NightWatch

For the Night of 29 June 2009

North Korea: Update. Two of the North’s declared zone closures expire during this Watch. The technicians are not ready for launches, apparently, unless they occur after NW closes. Nevertheless, most of the area off the east coast of the North remains closed until 10 July under other closures declarations. We are now in the missile launch window.

India-Jammu and Kashmir State: One Indian soldier was killed 29 June by gunfire from the Pakistani side of the Line of Control in the Poonch sector of south Kashmir, Reuters reported. It remains unknown whether separatist militants or Pakistani security forces were responsible.

Pakistani security operations in Swat and Waziristan have flushed out previously unconfirmed linkage between Islamist militants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Pakistani Kashmir. Pashtuns in the western border regions, using modern cell phones, can activate sympathetic and diversionary action in Kashmir in the east. The purpose is to relieve pressure in the west, but creating diversions in along the Line of Control, for example. That is what is taking place, based on open source reporting.

Pakistan: Security. Three policemen were killed and several injured by a car bomb in Buner District 29 June, Zee News reported. In response, the authorities imposed a curfew in the main city of Buner.

This incident spotlights the problem with Pakistani operations. Buner supposedly was cleared of terrorists earlier this month. The Pakistan Army wins every battle, but the rebels always return. Holding and securing ground is the primary objective after securing ground by conventional operations.

If the conventional forces have no follow-up, territorial consolidation plan, they are playing at counter-insurgency without being serious. They mimic British colonial operations which were immediately punitive and demonstrative, relying on fear and intimidation more than force to prompt compliant behavior by tribal leaders. The British never had enough force to guarantee security and neither do the Pakistanis, who copy the British tactics.

One reason why these tactics are less effective is modern communications technology enables agents of the rebels to report a government bluff as a bluff.

North Waziristan: Security forces sustained their largest losses in the past several years in North Waziristan when Taliban ambushed a military convoy, killing 20 soldiers, including a senior officer, and wounding 35 others, according to military spokesmen. A local Pakistani Taliban commander took credit for the attack, but claimed his forces had killed 60 and that 15 vehicles were destroyed.

National strategy. Minister for Information and Broadcasting Qamar Zaman Kaira issued a clarifying statement that Pakistan will not move troops from its eastern border (opposite India_ to its western border (opposite Afghanistan), Dawn reported 29 June. Minister Kaira said Pakistan and India have had a hostile relationship for more than 60 years, and Islamabad cannot ignore the conventional threat from India.

Kaira added that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's statement that India is not a threat for Pakistan was reported out of context, and what Zardari meant was that there is no imminent threat of war between the two countries. Hmm…

What this statement means is that Zardari got out in front of the Pakistan Army Corps Commanders and the intelligence establishment. Thus the need for a clarification. If the government officially should ever conclude that India is not a threat, the Pakistan Army and intelligence establishment shall lose the primary reason for their existence and for burdening Pakistani taxpayers. Obviously, that time has not arrived.

Afghanistan: At least 41 U.S.-trained Afghan security guards have been arrested after a clash at the attorney general's office in Kandahar which killed 10 people, including the city's police chief, Al Jazeera reported 29 June. The security guards entered the building in an attempt to seize a prisoner held inside, and the gunfight began after the attorney general's staff ordered local police to detain the security guards.

Kandahar's provincial governor said the 41 guards will be sent to Kabul for a military trial. U.S. forces released a statement saying no coalition forces were present, and that the guards were contractors with a private security firm loosely affiliated with the coalition.

The official US statement is not responsive to this event as a manifestation of an issue that has now reached crisis proportions. Afghanistan belongs to the Afghans, not the US and NATO forces, despite the blood shed and treasure spent by the Westerners. Ten Afghan officials would be alive but for the US-trained guards.

Something is wrong. The continuing complaints about innocent civilian deaths by Allied forces are the external manifestations of a fundamental and widening incongruity between the US and NATO military command and the government of Afghanistan. The behavior of Western forces communicates a belief that Afghan people are inferior; that conventional military superiority provides the right to behave with limited restraint against Afghans. That attitude undermines rule of law and the political purposes of the US expedition in Afghanistan.

Each incident may be explained on its own facts, but the proliferation of such incidents over time strongly points to a larger repetitive learning problem about executing military operations among foreign cultures.

In instability analysis, when the forces protecting the central government start killing each other, for whatever reason of mistake or misadventure, those events communicate to the people listening to radios that the government is self-destructing. When that message becomes consistent over time, the people support the alternative government.

Reading the public media accounts, the Kabul government appears to be struggling constantly with the US; NATO leaders are reluctantly going along with the US program so long as their casualties are minimal. Taliban shadow governments are emerging as centers of stability in solving local disputes and managing village affairs.

Saudi Arabia: For the record. Prince Khaled bin Talal accused his brother, Prince Walid bin Talal, of violating Sharia and disseminating vice through his media empire, and said his assets should be frozen, the BBC reported 28 June. Prince Walid is one of the richest businessmen in the world. His brother Prince Khaled is less rich but more devout.

He said he was left with no choice but to speak out publicly after his brother rejected private appeals, and said Prince Walid's decision to finance a movie film prompted his statement. Cinema is banned in Saudi Arabia.

Both Stratfor and Asia Times Online assessed this attack within the Royal Family indicates the conservative princes and their imams judge they are threatened by the limited reforms proposed by the King and are counter attacking to block any move to modernity. Alternatively, they might also sense a windfall opportunity to expand their influence at the expense of the reform-minded King by appealing to ultra conservative religious teachers to stop reform. Saudi Arabia is not uniform in belief systems or unquestionably supportive of the King.

Turkey-China: Turkish President Abdullah Gul, in Urumchi, the capital of China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, said 29 June the region was important to Turkey because it "acted like a bridge of friendship" between the two countries, Today's Zaman reported. Gul also said Turkey wanted to improve its economic relations with all of China's regions.

Gul apparently had a bad brief on the Uighurs, who are a Turkic people in a longstanding rebellion against the government of the Han Chinese. The only bridge NW knows about is the one that abets arms smuggling into Xinjiang, China to incite Islamist terrorism.

Israel-Russia: Prime Minister Netanyahu called Russian Prime Minister Putin and asked him not to sell Iran missile systems, Haaretz reported 29 June. A source in Jerusalem said that in recent weeks Russia has changed its position on selling arms to Iran, first noticed during a visit by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to Moscow several weeks ago.

President Dimitri Medvedev told Lieberman that Russia had signed a contract with the Iranian government and had already received several payments. Reportedly, Medvedev explained that due to the economic crisis, Russia needed the income, but also suggested that Israel could buy the systems or find a third party buyer.

Note. Medvedev’s statements should not be taken at face value as to their marketing to Iran is just good business. For one thing, the Russians absolutely have a driving need to know what is happening in the states on their southern border. If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, Russia must be involved in its development and targeting. Alternatively, Russian intelligence is incompetent.

Russia has every interest in not confiding in any US or Israeli diplomat, assuming it has embarked on a program of restoring Russian influence among Arab states that are hostile to the US. The weight of behavioral evidence is that Russia has embarked on such a larger program whose goal is securing a consequential position in deciding the outcome of Middle Eastern affairs, at the expense of the US and at low cost to Russia.

Honduras: Update. Parliamentary speaker Roberto Micheletti, sworn in as the new Honduran president, imposed a nationwide 48-hour curfew, Agence France-Presse reported 29June. Meanwhile, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he would do "everything that is necessary in political, diplomatic, social and moral aspects to restore the government of Manuel Zelaya."

Based on numerous feedback comments, most of which are supportive, Honduras did not experience a coup in the sense of a military takeover that usurped a constitution in order to serve military purpose. In the Honduran version of separation of powers, two of the three branches of government united against the executive and ordered the armed forces to boot the president/commander in chief and would-be usurper of the constitution.

Argentina: The Kirchners experienced a large setback in an election, interpreted by analysts as a referendum on their political dynasty and policies. They lost control of both houses of Congress.

The loss in Sunday's election weakened President Cristina Fernandez's government two years before she leaves office by diminishing her ability to push legislation through Congress and damaging the reputation of her Peronist party as it seeks direction ahead of 2011's presidential race.

Fernandez's husband, former President Nestor Kirchner, lost a bid for a seat from Buenos Aires province. The setbacks could kick off a power struggle within the party, which Kirchner has headed since 2007.

Kirchner conceded defeat early Monday after trailing Francisco De Narvaez by 32.2 percent to 34.5 percent with 91 percent of the ballots counted.

The issues are primarily internal economic, derivatives of the world wide recession, which makes all incumbents vulnerable. Nevertheless, the left-leaning tendency of national leaders in Latin America sustained a second blow in two days.

End of NightWatch for 29 June.