Senior Al Qaeda Leader(s) Killed in Damadola

Posted on May 24, 2008 by Thanos

It appears we got an Algerian Al Qaeda leader in the Damadola village hellfire strike last week, this is the third one in the area. ( as reported here in February.)  Jammie Wearing Fool has more

The Algerian, known by the nickname Abu Sulayman Jazairi, apparently died May 14 in the strike that killed as many as 14 people and destroyed a compound near the village of Damadola, an Al Qaeda stronghold in northwestern Pakistan, officials said. A knowledgeable U.S. official and a senior European anti-terrorism official said Jazairi was thought to be dead.

U.S. anti-terrorism forces are targeting front-line planners in Pakistani hide-outs, and Jazairi would be another in a series of recent losses for the Al Qaeda leadership, the two officials said.

More also at the Asia Times:

US intelligence is closely monitoring the area, acutely aware of its importance. The strike had some success, taking out two senior al-Qaeda leaders – Sheikh Osman, know for his amputated hand, and Sheikh Soliman. However, a famous Taliban commander, Dost Muhammad, escaped unhurt. **

** Note that when you read an article by Syed you will be reading the Taliban’s agitprop — sometimes they lie, sometimes they don’t; so you will find nuggets of truth in his articles. I don’t think Syed lies but he is sympathetic, and prints verbatim what they tell him.

Update: More from the Pakistan Daily times:

They said the Algerian, known by the nickname Abu Sulayman Jazairi, apparently died on May 14 in the strike that killed 14 people and destroyed a compound near the village of Damadola.

A knowledgeable US official and a senior European anti-terrorism official told the Times that Jazairi was thought to be dead.

They said that US anti-terrorism forces were targeting frontline planners in Pakistani hideouts, and Jazairi would be another in a series of recent losses for the Al Qaeda leadership.

“He was a significant person within the Al Qaeda ranks,” said the European official, requesting anonymity. “Not in the top five, but he’s up there. The suspicion is he was one of those individuals involved in training and targeting Western interests. There is uncorroborated intelligence that he was involved in plots against Europe.”

According to the Times, officials declined to discuss last week’s operation because of political tension in Pakistan over US airstrikes. In fact, it added, some doubt lingers about the identity of the man killed. The report referred to a statement of a senior Pakistani official in which he said he believed the slain man was not the Algerian but another foreign militant.

Despite the confusion, the US and European officials told the paper that their information about the militant’s identity seemed solid.

“There are good reasons to think that Al Jazairi is dead,” the US official said. The European official said that there recently had been allusions to Jazairi’s death on radical websites.

Explosives expert: Jazairi was an explosives expert and “important terrorist trainer”, the US official said.

“When it comes to training, this individual was an important figure … People like him are vital to terrorist plots. That doesn’t mean he can’t be replaced. But when Al Qaeda loses someone with his experience, it matters.”

UPDATE: More at The Long War Journal

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How to Talk to Tyrants

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Thanos

When Presidents talk to tyrants they do it in a particular way – it’s done through intermediaries and third parties with preset conditions, or its done through speeches and the press. To understand why you first need to understand how not to talk to tyrants.

After President Kennedy was elected he held direct policy talks with Kruschev in Vienna in which the main topic was Berlin, and access to East Berlin. It was initially seen and ballyhooed as a foreign policy coup; one sorely needed after the Bay of Pigs debacle.

39 days after the talks in Vienna construction started on the Berlin wall, and that’s about the length of time you would need to plan the construction and logistics if you were a Soviet tyrant in a hurry. That was followed later by the Cuban Missile Crisis, probably the closest America ever came to full on nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

Prior to Kennedy, the US policy towards Berlin was firm, unwavering, and resolute. (as you will see later, bear with me a moment.)

In another example of how not to talk to tyrants, even newly budded, you see President Carter working with the Khomeini camp and expressing support through intermediaries here.

The first contact between the US and the mullahs was established in November 1978, soon after Khomeini set up shop in a suburb of Paris. George Cave, the CIA’s Iran specialist traveled to Paris and met Khomeini’s close aides at the time: Abol-Hassan Banisadr and Ibrahim Yazdi. The message from President Jimmy Carter was one of support for the ayatollah and his Islamic Revolution.

So how do you talk to tyrants if you are President of the US?

Here are some examples:

 

Another from Eisenhower here,  here’s another way to talk to tyrants, but all talks with tyrants are fruitless and meaningless unless the tyrant understands that this day could come for them.

Why is it important to talk to tyrants only through intermediaries with set bounds and limits or only through speeches?

As President you don’t want to open negotiations on anything but the urgent, immediate issue that forces negotiations, and you want to circumscribe the playing field. An example of this is the negotiations held with North Korea over the captured US plane at the beginning of the GW Bush’s Presidency.

The rest of the time you speak to them and the world at large in clear obdurate phrases because it’s important to speak not just to the tyrant, but to the people enslaved under them.

More on this from John Bolton – the distinction between preparation, and preconditions or limits.

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JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Self-Censors after Muslim Fundamentalists Seethe Over Quran Depiction

Posted on May 22, 2008 by Thanos

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is an ongoing Anime/Manga cartoon series produced by Shueisha & A.P.P.P. of Japan, and recently they made and inadvertent mistake. They pictured a villain vowing to kill the hero while reading pages from the Quran. The series is old, but seething is eternal, here’s the Fatwa Committee who’s raising the stink.

From Bloomberg:

The scene from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, adapted from a comic strip published from 1987 to 2003, generated angry responses on more than 300 Arab and Islamic Internet forums, with many accusing Japan of insulting the Koran, Kyodo said.

Anime is a powerful draw to adolescent males, and typically it depicts good winning over evil, and the Hero winning through persistence and strength of moral character. It’s an influence not wanted in the Islamic fundamentalist world. In the clip below you will see the evil character bested by the good character, note how the evil character is willing to use any means to win, and says so. Warning this is a spoiler, the conclusion of the movie, do not watch if you are a fan and haven’t seen it.

Are Muslim Fundamentalists seething again because the publishers made a mistake, or are they seething because the company inadvertently got something right? Are they going after anime because of the strong moral content that appeals to youths?

The Japanese publisher Shueisha and the anime production company A.P.P.P. have halted shipments of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime and manga after online Islamic protesters objected to imagery in the anime that they deemed offensive. In particular, a scene in the sixth anime episode (“The Mist of Vengeance”) depicts the main villain, Dio, vowing to kill the main character Jotaro Kujo while looking at pages of the Qur’an, the main religious text of Islam.

The original scene in the manga’s Part 3 (“Stardust Crusaders,” pictured at right) has unintelligible scrawls in the book. However, the animators put reproductions of pages from the Ar-Ra’d (The Thunder) chapter of the Qur’an in the corresponding scene in their version. The Kyodo News agency cited Sheikh Abdul Hamid Al-Atrash, chairman of the Fatwa Committee at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, as saying, “The scene depicts Muslims as terrorists.”

Shueisha posted a Japanese statement about the issue and a English letter to the “Muslim audience of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure on Thursday. In both documents, Shueisha and A.P.P.P. explained that the anime staffers added Arabic text to the book to indicate the scene’s apparent location in the Arabic world. However, the same staffers were illiterate in Arabic and did not realize that they chose pages from the Qur’an. The two companies acknowledged that they were also unaware of the issue until recently, and emphasized that manga author did not know that the anime staffers added pages from the Qur’an.

A short plot summary :

Kujo Jotaro is a normal, popular Japanese high-schooler, until he thinks that he is possesed by a spirit, and locks himself in prison. After seeing his grandfather, Joseph Joestar, and fighting Joseph’s friend Muhammad Abdul, Jotaro learns that the “Sprirt” is actually Star Platinum, his Stand, or fighting energy given a semi-solid form. Later, his mother gains a Stand, and becomes sick. Jotaro leanrs that it is because the vampire Dio Brando has been revived 100 years after his defeat to Jonathan Joestar, Jotaro’s great-great-grandfather. Jotaro decides to join Joseph and Abdul in a trip to Egypt to defeat Dio once and for all.

Here’s the full story, you decide.

More at Bloomberg

H/T to my son, the Anime fan.

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Robotic Battlefield Ethics – ROE and Geneva Convention Programming?

Posted on May 19, 2008 by Thanos

Robotics are creeping into the battlefield  – so far with “human in the loop” controls, but we are fast approaching the point where autonomous lethal decisions on the battlefield might need to be made by the equipment itself. (Ballistic Missile Defense and Counterbattery come to mind, indeed, the MK15 Phalanx could be considered an autonomous robotic defense system already.)
This opens a case full of cans of worms, and it was a subject of consideration at this year’s Artificial General Intelligence conference. As the electronic battlefield evolves, so too will the equipment used, and at some point the speed and accuracy of machines will find “human in the loop” to be an impediment. As we cross that barrier it behooves us to pay attention to conventions, as in the Geneva Convention, as well as rules of engagement, and how those form the programming and controls of battlefield robots.

This is one of those lightning fast presentations where they were trying to make up time at the conference, and much is left out. Please do pay attention however, every two sentences covers a few varied topics that could be papers, presentations, and whole fields of study in themselves. There’s a lot of food for thought here, so please pay close attention, and then go here to read the paper.
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Iris

Posted on May 16, 2008 by Thanos

Our Iris’ are blooming thought you might enjoy them as well.

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HVT Killed in Yesterday’s Hellfire Strike?

Posted on May 15, 2008 by Thanos

MSNBC is reporting that an Arab high-value target was hit in yesterday’s Hellfire missile strike in Pakistan:

Senior U.S. and Pakistani officials tell NBC News that Wednesday’s Predator attack on a village in northwest Pakistan was not insignificant, that a “high-value target … an Arab” was among those killed. U.S. officials believe the unnamed target was planning attacks outside Pakistan, “so we nailed him,” in the words of one.

By all accounts, on Wednesday evening, two male guesthouses in the village of Damodola were struck by Hellfire missiles fired from Predator drones. The drones are normally operated by the CIA.  Inside the guesthouses were local fighters along with several “foreigners,” including the Arab fighter, according to the U.S. officials and locals. 

Although the number of missiles fired remains uncertain, recent attacks have involved multiple volleys from multiple Predators. Predators now carry up to six Hellfires.

Initial reports had the dead at 12, but now they are as high as 30.

UPDATE: In other news of note, this will be a first if true, Manned Nato aircraft striking the Pakistan side of the Durand line per Pakistan Tribune:

Our Wana correspondent adds: Jet fighters flying from across the Pak-Afghan border violated Pakistan’s airspace in South Waziristan Agency Wednesday and dropped bombs in the area near the Durand Line.
Tribal sources said the jet fighters from the US-led Nato forces operating in Afghanistan intruded into Pakistan’s territory at Sra Khawra area near the border town of Angoor Adda and flew about three kilometres deep into South Waziristan Agency.
The planes reportedly dropped some bombs inside Pakistani territory but there were no details of losses. The same jet fighters also bombed targets on the Afghan side of the border. The government officials could not be reached to confirm the violation of Pakistan’s airspace by foreign planes.

Worthy of note however is how the Durand Line has been stretched in a few areas into Afghanistan the past few years. The craft could have been bombing the internationally recognized line, rather than the Wazir view of where the line is.

Update:
A bit more from The News (jang) where some of the casualties are named:

“All the bodies were split into pieces and scattered in the building,” he spoke to this correspondent by telephone after visiting the destroyed house. Tribal sources told The News that close friends of the Arab fighter were invited to the function and that was the reason that death toll was high as the guests were spending the night in the hujra when blitzed by Drones.

Maulvi Omar, militants’ spokesman belonging to Bajaur’s troubled Mohmand subdivision, called this correspondent and said 11 people were killed in the air strike. Among the dead, he said, five militants belonged to Bajaur.

Five others, he said, hailed from neighbouring Mohmand Agency, including Shah Wali, brother of militants’ central commander Abdul Wali code-named Omar Khalid while another Shahid belonged to Shabqadar in Charsadda district.

He said thousands of tribe people came from all parts of the agency and attended funeral prayers of victims of the air strikes. Maulvi Omar said no women or children were killed or injured in the attack.

Also note here that TTP Taliban Leader Nawab Khan was killed by his friends in Parachinar, the location of a lot of sectarian fighting the past few years.

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The Touchy-Feely Obama

Posted on May 15, 2008 by Thanos

Obama’s raising hell about Bush’s speech in Israel about trying to appease the terrorists. Bush just
told it like it is although he didn’t mention any names, Obama was the first to counter his words. This is like someone who although suspected but not directly accused jumps up saying “No I didn’t, it wasn’t me!”

If Obama thinks he can go head to head with the leaders of North Korea Iran and Venezuela and come out on top he’s living in a fantasy world. He doesn’t have a clue on how they conduct negotiations and they wrote the book on lying and disinformation. Anything they say or sign concerning a treaty is not worth the ink used in their signatures.

Although people like Obama are so naive to believe they have accomplished a genuine feat only to find out all they did was waste their time and effort. To add to this, they will still have faith that the other side will change and honor their commitments — which has never and will never happen unless threatened by force of arms. And people like Obama will not press the issue and instead will allow it to evaporate like the dew on the morning grass.

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Another Grim Jihadi Milestone

Posted on May 13, 2008 by Thanos

Milestones -- the philosophy of the Muslim BrotherhoodIn another grim Islamist Terror group milestone, 902 muslims were killed in April, and another 1208 were maimed and injured. Indeed, since these numbers are compiled from news reports, some of the injured could have slipped into the death column after the news was reported, and many likely did.

The Islamists kidnapped and tortured some of these muslims, and the reports come from the following places:

Pakistan, Algeria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, The West Bank, Sudan, Lebanon, and the Kashmir. I’ve excluded incidents where non-muslims were killed, but the number of those deaths is less than a tenth of the number of muslims killed, tortured, and maimed.

Muslims at some point have to ask: if the terrorists are for the Umma, why are they killing so many of them? However that’s almost as silly as asking why a “holy warrior” would wear a mask… It’s evident that they seek temporal power, control, and wealth in the countries they are in, Islamism is good cover for their brutality since it is then supported by even some moderate muslims. After all how can moderates argue with Qutb and the Koran?

Compiled from reports at the Religion of Peace, The Daily Times, AP, and Reuters.

Above you see the book that extends the philosophy which drives many Islamist groups seeking temporal power: Milestones, by Sayid Qutb.

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Islamists Out of Control in the UK

Posted on May 13, 2008 by Thanos

A very disturbing video.

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Should MeK be Removed From the Terror Watchlist?

Posted on May 13, 2008 by Thanos

Since Mujahadin-e-Khalq has provided us intelligence on Iranian weapons initiatives, Quds force weapons smuggling, and Revolutionary Guards operations within Iraq there is a movement afoot to get them removed from the Terrorist organization lists in some countries. The intel they provided proved to be not only true over time, but invaluable in some cases. (background here, and here.)

They even have Daniel Pipes pulling for them – a heavy-weight proponent to be sure. I disagree with Daniel however. 

Once a group adapts terror as a means to an end they can never be trusted again – if they show the willingness to let the ends justify the means once, they can, and likely will, again. Should we continue to accept intelligence from them? Surely.  Just as I read El Ehklaas, so too must even terrorist sources of information be used.

That said, there is no redemption for terror groups. Fatah should never have been legitimized, and I don’t care if it’s convenient for political or strategic purposes – terror groups are terror groups. Accepting terrorism from any quarter allows our enemies moral footing, and that should never happen.

So, PKK, IRA, LTTE, MEK, Fatah — still terror groups in my book. If a group wishes to change, remove the leadership, rename, and repurpose with new manifesto that explicitly abjures all forms of terror without equvocation then maybe they could be considered. That’s not the case here.

More background here from Winston in Canada.

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