US Major General Killed in Green-on-Blue Attack in Afghanistan

By Ankit Panda

August 06, 2014

The incident is the latest green-on-blue attack in Afghanistan. 

An attacker in an Afghan National Army uniform killed a U.S. Army major general in Afghanistan, according to U.S. government sources. In addition to the major general, 15 other military personnel were wounded in the attack. Among the fifteen, three Afghan officers and a German brigadier general serving with NATO were injured. The attack comes after a relative lull in the frequency of so-called “green on blue” attacks—attacks carried out by rogue Afghan soldiers against U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The confirmed death of the U.S. major general, who remains unidentified by the Pentagon at the time of this report, marks the highest-ranking U.S. military casualty in the 13 year Afghanistan conflict.

The attack occurred just outside a U.K.-run military academy, Camp Qargha, on the outskirts of Kabul on Tuesday. The White House has been relatively quiet on the incident, with press secretary Josh Earnest stating that the Obama administration was unable to give “any information on the motive or circumstances surrounding the attack.” The BBC reports that the attacker opened fire following an argument. U.K. officials are also tight-lipped about the attack at the moment, stating that “it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.” Green-on-blue attacks are a sensitive political issue in the fraught bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Afghan governments.

In general, these sorts of “insider” attacks have decreased in frequency since 2012 when they reached their peak. As I have previously discussed in The Diplomat, completely preventing these attacks seems to be an intractable problem for the Afghan National Army and Security Forces. Earlier this year, “rogue” attackers within the Afghan police and security services shot and killed three American doctors and a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo journalist. While most attacks stemming from an Afghan defector have been carried out against U.S. and NATO troops, attackers have also attacked civilian targets.

So far, there is no concrete reason to believe that the attacker was motivated by links to the Taliban or anti-coalition forces. According to The New York Times, Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, noted that the group is uncertain whether one of their loyalists carried out the attack. He nonetheless praised the attacker, called him an “Afghan hero soldier who turned his weapon against foreign invaders.” Several green-on-blue attackers are motivated purely by personal reasons. In recent years, the Afghan National Army has grown dramatically, resulting in individuals discontented with the U.S. and NATO presence in the country donning the country’s uniform.

U.S. and NATO troops will largely withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of this year and are expected to leave a small residual force behind to aid in limited counterterrorism operations and training.

A WIDENING GULF: IMPEDIMENTS TO SAUDI RAPPROCHEMENT WITH IRAN

Behnam Ben Taleblu and David Weinberg

August 6, 2014

Despite reports to the contrary, Saudi Arabia and Iran are not about to turn a corner in their 35-year-long confrontation. These two oil-producing Middle Eastern heavyweights are diametrically opposed on a host of regional conflicts and the Iraq crisis on both countries’ borders additionally stands to push the two countries further apart.

Leaders in Tehran and Riyadh already seem to be doubling down on their antagonism. “This blood will boil in the hearts of tens of millions of Shia and between the Muslims of the world, and the burden of that for [Saudi] Arabia will be quite heavy.” That’s how the Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces, Major-General Hassan Firoozabadi, recently responded to reports that Saudi Arabia is preparing to execute the Shi’ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr who had led protests in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province. Meanwhile, the Saudi King promoted Prince Bandar, the Kingdom’s point-man for backing anti-Shi’ite jihadist groups in the Levant, as his personal advisor and emissary.

As standard bearers for Sunni and Shi’ite Islam, respectively, Saudi Arabia and Iran have long been at each other’s throats. They are in an economic and strategic battle for regional leadership, with theological disputes rooted in the 7th century providing a bloody background.

For decades, Saudi Arabia has had the upper hand. As America’s golden goose, pumping mass quantities of oil into the global economy, Riyadh enjoyed a protected status. But now, the tide may be turning. Iran is trying to cash in on the benefits of its recently extended interim nuclear deal with the world’s leading powers. Gulf leaders are sensitive to these shifting sands. On the one hand, they seek to block Iran’s rise. On the other, these countries are fearful of Iran, and are looking for ways to hedge.

To this end, Saudi Arabia invited Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s Foreign Minister, to visit in May. The trip never materialized, although Zarif’s deputyindicated that the door was open for a Saudi visit. He also noted that Iran and Saudi Arabia have not discussed the situation in Iraq together, suggesting that the two parties are not currently engaged in substantive talks at all.

CALIPHATE REDUX

Julia McQuaid

August 5, 2014 

The caliphate has been revived — again. But unlike in previous instances over the past several decades when jihadi groups made claims to states or “emirates,” the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) June announcement that it had established a new caliphate poses a potentially more long-term, or even permanent, threat to the future of Iraq. At the same time, the group faces real obstacles that could thwart its ability to expand influence and control over land, people, and resources.

Caliphate basics

The institution of the caliphate has important historical, religious, and political significance in the Muslim world. The first caliphate was established in 632 A.D. after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. The first four “rightly guided caliphs,” or rashidun, led from Medina, in modern-day Saudi Arabia. Due to their personal conduct and the process through which they were chosen, the rightly guided caliphs are often considered the ideal. Sunni Muslims consider all four of the rightly guided caliphs to be legitimate successors to the Prophet, whereas Shi’a accept only the fourth, ‘Ali. This disagreement led to a split in Islam and the emergence of its two main branches. Modern-day caliphate revivalism exists almost exclusively within the Sunni community and is largely relegated to extremist groups.

The notion of restoring the caliphate is not new. Throughout the 20th century, caliphate revivalist efforts emerged, such as the Khilafatmovement in India. In more recent years, additional extremist groups advocating for the restoration of the caliphate materialized. Hizb ut-Tahrir, for example, is well known for its advocacy of the caliphate due to its very effective media activities. And, of course, al-Qaeda also supports the establishment of a caliphate. Ayman al-Zawahiri once declared that terror attacks would be nothing more than disturbing acts, regardless of their magnitude, “unless they led to a caliphate in the heart of the Islamic world.” Notably, neither of these groups actually declared a physical caliphate. Hizb ut-Tahrir lacks the capabilities to do so and al-Qaeda finds the concept useful in unifying the global jihadi movement ideologically, but so far has shied away from taking it from the abstract.

Obstacles to overcome

The Islamic State has made remarkable advances in Iraq, and declaring a caliphate has arguably helped. Concerns over this development are justified, but at the same time, significant obstacles stand in its way.

Will the U.S. Help the Kurds Fight ISIS?

BY DEXTER FILKINS

AUGUST 4, 2014

Soldiers with the Kurdish peshmerga on the edge of Kirkuk; July 3, 2014.

The latest string of victories by Islamic militants in Iraq raises an enormous and obvious question: What’s the U.S. doing to help the Kurds?

This week, fighters from Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, captured the town of Sinjar and, the next day, Mosul Dam, the biggest dam on the Tigris River. These victories offer two terrifying prospects, one for humanitarian reasons, the other for strategic reasons.

Sinjar is home to several thousand members of the Yazidi sect, a religious minority with roots in Islam and Zoroastrianism. Islamist extremists, including those who make up the vanguard of ISIS, regard Yazidis as apostates. There is every reason to fear the worst about what the fighters in ISIS will do to the Yazidis. In other towns that ISIS has captured, militants have crucified and beheaded their enemies. Some two hundred thousand people are fleeing Sinjar and Tal Afar, a nearby town. A senior official with the United Nations, which is normally quite restrained in its public pronouncements, said, on Sunday, that “a humanitarian tragedy is unfolding in Sinjar.”

It gets worse. According to Iraqi state television, ISIS militants captured Mosul Dam, which regulates the water flow to Mosul, the country’s second-largest city, and to a string of towns and cities to the south. A hydroelectric plant at the dam provides electricity for much of the same area. If ISIS’s leaders decide to, they could flood cities, towns, and fields along the Tigris as far south as Karbala, south of Baghdad. The men who run ISIS have already demonstrated their capacity for far-out nihilism, so we don’t need to wonder whether they’re capable of deciding to do something like this.

What can be done? For starters, the U.S. can help the one group that is trying hardest to resist ISIS: the Kurds. The Kurds, who occupy a large swath of northeastern Iraq, now stand face to face with ISIS across a six-hundred-mile frontier. The Kurds are among America’s best friends in the Middle East; they are pro-Western, largely secular, and largely democratic. Since 1991, when Saddam Hussein’s latest attempt to launch a genocidal campaign against them was thwarted by the United States, the Kurds have more or less governed themselves. During the American war, from 2003 to 2011, not a single American soldier was killed in the Kurdish region. The Kurds regard themselves as culturally and linguistically apart from the Arabs—Sunni and Shia—who inhabit the rest of Iraq. These days, fewer and fewer Kurds even know how to speak Arabic.

After U.S. Spends $753 Billion, Afghanistan Might Be Lost

BY DAVID FRANCIS,

The Fiscal Times

August 5, 2014

As the majority of American troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan at the end of the year, two events have revealed the stark reality of the mess the United States is leaving behind.

First, reports indicate that a U.S. Army major general was killed and 14 others were wounded when a man dressed as an Afghan soldier opened fire at a base outside Kabul. The general is the highest-ranking military officer to be killed since the Vietnam War.

The attack reveals just how vulnerable American troops - even those with the highest of rankings - remain. It is also another example of an insider attack by Afghan Security Forces, or by members of the Taliban who have penetrated its ranks.

According to the Cost of National Security, some $753 billion has been allocated to pay for the Afghan war. Previous estimates by The Fiscal Times, the United States is on the hook for at least $111 billion in future costs in Afghanistan.

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News of the attack comes on the same day that the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction issued a new report on the future of power supplies to Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban. According to SIGAR chief John Sopko, the United States does not have a long-term plan to supply power to what is arguably the most important province in Afghanistan.

“[I]t appears that the U.S. still has no realistic plan for helping the Afghan government develop a sustainable source of electricity for the period between the end of the Kandahar Bridging Solution in September 2015 and when a stable source of power generation is projected to come online, at least three years later,” Sopko said in a letter to lawmakers. “The fact that USAID has commissioned a feasibility study to evaluate the viability of solar power to fill this gap seems overly vague.”

The lack of power in Kandahar is more than just a quality of life issue. During the surge in 2010, American troops fought a long and bloody campaign to wrestle back control of the province from the Taliban. It successfully held the province since then, forcing the Taliban, which has its roots in Kandahar City, to flee.

The Pentagon has identified power in Kandahar “as a top counter-insurgency priority.” Now, SIGAR warns that the lack of power could allow the insurgency to once again take root.

“I am concerned that if the relatively tight timelines and cost estimates for a new ‘bridging solution to the bridging solution’ are inaccurate, and electrical service to the Kandahar area is compromised, the U.S. government may lose some of the hard-earned counter-insurgency and economic development gains made over the last few years,” Sopko warned.

Sopko added that the inability of the Afghan government to provide power in Kandahar does not inspire confidence in its ability to provide other basic services across the country. He warned that any solution would cost the United States much more than initially anticipated.

“[L]egitimate concerns remain about the ability of the U.S. and Afghan governments to jointly develop, undertake, and complete two new and ambitious infrastructure projects before the end of the year. Security risks associated with starting new high-profile infrastructure projects pose a particular concern,” Sopko said. In addition, I fear the initial cost estimates for the two projects may be overly optimistic. For example, the draft cost estimate for the Dahla Dam turbine project6 is only $10 million, while the cost of the Kajaki Dam Unit 2 Project, which has already received substantial assistance, is at least $75 million.”

After the Arab Spring: The Return of the Generals

By Shadi Hamid

After the uprisings of 2011, the Arab world seemed to be moving towards democracy, but the recent resurgence of strongmen have illustrated just how deep certain divides still are -- and how desperate people are for stability.

In the tense build-up to the 2011 uprisings, Arabs seemed to be turning away from dictatorship. Poll after poll showed that more Egyptians, Jordanians and Moroccans believed democracy was the best form of government than did Americans or, say, Poles. But "democracy" in the abstract could mean just about anything as long as it was positive. It was one thing to believe in democracy and quite another to practice it.

In Egypt, the loss of faith in not just democracy, but in the very notion of politics, was particularly striking. A not insignificant number of Egyptians backed the military coup of July 3, 2013, and then turned away from -- or, worse, embraced -- the mass killing of their countrymen on August 14, 2013. More than 600 were killed in mere hours, as security forces moved to disperse Muslim Brotherhood supporters from two protest camps in Cairo. This happened exactly a year ago -- and will remain a dark blot on the country's history. It, in a sense, is what the Arab Spring had managed to unleash -- not just chaos but something darker.Before they began to falter, the region's autocrats, whether in Tunisia, Syria or Yemen, were fond of reminding Westerners that despite their brutality -- or perhaps because of it -- they were the ones keeping the peace and ensuring stability. As Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in a televised address just 10 days before he was ousted, "The events of the last few days require us all as a people and as a leadership to choose between chaos and stability." In a sense, he and his fellow autocrats were right -- there was a tradeoff. These, after all, were weak states, divided by religion, ideology, sect and clan.

With little warning, the uprisings pushed these internal tensions and conflicts that had always simmering in the background to the fore. Before the uprisings, Arab strongmen had governed unwieldy countries with arbitrary borders and uncertain identities. They promised stability at the expense of liberty -- and it was a bargain that held for decades.

Questions of Identity

The Rapid Expansion of ISIS Into Lebanon

Liz Sly and Suzan Haidamous

Washington Post

August 6, 2014

Al-Qaeda offshoot Islamic State expands its reach into Lebanon as tensions rise

Lebanese soldiers approach the town of Arsal near the Syrian border, which was taken by militants last week. Attempts on Tuesday to negotiate a cease-fire with the militants were not promising. (AFP/Getty Images)

BEIRUT — Lebanon struggled on Tuesday to contain tensions unleashed by the seizure of a remote border town by Sunni militants in the latest example of the unchecked expansion of the al-Qaeda offshoot that is battling to establish an Islamic state across the Middle East. 

The capture this past weekend of the town of Arsal by fighters with the extremist Islamic State gave the group its first foothold in Lebanon, extending the reach of the militants westward at a time when they are also making gains on the eastern flank of their self-proclaimed state against Kurdish forces in Iraq. 

The upsurge of violence also has presented a major challenge to the stability of fragile Lebanon, which has largely withstood the tensions triggered by the three-year-old war raging next door in Syria despite its own fraught history of sectarian conflict. 

Arsal, long a haven for Syrian rebels and for refugees fleeing fighting on the other side of the border, was overrun by fighters with the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State after the detention Friday of a prominent Syrian rebel leader by the Lebanese authorities. Surging into the Sunni town, the militants captured at least 15 Lebanese army soldiers and an unknown number of police officers, prompting the army to launch an offensive to reclaim it. 

At least 17 Lebanese soldiers have since been killed in the fighting, according to army officers. In addition, 35 people have been killed in Arsal in shelling by the Lebanese army, some of them in fires that erupted when shells struck a tented settlement. 

ISIS Fighters Overrun Syrian Artillery regiment in Eastern Syria; Capture All of Unit’s Artillery Pieces

Bill Roggio 

The Long War Journal 

August 6, 2014 

Islamic State overruns Syrian artillery regiment in Hasakah 

Islamic State fighters led by Chechen commander Omar al Shishani took control of a Syrian Army artillery base in the eastern province of Hasakah. The jihadist group seized a large amount of military hardware and munitions, according to a video tour of the base.

The Islamic State’s Hasakah Division released an eight-minute video on its YouTube account on Aug. 5 showing Islamic State fighters touring Regiment 121’s headquarters. The video [above] was tweeted by the Islamic State’s Al Bakara News Twitter account and other accounts related to the group.

In the video, the cameraman walks through Regiment 121’s base and documents the Islamic State’s spoils of war. The video shows numerous artillery pieces and crates of shells, trucks for hauling artillery and rounds, a tank, a truck-mounted anti-aircraft gun, and what appear to be BM-21 Grad rocket launchers with several rockets yet to be launched. The vehicles seem to be undamaged and operational, but the Islamic State fighters do not drive the vehicles or fire the weapons.

When the cameraman goes indoors, he shows crates filled with AK-47 assault rifles and accompanying magazines, RPGs and rounds, and what appear to be shoulder-fired anti-tank launchers.

Additionally, a video of Omar al Shishani [below], the Chechen commander who is a senior military leader in the Islamic State, was distributed on YouTube six days ago. Shishani is shown bantering with other jihadists as fires burn behind him.

Shishani leads what are essentially the Islamic State’s mobile shock troops. Shishani has appeared at key hotspots in both Iraq and Syria as his forces are considered to be some the best in theater.

Regiment 121 “is considered one of the most important [units] for the Syrian army in the region, and performs an important role of targeting the headquarters and emplacements of militants in Hasakah’s southern countryside, being deployed on high ground, which give it control by fire of large swaths of land,” according to Al Monitor.

The Islamic State considered Regiment 121 to be a threat to its recent gains in Hasakah and Deir al Zour provinces, and launched its offensive to take the base on July 24. The Islamic State claimed it killed more than 100 Syrian soldiers during the fighting, but the group did not display the bodies of any dead soldiers.

The Islamic State has maintained offensive operations in both Iraq and Syria for the past two months. While the jihadist group and its allies have taken control of much of northern and Western Iraq since the beginning of the year, it has also fought the Syrian Army and jihadist and other rebel groups to seize control of most of Deir al Zour and Hasakah provinces, and has advanced into Aleppo and Homs as well. 

Time for the U.S. to Turn on the Lights in Africa

By Daniel McGroarty

Political pundits are scandalized this week by Washington's failure to address the immigration issue along the long southern border before breaking for a five-week Congressional recess and, for President Barack Obama, a Martha's Vineyard respite. Bipartisanship, we're told, is dead. Let the Sunday talk show vitriol flow, and the eulogies begin.

But like Twain's death, reports of bipartisanship's demise are greatly exaggerated. Witness a bill with broad bipartisan support that passed the U.S. House, 297-117, back in May: the Electrify Africa Act. With the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit beginning today in Washington, a statement by both U.S. parties to speed the passage of Electrify Africa would be a timely show that bipartisanship is still possible.

How bipartisan is this bill? The statute was drafted by California Congressman Ed Royce -- who rates a perfect 100 on the Conservative Action voting scorecard -- and passed the House with Democrats voting in favor, 191-1. When a bill finds Representative Bobby Rush -- former "defense minister" of the Black Panthers -- voting on the same side as Steve Stockman, self-proclaimed"most conservative congressman in Texas," it's time to take note. Throw in President Obama, whose Power Africa initiative parallels much of the bill, and Bono, whose One Campaign also backs it, and the Senate should fast track Electrify Africa to the president's desk.

In all likelihood, the rare display of bipartisan consensus comes from the sheer calamity it aims to address: a continent of one billion people without electricity. It beggars the imagination in the year 2014, but let's try: Google an image of Africa at night, seen from space. Beneath the shimmering cities of Europe, and a scattering of lights across the northern Sahara, runs a pitch-black streak east from the Atlantic to Khartoum, and south from the Sahara to South Africa. Substitute "pitch-black streak east from San Francisco to Washington" and "south from Toronto to Mexico City." Now, remember how we symbolically turn our lights off for one hour every Earth Day? Flip the switch, and leave it off.

For good.

That mind exercise is as close as we'll come to knowing what it means for a continent to live in the dark.

The United Nations puts the present population of the entire continent at 1,099,755,000. The 99,755,000 rounding-error we typically leave out when speaking of "1 billion Africans" is equal to the entire population of 23 U.S. states west of the Mississippi, including California.

What will Electrify Africa do to bring power to the continent? In the words of Congressman Eliot Engle, Democrat of New York and ranking minority member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee:

"[The] long-term strategy will focus not only on providing incentives for the private sector to build more power plants, but also on increasing African government accountability and transparency, improving regulatory environments, and increasing access to electricity in rural and poor communities through small, renewable energy projects."

The bill backs what it terms "an appropriate mix of power solutions to provide sufficient electricity access to people living in rural and urban areas in order to alleviate poverty and drive economic growth."

But not everyone is happy with this ode to bipartisanship. And it's that "appropriate mix of power solutions" -- an all-of-the-above openness to providing electricity through coal, natural gas and oil, as well as renewables like water, wind and solar power -- that some environmental advocates find anything but appropriate.

Take The Nation, which calls the bill "a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry." Or Earthlife Africa, which -- The Nation notes approvingly -- posits that by 2050, renewable energy could be providing for 50 percent of Africa's energy needs.

Let the word ring forth in the darkened villages and the unlit streets of urban Africa: Hang in there. Your energy problem will be -- halfway -- solved, in just 26 years. It's a smug solution from First Worlders who fancy themselves as saving Humanity from itself. Just don't let the odd breath-drawing man, woman or child get in the way of the crusade.

But let's look beneath the Green slogans at what the absence of access to electricity means for far too many Africans. It means mothers burning animal dung for heat, even while long-term exposure to the airborne particulate matter in dung cake "has been associated with increased rates of acute respiratory infections, chronic obstructive lung disease and cancer." As for burning wood for fuel, according to the United Nations, 12 million hectares is lost each year to desertification, most of it in Africa. The lack of electric refrigeration in vast parts of Africa limits the diets of malnourished children, raises the prospect of food-borne illness and prevents the storage of life-saving medications.

Update on the War in the Ukraine and the Growing Russian Military Threats

August 6, 2014 

NATO Fears Ukraine Invasion as Russia Masses Troops; Moscow Restricts Western Imports 

MOSCOW/DONETSK Ukraine (Reuters) - Russia has massed around 20,000 combat-ready troops on Ukraine’s border and could use the pretext of a humanitarian mission to invade, NATO said on Wednesday, its starkest warning yet that Moscow could soon mount a ground assault against its neighbor. 

President Vladimir Putin announced Moscow’s biggest economic response to Western sanctions, launching a tit-for-tat trade war by ordering his government to restrict imports of food from countries that have imposed sanctions on Russia. 

With fighting escalating and rebels losing ground in the weeks since a Malaysian airliner was shot down over separatist-held territory, Russia has announced military exercises this week in the border region. 

"We’re not going to guess what’s on Russia’s mind, but we can see what Russia is doing on the ground – and that is of great concern. Russia has amassed around 20,000 combat-ready troops on Ukraine’s eastern border," NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said in an emailed statement. 

Moscow could use “the pretext of a humanitarian or peace-keeping mission as an excuse to send troops into Eastern Ukraine”, she said. A NATO military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russia’s build-up at the border included tanks, infantry, artillery, air defense systems, logistics troops, special forces, and various aircraft. 

A Russian defense ministry spokesman dismissed the NATO accusations: “We’ve been hearing this for three months already.” 

Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in the Black Sea in March, and Western countries say it has funded and armed pro-Russian rebels who rose up in the east of Ukraine in April. 

Over the past two months, government troops have gained ground against the rebels, who are led almost exclusively by Russian citizens and have managed to acquire tanks, missiles and other heavy weaponry that Kiev and its Western allies say can only have come from across the frontier. 

Kiev said 18 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed and 54 injured in 25 separate clashes over the past day in eastern Ukraine. Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said troops had been shelled from inside Russian territory and frontier guards had come under a four-hour mortar and artillery attack. 

Recent Crises Reveals How Social Media Is Now Used as a Source for Intelligence Information

August 7, 2014

From Syria to Ukraine, social media opens up warfare

In 2013, Eliot Higgins used videos posted online from Syria to track weapons and pinpoint a chemical strike in Damascus from a computer in the English Midlands. This year, the British blogger and activist is using the same techniques to investigate the missiles in Ukraine believed to have brought down Flight MH17.

As conflict flares in the Middle East and Ukraine, the number of images posted on social media is increasing exponentially, giving observers half a world away unprecedented visibility of events on the ground.

Footage and still photographs have helped activists and experts identify what they say are Iranian aircraft in Iraq, foreign arms - including U.S.-made rockets - in Syria and killings from Gaza to Nigeria. Last week, 16-year-old Farah Baker attracted worldwide media coverage after covering a bomb attack near her Gaza home live on Twitter. Intelligence agencies, security firms and human rights groups are all showing growing interest.

After Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was blown from the skies over eastern Ukraine last month, video and still photographs of a suspected Russian-built SA-11 surface-to-air missile launcher were quickly identified.

Using Google Streetview, Higgins and colleagues located each of the pictures along the main road route between Donetsk - the stronghold of Russian-speaking separatists - and the border town of Luhansk. At the same time others were plotting the location of parts of debris from the downed Boeing 777 well before international investigators were able to reach the scene.

"The volume of social media information is increasing all the time," Higgins told Reuters. "In Ukraine, much more is available than anywhere we have seen before. It makes it much easier to identify what is going on."

The problem with social media is that what is reported is not necessarily accurate.

But, experts say, while it would be quite possible to fake a single video convincingly, falsifying large numbers filmed from different locations and on different devices would be much harder.

NATO Warns That Russia May be Preparing to Invade the Ukraine

Peter Foster 

August 6, 2014 

Nato warns of Russian preparations to invade Ukraine 

Russia is preparing to send troops into eastern Ukraine under the pretext of mounting a humanitarian mission to save Russian-speaking separatist rebels in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, Nato and US officials have warned. 

Russia has now massed 20,000 troops on its border with Ukraine and it is conducting a week of military exercises in a show of force to intimidate Ukrainian government forces who are now pressing the rebels, deepening fears of a Russian intervention. 

A sapper works on the site hit by an air strike in Donetsk (AFP/Getty) 

"We’re not going to guess what’s on Russia’s mind, but we can see what Russia is doing on the ground - and that is of great concern. Russia has amassed around 20,000 combat-ready troops on Ukraine’seastern border,” a Nato spokeswoman, Oana Lungescu, said on Wednesday morning. 

Nato is concerned that Moscow could use “the pretext of a humanitarian or peace-keeping mission as an excuse to send troops into Eastern Ukraine”, she added.

The Nato statement came hours after Russia called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday night warning that the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk were “on the brink of a humanitarian disaster” and calling for the international community to intervene.

The Vladimir Putin School of Leadership

By Leonid Bershidsky

AUG 5, 2014 

SENSEI OF EMERGING MARKETS? PHOTOGRAPHER: ALEXEY DRUZHININ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The leaders of some of the biggest developing nations -- China, India, Turkey, South Africa -- are increasingly acting like Russian President Vladimir Putin. It may be that democracy as the West understands it will have to compete with a new strain of authoritarianism, much as it did with communism in Soviet times.

"I feel our personalities are quite similar," China's Xi Jinping told Putin last year. He has since been likened to the Russian leader for exacting selective justice against his political rivals and making a show of personally eradicating corruption rather than building institutions to counteract it. Putin has famously focused his anti-corruption efforts on enemies such as opposition leader Alexei Navalny, rather than on his billionaire friends who are so improbably good at winning government contracts.

The historian William Dalrymple has publicly worried that India's Narendra Modi could become a sort of "Indian Putin." Modi, who put pressure on human rights activists and opposition journalists while he ran the state of Gujarat, soon reinforced the comparison by having books containing an extreme nationalist version of history sent to the state's schoolchildren -- a riff on Putin's vision of a unified, definitive history textbook for Russia.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has grown increasingly Putinesque in his second decade as Turkey's leader. He has crushed major street protests by the liberal and leftist opposition, and all branches of power in Turkey are now under his control as he prepares to become the country's most powerful president since founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Like Putin, Erdogan distrusts social networks, believes his opponents are traitors and invokes external threats to reinforce his popularity at home.

At least one commentator has described South Africa's Jacob Zuma and Putin as "soul brothers." They are both dangerous to cross, and they have a common background: Putin is a former KGB intelligence officer and Zuma ran the African National Congress' intelligence operation in exile.

Parallels abound elsewhere. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has been accused of backsliding to authoritarianism and curbing press freedom. Argentine President Cristina Kirchner has offered her support for the Crimea invasion and accused the West of applying double standards to Crimea and the disputed Falklands.

It's not that Putin himself is inherently evil or contagious. The crucial similarities are not really among the leaders themselves but among all authoritarian regimes regardless of the continents on which they operate. The most typical ones: 

The leader's personal power either exceeds the legal allotment or allows the leader to change the law when needed; 

Justice is selective and politically motivated ("For my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law"), often in the guise of anti-corruption campaigns; 

Censorship of the media falls short of totalitarian repression but stifles dissenting opinions; 

The regime associates itself with "traditional values," revisionist history and strong nationalist rhetoric (and, sometimes, action); 

Leaders express irritation with Western "double standards" and "preaching," believing that the West operates just as cynically, only less openly. 

These are not the characteristics of a smattering of rogue regimes. This is how the world's populous nations, with all their emerging economic and geopolitical clout, are governed. The Western version of democracy had a chance to spread after communism fell in the 1990s, but it has failed to take root where the world's untapped economic potential is concentrated. The West squandered its opportunity by cynical and self-serving interference in the emerging world's affairs. It botched democracy's marketing campaign: While democratic values themselves are hard to tarnish, the politicians who put themselves forward as their champions did not live up to the task.

That's what Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, put more diplomatically in a New York Times article in March:

The United States does not have the same moral authority as it did in the last century. As ambassador, I found it difficult to defend our commitment to sovereignty and international law when asked by Russians, “What about Iraq?” Some current practices of American democracy also do not inspire observers abroad. To win this new conflict, we must restore the United States as a model.

Democratic nations need to do a better job of leading by example, so that their governance model would have a stronger appeal to emerging nations than the simple recipes of authoritarianism.

VIETNAM, CHINA MARITIME DISPUTES: TIME FOR A PARADIGM SHIFT – ANALYSIS

By KT Tan,Eurasia Review

AUGUST 6, 2014

Mr Rajaram Panda’s claim that “China’s illegal deployment of Haiyang Shiyang-981 oil rig is located 60-80 nautical miles deep within the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf of Vietnam” has no merit. (‘Vietnam Flays China’s Position On South China Sea – Part I’).

He conveniently ignored the fact that Yongxing (Woody island) in the Paracels (Xisha) is an island as it has a sizable population, buildings, a hospital, hostels, a post office, department stores, cafes, a harbour and an airport.

Under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UCLOS), Article 121 (2) states that “the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf of an island are determined in accordance with the provisions of this Convention applicable to other land territory.”

Therefore, clearly under UNCLOS, Yongxing (Woody Island) is entitled to a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

Since this overlaps with Vietnam’s 200 nautical mile EEZ, under Unclos Article 15, their respective EEZ is ‘equidistant from the nearest points on the baselines’.

As the distance from Vietnam to Yongxing (Woody island) is about 260 nautical miles, the equidistant point is about 130 nautical miles.

Since China’s oil rig was only 120 nautical miles from Yongxing (Woody island) and 140 nautical miles from Vietnam, Mr Panda’s claim that the Haiyang Shiyang-981 oil rig was “located 60-80 nautical miles deep within the exclusive economic zone of Vietnam” has no legal basis and is deeply flawed.

Mr Ning Fukui, China’s Ambassador to Thailand, was therefore right to say that the Haiyang Shiyang-981 oil rig was located in Chinese waters at the material time.

Mr Panda asked: “Who is the real trouble-maker in the South China Sea”? The answer is obvious because Chinese vessels were rammed over 1,400 times in Chinese waters and the deadly riots in May in Vietnam killed 4 Chinese workers, wounded hundreds more and destroyed hundreds of factories owned by Chinese and Taiwanese owners.

In the light of what really happened, Mr Panda’s attempt to characterize China as an alleged ‘bully’ is just rhetoric. Furthermore, his claim that “Vietnam was the first country to occupy and consistently exercised peaceful sovereignty over the Paracels, at least since the 17th century, when this territory was terra nullius” is incorrect.

A Lot Rides on the Decision to Relinquish the U.S. Role over the Internet

By Helen Domenici

AUG 4, 2014 

In March of this year, the Obama administration announced it would relinquish its role over the way domain names and Internet addresses are distributed. Commonly referred to as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), this U.S. nonprofit group has managed the use and governance of Internet addresses since 1998. At that time, U.S. government officials proposed the idea of eventually giving up oversight of Internet addresses and domain names. However, they didn’t actually take tangible steps to do so until recently.

In particular, the Department of Commerce currently determines the body responsible for regulating the Internet’s codes and numbering systems.

Obama administration officials proposed transitioning U.S. oversight authority to the “global multi-stakeholder community” by September 2015, when ICANN’s current contract with the U.S. government is set to expire.

Opponents of the plan fear that China and Russia could take advantage of the U.S. surrender, gaining more control over Internet functions through global organizations such as the United Nations. Obama administration officials insist they won’t cede such authority to a “government-led or an inter-governmental organization.” But U.S. skeptics of the administration’s plan have issued warnings about the International Telecommunications Union (ITU)—the United Nations’ specialized agency for information and communication technologies—grabbing control of the Web.

In March, former president Bill Clinton even jumped into the fray, saying he’s not convinced the multi-stakeholder model is the right course to take.

“I understand in theory why we would like to have a multi-stakeholder process. I favor that,” Clinton said. “I just know that a lot of these so-called multi-stakeholders are really governments that want to gag people and restrict access to the Internet,” he stated.

The Edward Snowden disclosures of National Security Agency activities have spawned distrust of U.S. control of domain names, if only technically speaking. Clinton argued, though, that the United States has done quite well at ensuring the Internet is open and free.

Clinton captured the concern of many Americans when he stated: “A lot of people…have been trying to take this authority from the U.S. for the sole purpose of cracking down on Internet freedom and limiting it and having governments protect their backsides instead of empowering their people.”

How Weibo Is Changing Local Governance in China

By Min Jiang & Jesper Schlæger

August 06, 2014

While most studies of Chinese social media focus on censorship, Weibo is helping to improve local governance in China. 

Most foreign studies on Chinese microblogs probe patterns of censorship, paying scant attention to how state-society conflicts are neutralized by local governments or how changes are introduced into local governance itself.

In a recent article in China Information, we asked: “How does the Chinese government’s adoption of microblogs affect local governance and social contention it is tasked to manage?” We explored this question through an in-depth case study of a municipal government’s microblogs (or weibo in Chinese), arguing that official microblogs do not in the short run act as a battering ram to spearhead reforms or a virus bringing unexpected consequences. Instead, Chinese local government microblogs function largely as “beta-institutions” with the local governments experimenting with ways to interact and negotiate with their publics and service providers in an effort to improve social management and enhance their political legitimacy. Local governments are also evolving gradually from service providers to “service predictors,” with enhanced capabilities to deliver individualized services and institute state surveillance via commercial service providers.

“Occupy Weibo”

The Chinese Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) estimates that China had 278 million microbloggers at the end of last year. The first Chinese microblog service, Fanfou, started in 2007 but was banned in July 2009. However, the Sina Corporation managed to overcome regulatory hurdles and started to offer its own service Sina Weibo in August 2009. Following Sina, similar microblog platforms have been developed by Tencent, NetEase and Sohu. There is even one from the state media outlet People’s Daily, which is called the People’s Weibo. Quickly, weibo became the epicenter of China’s online public life, where corruption scandals were exposed and local grievances were aired.

Over time, the Chinese central government grew increasingly nervous about the political ramifications of Weibo. Indeed, in the wake of the Arab Spring in 2011, Wang Cheng, deputy director of the Central Propaganda Department, encouraged local propaganda units to “occupy weibo.” Taking their cue from above, local governments incorporated microblogs into their administrative operation as a form of “social management.” By August 2013, there were more than 176,000 official government microblog accounts across various platforms, according to the Chinese Academy of Governance E-government Research Center. Notably, more than one-third of government microblog accounts are maintained by public security agencies and officials. The second largest group of government microblogs are from administrative entities such as municipal governments (for instance “Beijing Announcements”). These accounts emphasize collecting information for decision-making, obtaining social news, interacting with users, promoting positive news, and maintaining social stability during crises.

Government Weibo as “Beta Institutions”

Russian Cyber Crime Group Has Stolen 1.2 Billion Usernames and Passwords

Nicole Perlroth and David Gelles

Russian Gang Amasses Over a Billion Internet Passwords

August 5, 2014

A Russian crime ring has amassed the largest known collection of stolen Internet credentials, including 1.2 billion username and password combinations and more than 500 million email addresses, security researchers say.

The records, discovered by Hold Security, a firm in Milwaukee, include confidential material gathered from 420,000 websites, ranging from household names to small Internet sites. Hold Security has a history of uncovering significant hacks, including the theft last year of tens of millions of records from Adobe Systems.

Hold Security would not name the victims, citing nondisclosure agreements and a reluctance to name companies whose sites remained vulnerable. At the request of The New York Times, a security expert not affiliated with Hold Security analyzed the database of stolen credentials and confirmed it was authentic. Another computer crime expert who had reviewed the data, but was not allowed to discuss it publicly, said some big companies were aware that their records were among the stolen information.

Alex Holden, the founder and chief information security officer of Hold Security, has a history of helping uncover significant data breaches. Credit Darren Hauck for The New York Times

Watching the Watchers: Tracking the Activities of the Chinese Cyber Spies

August 4, 2014 

Information Warfare: Chinese Hackers Are So Damn Useful 

While China consistently denies any knowledge of or participation in numerous Internet based attacks a growing number of Internet security firms have succeeded in developing the ability to track the activity of some 30 Chinese hacking groups believed to be working for the Chinese government. Recently one of the more capable of these groups (Deep Panda) was detected searching Western research organizations for recent data on ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), a terrorist group that is seizing oil fields and refineries in northern Iraq. This is of great interest to China, which is a major customer for Iraqi oil and one of the largest investors in Iraqi oil industry projects. If ISIL manages to gain control over all of Iraq, China would want to be prepared to do business with this Islamic terrorist group. ISIL would want to sell their oil and China has demonstrated a willingness to buy oil from anyone. 

This indicates how China has come to treat its hacking resources as a handy intelligence tool for when there is a need for specific information that is not posted on the Internet but can be stolen via hacking organizations that are vulnerable to plundering by skilled hackers. 

Western Internet security firms have long known of Chinese hacker groups and in the last few years have often shared their knowledge with the public. For example, in early 2013 it was revealed (to the public for the first time) by Western Internet security researchers that a specific Chinese military organization, “Unit 61398,” has been responsible for over a thousand attacks on government organizations and commercial firms since 2006. China denied this, and some Unit 61398 attacks ceased and others changed their methods for a month or so. But after that Unit 61398 returned to business as usual. The Chinese found that, as usual, even when one of their Cyber War organizations was identified by name and described in detail there was little anyone would or could do about it. There was obviously a Chinese reaction when the initial news became headlines, but after a month or so it was realized that it didn’t make any difference and the Chinese hackers went back to making war on the rest of the world. Unit 61398 is believed to consist of several thousand full time military and civilian personnel, as well as part-time civilians (often contractors brought in for a specific project). Thus a year ago the Chinese thought they were safe despite this unwanted publicity for the secretive Unit 61398. 

Half of the People on US Intelligence Community’s TIDE Terrorist Watch List Have No Links to Any Terrorist Groups

Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux 

The Intercept 

August 6, 2014 

Barack Obama’s Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers

Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according toclassified government documents obtained by The Intercept. 

Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined. 

The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush. 

“If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent. The watchlisting system, he adds, is “revving out of control.” 

The classified documents were prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center, the lead agency for tracking individuals with suspected links to international terrorism. Stamped “SECRET” and “NOFORN” (indicating they are not to be shared with foreign governments), they offer the most complete numerical picture of the watchlisting system to date. Among the revelations: 

In supersecret cyberwar game, civilian-sector techies pummel active-duty cyberwarriors

By Andrew Tilghman

Staff writer 

Aug. 4, 2014 - 09:24AM | 

Fort Gordon, Ga., hosted a multiservice cyber exercise in June that included active-duty, National Guard and reserve troops. (Staff Sgt. Tracy J. Smith/Army)

When the military’s top cyberwarriors gathered last year inside a secretive compound at Fort Meade, Maryland, for a classified war game exercise, a team of active-duty troops faced off against several teams of reservists.

And the active-duty team apparently took a beating.

“They were pretty much obliterated,” said one Capitol Hill staffer who attended the exercise. “The active-duty team didn’t even know how they’d been attacked.”

The exercise highlights a sensitive question emerging inside the military’s cyberwarfare community about what future role reservists will play in the Pentagon’s overall cyber force.

At stake is a massive pot of money and thousands of military jobs for a critical mission that will be mostly shielded from budget cuts slamming nearly every other part of the force under sequestration.

Real-world experience

The cyberwarfare mission is unique, many experts say, in that reservists bring training and expertize from their work in the civilian sector that can be far more advanced than what’s found in the military itself.

While military missions like the infantry or submarine warfare have no direct civilian counterpart, some reservists are full-time cybersecurity experts on Wall Street or software programmers with top technology firms, especially those attached to National Guard units in high-tech hotspots like California’s Silicon Valley, Seattle and northern Virginia.

“The guys and gals who work day jobs in suits and ties — or tie dyes and blue jeans — a lot of them have real-world experience in cyber that is far and above the limited skills that ... regular military people have,” said Matthew Aid, a technology and intelligence expert and author of “The Secret Sentry, the Definitive History of the National Security Agency.”

Yet many reservists fear that active-duty leaders at the Pentagon and U.S. Cyber Command are drawing up preliminary plans that do not specifically include reserve component units in the mission.