NightWatch

For the Night of 4 February 2009

Bangladesh: Activists of Bangladesh's ruling Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) clashed today near Dhaka, leaving at least 2 people dead and 20 people wounded, Reuters reported, citing police. Police Inspector K. M. Abdullah said that the groups were throwing home-made bombs.

These are precisely the kinds of incidents that prompted the Army to impose a state of emergency in January 2007. The old parties and old time politicians are tempting fate.

The Bangladesh Army under Chief of Army Staff General Moeen U. Ahmed is not nearly as reluctant as its Pakistani counterpart to re-impose martial law. Moeen has published his ideas about how a democracy out to work. If the Army takes over again, there will be political tutelage along with it.

Pakistan: Earlier today, 29 Pakistani paramilitary troops and police were kidnapped by Taliban militants after operations in the Swat Valley, Reuters reported. Taliban fighters attacked a police station in Shamzoi village and besieged it for more than 24 hours before Frontier Corps soldiers and police defending it apparently ran out of ammunition, a senior police intelligence official said. The Taliban then took six police and 23 troopers hostage, blew up the police station and withdrew.

A Taliban spokesman said 30 people had been abducted, and that their fate was not yet decided. Late today Pakistani Taliban militants released the 29 soldiers and policemen, Reuters reported. It looks as if the did it to show that they could. The Swat Valley operations are not serious, if the security forces are so vulnerable.

Late today, the Pakistan Army announced that Army engineers had built a temporary bridge in Khyber Agency capable of supporting NATO supply trucks and that the route had been reopened to traffic. Meanwhile, eight empty transport containers were burned near Landi Kotal when militants attacked trucks along the road leading from Peshawar through the Khyber Pass. The containers reportedly had been unloaded at the Afghan border.

U.S. drone strikes have killed 11 of Al Qaeda's top 20 leaders across Pakistan's Federally Administrated Tribal Areas in the past six months, Asian News reported, citing a report from the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The report states the ISI has started to help the U. S. effort to track and kill al Qaeda and Taliban militants as an attempt to improve Pakistan's global image. The report did not mention whether those leaders had been replaced. Al Qaida is still functioning, in that the attacks continue, so apparently they have.

The number is impressive if accurate, but that kill ratio proves that al Qaida leaders are not the key drivers in the Afghan insurgency which surged far past 2007 levels of violence during the same period. The data supports the NightWatch observation that the drone attacks are about keeping up pressure on international terrorists and only tangentially about stabilizing Pakistan or Afghanistan or supporting US and NATO forces.

That campaign is important, but it does not seem to be part of a unified security strategy for the region which would seem to be an obvious essential basis for restoring security and ending its use as base for terrorism. Decapitation is not a permanent solution.

Afghanistan: Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said today that foreign militants are coming from Iraq into Afghanistan to join with the Taliban in fighting Afghan and international forces, Reuters reported. Wardak said the success of the U.S. surge of troops into Iraq had led to "a flow of foreign terrorists into Afghanistan." He added that, in some engagements with militants, up to 60 percent of the forces encountered have been foreign fighters.

The Fox News version of Wardak’s statement added that Wardak said the government estimates that the Afghan Taliban number 15,000 fighters. That is the first figure of Taliban strength mentioned in public by an Afghan official or a US official… ever.

Wardak’s information on foreign fighters is difficult to substantiate from public domain reporting. The media coverage of fighting engagements almost always mentions the presence and number of foreigners, including Pakistani Pashtuns, among the dead. Press coverage of the two years; of engagements in the NightWatch data base has never mentioned that 60% of the anti-government fighters were non-South Asians.

On the other hand, Wardak probably knows that “the growing external threat” is big news and a potentially great rallying point for the government, even by Pashtun tribes who by reputation are notoriously hostile to outsiders, meaning non-Pashtuns.

Kyrgyzstan: Update. Interfax reported the Kyrgyz parliament overwhelmingly passed the bill that terminates US access to Manas. The bill directs the Foreign Minister to provide the official notice to the US Secretary of State which starts a 180-day countdown for complete departure. President Bakiyev today said he hoped the US would do the civilized thing a leave early.

Russia: Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said today that Russia will let the U.S. transport supplies across its territory to Afghanistan, Reuters reported. Karasin added, “Russia will be flexible in many other ways which will support our joint success in Afghanistan—that would be the basic school of thinking from which we will proceed."

Karasin denied any link between a $US2 billion aid package from Russia to Kyrgyzstan for the closure of the U.S. Manas airbase there.

Russia is consolidating is influence among it’s the central Asian states. At least some of their leaders are content to return to the protective overwatch of Russia. As that trend increases, the group will grow increasingly Moscow-centric on critical issues, particularly national security. For $2 billion, Moscow bought back the loyalty of a country.

Latvia: Farmer protests against the economic crisis forced the Minister of Agriculture to resign to day. Yesterday they surrounded the Ministry in Riga with tractors, built bon fires and delivered a severed cow’s head in a coffin, according to the BBC and euobserver.com. The economic crisis has bludgeoned the country's farmers, whose productivity has slid as prices plunge. The losses are bankrupting rural Latvia, with producers unable to pay their loans and processing firms going out of business.

The government faces a vote of confident this week and is likely to fall. If so, governments in Latvia and Iceland are the first European casualties of the world recession.

NightWatch notes:

Sri Lanka: The government announced today that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) will be defeated completely in the next few days. The Army captured the fifth and last remaining air strip this week plus a luxuriously outfitted command bunker used by the leaders of the LTTE.

Israel: Likud leader Netanyahu promised that if Likud is elected to govern, Israel will topple the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip and end the rocket attacks. Kadima leader Livni hinted that if the rocket attacks continue even at a low level, another military operation will be ordered, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Libya: The newly elected chairman of the African Union, Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi, proclaimed that multiparty democracy in Africa leads to bloodshed.

Sweden-Israel: A woman threw a shoe at the Israeli ambassador to Sweden as he was giving a lecture on Israel's forthcoming elections. The shoe hit the ambassador in the chest during a seminar held at the University of Stockholm on Wednesday, a local police official said. The Swedish woman is the first shoe thrower to hit the target. She asked for her red Nike to be returned by the police as they escorted her out. Another person threw two books at the ambassador but missed.

End of NightWatch for 4 February.