special Forces

by Christopher Paul, Isaac R. Porche III, Elliot Axelband

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Research Questions

What lessons do the history and development of U.S. special operations forces and U.S. Special Operations Command hold for the contemporary cyber force?

How can U.S. Cyber Command organize to ensure that needed cyber capabilities are acquired rapidly and efficiently?

What types of authorities will U.S. Cyber Command require to ensure that joint, service, and warfighter needs are met?

Abstract

With the establishment of U.S. Cyber Command in 2010, the cyber force is gaining visibility and authority, but challenges remain, particularly in the areas of acquisition and personnel recruitment and career progression. A review of commonalities, similarities, and differences between the still-nascent U.S. cyber force and early U.S. special operations forces, conducted in 2010, offers salient lessons for the future direction of U.S. cyber forces. Although U.S. special operations forces (SOF) have a long and storied history and now represent a mature, long-standing capability, they struggled in the 1970s and 1980s before winning an institutional champion and joint home in the form of U.S. Special Operations Command. U.S. cyber forces similarly represent a new but critical set of military capabilities. Both SOF and cyber forces are, at their operating core, small teams of highly skilled specialists, and both communities value skilled personnel above all else. Irregular warfare and SOF doctrine lagged operational activities, and the same is true of the cyber force. Early SOF, like the contemporary cyber force, lacked organizational cohesion, a unified development strategy, and institutionalized training. Perhaps most importantly, the capabilities of both forces have traditionally been inadequate to meet demand. The analogy holds for issues of acquisition, the two forces' relationship with the conventional military, their applicability across the spectrum of combat, and their historic need for a strong advocate for reform. The analogy is not perfect, however. In terms of core capabilities, force accession, and tradition, the forces are also very different. But even these differences offer fundamental lessons for both the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Army with regard to the future and potential of the cyber force.

Key Findings