Monday Winds of War Briefing
Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Friday. Monday's Winds of War briefings are given by Security Watchtower and Peace Like a River.
Top Topics
* On Sunday, Hezbollah rockets struck the northern Israeli city of Haifa, killing nine and wounding dozens others. In response, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned there will be long-term consequences, while Hezbollah is threatening to destroy the city. Israel has moved three Patriot missile batteries to Haifa as well.
* The bombers who targeted Bombay's rail system had support from inside Pakistan, India's prime minister said Friday, warning that the nuclear-armed rivals' peace process could be derailed unless Islamabad reins in terrorists. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's unusually blunt comments appeared to signal a major shift in relations between India and Pakistan, whose ties had warmed over the past two years.
* Coalition and Afghan forces killed more than 40 militants across southern Afghanistan on Saturday, including 10 in a large-scale air assault aimed at wresting a desert town from Taliban control. More than 300 British paratroopers, backed by U.S. and Canadian forces, launched an early morning raid on Helmand province's insurgent stronghold of Sangin, where hundreds of Taliban had massed in preparation for launching attacks, coalition spokesman Maj. Scott Lundy said.
* Iran has reiterated their support for Damascus, and warned Israel of "unimaginable losses" if they took military action against Syria. Amir Taheri has commentary in Asharq Alawsat on the proxy war transpiring.
Other topics today include: Israel introduces cease-fire conditions; Syria given 72-hour ultimatum; reports Nasrallah wounded; Hezbollah rockets hit northern Israel; IDF moves into Gaza; stampede at Rafah; IAF pound Hezbollah positions; Preparing for ground war; Tourists & foreigners flee Lebanon; Hezbollah strikes Israeli ship; Israelis huddled in bomb shelters; Emergency Arab summit in Cairo; Iran banking on Russia & China; Turkey prepares response against Kurd militants; al Jazeera crew arrested in Haifa; Padilla examines terror documents; Stepped up security in Manhattan; Behind the killing of Basayev; Bombing in Tskhinvali; US secures lease for Manas; Russian amnesty offer to Chechen rebels; Indian bombers trained in Bangladesh; India names suspects & conduct interrogations; al Qaeda in Kashmir; Bombing in Karachi targets Shi'ite cleric; Bombings in southern Afghanistan; Taliban suffer heavy losses in fighting; Violent protests in Karachi; Baluch tribesmen surrender; Fierce firefight in Sri Lanka; Sanctions on North Korea; Arroyo declares all-out war against communists in the Philippines; Protests in Indonesia; Indian bombing financiers in Britain; European press condemns Israel; Peace talks in Somalia breakdown; and more.
Iran & the Middle East
* Israeli authorities have laid out the conditions for a cease-fire with Hezbollah, calling on the return of two kidnapped IDF soldiers and withdrawal of Hezbollah forces from southern Lebanon.
* According to al-Hayat newspaper out of London, the Israeli government has given Syria a 72-hour ultimatum to cease Hezbollah activity and release the two detained Israeli soldiers. The article cites a source in the Pentagon as saying the Israeli offensive will not stop until there is a "new situation created that will prevent Syria and Iran from using terror organizations to threaten its security." The source further added that "the US cannot rule out the possibility of an Israeli strike in Syria."
* According to reports airing on Israeli Channel 2 TV, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, has been wounded in an airstrike in southern Beirut. Hezbollah is denying the charges and Nasrallah appeared on a video broadcast on Sunday.
* On Monday morning, Hezbollah rockets landed in the Israeli towns of Afula and Upper Nazareth, about 40 km south of the Lebanon border.
* Israeli ground forces rolled back into northern Gaza on Sunday morning, a week after leaving the territory, and exchanged fire with groups of armed Palestinian militants as they advanced towards Beit Hanoun. An Israeli airstrike on Friday targeted the Palestinian Economy Ministry in Gaza, in the latest strike against government offices in Gaza city.
* Egyptian medical and security teams have been sent to the Rafah border crossing after some 2,000 Palestinians forced their way back into the Gaza Strip on Saturday. "North Sinai governor Ahmed Abdel Hamid gave instructions to all the state's services to be prepared for emergencies."
* Israeli aircraft have pounded Hezbollah positions and infrastructure throughout Lebanon for days now, striking the Jiyeh power plant in southern Beirut on Sunday. Other targets hit included a Lebanese coastal radar positions and sixty different Hezbollah targets in the Dahiya quarter. The IAF also destroyed five long-range rocket launchers.
* The IAF Chief Maj.-Gen. Elyezer Shkedy, warned Hezbollah that more attacks were to come. In the five-days of fighting, Israel has carried out 1,000 air raids and 350 helicopter gunship sorties, striking targets as far north as Abdeh. The IDF reports that 25 percent of Hezbollah's capabilities have been hit.
* In a move that could signal a pending ground assault in southern Lebanon, an IDF reserve infantry division was called up on Sunday and armored Israel vehicles were reportedly moving north, but the Israeli government maintains at this time there are no plans for a broad ground-offensive into Lebanon. John at Op-For believes we are currently witnessing the classic battlefield preparation for a ground invasion.
* Hundreds of tourists began fleeing Lebanon on Friday, many headed for Syria. More than 100 Lebanese civilians are reported to have been killed in the recent fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, including 7 Canadians. The United States and European and Arab nations moved on Saturday to evacuate their nationals from Lebanon. An estimated 25,000 Americans live and work in the country.
* On Friday, initial reports indicated that Hezbollah flew a Mirsad-1 UAV into an Israeli warship, setting the vessel afire. Later reports indicated the vessel was instead struck by an Iranian-made C-802 missile (also see more info on the missiles from Gateway Pundit). Four Israeli sailors went missing in the attack, which Israel says was orchestrated by Iran.
* An estimated 220,000 Israelis are now staying in bomb shelters throughout northern Israel, where martial law has been imposed by the government and a state of emergency remains in effect in areas of northern Israel.
* Arab Ministers squabbled during an emergency summit in Cairo on Saturday, with some nations very critical of Hezbollah in the latest conflict with Israel. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal called Hezbollah's acts "unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible (also see more on the Saudi reaction from Crossroads Arabia). King Abdullah of Jordan is among many calling for U.N. intervention to end the fighting.
* Iran has announced that they are still counting on Russia and China to protect their nuclear ambitions in the Security Council, and warned the G8 against sending their case back before the council.
* Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has signalled that his government was planning a tough response to mounting violence by Kurdish rebels after 13 members of the security forces were killed in the southeast over the past week.
* An Aljazeera TV crew was arrested outside of Haifa after filming their report with an Israeli seaside oil refinery as backdrop.
America Domestic Security & the Americas
* With a federal marshal standing guard just feet away, alleged al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla is being allowed to sift through U.S. government secrets as he prepares his defence with his lawyers. Padilla, charged with conspiring to wage and support international terrorism, is being allowed under a federal judge's order to examine the documents and videotapes detailing his statements during 3 1/2 years in Defence Department custody as an unlawful "enemy combatant." That designation was dropped last fall when he was charged in a Miami terrorism case.
* A wall that suspects in a terrorist plot hoped to destroy to unleash a catastrophic flood in lower Manhattan was quietly put under 24-hour protection in recent weeks once details of the plot began to emerge, two law enforcement officials said. The suspects hoped to bring down the so-called slurry wall, which keeps the water from the Hudson River out of the World Trade Center site, the officials told the AP Thursday.
* A stalled FBI investigation of seven terror suspects was salvaged when two informants persuaded the alleged ringleader to trust them because they had al Qaeda connections.
* The Bush administration and Congress are struggling to resolve three election-year issues that color U.S. and international perceptions of the war on terror: detainee treatment, military tribunals and government eavesdropping. The biggest progress Thursday came with word that President Bush agreed, conditionally, to support legislation that would open a special court review of the administration's most controversial terrorist surveillance program.
* The former imam of a Cleveland mosque is being called a "man without a country," stuck in jail because U.S. authorities cannot find a place to deport him. Fawaz Damra, who was born on the West Bank, was convicted in 2004 of lying about ties to terrorist groups when he came to the United States about 20 years earlier. The evidence included a 1991 videotape in which Damra called Jews "pigs and monkeys" in Arabic and urged his listeners to contribute to Islamic Jihad.
* Mubin Shaikh, a well-known and sometimes controversial figure in Toronto's Muslim community, says he decided to become an undercover police agent and infiltrate an alleged terrorism cell to protect Canada, the country of his birth.
* A youth charged in what's been billed as this country's largest counterterrorism operation since 9-11 was back home with family Friday after becoming the first of 17 terror suspects to be granted bail. The boy, who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, was released under very strict conditions, said his lawyer Gary Grill.
* Colombian leftist rebels, after fierce combat with rightist militiamen who spurned their comrades' demobilization, have massacred 10 people and taken some 170 others, mostly woodcutters, hostage and are using them as "human shields," a provincial governor said Friday.
Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia
* Government special forces in Kyrgyzstan have carried out an operation in the city of Jalalabad, killing five armed members of the Islamic movement of Turkestan and Hizb ut-Tahrir. According to Major-General Busurmankul Tabaldiyev, the terrorist organizations in the country have been decapitated.
* C.J. Chivers writes about the transformation of Ramzan Kadyrov, warlord turned Chechen president, in the Saturday edition of the New York Times.
* According to Russian intelligence sources, Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev was betrayed by a mole who was paid by Russian security forces to plant a powerful mine in the convoy he was travelling in.
* A bombing in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali killed two civilians and wounded four others on Friday, in attacks that Georgia is blaming on the Russian secret services.
* On Friday the United States reached terms with Kyrgyzstan, for continued use of Manas airbase, primarily used by the U.S. military for ongoing operations in Afghanistan since late 2001. Approximately 1,700 U.S. troops and millions of gallons of fuel passes through Manas each month, primarily on the way to Afghanistan. In exchange for use of the base in the coming year, the United States is reported to be paying $ 150 million in assistance and compensation (also see U.S. Interests in Central Asia: Policy Priorities & Military Roles).
* Nikolai Patrushev, the Director of the Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB) and the head of the National Antiterrorist Committee, is calling on militants in the northern Caucasus to disarm and begin negotiations.
* Chechen rebels are ready to drop their independence bid in exchange for peace, a senior representative said, in response to an offer of amnesty from Russia. However the radical wing of the guerrilla movement showed no sign of agreeing.
* According to Igor Drizhchany, the Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), they are prepared for more active cooperation with NATO countries in the global fight against terror. To date bilateral relationships with with 29 members of NATO and their partners are established by the SBU. This cooperation includes non-proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction, illegal circulation of drugs, money-laundering and illegal migration.
Afghanistan & Southern Asia
* Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri warned against "knee-jerk" reactions saddling his country with blame for the bomb blasts which killed at least 200 people in Mumbai. In an interview with CNN broadcast on Wednesday, Kasuri said India should be careful about ant attempt to attribute the attacks to Pakistan-based militants.
* All the seven bombers involved in engineering blasts on Mumbai’s suburban trains on Tuesday were either trained in Bangladesh or had spent considerable time there after receiving training in ISI-controlled training camps in Pakistan. The Anti-Terrorist Squad is now quite certain that the seven bombers, and the others who helped them carry out the blasts, had a strong Bangladeshi connection.
* Indian authorities named two suspects Thursday in this week's train bombings, an apparent breakthrough in the frenetic investigations into the well-coordinated attacks that killed at least 200 people. The government's Anti-Terror Squad released photos of young, lightly bearded men identified as Sayyad Zabiuddin and Zulfeqar Fayyaz, said Sunil Mane, an anti-terror official.
* Indian authorities on Friday named a third suspect in this week's train bombings in Bombay, as the local media said the well-coordinated attacks that killed 200 people were planned by Pakistan's main intelligence agency.
* Police in Bombay detained and interrogated hundreds of people in the probe of the coordinated bomb blasts that devastated commuter trains in this city Tuesday, killing 183 people and wounding 770, officials said Thursday.
* Indian authorities detained 11 people, mostly Muslims, on Saturday as the hunt for the Mumbai bombers produced several leads, but police warned about drawing premature conclusions. Panic gripped the city anew on Saturday evening when trains were stopped for over an hour and commuters evacuated after a bomb threat at a northern Mumbai suburban station. The threat was declared a hoax after a search, police said.
* India’s political leaders risked antagonising Pakistan last night. D. K. Shankaran, a senior figure in the Maharashtra state government, blamed Pakistan for allowing Kashmiri militants to orchestrate the plot. “There was substantial involvement of Lashkar-e-Taiba with local support,” he said, pointing the finger at the banned Students Islamic Movement of India for providing the manpower to carry the explosives on to seven trains. The Indian Cabinet was briefed by the national security adviser yesterday about possible cross-border links.
* Pakistan could jeopardise peace in South Asia by clinging to a "jihadi option" despite a high-profile crackdown on Islamic militants by President Pervez Musharraf, analysts say. Military ruler Musharraf, a major US ally in the "war on terror", has also failed to tackle the so-called holy warriors because he needs Pakistan's hardline Muslim parties on-side, they say. The result is worsening ties with India -- which says Tuesday's Mumbai bombings were carried out with "cross-border" help -- while Afghanistan is urging him to purge Taliban rebels allegedly based on Pakistani soil.
* As Indian investigators sift through the wreckage of Tuesday's deadly railway blasts in Mumbai, which killed at least 200 and wounded 700, suspicions are beginning to point to Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, or the Army of the Righteous, a Pakistani-based militant outfit with a long history of terrorist attacks inside India. It is too early to say whether the group was directly responsible for masterminding the violence. A Lashkar-e-Tayyaba spokesperson, Abdullah Ghaznavi, denied that the group was involved in the attack.
* The Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) is a banned Islamic fundamentalist organization, which advocates the ‘liberation of India’ by converting it to an Islamic land. SIMI has declared Jehad against India, the aim of which is to establish Dar-ul-Islam (land of Islam) by either forcefully converting everyone to Islam or by violence.
* Here are some links to background reading on some of the groups suspected of involvement in the Bombay train attacks.
* Police in Nepal are probing possible links between two Pakistani men arrested here on explosives charges and the serial train blasts in Mumbai that killed 179 people, an official said. The men were arrested at a downtown hotel Wednesday in connection with the 2001 discovery in a Kathmandu flat of 16 kilograms (33 pounds) of powerful RDX explosive.
* Kashmir authorities were tightlipped about a report that Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda may have set up a wing in the revolt-hit region, except to say they were probing the claims. A Kashmiri news agency took a call on Thursday from a man who said a group called "Al-Qaeda Jammu and Kashmir" had been launched that day in Indian Kashmir where an Islamic separatist insurgency against New Delhi's rule has raged since 1989.
* Police in Jammu and Kashmir have traced the PCO booth from where a man claming to be Al Qaeda spokesperson Abu-al-Hadeed had phoned a local news agency in Srinagar to declare that the organisation had set up its unit in the state. Preliminary investigations indicate that the man was a Kashmiri.
* A suspected suicide bomber blew himself up outside a key Shiite leader's house in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi Friday, injuring the cleric and killing a male relative, police said. The religious leader targeted in the attack, Hassan Turabi, escaped a similar assassination attempt in April.
* Here are the daily updates from the South Asia Terrorism Portal for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
* Here is the CDI's Afghan update for the month of June. It is a roundup of events in Afghanistan throughout the month.
* It will take three more years for the U.S.-trained Afghan army, intended to assume security responsibilities now shouldered by foreign forces in Afghanistan, to reach the planned goal of 70,000 soldiers, a U.S. commander said on Thursday.
* A suicide bomb blast wounded a policeman in southern Afghanistan Friday while nine Taliban were killed in a clash with Afghan and coalition troops, officials said.
* A suicide bomber drove a taxi into a convoy of US-led troops in Afghanistan, killing himself and a child, officials say. Officials say that the attack happened in the Yaqubay district of Khost province, and that two US soldiers and three other children were injured.
* At least 19 suspected Taleban militants have been killed in clashes in southern Afghanistan, officials say. A Helmand province government spokesman said Taleban fighters attacked the village of Nawzad, targeting a garrison of Afghan and coalition troops.
* At least 37 Taliban rebels were killed in fighting with Afghan and US-led coalition troops in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, an official has said. "Twenty seven Taliban were killed during a joint Afghan and coalition operation in Sangin district of Helmand province," said Mohammad Nabi Mullahkhil, the police chief in Helmand, Sunday. Another eight were killed in a separate clash with troops in the same region, said Mullahkhil. Two more Taliban fighters were killed when they attacked an Afghan security patrol in neighbouring Uruzgan province, provincial official Mohammad Zahir said. Mullahkhil said 22 rebels were also captured in the three clashes.
* Hundreds of youths set fire to a Pizza Hut restaurant, two gas stations and a dozen vehicles in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, after Saturday's funeral for an Islamic Shiite cleric killed in a suicide attack. Rioters rampaged through a busy commercial area a day after a suicide bomber killed cleric Allama Hassan Turabi, his cousin and a police guard.
* Some 600 rebel tribesmen have surrendered to the authorities in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan, a government spokesman said on Sunday. The fighters, led by three commanders, agreed to lay down their weapons at a parley with Baluchistan's Home Minister Shoaib Nausherwani in Dera Bugti district on Saturday. Khan Mohammad Masoori, one of the commanders, pledged to halt attacks on government installations as his men handed over AK-47 rifles, machineguns, rocket launchers and mortars in Baker town, 400 km northeast of Quetta, officials said. Baluch government officials hoped the fighters' decision to stop fighting would sound the death knell for a revolt led by tribal chieftain Nawab Akbar Bugti.
* At least 12 Sri Lankan soldiers and four Tamil Tiger rebels were killed in a firefight in the island's restive east on Friday, truce monitors said, in one of the worst military clashes since a 2002 ceasefire. The Tigers insisted they had shot dead 22 people in the firefight, and said the balance likely belonged to a breakaway faction of former comrades led by renegade commander Karuna, whom they accuse the military of helping to mount attacks.
Far East & Southeast Asia
* The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution against North Korea, imposing military related sanctions against Pyongyang. The move was welcomed in Japan, which described it as a "resolute message", but was expectedly rejected in North Korea.
* The Philippine military is not overlooking the threat from Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists, despite their shrinking presence in the country. According to Armed Forces assistant deputy chief for intelligence Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Legaspi, there are about 30 JI operatives in the country and they are all capable of launching attacks in the metropolis.
* Islamic extremists have been using Australian internet sites in order to recruit and rally support for international terrorism. The statement attacked moderate Muslims for condemning "the activities of Muslims abroad".
* Filipino President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has signed an executive order officially sealing the partnership between the military and the police in the all-out war against the communist insurgency.
* More than 5,000 Indonesian Muslims rallied peacefully to denounce Israel's military strikes on Gaza and Lebanon and to raise funds for the beleaguered Palestinians.
Europe
* As part of Tony Blair's 12-point plan to fight terrorism, British authorities are set to unveil a list of radical Islamic groups it wants to ban under the 2006 Terrorism Act. The list is expected to include Hizb ut-Tahrir and The Strangers (aka al-Ghurabaa').
* According to Indian intelligence officials, some of the primary financiers of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which remains the main suspect for orchestrating the latest bombings in India, are from Britain.
* Seven former Bosnian Serb officers have gone on trial at The Hague war crimes tribunal for alleged involvement in the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica. The men are pleading not guilty to a range of charges including murder, persecution and genocide.
* The European newspapers have almost unanimously condemned Israel's response against Hezbollah as out of proportion, with some calling it an "act of war" and others saying it was a violation of international law.
* Unconfirmed reports from Britain and US say that there was an attempt on the life of Baloch leader Senator Sanaullah Baloch in London recently, when "people of Pakistani origin threw a home made bomb" at the official.
Africa
* Bandits shot dead an aid worker in northern Darfur, a relief agency said, highlighting the difficulty of conducting the world's largest aid operation in the midst of one of its worst humanitarian crises. In a statement late on Wednesday, Relief International said armed robbers stopped Sudanese agricultural officer Hassan Ahmad Idris' vehicle, then shot him. He died instantly. Idris' driver survived the attack.
* Somalia's weak, UN-backed government has refused to travel to Sudan for Saturday's peace talks with Islamists who control the capital, Mogadishu. The president accused the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) of breaking a truce agreed at the last Sudan talks.
* Somalia’s interim government and the Islamists who now control Mogadishu can never share power because they have conflicting ideologies, a recently defeated top warlord said on Saturday. Fired National Security Minister Mohamed Qanyare Afrah — until last month one of Mogadishu’s biggest warlords — said Somalia’s future looks very bleak as a result. "The government wants to govern by the charter while the Islamic Sharia courts want to rule by the Koran. There is no way they will ever agree," Qanyare told Reuters in an exclusive telephone interview.
* Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, the executive leader of the Islamists in Mogadishu has condemned the U.N. Security Council for considering lifting the ban on weapons in Somalia (H/T: ThreatsWatch).
The Global War
* Despite progress on security, tons of nuclear material are "dangerously vulnerable" to theft by terrorists across the globe, a private group contends. As leaders of the Group of Eight industrial powers, including President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, meet this weekend, NIT reports note that only a fraction of the $20 billion those leaders pledged four years ago to secure nuclear materials has been spent.
* The videotaped rants of a 27-year-old American terrorist named Adam Gadahn that offer the most intriguing clues about the mechanics of al-Qaida’s propaganda machine and the sort of individual the shadowy terror organization is seeking to recruit.
* India will press leaders of the powerful Group of Eight nations meeting in St. Petersburg for greater cooperation in fighting terrorism in South Asia, India's foreign ministry said on Saturday. "The message which should come out from the G8 is that the world accepts that there cannot be a segmented response to terrorism," Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran said Saturday.
* Vladimir Putin and George Bush announced the global initiative to combat nuclear terrorism after their Saturday meeting, in a move that drew immediate support from Japan. Through the initiative, "Russia and the U.S. pledge to take joint measures to counter the threat of nuclear terrorism, including the acquisition, transport, or use of nuclear and radioactive materials by terrorists."
* Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media explains how the al-Jazeera media network stokes the fires of extremism and terrorism in the Middle East.
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Top Topics
* On Sunday, Hezbollah rockets struck the northern Israeli city of Haifa, killing nine and wounding dozens others. In response, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned there will be long-term consequences, while Hezbollah is threatening to destroy the city. Israel has moved three Patriot missile batteries to Haifa as well.
* The bombers who targeted Bombay's rail system had support from inside Pakistan, India's prime minister said Friday, warning that the nuclear-armed rivals' peace process could be derailed unless Islamabad reins in terrorists. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's unusually blunt comments appeared to signal a major shift in relations between India and Pakistan, whose ties had warmed over the past two years.
* Coalition and Afghan forces killed more than 40 militants across southern Afghanistan on Saturday, including 10 in a large-scale air assault aimed at wresting a desert town from Taliban control. More than 300 British paratroopers, backed by U.S. and Canadian forces, launched an early morning raid on Helmand province's insurgent stronghold of Sangin, where hundreds of Taliban had massed in preparation for launching attacks, coalition spokesman Maj. Scott Lundy said.
* Iran has reiterated their support for Damascus, and warned Israel of "unimaginable losses" if they took military action against Syria. Amir Taheri has commentary in Asharq Alawsat on the proxy war transpiring.
Other topics today include: Israel introduces cease-fire conditions; Syria given 72-hour ultimatum; reports Nasrallah wounded; Hezbollah rockets hit northern Israel; IDF moves into Gaza; stampede at Rafah; IAF pound Hezbollah positions; Preparing for ground war; Tourists & foreigners flee Lebanon; Hezbollah strikes Israeli ship; Israelis huddled in bomb shelters; Emergency Arab summit in Cairo; Iran banking on Russia & China; Turkey prepares response against Kurd militants; al Jazeera crew arrested in Haifa; Padilla examines terror documents; Stepped up security in Manhattan; Behind the killing of Basayev; Bombing in Tskhinvali; US secures lease for Manas; Russian amnesty offer to Chechen rebels; Indian bombers trained in Bangladesh; India names suspects & conduct interrogations; al Qaeda in Kashmir; Bombing in Karachi targets Shi'ite cleric; Bombings in southern Afghanistan; Taliban suffer heavy losses in fighting; Violent protests in Karachi; Baluch tribesmen surrender; Fierce firefight in Sri Lanka; Sanctions on North Korea; Arroyo declares all-out war against communists in the Philippines; Protests in Indonesia; Indian bombing financiers in Britain; European press condemns Israel; Peace talks in Somalia breakdown; and more.
Iran & the Middle East
* Israeli authorities have laid out the conditions for a cease-fire with Hezbollah, calling on the return of two kidnapped IDF soldiers and withdrawal of Hezbollah forces from southern Lebanon.
* According to al-Hayat newspaper out of London, the Israeli government has given Syria a 72-hour ultimatum to cease Hezbollah activity and release the two detained Israeli soldiers. The article cites a source in the Pentagon as saying the Israeli offensive will not stop until there is a "new situation created that will prevent Syria and Iran from using terror organizations to threaten its security." The source further added that "the US cannot rule out the possibility of an Israeli strike in Syria."
* According to reports airing on Israeli Channel 2 TV, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, has been wounded in an airstrike in southern Beirut. Hezbollah is denying the charges and Nasrallah appeared on a video broadcast on Sunday.
* On Monday morning, Hezbollah rockets landed in the Israeli towns of Afula and Upper Nazareth, about 40 km south of the Lebanon border.
* Israeli ground forces rolled back into northern Gaza on Sunday morning, a week after leaving the territory, and exchanged fire with groups of armed Palestinian militants as they advanced towards Beit Hanoun. An Israeli airstrike on Friday targeted the Palestinian Economy Ministry in Gaza, in the latest strike against government offices in Gaza city.
* Egyptian medical and security teams have been sent to the Rafah border crossing after some 2,000 Palestinians forced their way back into the Gaza Strip on Saturday. "North Sinai governor Ahmed Abdel Hamid gave instructions to all the state's services to be prepared for emergencies."
* Israeli aircraft have pounded Hezbollah positions and infrastructure throughout Lebanon for days now, striking the Jiyeh power plant in southern Beirut on Sunday. Other targets hit included a Lebanese coastal radar positions and sixty different Hezbollah targets in the Dahiya quarter. The IAF also destroyed five long-range rocket launchers.
* The IAF Chief Maj.-Gen. Elyezer Shkedy, warned Hezbollah that more attacks were to come. In the five-days of fighting, Israel has carried out 1,000 air raids and 350 helicopter gunship sorties, striking targets as far north as Abdeh. The IDF reports that 25 percent of Hezbollah's capabilities have been hit.
* In a move that could signal a pending ground assault in southern Lebanon, an IDF reserve infantry division was called up on Sunday and armored Israel vehicles were reportedly moving north, but the Israeli government maintains at this time there are no plans for a broad ground-offensive into Lebanon. John at Op-For believes we are currently witnessing the classic battlefield preparation for a ground invasion.
* Hundreds of tourists began fleeing Lebanon on Friday, many headed for Syria. More than 100 Lebanese civilians are reported to have been killed in the recent fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, including 7 Canadians. The United States and European and Arab nations moved on Saturday to evacuate their nationals from Lebanon. An estimated 25,000 Americans live and work in the country.
* On Friday, initial reports indicated that Hezbollah flew a Mirsad-1 UAV into an Israeli warship, setting the vessel afire. Later reports indicated the vessel was instead struck by an Iranian-made C-802 missile (also see more info on the missiles from Gateway Pundit). Four Israeli sailors went missing in the attack, which Israel says was orchestrated by Iran.
* An estimated 220,000 Israelis are now staying in bomb shelters throughout northern Israel, where martial law has been imposed by the government and a state of emergency remains in effect in areas of northern Israel.
* Arab Ministers squabbled during an emergency summit in Cairo on Saturday, with some nations very critical of Hezbollah in the latest conflict with Israel. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal called Hezbollah's acts "unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible (also see more on the Saudi reaction from Crossroads Arabia). King Abdullah of Jordan is among many calling for U.N. intervention to end the fighting.
* Iran has announced that they are still counting on Russia and China to protect their nuclear ambitions in the Security Council, and warned the G8 against sending their case back before the council.
* Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has signalled that his government was planning a tough response to mounting violence by Kurdish rebels after 13 members of the security forces were killed in the southeast over the past week.
* An Aljazeera TV crew was arrested outside of Haifa after filming their report with an Israeli seaside oil refinery as backdrop.
America Domestic Security & the Americas
* With a federal marshal standing guard just feet away, alleged al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla is being allowed to sift through U.S. government secrets as he prepares his defence with his lawyers. Padilla, charged with conspiring to wage and support international terrorism, is being allowed under a federal judge's order to examine the documents and videotapes detailing his statements during 3 1/2 years in Defence Department custody as an unlawful "enemy combatant." That designation was dropped last fall when he was charged in a Miami terrorism case.
* A wall that suspects in a terrorist plot hoped to destroy to unleash a catastrophic flood in lower Manhattan was quietly put under 24-hour protection in recent weeks once details of the plot began to emerge, two law enforcement officials said. The suspects hoped to bring down the so-called slurry wall, which keeps the water from the Hudson River out of the World Trade Center site, the officials told the AP Thursday.
* A stalled FBI investigation of seven terror suspects was salvaged when two informants persuaded the alleged ringleader to trust them because they had al Qaeda connections.
* The Bush administration and Congress are struggling to resolve three election-year issues that color U.S. and international perceptions of the war on terror: detainee treatment, military tribunals and government eavesdropping. The biggest progress Thursday came with word that President Bush agreed, conditionally, to support legislation that would open a special court review of the administration's most controversial terrorist surveillance program.
* The former imam of a Cleveland mosque is being called a "man without a country," stuck in jail because U.S. authorities cannot find a place to deport him. Fawaz Damra, who was born on the West Bank, was convicted in 2004 of lying about ties to terrorist groups when he came to the United States about 20 years earlier. The evidence included a 1991 videotape in which Damra called Jews "pigs and monkeys" in Arabic and urged his listeners to contribute to Islamic Jihad.
* Mubin Shaikh, a well-known and sometimes controversial figure in Toronto's Muslim community, says he decided to become an undercover police agent and infiltrate an alleged terrorism cell to protect Canada, the country of his birth.
* A youth charged in what's been billed as this country's largest counterterrorism operation since 9-11 was back home with family Friday after becoming the first of 17 terror suspects to be granted bail. The boy, who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, was released under very strict conditions, said his lawyer Gary Grill.
* Colombian leftist rebels, after fierce combat with rightist militiamen who spurned their comrades' demobilization, have massacred 10 people and taken some 170 others, mostly woodcutters, hostage and are using them as "human shields," a provincial governor said Friday.
Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia
* Government special forces in Kyrgyzstan have carried out an operation in the city of Jalalabad, killing five armed members of the Islamic movement of Turkestan and Hizb ut-Tahrir. According to Major-General Busurmankul Tabaldiyev, the terrorist organizations in the country have been decapitated.
* C.J. Chivers writes about the transformation of Ramzan Kadyrov, warlord turned Chechen president, in the Saturday edition of the New York Times.
* According to Russian intelligence sources, Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev was betrayed by a mole who was paid by Russian security forces to plant a powerful mine in the convoy he was travelling in.
* A bombing in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali killed two civilians and wounded four others on Friday, in attacks that Georgia is blaming on the Russian secret services.
* On Friday the United States reached terms with Kyrgyzstan, for continued use of Manas airbase, primarily used by the U.S. military for ongoing operations in Afghanistan since late 2001. Approximately 1,700 U.S. troops and millions of gallons of fuel passes through Manas each month, primarily on the way to Afghanistan. In exchange for use of the base in the coming year, the United States is reported to be paying $ 150 million in assistance and compensation (also see U.S. Interests in Central Asia: Policy Priorities & Military Roles).
* Nikolai Patrushev, the Director of the Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB) and the head of the National Antiterrorist Committee, is calling on militants in the northern Caucasus to disarm and begin negotiations.
* Chechen rebels are ready to drop their independence bid in exchange for peace, a senior representative said, in response to an offer of amnesty from Russia. However the radical wing of the guerrilla movement showed no sign of agreeing.
* According to Igor Drizhchany, the Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), they are prepared for more active cooperation with NATO countries in the global fight against terror. To date bilateral relationships with with 29 members of NATO and their partners are established by the SBU. This cooperation includes non-proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction, illegal circulation of drugs, money-laundering and illegal migration.
Afghanistan & Southern Asia
* Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri warned against "knee-jerk" reactions saddling his country with blame for the bomb blasts which killed at least 200 people in Mumbai. In an interview with CNN broadcast on Wednesday, Kasuri said India should be careful about ant attempt to attribute the attacks to Pakistan-based militants.
* All the seven bombers involved in engineering blasts on Mumbai’s suburban trains on Tuesday were either trained in Bangladesh or had spent considerable time there after receiving training in ISI-controlled training camps in Pakistan. The Anti-Terrorist Squad is now quite certain that the seven bombers, and the others who helped them carry out the blasts, had a strong Bangladeshi connection.
* Indian authorities named two suspects Thursday in this week's train bombings, an apparent breakthrough in the frenetic investigations into the well-coordinated attacks that killed at least 200 people. The government's Anti-Terror Squad released photos of young, lightly bearded men identified as Sayyad Zabiuddin and Zulfeqar Fayyaz, said Sunil Mane, an anti-terror official.
* Indian authorities on Friday named a third suspect in this week's train bombings in Bombay, as the local media said the well-coordinated attacks that killed 200 people were planned by Pakistan's main intelligence agency.
* Police in Bombay detained and interrogated hundreds of people in the probe of the coordinated bomb blasts that devastated commuter trains in this city Tuesday, killing 183 people and wounding 770, officials said Thursday.
* Indian authorities detained 11 people, mostly Muslims, on Saturday as the hunt for the Mumbai bombers produced several leads, but police warned about drawing premature conclusions. Panic gripped the city anew on Saturday evening when trains were stopped for over an hour and commuters evacuated after a bomb threat at a northern Mumbai suburban station. The threat was declared a hoax after a search, police said.
* India’s political leaders risked antagonising Pakistan last night. D. K. Shankaran, a senior figure in the Maharashtra state government, blamed Pakistan for allowing Kashmiri militants to orchestrate the plot. “There was substantial involvement of Lashkar-e-Taiba with local support,” he said, pointing the finger at the banned Students Islamic Movement of India for providing the manpower to carry the explosives on to seven trains. The Indian Cabinet was briefed by the national security adviser yesterday about possible cross-border links.
* Pakistan could jeopardise peace in South Asia by clinging to a "jihadi option" despite a high-profile crackdown on Islamic militants by President Pervez Musharraf, analysts say. Military ruler Musharraf, a major US ally in the "war on terror", has also failed to tackle the so-called holy warriors because he needs Pakistan's hardline Muslim parties on-side, they say. The result is worsening ties with India -- which says Tuesday's Mumbai bombings were carried out with "cross-border" help -- while Afghanistan is urging him to purge Taliban rebels allegedly based on Pakistani soil.
* As Indian investigators sift through the wreckage of Tuesday's deadly railway blasts in Mumbai, which killed at least 200 and wounded 700, suspicions are beginning to point to Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, or the Army of the Righteous, a Pakistani-based militant outfit with a long history of terrorist attacks inside India. It is too early to say whether the group was directly responsible for masterminding the violence. A Lashkar-e-Tayyaba spokesperson, Abdullah Ghaznavi, denied that the group was involved in the attack.
* The Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) is a banned Islamic fundamentalist organization, which advocates the ‘liberation of India’ by converting it to an Islamic land. SIMI has declared Jehad against India, the aim of which is to establish Dar-ul-Islam (land of Islam) by either forcefully converting everyone to Islam or by violence.
* Here are some links to background reading on some of the groups suspected of involvement in the Bombay train attacks.
* Police in Nepal are probing possible links between two Pakistani men arrested here on explosives charges and the serial train blasts in Mumbai that killed 179 people, an official said. The men were arrested at a downtown hotel Wednesday in connection with the 2001 discovery in a Kathmandu flat of 16 kilograms (33 pounds) of powerful RDX explosive.
* Kashmir authorities were tightlipped about a report that Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda may have set up a wing in the revolt-hit region, except to say they were probing the claims. A Kashmiri news agency took a call on Thursday from a man who said a group called "Al-Qaeda Jammu and Kashmir" had been launched that day in Indian Kashmir where an Islamic separatist insurgency against New Delhi's rule has raged since 1989.
* Police in Jammu and Kashmir have traced the PCO booth from where a man claming to be Al Qaeda spokesperson Abu-al-Hadeed had phoned a local news agency in Srinagar to declare that the organisation had set up its unit in the state. Preliminary investigations indicate that the man was a Kashmiri.
* A suspected suicide bomber blew himself up outside a key Shiite leader's house in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi Friday, injuring the cleric and killing a male relative, police said. The religious leader targeted in the attack, Hassan Turabi, escaped a similar assassination attempt in April.
* Here are the daily updates from the South Asia Terrorism Portal for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
* Here is the CDI's Afghan update for the month of June. It is a roundup of events in Afghanistan throughout the month.
* It will take three more years for the U.S.-trained Afghan army, intended to assume security responsibilities now shouldered by foreign forces in Afghanistan, to reach the planned goal of 70,000 soldiers, a U.S. commander said on Thursday.
* A suicide bomb blast wounded a policeman in southern Afghanistan Friday while nine Taliban were killed in a clash with Afghan and coalition troops, officials said.
* A suicide bomber drove a taxi into a convoy of US-led troops in Afghanistan, killing himself and a child, officials say. Officials say that the attack happened in the Yaqubay district of Khost province, and that two US soldiers and three other children were injured.
* At least 19 suspected Taleban militants have been killed in clashes in southern Afghanistan, officials say. A Helmand province government spokesman said Taleban fighters attacked the village of Nawzad, targeting a garrison of Afghan and coalition troops.
* At least 37 Taliban rebels were killed in fighting with Afghan and US-led coalition troops in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, an official has said. "Twenty seven Taliban were killed during a joint Afghan and coalition operation in Sangin district of Helmand province," said Mohammad Nabi Mullahkhil, the police chief in Helmand, Sunday. Another eight were killed in a separate clash with troops in the same region, said Mullahkhil. Two more Taliban fighters were killed when they attacked an Afghan security patrol in neighbouring Uruzgan province, provincial official Mohammad Zahir said. Mullahkhil said 22 rebels were also captured in the three clashes.
* Hundreds of youths set fire to a Pizza Hut restaurant, two gas stations and a dozen vehicles in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, after Saturday's funeral for an Islamic Shiite cleric killed in a suicide attack. Rioters rampaged through a busy commercial area a day after a suicide bomber killed cleric Allama Hassan Turabi, his cousin and a police guard.
* Some 600 rebel tribesmen have surrendered to the authorities in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan, a government spokesman said on Sunday. The fighters, led by three commanders, agreed to lay down their weapons at a parley with Baluchistan's Home Minister Shoaib Nausherwani in Dera Bugti district on Saturday. Khan Mohammad Masoori, one of the commanders, pledged to halt attacks on government installations as his men handed over AK-47 rifles, machineguns, rocket launchers and mortars in Baker town, 400 km northeast of Quetta, officials said. Baluch government officials hoped the fighters' decision to stop fighting would sound the death knell for a revolt led by tribal chieftain Nawab Akbar Bugti.
* At least 12 Sri Lankan soldiers and four Tamil Tiger rebels were killed in a firefight in the island's restive east on Friday, truce monitors said, in one of the worst military clashes since a 2002 ceasefire. The Tigers insisted they had shot dead 22 people in the firefight, and said the balance likely belonged to a breakaway faction of former comrades led by renegade commander Karuna, whom they accuse the military of helping to mount attacks.
Far East & Southeast Asia
* The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution against North Korea, imposing military related sanctions against Pyongyang. The move was welcomed in Japan, which described it as a "resolute message", but was expectedly rejected in North Korea.
* The Philippine military is not overlooking the threat from Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists, despite their shrinking presence in the country. According to Armed Forces assistant deputy chief for intelligence Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Legaspi, there are about 30 JI operatives in the country and they are all capable of launching attacks in the metropolis.
* Islamic extremists have been using Australian internet sites in order to recruit and rally support for international terrorism. The statement attacked moderate Muslims for condemning "the activities of Muslims abroad".
* Filipino President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has signed an executive order officially sealing the partnership between the military and the police in the all-out war against the communist insurgency.
* More than 5,000 Indonesian Muslims rallied peacefully to denounce Israel's military strikes on Gaza and Lebanon and to raise funds for the beleaguered Palestinians.
Europe
* As part of Tony Blair's 12-point plan to fight terrorism, British authorities are set to unveil a list of radical Islamic groups it wants to ban under the 2006 Terrorism Act. The list is expected to include Hizb ut-Tahrir and The Strangers (aka al-Ghurabaa').
* According to Indian intelligence officials, some of the primary financiers of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which remains the main suspect for orchestrating the latest bombings in India, are from Britain.
* Seven former Bosnian Serb officers have gone on trial at The Hague war crimes tribunal for alleged involvement in the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica. The men are pleading not guilty to a range of charges including murder, persecution and genocide.
* The European newspapers have almost unanimously condemned Israel's response against Hezbollah as out of proportion, with some calling it an "act of war" and others saying it was a violation of international law.
* Unconfirmed reports from Britain and US say that there was an attempt on the life of Baloch leader Senator Sanaullah Baloch in London recently, when "people of Pakistani origin threw a home made bomb" at the official.
Africa
* Bandits shot dead an aid worker in northern Darfur, a relief agency said, highlighting the difficulty of conducting the world's largest aid operation in the midst of one of its worst humanitarian crises. In a statement late on Wednesday, Relief International said armed robbers stopped Sudanese agricultural officer Hassan Ahmad Idris' vehicle, then shot him. He died instantly. Idris' driver survived the attack.
* Somalia's weak, UN-backed government has refused to travel to Sudan for Saturday's peace talks with Islamists who control the capital, Mogadishu. The president accused the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) of breaking a truce agreed at the last Sudan talks.
* Somalia’s interim government and the Islamists who now control Mogadishu can never share power because they have conflicting ideologies, a recently defeated top warlord said on Saturday. Fired National Security Minister Mohamed Qanyare Afrah — until last month one of Mogadishu’s biggest warlords — said Somalia’s future looks very bleak as a result. "The government wants to govern by the charter while the Islamic Sharia courts want to rule by the Koran. There is no way they will ever agree," Qanyare told Reuters in an exclusive telephone interview.
* Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, the executive leader of the Islamists in Mogadishu has condemned the U.N. Security Council for considering lifting the ban on weapons in Somalia (H/T: ThreatsWatch).
The Global War
* Despite progress on security, tons of nuclear material are "dangerously vulnerable" to theft by terrorists across the globe, a private group contends. As leaders of the Group of Eight industrial powers, including President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, meet this weekend, NIT reports note that only a fraction of the $20 billion those leaders pledged four years ago to secure nuclear materials has been spent.
* The videotaped rants of a 27-year-old American terrorist named Adam Gadahn that offer the most intriguing clues about the mechanics of al-Qaida’s propaganda machine and the sort of individual the shadowy terror organization is seeking to recruit.
* India will press leaders of the powerful Group of Eight nations meeting in St. Petersburg for greater cooperation in fighting terrorism in South Asia, India's foreign ministry said on Saturday. "The message which should come out from the G8 is that the world accepts that there cannot be a segmented response to terrorism," Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran said Saturday.
* Vladimir Putin and George Bush announced the global initiative to combat nuclear terrorism after their Saturday meeting, in a move that drew immediate support from Japan. Through the initiative, "Russia and the U.S. pledge to take joint measures to counter the threat of nuclear terrorism, including the acquisition, transport, or use of nuclear and radioactive materials by terrorists."
* Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media explains how the al-Jazeera media network stokes the fires of extremism and terrorism in the Middle East.
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1 Comments:
At Mon Jul 17, 08:25:00 AM, Leo Pusateri said…
"* Mubin Shaikh, a well-known and sometimes controversial figure in Toronto's Muslim community, says he decided to become an undercover police agent and infiltrate an alleged terrorism cell to protect Canada, the country of his birth."
Perhaps not anymore...
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