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 & Thursday.
Today's Winds of War briefing is brought to you by Bill Roggio of the fourth rail and evariste of Discarded Lies.
Top Topics
- Further endearing his cause to the masses, Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri issued a new tape, this time denouncing demonstration, people power and colored revolutions, insisting that peaceful change was impossible and armed struggle (the terrorist kind) was essential. Does he sound scared? One of his Pakistani hideouts may have been discovered.
- Mexican special forces replaced a border town's entire police force (pop. 500,000), detaining hundreds of them on suspicion of being in cahoots with druglords. Operation Safe Mexico targets 14 cities that are overwhelmed by druglord paramilitary violence. American law enforcement, having shared information in the past that led to no action, is skeptical but keeping an open mind. Nuevo Laredo is across the border from Laredo, TX and is the site of a recent police chief slaying by a drug gang (reported in this space two weeks ago).
- Michael Chertoff plans to propose some big changes for the Department of Homeland Security, but they're on hold for now while he trims the bureaucracy and tries to mold it into a more effective domestic counterterror force. The intelligence arm of the Department faces a major overhaul, the details of which are to be announced by the end of June.
- In a further blow to CIA's independence (which isn't a bad thing), its station chiefs around the world will now report both to NDI John Negroponte and their boss Porter Goss. Also, the House intelligence committee chairman says he's dropping legislation to subject Pentagon intelligence operations, including tactical intelligence for the military, to CIA "coordination". A bad idea, and it's good that it was dropped. The CIA and FBI took steps to end their turf war as well.
- Rumors that Israel was being systematically left out in the cold were finally officially confirmed by the Pentagon. Just when Caroline Glick declared that the US was abandoning its alliance with Israel over arms sales to China, Silvan Shalom, Israel's foreign minister, has formally apologized to the United States over the Harpy drones and Israeli insensitivity to US security concerns, simultaneously with a visit by Condi Rice in which she is said to be taking it easy on a politically shaky Sharon. Rice is seeking to ease Israeli fears over the Gaza pullout, but Israel is taking few chances, commencing construction of an underwater barrier to seal off Gaza. Meanwhile, two Israeli journalists, tapping into rising anti-disengagement sentiment in Israel, say that people close to Sharon think disengagement is more about protecting Sharon from an anti-corruption probe. Colt has more.
Other Topics Today Include:
Iran nuclear doings; Hamas rejects call to disarm; more foreigners in Iraq insurgency; Operations Spear, Dagger underway; Gangbusters bill; OTMs increase to 100,000; Patriot Act hobbled; Ugandan border security; Sudanese peace deal; Ethiopia crackdown denounced; Sudan intel chief visit controversial; Al Qaeda wants to make Afghanistan another Iraq; Aus Fed Police do counterterror in Phillippines; Mullah Krekar in Norway to be deported; 3 imams deported in Holland; German snit over Rummy snub; G8 security leaks, high-level doings and agreements; renditions program running into trouble overseas; UK to deploy 5000 more to Afghanistan and much more...
IRAN REPORTS
- Condi Rice slammed Iran's elections as a farce. The first results of the election say that a hardliner mayor and a former President will vie in a runoff election.
- Porter Goss says he has an excellent idea where Osama bin Laden is, and that his "sanctuary" is in a "sovereign country". That sure sounds like Iran to moi, especially given reports earlier this month that Iran was harboring baddies.
THE MIDDLE EAST
- Oh, Chad! The Saudis have arrested five Chadean Al Qaeda members who killed a French engineer last year.
- Rumors of the revival of the Kirkuk-Haifa pipeline are being revived. The source publication is unreliable.
- Operation Spear continues; the third heavy offensive has begun against terrorists in Western Iraq, with US warplanes dropping 500-lb bombs on their positions. About 1000 marines are involved in the operation. Operation Dagger in southern Iraq has also started.
AMERICAN DOMESTIC SECURITY & THE AMERICAS
- The number of illegal immigrants who are "Other than Mexican" (OTMs) has risen explosively to 100,000 in the past eight months (compared with 60,000 total last year.) The rapid spread of the information that OTMs are usually released on their own recognizance with a court date, rather than being detained, is probably the reason why. Brazilians, Central Americans and Middle Easterners are making their way to Mexico and then paying smugglers to take them across the border. They then seek out Border Patrol agents to surrender to, knowing that the agents will simply drop them off at the bus station.
- America is running out of patience with Canada's lax border security system. A US Congressman threatened in April to demote Canada to "junior partner" status if it does not make the necessary investments.
- The House voted down the renewal of provisions of the Patriot Act that allow the government to obtain terror suspects' library and bookstore records, defying a threat of veto by the President.
AFRICA
- Another peace deal has been signed in the Sudan, this one between the government and the largest opposition party. It follows a peace deal between North and South struck in January. There is still no deal for the genocide in Sudan's west (Darfur).
- Uganda, taking advantage of funding by the US Terrorist Interdiction Program (T.I.P.), has started using a new high-tech immigration and cross-border movement tracking system to counter terrorism.
ASIA & AUSTRALIA
- Australia's Federal Police have been operating an undercover base in the Phillippines to combat Islamist terror for a year now and have stopped several major terrorist attacks, one on a Madrid scale. They're also involved in tracking leaders of two major terror groups in Mindanao.
EUROPE
- The French want in on Britain's project to have BAE Systems, overseen by Kellogg, Brown and Root, build two massive new conventionally-powered aircraft carriers. They want the project to produce three carriers instead, in order for France to replace the troubled Charles de Gaulle.
- Germany's paramilitary Border Guard service has been renamed "Federal Police", alarming critics of mixing military and law enforcement duties.
- During Russia's G8 presidency, it plans to focus on the fights against drug trafficking and international terrorism as its priorities.
- G8 interior ministers concluded agreements for a "major program" of infrastructure protection and dealing with internet financing of terrorism. They also committed to conduct new research to track down the sources of recruitment of the newest generation of terrorists.
THE GLOBAL WAR
- Afghanistan's defense minister says Al Qaeda is regrouping and preparing to bring Iraq-style fighting to Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is believed to have recently slipped a half-dozen Arabs into the country, two of whom exploded. The UK is preparing to deploy 5000 more troops to Afghanistan, up from its current commitment of 900.
- A fugitive Pakistani arms dealer was deported by Mexico and promptly arrested in the US for illegally exporting jet engine parts to Iran, destined for its air force.
- Say hello to the Pacbot. It's a battlefield robot equipped with a pump-action shotgun, NBC sensors, and tracks.
- Blogger "coolbert" says the US lacks a sufficient AAA weapons capacity, saying that air superiority and Stingers aren't sufficient for every adversary our troops might face. Scroll down to it or ctrl-f "AAA"; his Blogspot permalinks are busted.
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Rumors of the revival of the Kirkuk-Haifa pipeline are being revived. The source publication is unreliable.
Uhm, this won't happen until a muslim is president of Israel, and even then it is unlikely
a-what if there's a Palestinian state and they want it too? I could see it happening. The US has a strategic need to bypass the Straits of Hormuz, as Iran has built up quite the capability to block shipping there in case it wants to punish the US.
I find it very amusing to read about the insurgents in Iraq, referred to as being "foreign". It shows the meaninglessness of the Western concepts of nation-state, citizenship, homeland and in general, what constitutes as "foreign" in the Near Eastern context.
Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq as separate nation-states did not exist 80 years ago. In fact, there has never been a time in history in which there were states with the names&boundaries in the Middle East as they exist now. There is no Iraqi nation to speak of. Even the nationalist discourse is about the "Arab people" (sha'b al-Arabi).
The current regimes in the Arab and Muslim world are all based on pure fiction and this is why democracy and freedom cannot come to the region.
Not every Arab is a pan-Arabist , Ali Abdullah. Iraqis consider themselves Iraqi and are quite fed up with the pan-Arabist Islamists who are slaughtering their sons and daughters. They have their own Arabic dialect, dishes, wedding customs, songs, shared history. I don't think the “Western concept” of the nation-state is as irrelevant as you do. It's quite relevant to Iraqis; they lead US & Iraqi troops to foreign insurgents because the foreigners are different enough to be noticed.
Your superior and dismissive attitude is typical of pan-Arab imperialists. The Arab dream is a pipe dream; as long as Arabism means the subjugation of other cultures, it will never flourish in an Arab world where people hold on to their separate and cherished identities. Kurds will never be considered "real Arabs" by Sunni Arab supremacists. Nor will Shi'ite Iraqis. The only thing that all Iraqis have in common is their Iraqi-ness.
Leaving aside the Ecce Libano piece, let me tell you something from my personal experience. Jordanians hate Palestinians. I know this as a Palestinian that's lived in Jordan. If Arabs who are that close geographically can be that far apart psychically, how can you pretend that there is such a thing as a common Arab identity? Only an ideologue infatuated with the stultifying dead dream of pan-Arabism would pretend there was any identity to be salvaged. A common language is not a common culture, no matter how hard you wish it to be. Egyptians have little in common with Lebanese, though both are cultural lodestones of the Arab experience; Jordanians detest Palestinians; Moroccans and Algerians are unintelligible to Iraqis.
You go ahead and be amused, though. The Arab nations, like Lebanon and Iraq, that are winning their self-determination under the shade of the Bush doctrine will leave your ideology in the dust, along with Communism, white supremacism, and other barren wastelands.
When Iraqis voted in their first free and fair elections, defying pan-Arabist terrorism and proudly waving their purple-stained thumbs, they weren't thinking what a great time it was to be an Arab. They were puffed full of Iraqi pride.
What, another one?
Oh, and ev, nicely done :-)
Re: Mexican Border towns.
The Untouchables did not put the Chicago gangs out of business. Ending prohibition did.
So far re: prohibition we have remembered nothing and forgotten nothing.
i.e. Same stupidity new century.
Simon ... Yup
For the wholesale destruction of our liberty and expanding the authority of the fed way beyond what the constitution allows. effectivly the near overthrow of our form of govt, its been quite effective tho.
"Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq as separate nation-states did not exist 80 years ago"
Neither did South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, India, and certainly Israel, just to name a few. They seem to have caught on to the democracy and freedom thing so far.
Colt-
Most people's memory isn't as long as yours, I think that's what they're counting on ;-)
Thanks :-)
M. Simon-
The current prohibition is foolish. But the Mexican gangs shouldn't be allowed to become a law unto themselves, right on the border with the US. We have drug gangs here, but they don't have organized paramilitaries that lord it over towns with half a million citizens. Compared to that, American gangsters are pussycats. It's not because our gangs are more self-restrained, it's because Mexico's government hasn't done enough to enforce its exclusive legal monopoly on the use of force. I'm glad to see them taking steps to reassert the central government's authority when local law enforcement breaks down to such a degree that the corrupt city cops have shootouts with the federales (see Malkin's Immigration Blog for that story, it's still on the front page but I missed it while compiling the briefing).
#10 Mark-Apparently Ali is an admirer of Sayyid Qutb (the bug-eyed Islamist intellectual famous for being so horrified by a church dance in Greeley, CO that he returned to Egypt and railed against the West and modernity till the end of his days) so I doubt any of this will get through his head.
This prudish villager who was terrified of 50's America, who Islamists like Ali consider a giant of thought, is about as relevant to most Arab youth raised on satellite dishes and licentious Egyptian and Lebanese music videos as the Amish are to Western teenagers.
If any other sign of the CIA being put into the cold is needed it is this: Negroponte's office will be in a DIA building on an Air Force base in D.C.
Israel removed four checkpoints in the Ramallah region last week, allowing free movement between Ramallah and Jericho. I wonder if Ramallah is next to be turned over to PA control.
ev, I just re-read the JPost article about the Sinai fighting:
Which is what I was remembering - he died in the Taba attacks.
Haifa is in Israel IIRC. Wouldn't they want an Palestinian Harbour. Besides going through Syria is much faster.
ps. Is the Iraq Iran pipeline already in business?
#16 a
Where would you prefer to invest huge amounts of money - Israel or the PLO?
Not that it matters. That al-Jazeera article is quoting a Ha'aretz piece from 2003.
Make that 101 year and Sweden was
still one with Norway. Remember that most of the EU Countries didn't exist/were not independent a 100 year ago.
If i were an Arab? Israel has the habit of stealing from Arabs.
{Walking away before things get bloody}
Hmm ... Ali how long did the Pan-Arab UAR last? Wasn't that a frickin disaster?
Pan-Arabism is objectively a dead end, as much as Stalinism, Fascism, and Nazism. A failure internationally and domestically.
A ... that's a pretty anti-semitic statement. The real problem with Israel is that it shows up the complete and total failure of the Islamic world with a Western, European, modern society right next to the complete failures of Syria, Jordan, PLA, Egypt, and Hezbollah-land of Lebanon. Everywhere you see Islamic societies you see oppression of women, repression of knowledge, laws handed down from GOD that are unchangeable (as opposed to laws made and interpreted by men); education based on rote memorization of holy books instead of scientific knowledge, tribalism, banditry, poverty, rule of strong men instead of the rule of law, lack of free enterprise and wealth creation, and just about every societal malady you can think of.
Leftists hate Jews and Israel because they show up the complete and total failure of non-Western societies and objectively prove that the fundamental principles of Western/Modern societies (including China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, and India) provide better lives for their people than Orientalist autocracy and rote traditionalism. Note for example the progress made in the Republic of Ireland when they threw off the traditionalist yoke of the Catholic Church and entered the modern age.
It is of course so sad to see the Left so in love with tradition, autocracy, freedom-stifling tyranny. It is however the inevitable result of hate for Western principles (that have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with secular humanism as shown in Ireland).
If Leftists really cared about Arabs they would urge them to follow the Lebanese, Iraqi, Turkish, and Malaysian models of secularism and progress versus tradition stifling autocracy.
So not true Colt. Is this just something Arabs very strong believe? Doesn't really matter if it true because they will act after it.
Anti-semitic? Can you explain to me that why this critisisme is anti-jewish. It is quiet obvious a critic on Israel and sadly true but i don't see why this makes it anti jewish.
My country made its greatest economic progress when it was still firmly under the yoke of the Churches, can say the same about Great Britain or if you wait twenty years Turkey. I wish it was true that secular humanism is the way to get the most economic development but it is simply not true. The reason why Ireland and Spain developed after loosing the yoke was because they were fed fortyfied breastmilk out of Brussels tite and you only get that milk when you follow secular humanism.
Iraqi model? Saddam was one of the better dictarors this world has seen (most dictators steal even more) but to much blood in my humble opinion.
Turkish model is Fascisme (not in the four letter word but the real kind) and wasn't particular succesfull. They have changed to a more religious model and that seems to work much better.
Lebanese model is a weird kind of apartheid were one group gets a lot of help from an outside agitator so the only way to have a fair way of re-dividing power is civil war.
Malaysia is Malaysia. Has very peculiar circumstances and as such not really applicable (only Israel/Palestina under jewish arab/palastinian rule could come a little bit close). It is also not exactly a secular haven
Egypt did follow "Western principles" for a very long time before the WWII but they had to deal with a party(Britain) that didn't want to see that happening.
I don't see myself as leftists. Leftists believe that goverment can change society and i don''t believe that goverment can do more than have a very minor influence. For example leftist would believe that you can invade an oil producing country and change its outview to conside wih that of the oil consuming West.
The Middle East is at a point were Eastern Europe was around 89 when it was clear that their colonist could no longer afford it to be there. It will be much more ruled by what the people want but to say that this future looks good to me is a lie.
"a", your understanding of modern history is frankly bizarre.
I'll say.
I'm still struggling to understand why 98%+ of that post is relevant.
Oops - missed Jim Rockford's post.
Not that 'a' is above babbling.
a-
Of course it's not. Free markets and a light governmental touch are the key. Secular humanism is merely the French state cult, and look how relatively poorly they're doing.
Yes, low taxes, trained workforces and globalization had nothing to do with it, it was all those Bruxelles sprouts. Spain experienced its highest growth rates under Aznar's government, because he privatized SOEs and loosened labor market regulations. The EU gives Spain $10 bn a year. Nice bonus, but it's only 1% of GDP, not exactly enough to account for Spain's outsize growth and jobs creation story.
No he wasn't, he was one of the very worst in modern world history and if unchecked by the United States would have grown into a pan-Arab dictator and regional heavyweight. He was terrible for Iraqis' economic well-being and their personal well-being. If you want excusable, fairly benevolent dictators, try Pinochet or Lee Kuan Yew, or in the Arab world, King Hussein or Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan.
Ah, I see you've heard of “neocons”.
Why? Because Arabs, alone among the people of the world, are too stupid to rule themselves competently and must be led by dictators?
Secular humanism is merely the French state cult
You have a point and maybe secular humanism is the way to prosperity
Spain and Ireland could have a low tax regime and spend on education and infrastructure because they got the cash for it from Brussels.
he was one of the very worst in modern world history
I really wish that this was true but Saddam had nothing on absolute clusterf like those who ruled most of Africa & South America.
King Hussein? Jordan is f up.
Why?
Because it will be ruled by unliberal politicians who will not be good for Europe. They will be good for the economic wellbeing of the Middle East but that is not something for which i care a great deal.