From Rose Mary Sheldon, War on the Rocks: "As soon as man learned to create documents, he began to classify them. This is one of the many indications that intelligence gathering is as old as civilization itself. Techniques regarded as completely modern — such as classifying documents — have actually existed for thousands of years. In fact, the world’s oldest classified document is part of this story. Unfortunately, much of the evidence for these operations comes from Iraq and Syria where, because of recent political events and wars, archaeological work is nearly impossible."
Espionage and Stratagems in Ancient Iraq and Syria
From Rose Mary Sheldon, War on the Rocks: "As soon as man learned to create documents, he began to classify them. This is one of the many indications that intelligence gathering is as old as civilization itself. Techniques regarded as completely modern — such as classifying documents — have actually existed for thousands of years. In fact, the world’s oldest classified document is part of this story. Unfortunately, much of the evidence for these operations comes from Iraq and Syria where, because of recent political events and wars, archaeological work is nearly impossible."
0 Comments
The Arab Spring: Six Years Later
From Joseph V. Micallef, Military.com: "On December 17, 2010, a street vendor in Tunis, named Mohammed Bouazizi, immolated himself in protest of the arbitrary seizing of his vegetable stand by a local government official. That act triggered the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia and a wave of public unrest throughout the Middle East that came to be called the "Arab Spring." Six years later, little remains of the hopes that the West saw in the Arab Spring. Instead, that spring has given way to a winter of economic stagnation and political violence that has plunged Syria, Libya and Yemen into bloody civil war, has led to widespread unrest in Egypt, Iraq and Bahrain, and threatens to destabilize Arab governments from Morocco to Saudi Arabia. . ." SYRIA: U.S.-led Coalition Intensifies Air Strikes Against Islamic State Near Raqqa From Bill Roggio, FDD's The Long War Journal: “Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR), the U.S.-led coalition that is fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, has intensified its air campaign against the Islamic State's stronghold and the seat of its so-called caliphate in the Syrian city of Raqqah. Over the past eight days, CJTFOIR has more than three times the number of airstrikes in Raqqah than it has in Mosul, where the Iraqi forces backed by Iranian-supported Shiite militias and the Kurdish Peshmerga are attempting to wrest the Iraqi city from the Islamic State.” Why Putin Is Winning in Syria
From Rob Dannenberg, The Cipher Brief: “Recent press headlines about Syrian peace talks and a possible ceasefire reflect naivete and false hopes that come from thinking the world is the way we wish it to be and not the way it really is. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical gambit in Syria is poorly understood and generally underestimated in the West.” A Happy Ending for Europe in 2017?
From Mathew J. Burrows, The Cipher Brief: "A comparison with the 1848 domino-like revolutions that spread across Europe is a bit of a stretch, but far-right populism is definitely on a roll, throwing the whole European project in doubt. Will it continue is the big question in 2017. A victory by French far-right leader Marine Le Pen or a trouncing of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2017 would crown it, setting off a veritable revolution that would mutilate, if not kill off, the European Union (EU). The opposite happening – President Francois Fillon elected in France and Merkel weakened but victorious – would signify the passing of the high water mark of electoral rebellion and potentially a more stable Europe. Whatever happens, Europe will never be the same after 2017."
Mideast Self-Reliance Isn’t a Problem—It’s Our Ticket Home
From Bonnie Kristian, RealClearDefense: “The desperate situation in Aleppo, Syria, has long been the subject of international negotiations, but in recent weeks the United States has been increasingly absent. Representatives of Iran, Russia, and Turkey met in Moscow Tuesday to discuss a political solution to Syria’s five-year civil war, and no American diplomat was present. Likewise, Syrian rebel and government forces have directly negotiated civilian evacuations from Aleppo, and earlier this month the rebels spoke independently with Moscow in a quiet series of meetings in Turkey—again, no input from Washington required.” The United Nations Resolution on Israel
From Elliott Abrams, Council on Foreign Relations: “Since the adoption last week the Security Council resolution on Israel, I’ve had my say in The Weekly Standard and The Washington Post condemning the Obama administration’s decision to allow the resolution to pass. The resolution rewards the PLO for refusing to negotiate and adopts its tactic of replacing serious, face-to-face negotiations with useless dramas in New York. It is a danger to Israel. And by refusing to veto, the Obama administration abandoned the usual American practice of defending Israel from what Jeane Kirkpatrick called “the jackals” at the United Nations.”
U.S., AFGHANISTAN: The Faltering War in Afghanistan
From Saagar Enjeti, The Daily Caller: “The U.S. resolute support command estimates the Taliban control 10 percent of the Afghan population, and contest the U.S. backed Afghan government for another 20 percent. The report notes that the government has been adept at keeping control of major cities in Afghanistan, while continuing to face a “resilient insurgency” in rural areas.” Advancing into Mosul has become a painful slog for Iraqi forces. Islamic State group militants have fortified each neighborhood, unlike past battles where they concentrated their defenses in one part of the city. As a result, every advance inflicts relatively high casualties. – Associated Press After two months, the battle to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State has settled into a grinding war of attrition. The front lines have barely budged in weeks. Casualties of Iraqi security forces are so high that American commanders heading the United States-led air campaign worry that they are unsustainable. Civilians are being killed or injured by Islamic State snipers and growing numbers of suicide bombers. – New York Times The Islamic State drew far more fighters from far more countries than its predecessor, a steady flow from far-flung global regions that helps explain the terrorists’ commitment to mass murder and destruction once they arrived to create a ballyhooed promised land. – Washington Times
More than five years after Tunisia’s authoritarian leadership was overthrown in the Arab Spring revolution, a still-tormented country is revisiting its brutal past in hopes of healing. Since last month, Tunisians have been riveted by heart-wrenching testimony as witness after witness appears before a Truth and Dignity Commission. The rare public airing of abuses committed under nearly six decades of authoritarian rule is being broadcast nationally on television and radio, and shared on social media. – Washington Post Patrick Megahan and John Capello write: As concerns over a shrinking qualitative advantage rise, calculating the benefits and liabilities of selling advanced weapons to the Sunni Arab states in the Middle East will become even more challenging. The United States must maintain a clear-eyed view of the changing balance of power in the region and where Israel stands vis-à-vis its adversaries and potential adversaries. The growing Iranian threat – both to Israel and the Sunni states – is and will remain for the foreseeable future the most significant complicating factor. – The National Interest Elliott Abrams writes: The United States should nevertheless support those seeking peaceful change toward more open and democratic political systems. The Arab uprisings of 2011–2012 suggest that the public desire for change is widespread, and democratic political systems provide paths for peaceful change that can accommodate many different social and economic views through compromise. – Council on Foreign Relations
Turkey is moving toward a referendum that if approved would give President Recep Tayyip Erdogan near absolute power—and every new terrorist attack is likely to increase his chances of winning the vote. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required) President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has embraced — quite literally — a 7-year-old Syrian girl from Aleppo, famous for her Twitter messages describing life in a war zone. – New York Times A car bombing in central Turkey killed 13 soldiers and wounded more than 50 other members of the military on Saturday, the latest in a series of attacks in the country. –New York Times
Turkish courts last week charged U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson with “membership in an armed terrorist organization,” transferring him to a high-security prison after two months in solitary confinement in a detention center. –Foundation for Defense of Democracies Michael Rubin writes: If Erdogan seeks to mobilize—perhaps utilizing not only the emergency powers he claimed in the wake of the coup but also war powers derived from Turkey’s involvement in Syria and Iraq—he can arrest anyone and seize anything he desires. –AEI Ideas Editorial: Since assuming the nominally ceremonial position of president in 2014, Turkish ruler Recep Tayyip Erdogan has aspired to endow it with far-reaching powers, replacing the country’s parliamentary system with something more like what Vladimir Putin has established in Russia. –Washington Post A suicide bomber disguised as a policeman detonated himself Sunday outside a military base in the southern port city of Aden, killing at least 52 soldiers and policemen waiting to collect their salaries, officials said. –Washington Post
Editorial: Over the past 21 months, thousands of civilians have died in the fighting in Yemen, and a humanitarian crisis is escalating. But Yemenis — aware of their country’s status as one of the world’s oldest repositories of civilization, dating back centuries before Christ — voice equal outrage about cultural losses. –Washington Post How C.O.I.N. is Applied in Near East for "The Long War" & Christians & the Iraki Plains of Nineveh12/18/2016
What Trump Will Get From His Generals
From Paul D. Shinkman, U.S. News & World Report: “Fighting modern foes and stabilizing unstable regions is complex, time-consuming and expensive. The military's official counterinsurgency manual – which Mattis compiled with Petraeus – begins on Page 1 with clear instructions: Fighting an insurgency "involves the application of national power in the political, military, economic, social, information and infrastructure fields and disciplines," it states. "Political and military leaders and planners should never underestimate its scale and complexity; moreover, they should recognize that the Armed Forces cannot succeed in [counter-insurgency] alone."”
Indiana Hoenlein & the Zionist Abraham Lincoln. @conf_of_pres.
"...When Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 there were fewer than 3,000 Jews in the United States. By the time he died there were 150,000. Many of Lincoln’s contemporaries were alarmed by this development. Anti-Semitism, like the plague, had spread from Christian Europe to the New World, but Lincoln, a staunch Christian Republican, stood up for the Jews, much in the same way he would for African-Americans. Lincoln was a devote student of the Bible and often quoted from the Old Testament in his public speeches. Lincoln rejected the notion held by many Christians of the time that the Jews were responsible for killing the Son of God. He made it a point to treat the Jews with respect right from the beginning of his career. Lincoln boasted many Jewish friends, often represented them in his law practice, and even appointed Jews to offices in his administration. Many Jews served as President Lincoln’s personal advisors." A number of Lincoln’s generals regarded the Jews as hostile intruders to the North American continent and tried to have them expelled. General Ulysses Grant tried to force them out by issuing an edict barring Jews from selling goods to Union soldiers. Lincoln would have none of it, and confronting his commanding general immediately rescinded the shameful order. When the Union Army wanted to “appoint Christian Chaplains to care for the spiritual needs of our brave soldiers,” Lincoln insisted on also appointing Jews to serve as chaplains to the army, something that had never been done before. Lincoln then signed the act into law and Jewish chaplains have been serving in the US Armed Forces ever since. It was Lincoln who was the first to acknowledge the need to recognize Judaism as an official religion of the United States. At the time it was common to call the United States a “Christian Nation.” In order to make sure that the growing Jewish population also be included, Lincoln insisted that America be called “a nation under God.” In 1863 Lincoln delivered his Emancipation Proclamation declaring that “all slaves under the Confederacy were from then on forever free.” Shortly afterwards, Lincoln met with a Canadian Christian Zionist named Henry Wentworth Monk who explained to him that Jews who were being oppressed in Russia and Turkey also need to be emancipated "by restoring them to their national home in Palestine."..." http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/26112/Default.aspx A set of giant security gates financed by China and intended to protect Kabul from large bombs and drug smuggling lie stored in a warehouse more than five months after they arrived, while Afghan authorities bicker over who should install them. - Reuters
Islamic State claimed responsibility for a bombing that killed 24 people at Cairo’s main Coptic Christian cathedral this weekend, in what would be the first militant attack on a Christian house of worship in Egypt since 2011. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Operations have restarted at two key oil fields and a connected pipeline in Western Libya that have been shut down for over two years, Libyan officials said, following an agreement with local tribes. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required) The Algerian government is coming under criticism for its treatment of a freelance British-Algerian journalist, Mohamed Tamalt, who died in a hospital on Sunday after being imprisoned under a draconian new law that criminalizes offending the president and state institutions. – New York Times The Islamic State group was manufacturing weapons in and around Mosul on an industrial scale with products largely purchased in bulk from Turkey, according to a report published by an arms research group Wednesday. – Associated Press
Iran’s brutal Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force has played an extensive role in the rape of Aleppo, building a network of bases around the Syrian city and directing militiamen from Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan to do the killing, an Iranian opposition group says in a new intelligence report. –Washington Time
The starkly different outcomes of two pivotal battles—for Aleppo and Palmyra—showcased the priorities of the regime and its Russian and Iranian sponsors: to fight moderate Sunni rebels rather than the Sunni extremists of Islamic State. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required) The Islamic State group could now control sophisticated military equipment and weapons, including an air defense system, after recapturing the town of Palmyra from Russian and Syrian forces, the top U.S. general in charge of operations in Iraq and Syria said Wednesday. – Stars and Stripes Adding 200 troops to the existing 300 would seem to bring the total Syria deployment to 500. But it doesn't mean 200 operators are actually heading to the war zone. A Pentagon spokesman has acknowledged that Carter merely "authorized" a higher number of troops to deploy, without revealing the actual number of troops operating in the war zones. – Washington Examiner Editorial: On Tuesday, Mr. Obama’s U.N. ambassador, Samantha Power, delivered an impassioned denunciation of the Aleppo carnage, which she said would “join the ranks of those events in world history that define modern evil, that stain our conscience decades later.” She excoriated the Assad regime, Russia and Iran but offered no acknowledgment that the stain of Aleppo extends also to her, the president and American honor. Those who will live with the long-term consequences of the Syrian catastrophe are unlikely to be so forgiving. – Washington Post Frederic Hof writes: Once [Trump] has mastered the salient facts of the Syrian crisis, will he continue with policies and polemics in western Syria that embolden Russian adventurism in the region and beyond, facilitate the hegemonic designs of Iran, and help make the propaganda case for ISIS in Sunni Muslim communities around the world? These are the things the Obama administration has, quite unintentionally, succeeded in doing. The United States can, under new management, do much better. – Defense News Hanin Ghaddar writes: This is not a civil war. Only when we stop calling it a civil war, we might be able to understand the history and strategy of the regime, the various layers of the Syrian people, the interests of those who are already intervening, and the significance of accountability. – Washington With the rebels clinging to a tiny pinprick of territory in one corner of the city, it is now only a matter of time before the government reclaims full control over the country’s biggest metropolis, an architectural and historical jewel that has now become a symbol of the catastrophe of the Syrian war. – Washington Post Russia declared on Tuesday that the four-year battle over Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, was over, as the last remaining rebel fighters agreed to turn over their territory to the Syrian government. While pro-government forces were moving in, United Nations officials said they were receiving multiple reports of execution-style killings. – New York Times Artillery shelling resumed early Wednesday on besieged eastern neighborhoods of the Syrian city of Aleppo, delaying a promised evacuation of thousands of civilians and medical staff members who had been expecting to leave under the aegis of a deal announced at the United Nations. – New York Times The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that a United States airstrike had killed three Islamic State operatives who were involved in mounting terrorist attacks in Europe, including the deadly assault in Paris in November 2015. – New York Times The Islamic State’s conquest of Palmyra appears to have netted the group a trove of weaponry, armor, ammunition and equipment that risks fueling a surge of gains by the militants in Syria at a time when attention has been diverted on the battle unfolding in Aleppo. – Washington Post Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Tuesday tore into the Obama administration for "inaction" on Syria as president Bashar Assad's forces reclaim Aleppo from rebel groups. – The Hill In a dramatic setback to the Syrian regime, the Islamic State terrorist group recaptured the oil fields in central Syria and the city of Palmyra on Sunday. Syrian media published the names of 11 officers and 49 soldiers killed in the battle, while several Syrian soldiers were taken prisoner, according to ISIS video posted Monday. – Washington Free Beacon Aleppo's fall to Syrian government forces is shaping up as the first major test of President-elect Donald Trump's desire to cooperate with Russia, whose military support has proven pivotal in Syria's civil war. The death and destruction in the city is only renewing Democratic and Republican concern with Trump's possible new path. – Associated Press The fall of the last rebel-held areas in the Syrian city of Aleppo could seal the fate of the "Obama Doctrine," deepening the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in decades and staining U.S. President Barack Obama's legacy. - Reuters David Daoud writes: ISIS has murdered Americans domestically and abroad, undermined U.S. interests and threatened U.S. allies like Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Trump’s objective of using American military power to defeat the group is therefore sound. However, doing so while allowing Assad to remain in power would turn the laudable goal of ISIS’s destruction into a net strategic loss for Washington. Instead of starving Hezbollah, it would empower that implacable enemy of the United States—one which has already proven itself a formidable threat to Americans. - Newsweek Leon Wieseltier writes: We need to be unforgivingly clear. The obligation to act against evil in Aleppo was no different from the obligation to act against the evil in Sarajevo and Srebrenica. (Has anyone ever heard Obama mention Bosnia?) It was no different from the obligation to act against the evil in Rwanda. It was no different from the obligation to act against the evil in Auschwitz. And we scorned the obligation. We learned nothing. We forgot everything. We failed. We did not even try. – Washington Post
David Ignatius writes: The fall of Aleppo is a human catastrophe. It’s also a demonstration of the perils of choosing the middle course in a military conflict. Sometimes it’s possible to talk and fight at the same time. But in Syria, the U.S. decision to pursue a dual-track, halfway approach made the mayhem worse. – Washington Post Stephen Hayes writes: Obama's single-minded pursuit of one legacy-defining accomplishment, the Iran deal, ensures that his legacy will be forever blackened by the tragedy of Syria. His presidency will be remembered as a time when America brushed aside its responsibility as a leader, ignored its responsibility to our fellow human beings, and turned a blind eye to the atrocities in Aleppo and elsewhere. On this, at least, it will be remembered, in the words of one former proponent of American exceptionalism, as a betrayal of who we are. – The Weekly Standard Max Boot writes: To get an idea of how long such a conflict can continue, recall that the Lebanese civil war lasted 15 years—from 1975 to 1990—and only ended because of outside intervention by Bashar Assad’s father, Hafez. The Syrian conflict is less than six years old. If there is no outside intervention in Syria—and that appears unlikely—the fighting can continue indefinitely. And that means that Syria will remain not only the scene of continuing war crimes but that it will also be a haven for terrorists and an exporter of refugees—a “geopolitical Chernobyl,” in the words of David Petraeus, that will continue to spew its toxins across the region and the world. – Commentary
|
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
Archives
June 2023
Categories |