NightWatch

For the Night of 12 October 2009

North Korea: North Korea test-fired five short-range missiles from a range on the east coast into the Sea of Japan, a South Korean government source, Yonhap reported. A navigation ban reportedly has been issued by North Korea in waters off its east and west coasts 10 to 20 October.

The North seems to have no shortage of missiles for testing and message sending. The message is that Kim Chong-il’s agreement with Chinese Premier Wen to resume bilateral and multilateral talks should not be considered a sign of weakness. Same tactics to back up the same tired old message; same Korean paranoia about images and perceptions.

North Korea takes no chances that its actions might be misinterpreted, but it has to know by now that everyone takes it seriously – nuclear tests and ballistic missiles do that even for an aging force.

Less than a day after the missile tests, the North agreed to more discussions with South Korea about reunion of families divided by the Korean War and arrangements to prevent cross border flooding.

Pakistan: Interior Minister Rehman Malik told the press today that the “Pakistani Taliban and al Qaida” were suspected to be behind Saturday's attack on and occupation of Army headquarters.

"The man who has been arrested, his name is Usman. He is a TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan) guy, but we have some indications he's also from al Qaeda," said Malik, who was in Singapore for an Interpol conference.

Malik was contradicted by a security official from Punjab Province who said that some of the men involved in the attack spoke Punjabi, instead of Pashtu or Urdu. Another official said the detainee, Usman, belongs to the Lashkar e Jhanghvi, a vicious terrorist group also affiliated with al Qaida but separate from the TTP.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for siege of the Pakistan Army's headquarters, according to The Associated Press, quoting Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq. Tariq said the attack that left 20 people dead is the first in a planned series of strikes intended to avenge the killing of Baitullah Mehsud. Tariq said the raid on army headquarters was carried out by a Punjabi faction of the militant group, adding that orders were given to other militant branches across the country to launch similar operations. He also warned the Pakistani army against launching an offensive into South Waziristan.

Minister Malik said it was too early to conclude that Punjab-based groups were involved in the attack.

Today, combat aircraft bombed suspected militant hideouts, killing eight alleged militants, according to The Associated Press. A local government official said the airstrikes were in Bajaur Agency.(Note: this is an area the Army previously declared secure.)

Elsewhere in Bajaur, a remote-controlled bomb went off in front of the Khar political administration office, and militants are suspected of abducting 10 tribal elders after they attended a meeting to form a citizens' militia to protect against the PakistaniTaliban

In a separate action, at least 41 people have been killed in a suicide car bombing in the Swat valley, officials said. The explosion hit a security convoy in Shangla District - an area the military said it had retaken from militants.

It is the latest in a string of attacks and comes amid warnings of an offensive against militants in nearby South Waziristan, on the Afghan border.

Minister Malik insisted today that an Army offensive in South Waziristan is “imminent.” According to official statements last week, it was to have started on 9 October. Pakistani press sources stated the Army has assembled 28,000 men to fight the 10,000 militants it assesses are in South Waziristan.

Comment: The anti-government forces may have given the Pakistan Army a reprieve by their attacks during the past three days. The Army has insufficient forces assembled for a serious forced march into South Waziristan, much less a counter-insurgency operation. The clean up and investigation of the weekend attack in Rawalpindi will justify postponing a new suicidal mission into South Waziristan, if the stated force ratios are accurate.

The larger question, pointed out by many commentators, is the integrity of the Pakistan Army. Rawalpindi is a military garrison town. Any attack that comes close to the residence of a general officer, not to mention Army Headquarters itself, requires complicity and active cooperation by garrison guards from the Army itself.

Multiple attempts to kill senior officers during the past several years have made it obvious that guards at military cantonments in Rawalpindi are not dependable.

Army Headquarters is not easy to breach. A succession of guards and higher NCOs had to cooperate in this attack, willing to risk the lives of fellow guards. The enormity of the security breach is difficult to overstate, especially in light of the history of assassination attempts against Musharraf when he was Chief of Army Staff and President.

Yet even under Musharraf, no attack so daring had so much success. This is a major failing of General Kayani’s management of the Army. If the Army cannot protect itself, how can it be expected to protect the nation….that is the message the anti-government forces intended and succeeded in sending.

For the rest of the world, the surest conclusions are that the Pakistan Army cannot be trusted to protect itself; the enemies of the government can attack at will anywhere; the Army is so penetrated by Islamists that it is not reliable; no major operations in South Waziristan will succeed…the Army cannot be trusted to fight its own citizens. More later.

Afghanistan: The Taliban are in much stronger financial shape than al-Qaida and rely on a wide range of criminal activities to pay for attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, a senior Treasury Department official said Monday, 12 October.

David Cohen, the Assistant Secretary for terrorist financing, said the extremist group extorts money from poppy farmers and heroin traffickers involved in Afghanistan's booming drug trade. The Taliban also demand protection payments from legitimate Afghan businesses, he said during a speech at a conference on money laundering enforcement.

Comment: Assistant Secretary Cohen said more but the gist cited above is enough to warrant comment.

Cohen’s statement starkly contrasts with the item published Sunday in the Miami Herald by several reputable McClatchy News reporters on a related topic. In that item, 15 anonymous US government officials told McClatchy reporters a very different story.

The anonymous officials claimed that the relationship between al Qaida and the Afghan Taliban is closer now than it was before the 9/11 attack when al Qaida was a guest of the Taliban leader Mullah Omar. They based this on statements by the anonymous officials that there are new assessments.

For NightWatch Readers, the statement by Assistant Secretary Cohen means that the Afghan Taliban have no need of al Qaida for financial support. Adding that information to the statement by National Security Advisor Jones that less than 100 al Qaida fighters are ever in Afghanistan, the conclusion is compelling that al Qaida is not a significant influence on the Afghan Taliban movement.

The Taliban posted a statement last week that they are not interested in spreading an ideology. That statement is backed up by eight years of history plus the public statements by the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and the National Security Advisor. That thesis is challenged by the statements of anonymous officials who are leaking information and not presenting their proof for public scrutiny.

The situation that emerged this weekend is typical of a bureaucratic struggle in which different elements of the executive branch strongly disagree about Afghanistan policy. Some are willing to break security rules to advocate their position; and some are willing to manipulate intelligence.

For example, if there are new assessments, as the McClatchy article asserts, they ought to be part of the public debate; their evidential basis ought to be sanitized for review by expert and unbiased interests; and their fingidings ought to be open to discussion by all parties in a competitive debate.

Since 1947 the sense of Congress has been that competitive analysis is a surer safeguard against strategic catastrophe than all the alternatives. It is time to respect that tradition instead of playing the Washington “leak” game.

Treasury is probably the least known actor in the fight against terror and arms proliferation, but it stands among the most cost-effective because it attacks the financial underpinnings. It does not get the credit it deserves.

Of the six strategies for attacking terrorism, Treasury’s attacks against financial sustainment are a strategy that produces permanent results, in contrast with decapitation of the leadership that usually produces only short term results.

The issue is the relationship of the Afghan Taliban to al Qaida. The anonymous leakers claim Taliban is synonymous with al Qaida. An Assistant Secretary of the Treasury reports Taliban does not need al Qaida and reinforces other and earlier reports that al Qaida is short of money and fallen on hard times.

So what is Treasury seeing that the anonymous leakers are ignoring?

Somalia-Ethiopia: Ethiopia has launched a second incursion into Somalia. Eyewitnesses reported hundreds of Ethiopian soldiers entered three villages in central Somalia and began rounding up suspected supporters of the Islamist movements, according to Xinhua and other news agencies, quoting local residents.

 "They had several trucks and a lot of heavy weapons. After they came in, they began arresting men, young men in the villages," Mohamoud Gure, an elder in one of the villages told Xinhua.

Ethiopia’s intentions are not clear, but they do not appear to include a second large scale intervention as during 2006 and 2008. Rather, the Ethiopians might be trying to create a safe corridor for the Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu to flee, before it is wiped out or captured by the Islamists, who hold most of Mogadishu. That is just a guess at this point.

End of NightWatch for 12 October