NightWatch

For the Night of 24 February 2009

North Korea: A press statement by an unnamed spokesman of North Korea's Space Technology Committee said Pyongyang plans to launch a "communications satellite."

"The preparations for launching experimental communications satellite Kwangmyongsong-2 by means of delivery rocket Unha-2 are now making brisk headway" at a launch site in Hwadae in the northeast, according to the Korean Central News Agency.

The report did not say when the launch would take place, but South Korean media reported n 25 February that Kim Chong-il is in the northeast on an inspection trip in the same province where the launch preparations are taking place. The implication that Kim’s presence is a potential launch indicator is clever but premature. South Korean authorities leaked that they have yet to detect an airframe on the launch pad at the Taepo Dong launch complex.

Kim was visiting the Chinese border town of Hoeryong, just up the coast from the launch site. Hoeryong is also the birthplace of his deceased mother, Kim Jong-suk who died in 1949 when he was seven. She was Kim Il-Sung’s first wife. Kim was quoted by KCNA as saying, "time flies, one generation is replaced by another," and emphasized that greater efforts should be made to educate the people on the country's revolutionary traditions.

A few years ago, Kim Chong-il designated 24 December a national holiday in honor of his mother’s birth date in 1917. She was a war hero in the fight against Japan.

India: The police will file a 5,000 page charge sheet on 25 February detailing the Mumbai terror attacks, the Times of India reported today. The militant arrested during the attacks, Ajmal Amir Kasab, will be charged with several crimes including waging war against the country and attempted murder. The Times speculated the charge sheet may list 20 suspects reportedly hiding in Pakistan, including Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Yosuf Muzzamil.

Pakistani authorities gave their approval for India to try the detained militant in its courts, an unusual Pakistani expression of confidence in the Indian system of justice. The Indians are putting Pakistan to its proof. Sensational trials of Indian Muslim criminals tend to raise tension in India’s large Muslim communities, but that is not likely in this case unless agents from Pakistan try to stir up trouble.

Pakistan: Islamic militants and Taliban leaders issued several unusual and significant press statements in rapid succession in the past week.

The first statements announced temporary ceasefires in Swat District and later Bajaur Agency. This generated negative press for the government because it traded acceptance of Sharia in part of the federal patrimony in return for a truce. Today militant leaders in Swat announced they extended the ceasefire indefinitely. A ceasefire also is pending in Bajaur and Malakand, apparently.

Yesterday three top Pakistani Taliban commanders announced they had formed an alliance and would henceforth work together. The Washington Times reported that Baitullah Mehsud, and two rival Taliban chiefs, Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazeer (also spelled, Nazir), met at an undisclosed location recently and settled their differences. The new alliance calls itself the Shura-e-Ittehadul Mujahedeen (Council of United Holy Warriors). Gul Bahadur, from North Waziristan, and Nazeer are militia leaders armed by the Pakistani government to fight Baitullah Mehsud.

Alliances come and go in the frontier marches, but this time the new allies professed allegiance to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar as their "supreme leader" in the fight against U.S.-led forces, the Afghan official said. Afghan Taliban commander Sirajuddin Haqqani, the son of Jalaludin Haqqani and leader of one of the most vicious anti-Kabul militias, influenced the Pakistani Taliban to unite in response to stepped-up U.S. attacks on Taliban and al Qaeda militants in Pakistan, according to the news report.

Today, Mullah Omar published a letter directing the new allies not to fight the Pakistani security forces and kill their Muslim brethren, a reliable source told The News yesterday.

Omar’s letter admonished that fighting Muslims could not be described as Jihad so they should immediately cease attacks on the Pakistani security forces. "If anybody really wants to wage Jihad, he must fight the occupation forces inside Afghanistan…Attacks on the Pakistani security forces and killing of fellow Muslims by the militants in the tribal areas and elsewhere in Pakistan is bringing a bad name to Mujahideen and harming the war against the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Our aim is to liberate Afghanistan from the occupation forces and death and destruction inside neighboring Pakistan has never been our goal," he added.

The News’ source said according to Mullah Omar, the US was devising a new strategy and adopting new tactics to crush Mujahedin in Afghanistan so the Taliban, too, must forge unity in their ranks, and instead of operating in Pakistan, they must concentrate on actions against the US and NATO forces. “The formation of a new alliance of militants by the name of Shura Ittihad-ul-Mujahedin is aimed at implementing the advice given by Mullah Omar," the source said. "After this development, the attacks on security forces by the local Taliban will decrease if not end completely," he said.

This is good news for Pakistani forces, but Omar’s purpose is to drive a wedge between Pakistan and the US, by encouraging Pakistan’s visceral reluctance to use Pakistani forces to fight fellow Pakistanis in support of a US program, as the Pakistani perceive it. A more limited, similar strategy undermined combat operations in the tribal agencies during Musharraf’s presidency. The Army operations foundered, led to a ceasefire with the tribes and resulted in the government’s virtual abandonment of Waziristan to the leaders who have formed the new militant alliance.

The more sinister dimension to this is that the three militant warlords have not previously professed obedience to Omar, at least in public. Baitullah Mehsud has been considered a proxy or agent of Usama Bin Laden and al Qaida. His policy of fighting Pakistani authorities – a position propounded by Ayman Zawahiri -- instead of the US and NATO in Afghanistan has been a longstanding source of division among the militants, especially Omar’s Taliban who are determined to return to Kabul in triumph.

These developments are significant for several reasons. First they indicate the split over strategy is publicly and officially ended. Pakistani and other efforts to exploit and enlarge rifts among the anti-government militants have failed. The movement appears to have achieved a degree of unity that eluded it for years.

The Pashtun militants will fight under Omar’s flag and in Afghanistan, suggesting a significant reinforcement in the numbers and skill sets of the anti-Kabul fighters, who may be expected to move into Afghanistan before spring.

Omar and his lieutenants must be planning a major surge before the US and NATO members increase their combat forces.

Finally, the militant leaders seem confident that their ceasefire will not make their home villages vulnerable to attack, but rather will erode the will of the Pakistani security forces to continue operations in North West Frontier Province and the tribal agencies. The government in Islamabad already has announced a cessation of operations in Swat, but continues to insist it has made no concessions to the militants.

Comment: The Pakistan government’s recent actions conform precisely to instability theory which predicts a three-step cycle that tracks the loss of authority when a weak government is struggling to find a line it can hold. The steps in a single cycle are under-reaction; over-reaction and concession.

Under-reaction occurred in 2008 from the elections to the summer. The standing forces for coping with tribal unrest failed, resulting in a serious threat to Peshawar, the provincial capital. The over-reaction response by government was the temporary increase in Pakistan Army and paramilitary force operations. The militants countered by disrupting the Allied lines of communication to Afghanistan and spreading the institution of Islamic courts in Pakistani districts outside the tribal agencies.

The concession step began when the government started negotiating peace in return for accepting Islamic law in Swat. This represents the completion of the first full cycle in the devolution of the authority of the elected government in the Pashtun regions, west of the Indus.

A significant degree of governing authority has shifted from the government and to the militants. Now the government must wait to determine whether its concessions will work to halt the expansion of the areas under militant control, recycling the three-step sequence. It is relying on the end of violence to rebuild local support.

Omar’s letter suggests the stratagem will buy some time and calm from Islamabad, by diverting Omar to concentrate the militant fighters against Afghanistan during the spring. However, this redounds to the credit of the militants who compelled the government to make concessions. When the fight returns to Pakistan, as it has every year, the second step – over-reaction – will begin again, in phase two of the devolution of government in Pakistan.

The Pakistani government also might have given $6 million incentive to the fighters in the Swat Valley in exchange for the cease-fire, Press TV reported. An unnamed security official said the money, "paid through a backchannel," was "compensation for those who were killed during military operations and for the properties destroyed by the security forces."

Lebanon: Update. The U.N. Special Tribunal for Lebanon will begin work 1 March to prepare to bring to trial those suspected of involvement in the February 2005 killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, Reuters reported, citing the tribunal's registrar, Robin Vincent in The Hague. Vincent said the tribunal has a $51.4 million budget.

Lebanon’s Naharnet news service quoted Vincent that the trial is expected to last five years!

In election news, France and Italy announced their willingness to help Lebanon organize its 7 June legislative elections and send election monitors. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, and his Italian counterpart Franco Fratini in a joint interview by the French daily Le Monde said: "Lebanese democracy must be protected….In this regard we are ready, if the Lebanese authorities want, to help organize this election and guarantee its proper path, by sending election monitors to ensure a transparent and free election based on international democratic standards," the ministers said.

Both stressed the importance in contributing in normalizing Lebanon's relations with its regional surrounding. Both ministers also praised the establishment of Lebanese-Syrian diplomatic relations.

President Suleiman told the press today that he judged elections for 120 deputies could be held in a single day, if all parties cooperate in the process.

Somalia: Update. Islamist rebels clashed with police and African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu today, killing at least 13 people, Reuters reported. Al Jazeera reported the militants attacked the Presidential Palace with mortars, the day after interim President Sharif Shaykh Ahmad returned to Mogadishu.

Somali pirate patrol: Feedback from a brilliant and tenacious Reader has confirmed that under Kenyan law the maximum penalty for piracy is life imprisonment. Capital punishment is reserved for treason and murder. Special thanks for this feedback note.

Foreign Policy’s blog was gratified that USS Lewis and Clark is holding 16 Somali pirates in its brig, pending completion of an investigation on the sufficiency of evidence to turn them over to Kenyan authorities for trial. Hmmm…. The BBC’s correspondent aboard HMS Northumberland noted wryly that the Royal Navy has no orders to capture pirates for trial.

The good news about the blog report is that for once the US Navy got credit for the support it provides that makes the piracy patrol sustainable. Most nations that sent combatant ships did not send support ships.

Sudan: One week after signing a declaration of intent for a peace agreement between the Sudanese Government and the armed opposition Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) in the Qatari capital, Doha, JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim announced that the JEM will exert double efforts to topple the Sudanese Government and President Umar Hasan al-Bashir in the event the International Criminal Court (ICC) issues a warrant for his arrest. The Court has set 4 March as the date it will announce in public its decision whether to approve the application for a warrant for Bashir’s arrest.

End of NightWatch for 24 February