NightWatch

For the Night of 10 August 2009

North Korea: For the record. Today the Foreign Ministry said it "will closely watch" how members of the Six-party nuclear talks respond to South Korea's planned satellite launch after the North Korean government was brought before the U.N. Security Council for what North Korean contend was a similar move. The Ministry said how the Six-party members respond will indicate if a "principle of equality exists or has collapsed."

The South Korean missile was scheduled for launch on 11 August. The next launch window for the South Korean Space Launch Vehicle ends 18 August.

The North’s argument is elegant in its logic, but it proceeds from a false premise of equal standing for North and South Korea. North Korea is already under sanctions for ballistic missile testing. South Korea is not. The logic fails because the premise is false.

Tip for analysts: Never fail to examine the premises as well as the logic and supporting evidence. Many logically valid arguments may only be destroyed by attacking their initial premise. Making valid inferences from an invalid argument is an experienced debater’s and attorney’s tactic that should only catch the unwary and the unprepared. (Hey, that was a test -- is the inference valid?)

North Korea-South Korea: Update. The chairwoman of Hyundai Asan visited North Korea today to negotiate the release of a Hyundai employee who was detained by North Korean authorities 30 March, Joong Ang Daily reported. The Hyundai employee, who was working in the Kaesong Joint Industrial Complex, was detained for criticizing the North Korean government and encouraging a North Korean co-worker to defect.

A South Korean government official said North Korea is likely to release the employee before the beginning of Korea’s Aug. 15 Liberation Day.

Indonesia: Update. Noordin Top is still alive. A police source said today. According to The Associated Press, that fingerprint analysis and facial structure indicate that the man killed in a police raid on 7 August is not Noordin Mohammed Top, the Malaysian Islamist who is wanted for multiple suicide bombings against Western targets in Indonesia. The source said Top may have escaped from the farmhouse before police arrived. A senior counter-terrorism official said DNA tests would confirm whether it was Top or not.

Indonesian police have a corpus delicti, unlike Pakistan which is supposedly trying to confirm the death of Baitullah Mahsud without a corpse. Good luck.

Like India, Indonesia relies on specially trained police to fight terrorists, not the army.

India: Update. The New York Times reported that Indian coast guard inspectors thus far have found no nuclear materials aboard the detained North Korean ship M/V Mu san, according to Indian police officer Ashok Chand. To date officials have only confirmed the cargo as sugar. However, "there will be more checking today and we will open the hatch to check the entire consignment for any radioactive material," Chand said. If any is found, the U.N. resolution enables Indian authorities to confiscate and destroy the material.

The Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Sureesh Mehta and other officials said today there was no reason for the ship to be in Indian waters. They suspect its voyage is related to North Korean illicit trade with Burma.

Pakistan: Update. Baitullah might still be alive.

The government reports of disarray in the Pakistan Taliban movement, including the death of Baitullah Mahsud, got more confusing today.

Hakimullah Mahsud, a deputy leader of the Pakistani Taliban, continued his marathon round of telephone calls to Pakistani reporters for the second day by calling an ethnic Pashtun analyst. Hakimullah’s message is simple: he is not dead. This simple message refutes the government's claims on 8 August that he was killed during a gunfight among Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud's aides in a succession struggle, Bloomberg reported.

Karachi Geo TV also reported that rumors of Hakimullah’s demise are greatly exaggerated.

Reuters spoke with another Baitullah Mahsud aide and putative successor, Wali ur Rehman who also insisted he is still alive, in the phone conversation.

Hakimullah and two other spokesmen said there no such gun battle took place. The local government political officer for South Waziristan said the same thing – there was no interfactional clash. Hakimullah claims that the death and gunfight reports are fabrications of the US and Pakistani intelligence.

Hakimullah also said Mehsud is still alive but could not speak on the phone because they were "in the battlefield." The analyst Hakimullah called was Sailab Mahsud, who is located in the Pakistani city of Dera Ismail Khan, east of South Waziristan.

The BBC today reported that Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan chief Baitullah Mehsud remains alive but ill and will release a video debunking claims of his death, citing aide Maulana Noor Saeed. Separately, analyst Rahimullah Yousufzai confirmed receiving the same information from Saeed, who also said a live appearance by Mehsud could launch a second drone attack. Mehsud had left the bombed area before the 5 August attack, although his wife died, Saeed said.

Comment: Readers, the only data in the public domain that no one has refuted are that a drone attack occurred on 4 August – not 5 August -- against the house owned by Baitullah Mehsud’s father-in-law. Baitullah Mehsud’s wife died on 5 August as did his driver who was buried yesterday in Mardan village.

Data that were alleged but have been disproven are that Hakimullah Mahsud and Wali ur Rehman were both reported killed in a leadership clash. Both men worked the phones with friends and reporters yesterday and today. Both are aides of Baitullah and have been mentioned as candidates to replace him, if he is dead which both men deny. They also deny they are dead, as the government claims. Hmmm…

This could all be an elaborate hoax. Data in the public domain, especially the Hakimullah phone calls, create a reasonable suspicion that the entire Baitullah Mehsud death story and the leadership struggle story are components of a US and Pakistani information operation that backfired.

If Baitullah Mehsud shows up somewhere, somebody will need to make an accounting to the National Security Adviser, General Jones, who told Meet the Press that Baitullah Mehsud is dead, with 90% certainty.

NightWatch’s position is agnostic-- the alleged facts do not require judgment, but proof. Neither side has proven anything and some government allegations are patently false. Baitullah Mehsud could be dead, to be sure, but the burden of making a proffer of proof is on the Pakistani and US governments, i.e., on those who made the allegations. The clock is running on their credibility.

The US CT version.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported the following item, in pertinent part, during this Watch.

“A US counterterrorism official told AFP that "there are strong indications (Mehsud) is dead" following a drone attack. "No one is expecting him home for dinner tonight," the official said.”

“US President Barack Obama is being told Mehsud was killed after a "dramatic escalation" of nine unmanned drones specifically targeting the Taliban leader in recent weeks, the US official told CNN television.”

On Wednesday night, US surveillance in Pakistan spied a man on the roof of Mehsud's father-in-law's home in South Waziristan. The description was of a "short, stocky man who was following the physical description" of Mehsud, CNN said, citing the intelligence official. A woman was massaging the man's leg and the Central Intelligence Agency knew Mehsud had diabetes, experienced pain in his legs, and often sought relief in that way, the report said.”

If Mehsud makes a magical recovery, somebody at CIA will look very inept. If he is dead, the continuing confusion undermines the credibility of what could be a significant tactical success. The prolonged public discussion ensures that the US-Pakistani relationship will not profit from such a success. That would be a major propaganda victory for the Pakistani Taliban, whether Baitullah is alive or not.

Final note: Only the Tribune in Chandigarh, India, made the astute observation on Saturday that without Baitullah Mehsud the anti-government militants could revert to the very effective but uncoordinated movement that bested the Pakistan government’s best efforts prior to December 2007. It noted that Baitullah has only been the head of a loosely united Pakistan Taliban movement since his selection less than two years ago, but the tribal militant fighters were effective without his titular leadership.

Four years ago and more, the Pashtun fighting groups were not united, but first blunted and then defeated a large Pakistan Army offensive mounted by Musharraf. The offensive ended in ignominy for the Pakistan Army which backed government negotiation of the first treaty with the tribal militants in North Waziristan.

No source in the public domain ever explained Baitullah’s emergence as the leader, but money almost certainly was important, in the sense that outside financiers probably wanted a single point of contact for their donations-- that is just a guess but fits the phenomenology.

The formation of the Pakistani Taliban movement did not start with Baitullah and had little to do with the viciousness of his hatred for Benazir Bhutto, Musharraf, or the Pakistan political class. He and his gang were vicious long before he became head of the movement. The groups are harder to track and to destroy in autonomous mode.

Politics. Update. Another Court has ordered a police investigation into allegations that former President Pervez Musharraf illegally detained judges in 2007, The Associated Press reported today, citing a statement by the attorney who filed the illegal confinement complaint.

Afghanistan: The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, said in an interview that the Taliban are advancing from their strongholds in southern Afghanistan to formerly stable areas in the north and west and U.S. causalities will remain high for months to come, the Wall Street Journal reported 9 August.

McChrystal said he will redeploy some troops from sparsely populated areas to ones with larger concentrations of civilians, while some of the 4,000 American troops still to arrive will be deployed to Kandahar. McChrystal also said he would expand the Afghan army and national police force.

Whoa. This looks like a major modification of a much–praised new US strategy for success in which the US troops would measure their progress by protecting villages, rather than killing Taliban and defending cities. City defense was the Soviet strategy.

The point is the US strategy appears to have changed quietly, substantially and unobtrusively, without debate or notice, in just two months and in the direction of the Soviet strategy. The doctrine is called economy of force. In other words, it took two months for the new commander to realize he has too few troops to defend the villages.

Iran: Ali-Asghar Zarei, a senior parliamentarian and adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad called for the arrest of Mir Hossein Mousavi yesterday for inciting the post-election unrest, Press TV reported. "Our intelligence sources say that the Mousavi camp not only laid the foundation for a coup, but also offered their full support to foreign intelligence agents in Iran," he said. Zarei also accused Mousavi of cooperating with Western media outlets and foreign embassies in Tehran by casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election.

A spokesman for Mousavi dismissed the accusations as "absurd."

In probably related developments, The Associated Press reported at least four senior Intelligence Ministry officials have been fired by President Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad because they disagreed with claims of a "velvet revolution," referring to opposition to the handling of recent elections.

Most news service coverage of the dismissals has assessed that Ahmadi-nejad was staffing the Intelligence Ministry with his own senior men, which, on the surface, suggests intelligence men from the Revolutionary Guards who form a key component of Ahmadi-nejad’s power base. If that is the case, the arrest of Mousavi for counter-revolutionary, if not treasonous acts, seems only a matter of time and opportunity.

Some news analysis is focusing on the apparent rift between Supreme Leaders Ayatollah Khamenei and Ahmadi-nejad. The attacks on Mousavi point to a clever ruse to expose treasonous behavior among the followers of former President Rajsanjani to break the power of that group.

NightWatch is skeptical when Iranian politics seem to lend themselves to easy analysis by western media commentators and when that analysis looks a lot like mirror imaging of western politics or wishful thinking. The apparent rift looks less like a leadership split than a leadership trap to catch the opposition, as a working hypothesis for the purposes of prediction.

Lebanon-Israel: Prime Minister Netanyahu said today tensions were not increasing between Israel and Lebanon, but added the Lebanese government would be responsible for any attacks by Hezbollah on Israeli targets, Israel News reported. Netanyahu also said Hezbollah's official participation in Lebanon's government "takes away any line between the state and the militant group."

The message is that Israel will hold hostage all of Lebanon for the acts of a semi-autonomous member of the government – Hezbollah. This is precisely the wisdom of a grade school teacher who punishes the whole class for the acts of a single misbehaving child, arguing that the other children could have prevented the misbehavior. The strategy seems to be popular in Israel and tends to work in Lebanon. (This is another example of a set of valid inferences from invalid premises.)

Shebaa Farms. The Lebanese Army was placed on alert today after receiving reports that Israeli forces advanced to the Shebaa Farms area, Haaretz reported, citing a Lebanese Army source. Three Israeli armored vehicles and a civilian vehicle moved to the area located at the junction between southeast Lebanon, southwest Syria, and northern Israel. The Lebanese army deployed tanks and positioned soldiers on its side of the border, the source said.

This resembles the kinds of assertive and provocative Israeli behavior that led to the disastrous 2006 Lebanon War. Israeli forces look like they are deliberately provoking a fight.

Hamas. Prime Minister Netanyahu also said today that Israel will respond to every rocket attack from the Gaza Strip, the Jerusalem Post reported. The doctrine of asymmetrical retaliation is back.

In a related development Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that because of the "Palestinians' radical and uncompromising positions on Jerusalem, the right of return and the settlement blocs," any Middle East peace agreement can be based only on improving security and the Palestinian economy, Agence France-Presse reported. He added that "Israeli policy must be based on reality and not illusion" while maintaining dialogue with the Palestinians.

Translated into plain English in the context of the threats of retaliation, Israel will not retaliate if the Palestinians and Hezbollah do not shoot in the first place. That is the deal for improving security. As for the economy, the deal is Israel will open the border crossing points for Palestinian workers, if the Palestinians do not shoot rockets into Israel.

Brazil-Colombia-US: Update. President Lula da Silva called for a meeting between members of the Union of South American Nations and U.S. President Obama to discuss a proposed increased military presence in Colombia, Dow Jones reported. Brazil strongly opposes the establishment of a US base in Colombia.

Da Silva made his comments at Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa's swearing-in ceremony for his second term. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez -- who was absent at the ceremony -- should be present at the proposed meeting. The meeting would be held in Argentina; no date has been determined yet.

The leaders of the anti-US alliance in South America apparently think they can use international pressure on Colombia to prevent the establishment of a US base. Some US analysts might think their belief is naïve, but if they somehow succeed in placing irresistible pressure on Colombian President Uribe so that he rescinds the base offer, they win and we lose.

Colombia-Venezuela: Update. Colombia's government denied Venezuelan accusations that Colombian troops crossed the Orinoco River into Venezuelan territory, Agence France-Presse reported.

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Yesterday, 9 August, Venezuelan President Chavez said his military should be prepared for a possible confrontation with Colombia because Bogota's plans to increase the U.S. military presence at its bases pose a threat to Venezuela, The Associated Press reported.

Chavez said Venezuela's Foreign Ministry would file a formal complaint over an alleged violation of its border by Colombian troops, and warned Colombia that "Venezuela's military will respond if there's an attack against Venezuela."

Chavez must be feeling insecure because he announces a new crisis nearly every day. If there is an attack against any country, the national leadership must respond or be found incompetent. Chavez’ threats are statements of the obvious … demagoguery. They imply no threat, only response. At last check, Colombia does not intend to attack Venezuela, just the FARC whom Chavez is accused of supporting.

End of NightWatch for 10 August.