Monday's Winds of War: 21 August 2006

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 C.S. Scott and Jeff Kouba of Security Watchtower.

Top Topics

• Afghan and NATO troops used rockets, planes and artillery in rolling battles with Taliban insurgents this weekend in Afghanistan's volatile south, leaving 71 militants and five Afghan soldiers dead in one of the bloodiest clashes since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. The fierce fighting began late Saturday and continued into Sunday after the Taliban attacked a police convoy in Kandahar province's Panjwayi district, said Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi, the district government chief.

• Pakistan has detained the father of British airline bomb plot suspect Rashid Rauf, making him the third member of the family in custody, officials said Friday. Senior security officials said Abdul Rauf, 52, met his son shortly before the arrest in early August of 25-year-old Rashid, who is described by Pakistan as a ‘key man’ in the conspiracy with links to Al-Qaeda. Also, C.S. Scott of Security Watchtower has commentary on Pakistan's arrest of Matiur Rehman, a wanted Pakistani militant.

• Iran has announced that they will not suspend uranium enrichment, the key point of contention between the United Nations security council and the regime in Teheran, as a deadline for their reply quickly approaches.

Other topics today include: IDF raid in Bekaa; Olmert and the West Bank; Saudi fighter deal; IDF grabs Hamas leader; Iranian war games; Turkish pipeline blown; Mubarak warns against strike on Iran; Clashes between IDF and Hamas; Naval blockade of Lebanon; Egyptians arrested in Iraq; Hamas terrorists blownup; US wants better bomb-detection technology; Court rules on NSA; Chavez claims to capture 4 US spies; Russian war games; Chechen amnesty program; Russian police killed; Tensions in Abkhazia; Fighting in southern Afghanistan; Teachers targeted in Afghanistan; Pakistan's jihadists; Reported bin Laden sighting; Shootout in Kashmir; Indian troops deployed to Taj Mahal; Fighting in Sri Lanka; Counterterrorism in southern Philippines; Indonesian terrorist released; Australian counterterror efforts; North Korea nuclear test; Germany dodges terror attack; French soldiers in Lebanon; More on London airline plot arrests; Peacekeeping in east Africa; and more.

Iran & the Middle East

• Israeli special forces carried out a raid in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon on Saturday, aimed at preventing the rearmament of Hezbollah by Syria and Iran. Lebanon Defense Minister Elias Murr condemned the assault and threatened to halt the deployment of the Lebanese army, suggesting that Israel could be trying to draw them into a new round of fighting.

• According to an Israeli minister, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has suspended his plans for a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank.

• Saudi Arabia has confirmed they will purchase 72 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft from the UK, in a deal that could be worth more than £6bn.

• Israel seized Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister Naser al-Shaer, a top Hamas official, at his home in the occupied West Bank on Saturday.

• In Saudi Arabia, five suspected militants were arrested in an operation involving hundreds of police officers and special forces who had gathered around a three-story villa in the Al-Ajwad area of Jeddah on Saturday.

• On Saturday Iran launched a series of large-scale military exercises aimed at introducing the country's new defensive doctrine, state-run television reported. The television report said the military exercise would occur in 14 of the country's 30 provinces and could last as long as five weeks. The first stage of the maneuvers began with air strikes in the southeastern province of Sistan va Baluchistan.

• A pipeline in north eastern Turkey used for importing gas from Iran was in flames late on Saturday following a suspected sabotage attack.

• Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned against any military strike on Iran in an interview published on Saturday.

• An Iraqi Kurdish official accused Iranian forces of firing a prolonged barrage of mortar shells at a camp of Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq, killing two civilians and wounding three others.

• Israeli authorities have arrested an Islamic Jihad terrorist from the Jenin area on charges of stabbing to death an Italian tourist in the Old City of Jerusalem last week. Police said the terrorist, Ashraf Heneishah confessed to the killing.

• One IDF soldier was shot dead in an attack by Palestinian terrorists on Saturday at the Bekaot checkpoint in the Jordan valley.

• The Israeli Navy may continue a blockade of Lebanese ports for months, in attempts to prevent Hezbollah rearmament. They are currently under orders to maintain the blockade until Lebanon completes the deployment of army units to the south.

• Five Egyptian terror suspects were arrested in Baghdad on Friday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki 's Office said in a statement. The five Egyptians along with an Iraqi were detained by national police commandos in a raid, the statement said, without elaborating.

• Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post provided evidence of the coming wars she fears soon will come to the Middle East and warns that Israel is not yet prepared for it. Amir Taheri also argues that Lebanon was just a prelude to a bigger, longer, costlier, and deadlier struggle.

• Three Hamas terrorists were killed north of Jenin on Friday morning when the bomb belt they were preparing exploded prematurely. The three were working on the explosive device in order to carry out an attack on Israel.

• The Washington Post reported that two Shi'ite Muslim parties accused Iran of instigating violence in Iraq and attempting to destabilize the country, exposing a growing rift within Iraq's largest sect.

America Domestic Security & the Americas

• The US authorities are reluctant to release Saifullah Paracha, allegedly one of the financiers of the al-Qaeda terrorist network currently languishing in the US-controlled Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, according to the director of Pakistan's National Crisis Management Cell (NCMC) Col Imran, who recently visited the detention cell.

• Homeland Security officials and Republican lawmakers have begun downplaying the need for more bomb-detection technology, calling instead for expanded government monitoring and airline passenger profiling -- including, as House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King, R-N.Y., now suggests, pulling those of Middle Eastern descent out of airport lines for additional questioning.

• At NRO, Bryan Cunningham and Andy McCarthy have articles arguing that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's decision that the Bush administration’s NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program was unconstitutional was wrongly decided.

• A massacre last month near Venezuela's lawless border with Colombia has deepened public mistrust of the Venezuelan military, soon after it deployed thousands of additional troops along the border to keep out Colombia's leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitary fighters and drug traffickers. Some residents say the Venezuelan soldiers can be abusive and ineffective at times, conducting random interrogations for hours, stripping people of documents, even robbing homes and firing at people for minor infractions.

• President Hugo Chavez said Venezuela has caught four people spying for the American government, but a U.S. embassy spokesman said Saturday that he had "no idea what the president is talking about." Without offering specifics, Chavez said that one woman was caught not long ago while taking photos in the north-central city of Valencia.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• Russia's military will practice repelling a foreign invasion during military exercises this month in the country's far east.

• Chechen warlord Doku Umarov's older brother surrendered to authorities Friday, the North Caucasus republic's government said, correcting an earlier report that Doku Umarov himself had surrendered.

• Two police were killed and their homes burnt in an attack Sunday in the Republic of Ingushetia in Russia's North Caucasus.

• Two former members of illegal armed groups surrendered in the last 24 hours in Chechnya, local Interior Ministry said Saturday. The ministry's spokesman Magomet Deniyev said a total of 124 militants had surrendered to the authorities since the Kremlin declared an amnesty until August 1 and later extended it until September 30.

• About 200 police and interior troops have been killed in the past four years in the Republic of Dagestan in Russia's North Caucasus, the Russian interior minister said Sunday.

• Georgia is ready to start international monitoring of the Kodori Gorge in breakaway Abkhazia on August 20, but Russian peacekeepers will not be allowed to join the process, a minister said Friday. Russian troops remain in Abkhazia as part of a peacekeeping mission from the former Soviet republics, but Georgia has accused them of supporting Abkhazia's separatists.

Afghanistan & Southern Asia

• Coalition troops clashed with insurgents in two battles Saturday in fighting that left four U.S. and two Afghan soldiers dead and six other Americans wounded, officials said.

• Gunmen have kidnapped at least 15 people, including a doctor and nurses, in southern Afghanistan, officials say. They were travelling to Zadi refugee camp in Kandahar province, a government spokesman said. It was not immediately clear who was responsible. Elsewhere, a US soldier died in a mine blast in southern Paktika province A man claiming to be a Taleban spokesman said it was a suicide attack. US-led forces also say they killed eight insurgents in Kunar province.

• A British soldier has been killed and three injured in fighting in
  Afghanistan, a spokesman for Britain's defence ministry said. "It is with deep regret that the MoD can confirm the death of a British soldier during a contact in northern Helmand province at around noon Sunday local time," the spokesman told AFP.

• At least 41 teachers and students have been killed over the past 12 months in a wave of attacks on Afghanistan's schools. Education Minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar says attacks have closed more than 208 schools -- including 144 burned down -- in the past year as militants changed tactics to hit soft targets. By some estimates, attacks have increased six-fold over 2005

• Here are the daily updates from the South Asia Terrorism Portal for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

• A post by Evan Kohlman at the Counterterrorism Blog points to a report on the Jihadists of Pakistan.

• Has Osama bin Laden been sighted? A report with the Government of India says Al-Qaeda's top leadership was recently spotted near Darkot, a Pakistani village near the border with Afghanistan's Wakhan corridor. Sources say the report was made less than a fortnight ago.

• Punjab police on Sunday arrested four Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists from Pathankot town of Gurdaspur district and seized arms and ammunition from them. On a tip off, police raided the hideout of the terrorists in Madhopur village in Pathankot town and arrested them, Gurdaspur police chief Paramraj Singh told PTI over phone.

• Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi said on Saturday that since the Al-Qaeda was trying to set up its base in the country, it was high time that India should make serious efforts at the international level so that Pakistan might be declared a terrorist state.

• A powerful separatist group in India's troubled northeast announced on Friday it would suspend hostilities against government forces to help facilitate peace talks with New Delhi. A spokesman of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) said it has asked all its armed units not to target security forces for the time being in response to New Delhi's decision on Sunday to suspend all counter-insurgency operations.

• At least two terrorists, both said to be foreigners, were killed Thursday in a gun battle with soldiers in Jammu and Kashmir's Udhampur district.

• Two unidentified terrorists were killed in an encounter with security forces at their hideout in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir. Officials on Sunday said the gun battle broke out on Saturday night at Ranipora in Shopian area, 60 kms from Srinagar, when the terrorists opened fire at a search team of security forces.

• Heavily-armed troops have been deployed at the famous Taj Mahal in northern Indian after police received a letter threatening to blow up the 17th century monument to love. The sender identified himself as Mohammed Mirza and claimed to be associated with Al-Qaeda.

• Sri Lankan jets hit the Tamil Tiger front line on Friday as fighting raged on the northern Jaffna peninsula, cut off by the rebels, and residents with foreign passports begged their embassies to get them out. Almost three weeks of ground fighting, the first since a 2002 ceasefire, has left the government-held Jaffna enclave largely cut off and areas near the port of Trincomalee under intermittent artillery fire.

• Sri Lanka's army says it has bombed a sea base from where Tamil Tiger rebels launched attacks on government positions in the Jaffna peninsula. A rebel website said the facility was a civilian shipyard and that bombs had injured four civilians. Denying the report, the military said it had destroyed many rebel boats. Both Sri Lanka's government and Tamil Tiger rebels might still say they want peace despite a return to large-scale fighting, but in reality they may have got the war that they wanted after four years of ceasefire.

• Pakistan's Inter-Provincial Coordination Committee (IPCC), which met on Saturday, has put 400 'alleged extremists' on a watch list.

Far East & Southeast Asia

• Filipino military and police officials in Central Mindanao recently called on civilians to be more vigilant in the wake of renewed bombing threats in the different parts of the region. Central Mindanao Police Director German Doria confirmed receiving intelligence reports that alleged Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) members had reportedly entered the region.

• The Victoria Court of Appeal ruled that some of the evidence used against Joseph Thomas was not admissible at his trial this spring, after the man known as "Jihad Jack" was sentenced to five years for receiving a plane ticket from an al Qaeda agent in Pakistan.

• Prime Minister John Howard says Australians must realize the long-term nature of the war against terrorism.

• The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a separatist group that is engaged in talks with Manila, is chasing Abu Sayyaf kidnappers of a 19-year old girl in the southern Philippines.

• An Islamic militant jailed for the Bali bombings that killed 202 people was released from prison as part of Indonesia's independence day celebrations, and 11 others linked to the blasts had their sentences reduced.

• A Japanese court on Friday upheld the death sentence of Masami Tsuchiya, a chemist convicted of leading a doomsday group's efforts to develop nerve gas used in a 1995 attack on the Tokyo subways that killed 12 people.

• The Australian government's national security committee met Aug. 15 to consider beefing up the army, which is stretched by deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Pacific.

• Philippine troops killed one member of Abu Sayyaf and captured three others during a raid on their hideout in Sultan Kudarat town in Maguindanao province.

• According to ABC News, North Korea may be preparing an underground nuclear test after citing reports that U.S. intelligence had recently observed activities lending to such a possibility. A senior State Department official is quoted as saying "a test is a real possibility."

Europe

• German police detained a 21-year-old Lebanese man on Saturday who they believe planted a makeshift bomb on a German train last month as part of a failed terrorism plot. More commentary and links from Gateway Pundit and Security Watchtower.

• German politicians are warning of a growing terrorism threat and called for new measures to counter it after authorities said a plot to blow up trains had failed only because the crude bombs did not go off.

• Truce monitors from Norway and Iceland are to dominate the composition of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the international observer team of Sri Lanka's fragile truce with the Tamil Tiger rebels.

• The audience at a Muslim rally were told that dying for your beliefs was "just" and the "greatest act of martyrdom". Dr Azzam Tamimi, a firebrand Islamic academic and self-styled Hamas sympathiser, claimed he is prepared to become a suicide bomber. An 8,000 strong crowd in Manchester were told that Tony Blair and George Bush were not pursuing a path which was "just and fair". He said the government was attempting to make the war on terrorism a war on Islam.

• French soldiers landed in Lebanon on Saturday, the first reinforcements for an expanded U.N. peacekeeping force tasked with keeping the truce in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. About 50 French troops — military engineers — were to prepare for the arrival of 200 more soldiers expected next week.

• Hotair has the video of Melanie Phillips, author of "Londonistan".

• The interior ministers of France and Britain on Wednesday signed a text pledging cooperation between their countries in the fight against terrorist activity in Europe.

• According to the BBC, martyr videos were found on laptop computers owned by some of the 23 London suspects in the foiled plot to blow up 10 trans-Atlantic flights. Reports indicate that British authorities will soon file charges against many of the suspects.

• A bomb threat scrawled on a sick bag caused a British passenger plane from London to Egypt to be diverted to southern Italy on Friday, but police said it appeared to be a false alarm.

• A suitcase filled with bomb-making material has been found by police teams investigating the alleged plot to blow up aircraft over the Atlantic. The suitcase, containing chemicals and other equipment for a home-made bomb, was found in woods in High Wycombe, close to addresses at which suspects were arrested last week.

• Terrorism suspects could be held without trial in Britain under a proposal by the country's top security official according to a recent report. Home Secretary John Reid has instructed his staff to draft the new measures, which would let law-enforcement officials bypass British human rights legislation according to the Independent.

Africa

• East African defense chiefs expect to have the vanguard of a peacekeeping force for Somalia ready by the end of next month, officials have said, despite fierce objections from powerful Islamists in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation. Under revised plans for the mission agreed here late Thursday, the first elements of the nearly 7,000-strong regional force are to assemble in northeast Kenya near the Somali border in late September, the officials said.

• The United States military looked at this tiny town in East Africa and saw something more than empty wells, a crumbling clinic and stretches of sun-baked dirt. It saw an opportunity to fight terrorism — a scourge that the U.S. believes could fester unchecked in remote parts of this vast continent unless America makes friends, and fast. "We feel the best way to counter terrorism is to go after conditions that foster terrorism," U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Richard W. Hunt, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, told reporters Thursday. "So we focus on medical care, education. We attack these causes right at the very root."

• The United States warned Sudan of potential consequences if it continued to resist UN peacekeepers in Darfur, hinting of stepped up moves for an international probe on alleged war crimes in the war-torn region.

• Two African Union peacekeepers were killed and three were wounded when their convoy was ambushed in Sudan's Darfur region Saturday, the AU said in a statement. A group of unidentified armed men attacked the fuel convoy traveling to an AU headquarters in North Darfur, the statement said.

The Global War

• Pakistan has informed US-led coalition forces that an Al-Qaeda kingpin linked to an alleged plot to blow up airliners is based in eastern Afghanistan, senior security officials said. The Pakistani officials said the unnamed Al-Qaeda member of Middle Eastern origin was based in Afghanistan's volatile eastern province of Kunar, which borders Pakistan's militant-infested northwestern tribal areas.

• WorldNetDaily has learned that ally Pakistan failed to outlaw an al-Qaida charitable front after it was tied to last year's London bombings, and the inaction allowed the charity to finance the new London-based plot to bomb U.S.-bound jetliners.

• The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Israelis have found sensitive night-vision goggles on Hezbollah fighters that originated in the UK. The tactical equipment appears to come from a shipment sent from the British government to Iran in 2003, intended to help interdict narcotics. Instead, the Iranians put them to another use entirely.

• David Gartenstein-Ross has the latest analysis of efforts between Turkey, Iraq and the United States to combat the Kurdish Worker's Party (PPK) terrorist group.

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