Ukrainian Government Says Russian Officers Are Covertly Advising and Leading Separatist Forces in the Eastern Ukraine

July 15, 2014

Ukraine says Russian army officers fighting alongside rebels

Reuters, July 14, 2014




1 of 5. A member of the Ukrainian police special task force ‘Kiev-1’ patrols in the eastern Ukrainian village of Semenovka near Sloviansk, July 14, 2014.

(Reuters) - Ukraine accused Russian army officers on Monday of fighting alongside separatists in the east of the country and said Moscow was once more building up its troops on the joint border.

A missile that downed a Ukrainian transport plane carrying eight people near the border was probably fired from Russia, Ukrainian officials said.

President Petro Poroshenko held an emergency meeting of his security chiefs after a weekend of Ukrainian air strikes on rebel positions near the border with Russia and charges by Moscow that Kiev killed a Russian man with a cross-border shell. The war of words between Kiev and Moscow and intense fighting, in which Ukrainian forces say they inflicted heavy losses on the rebels, marked a sharp escalation in the 3-1/2 month conflict in which several hundred Ukrainian servicemen, civilians and rebels have been killed. “Information has … been confirmed that Russian staff officers are taking part in military operations against Ukrainian forces,” Poroshenko said.

Diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis have so far made little progress. However, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said a “Contact Group” - which includes Russia, Ukraine and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) - aimed to talk to the rebels by video link on Tuesday and meet them in person soon afterwards.

Speaking after what he described as “difficult talks” on the telephone with his French, Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, Steinmeier said all parties were making a “strong effort” for the Contact Group to hold the video conference and agree a venue for the direct meeting.

Poroshenko made similar complaints of Russian incursions on Sunday to the European Union with an eye to pushing the bloc to exert greater pressure, and possibly more sanctions, on Moscow.

Poroshenko told his security chiefs that government forces, which lost 23 men in a rocket attack on an army camp last Friday, were now facing a new Russian missile system and there would have to be a change in tactics. He gave no details.

Is This Hamas’ Last War? With nonstop fury, Israel appears intent on battering the militants into submission. By GREGG CARLSTROM July 11, 2014

By GREGG CARLSTROM 

July 11, 2014 

Is This Hamas’ Last War? 

With nonstop fury, Israel appears intent on battering the militants into submission. 

el Aviv, Israel — Down in the south there is a feeling of déjà vu: Israeli jets have dropped thousands of tons of bombs on Gaza, hundreds of rockets have been launched into Israel and troops are amassing along the border ahead of a possible ground invasion. 

And yet something is very different about this latest go-round of violence between Israel and Hamas. The Palestinian militant group is, in the estimation of Israeli officials, weaker than it has been in memory, and Israel senses the best opportunity it has had in a long time to permanently degrade or even eliminate Hamas as a political factor. It’s not just that the Israelis are pounding Hamas from the air and rounding up senior Hamas officials; with help from their de facto ally across the border—Egyptian general-cum-dictator-cum-president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi—they have managed to keep Hamas’ supply tunnels to Gaza virtually shut down. Analysts estimate that the roughly $20 million per month that Hamas collected in tax revenues from the tunnels has been reduced almost to zero. 

Based on their public statements, it’s clear that at least some Israeli hawks would like to do to Hamas what Sisi has done to the Muslim Brotherhood group from which Hamas once sprung: batter it into submission. Officials in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet have gone further, talking openly of a campaign to eradicate the group. Even Hamas officials admit they are worried. “I would say that, yes, the situation is not ideal,” Osama Hamdan, the head of Hamas’ foreign relations bureau, told me. “It’s certainly not as it was a few years ago.” 

Indeed, Israel’s four-day-old offensive has already surpassed the last war against Hamas—in 2012—in size, with Israeli jets carrying out more than 1,100 airstrikes since Monday night, an average of more than 10 per hour. The word from both sides is that this is only the beginning. Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, promised a “lengthy campaign, which will not be completed in a matter of days,” and on Thursday night the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, spoke of a “very long battle.” 

All this has been triggered by an act that even Israeli security officials believe was probably not approved by top members of Hamas in Gaza or Qatar but was more likely the work of a rogue Hamas branch in Hebron: the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers. 

Netanyahu has presented no evidence that indicates Hamas’ leadership was involved. Nonetheless, he has launched a massive operation against the militant group, rounding up hundreds of members in the West Bank. The leadership went to ground, its more radical rival Islamic Jihad took advantage of the vacuum to launch more rockets, and Israel eventually struck Hamas, prompting the current conflict. The army has begun gathering troops and tanks along the border, and ministers are speaking openly about a ground invasion. 

“The voices in Israel go from, ‘Let’s create some friction with Hamas, to show we’re serious,’ to the idea of taking back the Gaza Strip,” says Ya’akov Amidror, a retired general who was until recently Netanyahu’s national security adviser. “And democratic systems are craziest ones in the international arena, because the leadership has to take into consideration all of these ideas.” 

It is hard to see an endgame beyond quixotic hopes for the extinction of Hamas. Avigdor Lieberman, the hawkish foreign minister, has called for re-occupying Gaza, a costly and bloody undertaking that’s likely to find little popular support. Others have suggested a short-term invasion aimed at crippling Hamas, with the aspirational hope that the Palestinian Authority will somehow regain control over the strip. “Perhaps Abu Mazen’s [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’] people can take the responsibility for Gaza. Whether they want to or not, I don’t know,” Amidror said. “But it’s true, for today, there is no alternative.” 

There was no need for an “alternative” in 2012, when Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood-led government played a central role in brokering the cease-fire. But Sisi’s military-backed regime, which booted Morsi from office last year, has declared Hamas a terrorist organization, and destroyed most of the smuggling tunnels into Gaza on which the group relied for weapons and tax revenue. 

Israel’s Bloody Status Quo

Roger Cohen

JULY 14, 2014 

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The story goes on and on. There is no denouement. Gaza, a small place jammed with 1.8 million people, does not recess to the Stone, Iron, Middle or other Ages. It does not get flattened, as Ariel Sharon’s son once proposed. The death toll is overwhelmingly skewed against Palestinians. Hamas, with its militia and arsenal of rockets, continues to run Gaza. The dead die for nothing.

Israel could send Gaza back to whichever age it wishes. Its military advantage, its general dominance, over the Palestinians has never been greater since 1948. But it chooses otherwise. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s talk of a ground invasion is empty. The last thing Israel wants, short of a cataclysm, is to go into Gaza and get stuck.

What Israel wants is the status quo (minus Hamas rockets). Israel is the Middle East’s status quo power par excellence. It seeks a calm Gaza under Hamas control, a divided Palestinian movement with Fatah running the West Bank, a vacuous “peace process” to run down the clock, and continued prosperity. Divide and rule. Hamas is useful to Israel as long as it is quiescent.

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, is also a status quo man. Late in his life, he is not prepared to make the painful decisions necessary to attain a two-state peace, decisions that would include relinquishing, against compensation, the so-called “right of return” for millions of Palestinian refugees. He prefers the comforts of his position and the ambiguity of concessions not formalized.

The Palestinian unity government recently established with Hamas is no more than a marriage of convenience, sought by a weakened, unpopular Hamas to escape isolation and unmet salary obligations in Gaza, and by Abbas as a distraction from his failures. There is no unity of Palestinian national purpose. There is no Palestinian democratic accountability; election talk evaporates. As for Israel, the fig-leaf Palestinian reconciliation was a godsend for its status-quo objective. Netanyahu was in sound-bite heaven, his favorite environment, on the risible notion of peace with Hamas.

None of this is edifying. Much is abhorrent: indiscriminate Hamas rockets on Israel, Israeli killing of Palestinian civilians in “collateral damage.” Yet I find myself short on moral outrage. It is all so familiar, a recurrent curse. It is a sham fight, and so doubly inexcusable. The Jews and Arabs of the Holy Land are led by men too small to effect change. Shed a tear, shed a thousand, it makes no difference.

Hamas Publishes Photos of One of Its Drones

ISABEL KERSHNER and PATRICK J. LYONS

New York Times

July 14, 2014

Hamas Publishes Photo of a Drone It Says It Built

JERUSALEM — Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, said on Monday that it had built and flown three types of unmanned aircraft against Israel, all variants of the Ababil-1, an Iranian-made drone. It said two of the drones were armed for attacks and one was intended for reconnaissance.

Hamas’s military wing published a photograph that it says shows one of its drones. The image gives no direct indication of how big the aircraft is, what its capabilities are, where it came from or where or when the photo was taken. According to Jane’s Defence Weekly, the Iranian-made Ababil-1 is nine and a half feet long, with a range of about 150 miles, and is able to carry up to 88 pounds of payload, such as explosives or camera equipment.

The group also claimed on its website that it had mounted three drone sorties of at least two aircraft each over Israel on Monday, including one it said had hovered over the Tel Aviv headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces. A spokesman for the I.D.F. said that while he could not rule out other drone flights, he was not aware of any sortie over Tel Aviv.

Israel has been talking about a threat of attacks by unmanned aircraft for several years. Compared with the rockets that militant groups typically fire into Israel, drones like the Ababil-1 are potentially capable of greater accuracy and more destructive power, but they also tend to be more susceptible to standard air defenses.

In October 2012, the Israeli military said it had shot down a drone over the Negev desert in southern Israel, near Gaza, and was hunting for the wreckage. It did not say where the aircraft had come from.

The following month, the military said it had “inflicted severe damage” on Hamas’s drone program with an airstrike. It published a video clip that it said showed a drone being tested on an airstrip in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, and then being stored in a warehouse. The video could not be independently verified.

Hezbollah, the radical Shiite group in Lebanon, is also believed to have tried using Ababil-1 drones against Israel. The I.D.F. said in April 2013 that it had shot down a drone over the Mediterranean near Haifa that was trying to enter Israeli airspace.

The Ukraine Crisis and the Resumption of Great-Power Rivalry

Dmitry Trenin

14 july 2014

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Dmitry Trenin is Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. 

Resume: The Ukraine crisis was not an isolated spat or a tragic misunderstanding, but rather the last straw—for both sides. The failure to achieve an acceptable post–Cold War settlement produced an unanchored relationship between the West and Russia.

The Ukraine crisis that erupted in early 2014 has brought an end to the post - Cold War status quo in Europe. Russia, feeling betrayed by its Western partners because of their support for regime change in Kiev, has stepped forward to protect its vital interests - which the West saw as aggression by a revisionist power. The ensuing conflict will last long and have an impact far beyond Europe.

Great-Power Competition Is Back 

The Ukraine crisis has ushered in a period of U.S.-Russian rivalry, even confrontation, reminiscent of the nineteenth-century Great Game, a fight for supremacy between the Russian and British Empires. The competition is asymmetrical and highly unequal. 

This conflict is being waged mainly in the political, economic, and information spheres, but it has military overtones as well. It differs from the Cold War in that human contact, trade, and information flows are not completely shut off, and there is a modicum of cooperation. 

Russia is focused on post-Soviet integration in Eurasia, while the United States has initiated a series of measures to restore a “holding line” against Russia in Europe. 

The U.S. approach toward Russia reflects traditional concerns, even phobias, and is not based on an adequate understanding of the country, in part because Russia has ceased to be a focus of U.S. foreign policy. 

The international system is becoming more balanced, and Washington needs to prepare for this by developing policies that account for the interests of major players, including Russia. 

Global Implications 

Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia will be the battleground in the U.S.-Russian fight for influence. A number of other countries and territories, including Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Russian North Caucasus and Crimea, and the Baltic states, may also be affected by this competition. 

In Central Europe, Poland, which has been most directly involved with the crisis over Ukraine, has toughened its attitudes toward Russia. 

Western Europe’s relations with Russia have changed significantly since the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis. The period of cooperation and mutual understanding ushered in by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s agreement to Germany’s reunification is over. 

Faced with an increasingly hostile West, Russia is visibly turning East. In particular, China and Russia have become closer, signing a historic gas deal, conducting joint naval exercises, and increasing trade. 

Despite Risk of Escalation, West and Russia Keep Ukraine Crisis Limited

By Richard Gowan, 

July 14, 2014

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Is Ukraine a promising model for the management of future international crises? At first glance, it looks like nothing of the sort. Kiev is in the middle of a bloody military campaign to regain control of towns and cities in the east of the country from pro-Russian rebels. More and more civilians have been caught in the crossfire. As Janek Lasocki of the European Council on Foreign Relations has noted, roughly 200,000 Ukrainian citizens have registered as internally displaced personsinside the country or moved to Russia. “In the past week alone,” he adds, “over 10,000 more have formally registered, and some estimate the total number could be two or three times larger.” 

Meeting at the World Cup final in Brazil, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed that the crisis has “a tendency toward degradation.” There is little else that Russia and the West have managed to agree on, however. The European Union announced new sanctions against rebel leaders last week. Although Moscow closed several major border crossings last week, Ukraine claims that reinforcements and supplies for the rebels continue to flow in from Russia.

There is still a danger that this conflict could escalate further, possibly without much prior warning. Moscow has accused Ukrainian forces of firing on a village in Russia, killing one, and the Kremlin is reportedly considering limited precision “answering strikes” as a riposte. Yet the most striking feature of the crisis is just how limited it has remained to date.

Three months ago, as instability in Kiev and the Crimea initially spread to eastern Ukraine, it appeared all too likely to culminate in a full-scale Russian incursion there. Up to 40,000 Russian troops were poised just across the border. American and European efforts to defuse the crisis, including the agreement of a rapidly discarded peace plan in Geneva in mid-April, appeared to be going nowhere.

Experts on the Russian military questioned whether it was really ready to launch a conventional invasion of eastern Ukraine in the face of concerted resistance. Yet Moscow had other options. Its mix of irregular forces and local strongmen were able to seize patches of territory and hold them against the government’s amateurish counterattacks. Pro-Russian leaders called on Putin to send “peacekeepers” to protect them. Had he done so, Kiev and the West would have struggled to respond. 

Although the threat of direct Russian action has not disappeared, it has receded. Moscowstill has a large military presence on the Ukrainian border, but the Russian parliamentrevoked an authorization for a ground invasion at Putin’s request. The mere fact that Ukrainian forces have been willing to mount intensive operations in the east in recent weeks implies that they doubt Russia will intervene. What has changed the two sides’ calculations?

Europe: Big jobs and low growth

14 July 2014 

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Bad debts at Portugal's biggest bank sparked fresh eurozone jitters last week

This is a week which will decide some of the ins and outs - who will be the stars in the EU firmament.

It is a game played with some intensity. The nation states are all proposing names to be their EU commissioner - who gets what will tell us much about power and influence in Brussels over the next five years. And who becomes the President of the European Council and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs. But more of that tomorrow.

Tuesday should see Jean-Claude Juncker clear the final hurdle on his way to be enthroned as President of the European Commission, when the European Parliament almost certainly will back him.

But the Juncker era will not be defined by institutional struggles or who sits in what chair. It will be judged by whether Britain stays in the EU and - arguably more importantly - the health of the eurozone economy, which remains vulnerable to weak growth and high levels of debt.

Last Thursday there was a reminder that the eurozone crisis has not been cured. It is just no longer acute. Shares in Banco Espirito Santo, Portugal's biggest bank, were suspended after falling 17%. Troubles had been revealed in the bank's parent company.

What was interesting was not so much the bank itself - the government in Lisbon insists any capital shortfall can be met - but the nervousness of international investors.

For 24 hours nerves were frayed not just by the spectre of the banking crisis returning but by a raft of economic news which showed just how fragile the eurozone recovery is.

Bleak figures

In May industrial output in Italy fell 1.2%. It fell 1.7% in France. In Germany it has dropped for three successive months.

Portugal's debt-to-GDP ratio is heading towards 130% by the end of the year. Growth in Italy might just edge 0.6% this year but its debt ratio could hit 135% of output.

France is stagnating. Yes there are some bright spots - unemployment in Spain has edged down faster than expected - but in Greece, for instance, unemployment remains stubbornly around 27%.

The U.S. Empire Is a Basket Case

By Tom Engelhardt

July 14, 2014

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For America's national security state, this is the age of impunity. Nothing it does -- torture, kidnapping, assassination, illegal surveillance, you name it -- will ever be brought to court. For none of its beyond-the-boundaries acts will anyone be held accountable. The only crimes that can now be committed in official Washington are by those foolish enough to believe that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth. I'm speaking of the various whistleblowers and leakers who have had an urge to let Americans know what deeds and misdeeds their government is committing in their name but without their knowledge. They continue to pay a price in accountability for their acts that should, by comparison, stun us all.

As June ended, the New York Times front-paged an account of an act of corporate impunity that may, however, be unique in the post-9/11 era (though potentially a harbinger of things to come). In 2007, as journalist James Risen tells it, Daniel Carroll, the top manager in Iraq for the rent-a-gun company Blackwater, one of the warrior corporations that accompanied the U.S. military to war in the twenty-first century, threatened Jean Richter, a government investigator sent to Baghdad to look into accounts of corporate wrongdoing.

Here, according to Risen, is Richter's version of what happened when he, another government investigator, and Carroll met to discuss Blackwater's potential misdeeds in that war zone:

"Mr. Carroll said ‘that he could kill me at that very moment and no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,' Mr. Richter wrote in a memo to senior State Department officials in Washington. He noted that Mr. Carroll had formerly served with Navy SEAL Team 6, an elite unit. ‘Mr. Carroll's statement was made in a low, even tone of voice, his head was slightly lowered; his eyes were fixed on mine,' Mr. Richter stated in his memo. ‘I took Mr. Carroll's threat seriously. We were in a combat zone where things can happen quite unexpectedly, especially when issues involve potentially negative impacts on a lucrative security contract.'"

When officials at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the largest in the world, heard what had happened, they acted promptly. They sided with the Blackwater manager, ordering Richter and the investigator who witnessed the scene out of the country (with their inquiry incomplete). And though a death threat against an American official might, under other circumstances, have led a CIA team or a set of special ops guys to snatch the culprit off the streets of Baghdad, deposit him on a Navy ship for interrogation, and then leave him idling in Guantanamo or in jail in the United States awaiting trial, in this case no further action was taken.

Power Centers But No Power to Act

Think of the response of those embassy officials as a get-out-of-jail-free pass in honor of a new age. For the various rent-a-gun companies, construction and supply outfits, and weapons makers that have been the beneficiaries of the wholesale privatization of American war since 9/11, impunity has become the new reality. Pull back the lens further and the same might be said more generally about America's corporate sector and its financial outfits. There was, after all, no accountability for the economic meltdown of 2007-2008. Not a single significant figure went to jail for bringing the American economy to its knees. (And many such figures made out like proverbial bandits in the government bailout and revival of their businesses that followed.)

What Stands in the Way of the Pentagon Keeping Its Best and Brightest?

Amy Schafer 

July 14, 2014 

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With July 1 marking the fortieth anniversary of the military’s all-volunteer force and with the continued military drawdown, it’s time to take another look at retention. While budget cuts and sequestration may lead to fewer men and women in uniform, it is essential that the military considers ways to keep their best and brightest. There are many challenges to military retention, including the lack of a “meritocracy,” limited to no control over assignments, the “all or nothing” twenty-year pension system, and the role a family or spouse plays.

Tim Kane, a former Air Force officer, examines this issue in Bleeding Talent: How the U.S. Military Mismanages Great Leaders and Why It’s Time for a Revolution. As he argues, “The Army has bled talent for decades, a consequence of a deeply dysfunctional organization that poorly matches jobs with talent and doesn’t trust its officers to make choices about their own careers.”

Author 

Amy Schafer is a research intern for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has worked previously as a policy intern in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Schafer is a 2013 graduate of the College of William & Mary. Full Bio There are several areas where reform could be highly effective in influencing the best junior officers to stay past their minimum service requirement; among the most promising is a system that more resembles a meritocracy.

A recent survey of over 5,000 active duty Navy personnel by CDR Guy Snodgrass presents hard data on the challenges and concerns facing service members as they decide whether or not to separate from the Navy. According to the survey, 64 percent of sailors believe that performance rankings are based more on timing than merit, with 21 percent citing timing and merit, 9 percent citing neither, and only 6 percent believing performance rankings are based upon merit alone.

Meanwhile, Tim Kane interviewed 250 West Point graduates (from class intervals five years apart, to encompass a breadth of ranks and experience) and found 93 percent believed that, “[H]alf or more of the best officers leave the military early rather than serving a full career”. As one former Marine Corps officer notes, “Among my peers, the ones with ideas are the ones getting out, because they just don’t feel the organization values them”.

The recent Interim Report of the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission acknowledges, “[T]he uniformed services must be empowered with flexible personnel management tools to shape the force as security needs change.” The commission examined the challenges of recruitment and retention in a time of fiscal austerity and made many recommendations for the modernization of the compensation and personnel systems of the armed services.

Beyond Hollywood, 'Call Of Duty': Why Special Forces Are The Future Of The U.S. Military

By BRIAN HARDZINSKI 

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Soldiers from the U.S. Special Forces review map data while conducting an operation in Panjawi district, Kandahar province July 10, 2010. 

Sgt. David Russell U.S. Army 

The so-called “light footprint strategy” has been a hallmark of President Obama’s military engagement strategy as he pulled U.S. troops out of Iraq and winds down the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. That drawdown of massive units of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and civilian support staff means a stronger reliance on smaller, more elite military groups.

RAND Corporation senior international policy analyst Linda Robinson focuses on national security strategy and these types of units in her latest book One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the Future of American Warfare. It covers the two years she spent embedded in Afghanistan.

Listen to Suzette Grillot's conversation with Linda Robinson.

Before the Middle East, she started her career focusing on insurgencies in Latin America. She studied and wrote about the role of U.S. Special Forces in a counter narcotics effort that eventually evolved into a true counterinsurgency against FARC rebels in Colombia.

“One officer had said, ‘Nothing has been written about us since Vietnam. Much of what was written in that era wasn’t good, so let’s take a chance on this reporter and see if she’s willing to give some in-depth research on us.’,” Robinson says.

According to Robinson, U.S. special operations have doubled in size since the September 11, 2001 attacks and the subsequent October invasion of Afghanistan. But they still operate in small numbers, and Robinson calls that the model of the future.

“About 12,000 people can be deployed around the world at any one time as a sustainable number,” Robinson says. “And some people may say, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s a lot.’ Well, if you consider it compared to 100,000-plus [the 2006 counterinsurgency] in Iraq, it’s not.”

In Afghanistan, these small units worked among indigenous populations by going into villages and seeing if residents wanted to form self-defense groups and a local government.

“They had done this in the Vietnam era, but they had gotten away from that in the years after 9/11,” Robinson says. “And that is a more long-term solution while recognizing they still do the direct action raids, but that is more of a temporary piece of the puzzle.”

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INDIA – PAKISTAN: JUD THE DEPENDABLE TERRORIST – ANALYSIS

By Sanchita Bhattacharya

JULY 15, 2014 

On June 25, 2014, a US State Department media note announced amendments to the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) entity designations of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) to add the following aliases: Jama’at-ud-Dawa (JuD), Al-Anfal Trust, Tehrik-e-Hurmat-e-Rasool, and Tehrik-e-Tahafuz Qibla Awwal. In conjunction with these actions, the Department of the Treasury also designated two LeT senior members as SDGTs – Nazir Ahmad Chaudhry and Muhammad Hussein Gill. Ahmad has been a senior leader of LeT since the early 2000s, and has served as its ‘vice-president’, and a member of its central leadership. Hussein Gill, one of the group’s founders, has been an accountant for the LeT for more than ten years and, more specifically, has served as the outfit’s ‘chief financial officer’ and headed its accounts department for several years.

The media note further stated: “LeT created JuD as a front organization, claiming that the group was an ‘organization for the preaching of Islam, politics, and social work.’”

LeT had first been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organisation by the US on December 26, 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. It was, similarly, banned in the UK in 2001. Under growing international pressure, Pakistan also banned the group in 2002, though not before allowing it ample opportunity to empty out its bank accounts and encash or transfer it other assets to various fronts, including JuD. JuD was subsequently put on the FTO listing by the US in 2006. LeT was also sanctioned by the UN in 2006, and banned by the European Union (EU) in 2008. Subseqently, in 2008, the UN also declared JuD an LeT front organization. In 2010, the US exacted an executive order against the Falah-i Insaniat Foundation (FIF), essentially the renamed JuD, and named it a terrorist organization. FIF was always reported to be one of the arms of JuD and operated from a JuD office located at Chauburji Chowk in Lahore, Pakistan.

Hafiz Muhammadd Saeed, the founder of LeT and JuD chief, and Zafar Iqbal, two professors at Lahore University, formed JuD in 1985 as a missionary group dedicated to the tenets of Ahl-e-Hadith Islam. In 1987, mujahideen fighting in Afghanistan formed a group named Markaz Dawat wal Irshad (MDI) under Hafiz Saeed’s leadership. MDI continued jihad (Islamic campaign against non-believers and ‘apostates’) in Afghanistan, where it set up its first training centre, with active support from both the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to fight alongside the Afghan mujahideen. MDI’s founders sought to ensure the group’s survival even after the Afghan jihad came to an end, and dovetailed the objectives of both armed and peaceful jihad, expanding a network of ‘social services’, even as they continued to build up their armed strength. As the Afghan jihad came to an end and the Afghan mujahideen threw themselves at each other’s throats, the MDI was directed by its handlers in the ISI to another front in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). In 1990, MDI formed the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), the armed wing dedicated to fight the jihad in J&K.

Overtly, JuD, headquartered in Muridke (Punjab), acts as a socio-religious, cultural, spiritual and educational driving force behind the armed wing represented by the LeT. A 2011 report suggested that JuD has about 50,000 registered members to spread its influence and raise funds. JuD owns a solid and extensive infrastructure inside Pakistan, including more than 300 offices, mosques and madrassas (Islamic seminaries). The group has set up many commercial ventures including more than 400 English-medium schools, colleges, transportation companies, residential projects and media groups, and has acquired farmland on a large scale. Its ‘charity wing’ has one of the biggest fleets of ambulances in the country, seven hospitals and more than 200 health centres. The group has the second largest charity network in Pakistan, after the Maymar Trust [formerly known as Al Rashid Trust (ART). ART was listed by the US State Department for involvement in financing and supporting a international Islamist terrorist groups on September 22, 2001].

The Shadow over the Indian Navy: Accidents and Equipment Gaps

by Ajai Shukla

9 July 2014

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The defence minister told parliament on July 8 that eleven accidents had occurred on navy warships in the last year (details at the bottom of this article) 

Less than three weeks after being sworn in, in mid-June India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, made his first visit to an operational military unit, the newly commissioned aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, deployed in the Arabian Sea. In being the first prime minister to visit the navy before the army or air force, Modi highlighted a new maritime attentiveness in a country that has traditionally focused on its contested northern land borders.

The Indian Navy is growing in size, reach and operational sophistication and the Indo-Pacific region is keenly aware of this. In April, China’s navy chief, Admiral Wu Shengli, made a courtesy visit to an Indian frigate, INS Shivalik, which was visiting China’s Qingdao naval base for exercises to mark the 65th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). Amidst thebonhomie, Admiral Wu sprang a surprise on the Shivalik’s commanding officer by requesting a tour of the frigate’s combat information centre, its operational heart. The skipper politely rebuffed the request.

The Chinese admiral would probably be even more interested in touring INSKolkata, a 7,200-tonne destroyer that will be commissioned into the Indian Navy in July, with two sister vessels to come into service within a year. Also on the anvil in Mazagon Dock Ltd (MDL) – India’s premier warship-building yard – are four more destroyers, which will begin delivery in 2018. MDL and Kolkata-based shipyard Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Ltd will also build seven stealth frigates, the first of which will enter service by 2020. Meanwhile, Russia has offered to supply three more Krivak III-class frigates, as a follow-up to six such vessels supplied in the decade before 2023. At the same time, six Scorpene conventional attack submarines are under construction in MDL and there is an impending tender for another six submarines with air-independent propulsion systems. These warships will form part of a 160-ship navy, including the ninety capital warships envisioned by New Delhi in its Maritime Capability Perspective Plan for 2012–27.

The country’s 7,500-kilometre coastline – and the geostrategic advantage offered by a peninsula extending 1,000 kilometres into the Indian Ocean – facilitates the Indian Navy’s dominance of the 5,000 kilometres of international sea-lanes that pass through these waters. These carry much of the world’s oil and bulk cargo – 60,000 vessels annually, or one every nine minutes – between the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca. Both Beijing and New Delhi know that the advantages enjoyed by China on the Himalayan land frontier between the two countries – due to easy approaches from the high Tibetan plateau and well-developed transport networks – could be countered by an Indian blockade of Chinese shipping.

Further improving India’s position in this regard are two strategically invaluable island chains: the Lakshadweep archipelago in the Arabian Sea and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal. Here, India has raised the tri-service Andaman and Nicobar Command, with its own land forces, warships and a fighter base on Car Nicobar Island. In 2012, this was supplemented with a second air base, INS Baaz, whose 10,000-foot runway will soon allow Indian fighters to comprehensively dominate the nearby Malacca Strait.

It is therefore no surprise, therefore, that India was singled out as a key partner in the US’s ‘rebalancing’ to the Asia-Pacific, first announced in 2011. The Indian Navy’s role as the gatekeeper of the Indian Ocean is also acknowledged by the UK, Russia, France, Japan and Australia, with which it regularly conducts joint exercises.

RAISING AN ARMY: TEN RULES

Sean McFate

July 14, 2014 

Source Link

Last month, many in the Pentagon were aghast to watch a terrorist army sweep aside the U.S.-trained Iraqi military. In Mosul, Iraq’s second most populous city, a few hundred fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) invaded and sent 30,000 Iraqi troops running, many shedding their equipment and uniforms as they fled. America invested years of training and billions of dollars in the Iraqi military, and now ISIS drives captured Humvees and shoots heavy weapons made in the United States of America.

How do a few thousand jihadists rout the Iraqi army, a force of 200,000 troops with aircraft, tanks and superior firepower? The answer is disappointingly simple: they are inept.

Helping allies build better armies is a strategic imperative for the United States. What the U.S. calls security force assistance is commonly termed security sector reform (SSR) in the international community, and it is an indispensible solution for conflict affected states. SSR professionalizes and strengthens the state’s statutory armed actors so that they can responsibly enforce the law of the land and defend it from armed threats. Operationally, SSR is the exit strategy for costly stability operations like Afghanistan because it allows those countries to provide security for themselves rather than depend on the United States military for firepower. Strategically, helping fragile states professionalize their military and police promotes durable development, since corrupt security forces tend to devour the fruits of development. Additionally, the United States must help its partners grow effective security forces to contend with shared threats, such as global terrorist groups, or it will face a Hobson’s choice: Send in U.S. troops to do the job or permit minor threats to fester into major ones.

Despite this strategic imperative, the U.S. track record is disappointing, and not just in Iraq. In 2012, one in seven of all NATO deaths in Afghanistan were at the hands of the very Afghan troops the coalition was training. America has appropriated over $50 billion to raise Afghan forces since 2002, yet a 2012 Pentagon assessment found that only 1 of its 23 brigades is capable of operating independently. This augurs poorly for Afghanistan after the U.S. withdraws.

Nor are these problems limited to Iraq and Afghanistan. Two years ago a group of U.S.-trained Malian soldiers mutinied and staged a coup d’état in Mali, setting the Sahel region of Africa ablaze. As the international community condemned the coup, a Taureg rebellion seized northern Mali and threatened to advance south, fuelled by small arms from a collapsed Libya and al Qaeda affiliates. Timbuktu and other cities in the north fell to the advancing rebels and a strict version of Islamic law was imposed. Finally the French intervened with military force and pushed the rebels out.

The United States is not alone. The United Nations has suffered similar setbacksin the Balkans, Haiti, Timor-Leste, Libya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Consequently, these places simmer in chaos and threaten their neighbors. Such setbacks bode poorly for potential SSR efforts in Syria and Iraq, assuming those states do not Balkanize.

Inability to competently raise indigenous security forces results in strategic failure.

Why all the SSR failures? There are numerous reasons: it is hard to do; there is a theory to practice gap on how to do it; there are no comprehensive practitioner guides or field manuals, despite the reams of academic literature on the topic; and few practical models exist. The current “train and equip” model as practiced by the Department of Defense is ineffective as it focuses too much on tactics and techniques and misses the important intangibles. Or as General Carter Ham, commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), reflected after Mali: “We didn’t spend, probably, the requisite time focusing on values, ethics and military ethos.”

For rejuvenating, not re-engineering, the Ganga

Published: July 16, 2014

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/for-rejuvenating-not-reengineeringthe-ganga/article6214337.eceRamaswamy R. Iyer

Narendra Modi needs to ensure that the objective of reviving the dying Ganga is not compromised by various sectoral plans, programmes and projects. Picture shows a stretch of the river in Varanasi. Photo: R.V. Moorthy

The forces of free market capitalism and the insatiable ‘developmental’ demand for energy will trump all environmental concerns as well as anxieties about the Ganga

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared his objective to rejuvenate the Ganga, anxiety over the state of the river gave way to a sense of relief; there was finally hope for a river in its death throes. Also, the Minister of Water Resources was a known champion of the Ganga. However, satisfaction quickly changed to dismay because of a number of disturbing indicators.

Contradictions

First, the new name for the Ministry of Water Resources is Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation. What does ‘river development’ mean? We get a clue from the phrase used commonly in the Water Establishment, namely ‘water resource development.’ In the language of the water engineer, this means harnessing more water for use through dams, barrages, reservoirs, canals, etc. A part of that meaning gets carried over into the term ‘river development’ — where development means development for human use. There is also the allied term ‘river training’ which seems to suggest that a river is a household pet or circus animal waiting to be trained by its human masters. The addition of the term ‘River Development’ to the name of the Ministry is thus an indication of the intention to build more projects on rivers. How does that fit in with the term ‘rejuvenation’?

A second disturbing indicator is the reference by some to the Sabarmati model. Sabarmati was not rejuvenated; a 10.4 kilometre stretch of the river was used as a receptacle for water from the Narmada, i.e., water from another river was used to create an artificial river front for Ahmedabad. From which river will water be brought to the Ganga, and for what length of the Ganga? Is the intention merely to create an artificial water front for Varanasi? I am sure this is not the idea. Reference to the Sabarmati model is therefore misleading.

Third, there is talk of reviving the project announced in 2002 by Atal Bihari Vajpayee — the Inter-Linking of Rivers Project. Among the links forming part of that project is one from the Ganga to the Subarnarekha and the Mahanadi and then further southwards. How is a diversion of waters from the Ganga reconcilable with the idea of rejuvenation of the river?

Fourth, the ‘Save the Ganga’ movement has formulated the slogan of ensuring a nirmal (pollution-free) and aviral(uninterrupted) flow of the river. This phraseology has also been adopted by the IIT Consortium and the National Ganga River Basin Authority. However, a Cabinet Minister in the Modi government has declared the intention of building a series of structures on the river at intervals of 100 km. What will this do to the Ganga? What implications will this have for a nirmal-aviral flow?

Dams without responsibility

Meena Menon, Jul 16, 2014  |

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/dams-without-responsibility/article6214342.ece
 

Uttarakhand has to ensure that the quest for hydropower cannot come without a responsibility to preserve a region that is limping back to life after a calamity aggravated by unplanned human interventions neither scientifically assessed nor endorsed by the people of the region

The devastation in Uttarakhand had already happened much before the cataclysmic events of June 2013. The unprecedented rainfall and floods and loss of life drew attention to the alarming situation in a State known for its pristine forests and rivers. It also drew attention belatedly to the “bumper to bumper” dams in the mountains.

Construction on all dams in Uttarakhand was halted by the Supreme Court in August 2013 and on its instructions, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) appointed an expert body which said that 23 hydropower projects out of the 24 it was asked to examine would have an irreversible impact on the biodiversity of the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi basins and should not be constructed.

In May, the Supreme Court reiterated its orders stopping work on the 24 hydropower projects examined by the body. While all this amounts to shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, it is a measure of recognition of the man-made destruction wrought by unplanned hydel power projects in a sensitive and fragile ecosystem.

Endangering the Ganga

The body’s report said, “The problem with the dams is their location in a high or very high biodiversity value area, some of them at elevations above 2,200-2,500 metres. These altitudes come in the paraglacial and glacial zones and in these zones, the rivers are capable of mobilizing tremendous amounts of sediments, under intense rainfall conditions, from the moraine left behind in the past by receding glaciers. In such situations, they cause havoc in the vicinity of dams as witnessed at the Vishnuprayag barrage site and below during the June 2013 disaster.”

The State of Uttarakhand is a part of the Ganga basin and rivers suffer from several depradations apart from dams in high places, including extensive pollution from untreated sewage. Despite huge amounts of money being spent, plans to clean up the river have failed miserably. An IIT-led consortium has been set up to prepare a master plan for the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA), to restore its “wholesomeness,” as the extended summary of a draft Ganga River Basin Management plan says. Citing anthropogenic activities, it says dams and barrages have snapped her “longitudinal connectivity.”

While the recent Ganga Manthan event in Delhi attracted more than its fair share of sadhus, there were a few who spoke against dams and said that they were a threat to the river’s existence. But the focus was on keeping the river Ganga “aviral and nirmal” (continuous and unpolluted flow). Activists said only cleaning up the river will not restore it. Some pointed to the lack of studies of the entire river system and hydrological data which was a secret. Since the Ganga is glacier fed, the climate change impact in the Himalayan ecosystem and on the receding Gangotri and other glaciers are also of paramount importance.

In its report of March 2013, the Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG) on Issues Relating to River Ganga says that the development of new hydro power projects has an impact on the environment, the ecology, the biodiversity, both terrestrial and aquatic, and economic and social life. Crucially, it says that in the upper reaches of the river — where the oxygenating abilities of the river are the highest — there are growing signs of contamination. This suggests that even here, water withdrawal for hydroelectricity is endangering the health of the Ganga. Implementation of the 69 hydro power projects will lead to 81 per cent of the Bhagirathi and 65 per cent of the Alaknanda getting affected. The IMG had considered the need to have portions of the river free of hydro projects and recommended that six rivers should be kept in pristine form.

Cumulative impact

In the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi basins, the report said that 17 dams have been commissioned with a total installed capacity of 1,851 MW. Fourteen projects of 2,538 MW capacity are in different stages of construction and 39 projects with an installed capacity of 4,644 MW are in different stages of planning. The expert body report said that if all the 450 dams in the State are completed, about 252 projects will each have an installed capacity of 5MW or more. The vast majority of them will divert rivers through tunnels to power houses downstream. Their combined impact will affect the landscape of Uttarakhand. The environment management plans of individual projects do not address the cumulative impacts of multiple projects in a river valley.

With dams proposed on major rivers for every 20 to 25 kilometre stretch, large fragments of these rivers could be left with minimal flow as almost all the river water is extracted for producing hydroelectricity, the body’s report has said. Prof. Ravi Chopra, chairperson of the body said that tunnelling is also controversial and leads to damage with natural springs being diverted and homes developing cracks. The government has only looked at the need to generate power and not the impact on the environment. On field visits, the body noticed scarred landscapes, dry river beds and a complete disappearance of riverine ecosystems due to submergence at existing and under construction large hydropower projects such as Tehri Stage I and Koteshwar on the Bhagirathi basin and the Srinagar dam in the Alaknanda basin.

Deforestation

If all the dams are built, studies indicate a loss of biodiversity. A National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) report, quoted by the body, has highlighted the effect of the Tehri dam on the unique self-purifying ability of Gangajal. It attributed this property to river sediments; data indicated that the blocking of sediments behind the Tehri dam diminished this property.

Extensive deforestation and diversion of forest land too has posed problems. The body found that 80,826.91 hectares of forests have been diverted for non-forest use in Uttarakhand since 1980. The diversion for hydropower production is 5,312.11 ha. Most of the diversion for roads and hydropower has been in Uttarkashi, Rudraprayag, Chamoli and Pithoragarh districts, the areas most affected in the June 2013 disaster.

Hearings

People have been agitating against dams for years in the region, notably Tehri. In 2010-11, and for the first time for any project, there were three public hearings on the Devsari hydel project on the Pinder. After two hearings, the third one was accepted by the government, according to Vimalbhai of the Matu Jansangthan which led protests along with the Bhu-Swami Sangharsh Samiti. He says this was the first major protest after the ones against Tehri. A public hearing was also organised where many voiced their opposition to the dams and on the need to keep the undammed tributary of the Ganga that way. He referred to the pathetic status of the catchment area, and the lack of studies on water flows and climate change impacts. The people displaced by the Tehri dam are still to get land rights or basic amenities in their relocated homes, he added.

Local people who have borne the brunt of the devastation due to dams and floods and environmental groups have questioned the feasibility of dams. By all accounts there is cause for concern as reflected in many reports. Even as the Uttarakhand government proposes to approach the Supreme Court in a bid to get a green signal for dam construction, it must remember this. It has to ensure that the quest for hydropower cannot come without a responsibility to preserve a region that is limping back to life after a calamity aggravated by unplanned human interventions neither scientifically assessed nor endorsed by the people of the region.

meena.menon@thehindu.co.in 

Go easy on the oil

http://www.asianage.com/columnists/go-easy-oil-545

Jul 16, 2014

Mohan Guruswamy

The oil sector is a goose that lays a golden egg for the economy. We need a policy that will on one hand curb the appetite for oil consumption, and on the other hand will encourage domestic production.

The biggest millstone around India’s neck is its ever-increasing trade deficit. India had a trade deficit of $191 billion in 2013. Of this $109 billion was due to oil. India imports 82 per cent of its oil needs. Last month the price of the Indian basket of imported oil peaked to $114 a barrel when it was assumed that it would be $104.

Every additional dollar adds $1 billion to the oil bill. India is the world’s fourth largest consumer of energy with an oil equivalent of 563.5 million tonnes of oil a year. Its oil demand is growing by 5.1 per cent every year. Clearly there is an urgency to produce more oil and gas domestically. The road to our national salvation means closing in this trade deficit, which means reducing our energy import dependency quite significantly. I would have liked to see a tax holiday for 10 years for oil exploration and production, as was given for the power sector. But then, Gautam Adani and Anil Ambani are not in the oil sector.
There are plenty of oil and gas reserves in and around India. We have to make those fields viable by higher producer prices. There is an essential paradox we must understand here. The higher the prices the greater the reserves, as it make more reserves commercially feasible. The appetite for energy is always going to be huge in a growing economy. And if the government keeps subsidising consumption to the extent it does, that appetite will only keep growing. Last year the government subsidised oil consumption (under-recoveries of petroleum marketing public sector undertakings) to the extent of Rs 190,000 crore or over $30 billion at today’s exchange rates. Fertiliser subsidies and electricity subsidies further ramp up the subsidy bill.

Clearly getting an energy policy that does not drain national resources and drive the national exchequer into near bankruptcy is a national priority. We must also understand that subsidies are always at the cost of the poorest and the voiceless majority of this country. Every rupee given to a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) consumer is at the cost of a poor villager who gets nothing from the state. Since 85 per cent of the LPG is consumed in urban areas and mostly by the middle and upper classes, by no stretch of the imagination can it be called a merited or deserved subsidy. This is not like state provided free education, which is obviously a merited and well-deserved subsidy.