from STRATFOR
Negotiations Behind U.S. Sanctions Against Iran
July 3, 2012 | 0914 GMT
Stratfor
By Reva Bhalla
Over the past week, the latest phase of U.S.-led sanctions against Iran has dominated the media. For months, the United States has pressured countries to curtail their imports of Iranian crude oil and is now threatening to penalize banks that participate in oil deals with Iran. In keeping with the U.S. sanctions campaign, the European Union on July 1 implemented an oil embargo against Iran. The bloc already has begun banning European countries from reinsuring tankers carrying Iranian oil.
On the surface, the sanctions appear tantamount to the United States and its allies serving an economic death sentence to the Iranian regime. Indeed, sanctions lobbyists and journalists have painted a dire picture of hyperinflation and plummeting oil revenues. They argue that sanctions are depriving Tehran of resources that otherwise would be allocated to Iran's nuclear weapons program. This narrative also tells of the Iranian regime's fear of economically frustrated youths daring to revive the Green Movement to pressure the regime at its weakest point.
But Iran's response to sanctions deadlines has been relatively nonchalant. Contrary to the sanctions lobbyist narrative, this response does not suggest Iran will halt its crude oil shipments, nor does it portend a popular uprising in the streets of Tehran. Instead, it suggests that sanctions are likely a sideshow to a much more serious negotiation in play.
Loopholes in the Sanctions Campaign
The sanctions applied thus far certainly have complicated Iran's day-to-day business operations. However, Iran is well versed in deception tactics to allow itself and its clients to evade sanctions and thus dampen the effects of the U.S. campaign.
One way in which Iran circumvents sanctions is through a network of front companies that enable Iranian merchants to trade under false flags. To enter ports, merchant ships are required to sail under a flag provided by national ship registries. Tax havens, such as Malta, Cyprus, the Bahamas, Hong Kong, the Seychelles, Singapore and the Isle of Man, profit from selling flags and company registries to businesses looking to evade the taxes and regulations of their home countries. Iranian businessmen rely heavily on these havens to switch out flags, names, registered owners and agents, and addresses of owners and agents.
The U.S. Treasury Department has become more adept at identifying these firms, but a government bureaucracy simply cannot compete with the rapid pace at which shell corporations are made. Several new companies operating under different names and flags can be created in the time it takes a single sanctions lawsuit to be drawn up.
Many of Iran's clients turn a blind eye to these shell practices to maintain their crude oil supply at steep discounts. Notably, the past few months have been rife with reports of countries cutting their Iranian oil imports under pressure from the United States. However, after factoring in the amount of crude insured and traded via shell companies, the shift in trade patterns is likely not as stark as the reports present.
The United States already has exempted China, Singapore, India, Turkey, Japan, Malaysia, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and the 27 members of the European Union from the sanctions. Many of these countries imported higher than average quantities of Iranian crude in the months leading up to their announcements that they had cut down their supply of Iranian crude. China, South Korea, India and Japan also are finding ways to provide sovereign guarantees in lieu of maritime insurance to get around the latest round of sanctions. Even though many of these countries claim to have reduced their oil imports from Iran to negotiate an exemption, falsely flagged tankers carrying Iranian crude likely compensate for much of Iran's officially reduced trade.
U.S. lawmakers are drawing up even stricter sanctions legislation in an effort to track down more Iranian shell companies, but the U.S. administration is likely aware of the inadequacies of the sanctions campaign. In fact, while Congress is busy trying to expand the sanctions, the U.S. administration is rumored to be preparing a list of options by which it can selectively repeal the sanctions for when it sits down at a negotiating table with Iran.
The Real Negotiation
While talk of sanctions has dominated headlines, a more subtle dialogue between Iran and the United States has been taking place. In an editorial appearing in U.S. foreign policy journal The National Interest, two insiders of the Iranian regime, Iranian political analyst Mohammad Ali Shabani and former member of Iranian nuclear negotiating team Seyed Hossein Mousavian, communicated several key points on behalf of Tehran:
The United States and Iran must continue to negotiate.
Sanctions hurt Iran economically but by no means paralyze Iranian trade.
Iran cannot be sure that any bilateral agreement made with the United States will be honored by a new administration come November.
The United States must abandon any policy intended to bring about regime change in Tehran.
Washington has few remaining options other than military intervention, which is an unlikely outcome.
Iran can significantly increase pressure on the United States by, for example, threatening the security of the Strait of Hormuz, an act that would raise the price of U.S. oil.
Perhaps most important, they said, "the Islamic Republic is willing to agree on a face-saving solution that would induce it to give up the cards it has gained over the past years."
On June 27, the United States delivered an important message. U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert said during a Pentagon news conference that the Strait of Hormuz had been relatively quiet and that the Iranian navy had been "professional and courteous" to U.S. naval vessels in the Persian Gulf. According to Greenert, the Iranian navy has abided by the norms that govern naval activity in international waters. Previously, armed speedboats operated provocatively close to U.S. vessels, but they have not done so recently, Greenert said. It is difficult to imagine Greenert making such a statement without clearance from the White House.
Red Lines
When Iran began the year with military exercises to highlight the threat it could pose to the Strait of Hormuz, Stratfor laid out the basic framework of the U.S.-Iranian relationship. Both countries have defined their red lines. Iran raises the prospect of closing the Strait of Hormuz or detonating a nuclear device. The United States moves its naval carriers into the Persian Gulf to raise the prospect of a military strike. Both remind each other of their respective red lines, yet both stay clear of them because the consequences of crossing them are simply too great.
The situation calls for a broader accommodation. Over the past decade, Iran and the United States have struggled in negotiations toward such an accommodation. At the heart of the negotiation is Iraq -- a core vulnerability to Iran's western flank if under the influence of a hostile power and Iran's energy-rich outlet to the Arab world. The United States has tried to maintain a foothold in Iraq, but there is little question that Iraq now sits in an Iranian sphere of influence. With Iraq now practically conceded to Iran, the other components of the negotiation are largely reduced to atmospherics.
Iran's biggest deterrent rests in its threat to close the Strait of Hormuz. The leverage Tehran holds over the strait allows Iran room to negotiate over its nuclear program. Of course, the United States would prefer that Iran abandon its nuclear ambitions and will continue efforts to impede the program, but a nuclear Iran might in the end be tolerated as long as Washington and Tehran have an understanding that allows for the free flow of oil through the strait. Everything from the sanctions campaign to U.S. covert backing of Syrian rebels to the nuclear program becomes negotiable. As the Iranians put it, a path has been created for a "face-saving solution" that would allow both to walk away from the dialogue looking good in front of their constituencies, but would also require the sacrifice of some of the levers they have gained in the course of the negotiation.
With only four months until the U.S. election, it is difficult to imagine that this negotiation will reach the point of a strategic understanding between Washington and Tehran. However, one would be remiss to overlook the important confidence-building measures that are being communicated at a time when neither power wants to skirt its respective red lines, Iraq is more or less a moot issue and the United States is trying to redirect its focus away from the Middle East.
Read more: Negotiations Behind U.S. Sanctions Against Iran | Stratfor
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
South China Sea: Limits to commercial fishing by claimants
RSIS presents the following commentary South China Sea: Limits to commercial fishing by claimants by Youna Lyons and Tara Davenport. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward any comments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, at RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg
No. 113/2012 dated 3 July 2012
South China Sea:
Limits to commercial fishing by claimants
By Youna Lyons and Tara Davenport
Synopsis
China’s deployment of its largest factory ship with its fishing fleet in the South China Sea raises questions about limits to commercial fishing in overlapping areas. Intensive fisheries in such claim areas which result in the extinction of certain fish stocks would be contrary to UNCLOS and may impede the conclusion of fisheries co-operation agreements.
Commentary
The announcement by China in May 2012 that it was deploying its largest factory ship and a fleet of support vessels to join its fishing fleet in the overfished waters of the South China Sea (SCS) raises the question: are there any limits to commercial fishing in overlapping claim areas in the South China Sea?
Overfishing a growing concern
While South East Asian Seas account for 40% of the world’s total fish catch, wild fish catches reached their maximum a few years ago and are decreasing. The aquaculture industry quickly grew to compensate for dwindling wild fish stocks and in 2005, represented half of capture fisheries. However, aquaculture brings its own set of environmental stresses to coastal systems. Further, the growth in the aquaculture industry is itself the source of further depletion of fish stocks in the SCS used as feed for this industry. Although information is admittedly patchy available data indicate that many stocks are endangered and that the average catch sizes have also decreased substantially.
The Chinese fishing fleet for the SCS is expected to process up to 2,100 tons of seafood per day thanks to the addition of the new factory ship. At 32,000-tons, the Hainan Baosha 001 is one of the four largest fish processing vessels in the world, holding four processing factories, 14 production lines and 600 workers to process and freeze the fish catch. With support vessels, which include a 20,000 ton oil tanker and two 10,000-ton supply vessels, the factory ship can operate at sea for nine consecutive months.
The deployment of China’s factory fishing vessel in the South China Sea raises legitimate questions about the basis of China’s claim to fish in the South China Sea. China can only argue that it has some form of historic fishing rights in the South China Sea or that it is fishing in its own EEZ claimed from the Spratly Islands or Paracel Islands, both of which are likely to be challenged by the other Claimants.
Obligations of co-operation and mutual restraint
However, even if China (rightly or wrongly) argues that it is entitled to fish in the EEZ claimed from the Spratlys or Paracels, it must remember that its fishing rights are not unlimited. As a party to the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), it has an obligation to conserve the living resources of the EEZ under Articles 61 and 62, to ensure that they are not over-exploited. In addition, as a State bordering a semi-enclosed sea, it has an obligation under Article 123 to co-operate with other coastal States in the management, conservation, exploration and exploitation of living resources of the sea.
Perhaps an equally important constraint on China’s right to fish in certain areas of the South China Sea is the fact that other Claimants have claimed an EEZ from their respective mainland. Any EEZ claimed by China from the Spratlys or Paracels (or on the basis of alleged ‘historic rights’) will overlap with the EEZs of other Claimants extending from their mainland. Under UNCLOS, States have certain obligations of co-operation and mutual restraint in areas of overlapping maritime claims. This was reinforced by a 2007 international arbitral tribunal decision which found that Articles 74 (3) and 83 (3) of UNCLOS obliged parties to co-operate and negotiate in good faith “provisional arrangements of a practical nature” and to refrain from unilateral activities which could result in a permanent change to the marine environment. Unilateral drilling in overlapping claim areas was therefore found to be inconsistent with UNCLOS.
These obligations of co-operation and mutual restraint should also apply to unilateral exploitation of living resources in overlapping claim areas. Overfishing can result in permanent changes to the marine environment, particularly if it leads to the extinction of certain fish stocks. In the South China Sea, the risk of overfishing and destructive fishing methods resulting in a permanent change to the marine environment is particularly acute.
The use of China’s factory vessels has the potential to further threaten the already fragile fish stocks in the South China Sea. Further, the fishing techniques used can also have a potentially irreparable effect on the marine environment, particularly bottom trawling. The large proportion of by-catch of non targeted and non-commercial species also generated by large driftnets fixed nets and purse seiners may also have an extensive impact on marine biological diversity.
Implications of factory fishing for fisheries co-operation
It is clear that some form of agreement on fisheries co-operation is needed in the South China Sea to reverse the current trend of depletion of living marine resources and their biological diversity. However, the difference between the fishing capacity of the Claimants makes the reaching of a cooperation agreement particularly challenging. Claimants which rely on smaller fishing vessels and traditional and artisanal fishing methods (notably Vietnam and the Philippines) cannot compete with China’s industrial fisheries.
The use of China’s factory vessels also reinforces the argument that joint fishing zones between China (and/or Taiwan) and other Claimants may not be a viable solution. Reliable control mechanisms would need to be put in place to balance the respective fishing capabilities of the national fishing fleets involved. Above all, China will need to exercise restraint and good neighbourliness to guard against the depletion of the living resources in the South China Sea and engage in fisheries cooperation with other littoral states for their mutual benefit.
Youna Lyons is a Senior Research Fellow and Tara Davenport a Research Fellow at the Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore. They wrote this article specially for RSIS Commentaries.
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Saturday, June 30, 2012
Obama Killer Drones Scored by UN Official
Obama has now been condemned as a war criminal by the UN and by former President Jimmy Carter (backed by other former Democratic Party leaders), among others. The following article is in the current issue of EIR. For the op-ed by Jimmy Carter published in the NY Times, see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-record.html?_r=1
Mike Billington
Hits ‘Kill, Not Capture’ Policy ---
Obama Killer Drones Scored by UN Official
by Carl Osgood
June 25—Anyone who still doubts the Nazi-like character
of the Obama Administration needs to examine,
closely, how the U.S. killer-drone program operates in
Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other places. The Administration,
using the CIA and the military’s Joint Special
Operations Command, carries out targeted killings
in countries with which it is not officially at war, using
Reaper and predator drone aircraft, without any sort of
accountability or oversight or even any explanation of
the legal basis for this campaign.
Among its victims have been at least three American
citizens, killed in Yemen, whom the Administration
claimed were terrorist facilitators, without ever providing
evidence of its claims, never mind any due process
for the victims. The White House has refused to officially
acknowledge the program, despite Congressional
inquiries and Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.
However, leaks known to have come from the White
House bragged about how the perverse President takes
personal responsibility for choosing targets and directing
strikes.
Lyndon LaRouche minced no words in describing
what the drone program is on June 23. “You know,
when the people in the United States know they have a
Hitler running the U.S. government, which is what they
have—this drone business and similar processes, done
personally by the dictator, der Führer—that is a big
issue! That any one of you, anyone out there, can suddenly
disappear—then it reminds me of a case in Germany,
where the town, which was a quiet town, and
there’s a big smokestack in a wooded area around that
town, and occasionally great billows of smoke were
coming out of that smokestack. And life went on otherwise.
And millions of people were killed, in the course
of that, and the warfare, just because people didn’t
notice what the smokestacks had meant, back then.
“And that’s the same thing that’s going on in the
United States, under der Führer, now! And people who
are less old than I am—there’s only a million or fewer
other people still around doing things—but we remember;
and other people get the smell, which tells them
what we remember.”
Obama Violates Human Rights
This brutal, targeted killing by the Obama Administration,
with little regard for civilian casualties, has
damaged the United States in more ways than one. Not
only has the policy backfired in places like Pakistan and
Yemen, where the killings have turned the local populations
against the U.S., and increased sympathy for the
enemies we’re supposed to be fighting, but it has also
damaged our credibility in international fora. How can
the U.S. claim to be concerned about human rights violations
when it ignores human rights principles in its
operations in other countries?
By former President Jimmy Carter’s count, as published
in an op-ed in the June 24 New York Times, the
Obama Administration’s counter-terrorism policy violates
at least 10 of the 30 articles of the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, including the one against
“cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”
The killer-drone campaign has been the target of investigation
by the UN Human Rights Council for some
years, and the subject of a report, released last week by
Christof Heyns, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial
Killings, Summary and Arbitrary Executions.
Heyns’ report noted that his predecessor had raised
concerns about the program in 2008, but that the U.S.
has done nothing to bring about improved transparency
and accountability of the program since that time.
Heyns said that the program not only threatens 60
years of international law, but that some attacks may
even constitute war crimes. “Are we to accept major
changes to the international legal system which has
been in existence since World War II and survived nuclear
threats?” he asked. Some states, he said, “find targeted
killings immensely attractive. Others may do so
in the future. Current targeting practices weaken the
rule of law. Killings may be lawful in an armed conflict
[such as in Afghanistan], but many targeted killings
take place far from areas recognized as being an armed
conflict.” He added that there have been reports of secondary
drone strikes on rescuers helping the injured
from the first drone strike, and if these reports are true,
“those further attacks are a war crime.”
Heyns has put the questions of accountability and
transparency to the Obama Administration’s representatives,
but is not satisfied with the response. “I don’t
think we have a full answer to the legal framework and
we certainly don’t have the answer to the accountability
issues,” he told reporters on June 20. “How are these
decisions taken?” he asked. “Also the effect on citizens,
civilians, how are these decisions taken in the first place
and the numbers that are involved and also the effect in
terms of accountability when civilians are also killed?
The standards, also if one looks at the recent newspaper
reports that came out, how are the direct participants in
hostilities, how are they identified, the legitimate targets
as opposed to the civilians? Is it simply everybody
who’s around someone who’s considered to be a legitimate
target—those things are very worrying and certainly
those are things that I will follow up on.”
The U.S. response to Heyns’ report was to say that
most of the issues of concern are outside the purview of
the Human Rights Council, and besides, the rationale
and legal basis for the program has already been articulated,
in public speeches by Deputy National Security
Advisor John O. Brennan at Harvard Law School on
Sept. 16, 2011, and at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars on April 30, 2012 (Brennan simply claimed
that the use of drones passed every legal and "ethical" hurdle
and called their use "wise" because no US lives are endangered);
by Attorney General Eric Holder at Northwestern University
School of Law on March 5, 2012 (Holder said that the "due
process" required by the US Constitution did not mean "judicial"
process - it is adequate that the President approves); and by
Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson at Yale Law
School on February 22, 2012 (Johnson said that the entire world
is now our battlefield, and therefore any use of deadly force,
anywhere, is legal).
Heyns ridiculed the U.S. argument that the drone killings
are a legitimate response to 9/11. “It’s difficult to see
how any killings carried out in 2012 can be justified as in
response to events in 2001,” he said. “Some states seem
to want to invent new laws to justify new practices.”
Obama Sets Killer Precedent
The Human Rights Council session opened on June
19 with Heyns presenting his written report, which followed
up from the report of his predecessor in 2008,
which had taken notice of the lack of a legal framework
for drone killings and the lack of transparency into the
policy behind them. “The Special Rapporteur reiterates
his predecessor’s recommendation that the [U.S.] Government
specify bases for decisions to kill rather than
capture ‘human targets’ and whether the State in which
the killing takes place has given consent,” Heyns wrote
(emphasis added).
“It should also specify procedural safeguards in
place to ensure in advance that targeted killings comply
with international law, as well as the measures taken
after such killing to ensure that its legal and factual
analysis is accurate.” Heyns concludes that he “is seriously
concerned that the practice of targeted killing
could set a dangerous precedent, in that any government
could, under the cover of counter-terrorism imperatives,
decide to target and kill an individual on the
territory of any state if it considers that said individual
constitutes a threat.”
The figures Heyns reported were astounding.
Citing the Pakistan Human Rights Commission,
Heyns said U.S. drone strikes killed at least 957 people
in Pakistan in 2010 alone. Thousands have been killed
in 300 drone strikes there since 2004, 20% of whom are
believed to be civilians.
“Although figures vary widely with regard to drone
attack estimates, all studies concur on one important
point: there has been a dramatic increase in their use
over the past three years. While these attacks are directed
at individuals believed to be leaders or active
members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, in the context of
armed conflict, in other instances, civilians have allegedly
also perished in the attacks in regions where it is
unclear whether there was an armed conflict or not,”
Heyns said. Human rights law requires that every effort
be made to arrest a suspect, in line with the “principles
of necessity and proportionality on the use of force.”
There had been no official or satisfactory response to
demands issued by Heyns’ predecessor, Heyns wrote.
Heyns’ predecessor, New York University law professor
Philip Alston, was also sharply critical of the
U.S. killer drone program. In a September 2011 report
after he left the UN, Alston wrote that the use of targeted
killings by the Obama Administration “represents
a fundamental regression in the evolution of both international
law and United States domestic law.” Until
9/11, the trend on both international law and U.S. law
had been away from targeted killings and assassinations,
a trend reversed by the George W. Bush Administration
and, even more aggressively, by the Obama Administration.
The complete lack of transparency and
accountability of the program, Alston concluded,
“means that the United States cannot possibly satisfy its
obligations under international law for its use of lethal
force” thereby undermining international law and setting
precedents “which will inevitably come back to
haunt the United States before long, when invoked by
other states with highly problematic agendas.
‘The Public Does Not Have a Right To Know’
Not only did the Obama Administration representatives
in Geneva refuse to provide satisfactory answers
to Heyns’ questions, but back home, the Administration
made clear that it has no intention of clarifying the legal
basis for the killer-drone program, nor releasing any
other pertinent information to the American public regarding
the program. In response to an ACLU/New
York Times lawsuit, government lawyers told a Federal
judge in New York on June 21 that: “Whether or not the
CIA has the authority to be, or is in fact, directly involved
in targeted lethal operations remains classified.”
Furthermore, “Even to describe the numbers and details
of most of these documents [that the suit seeks] would
reveal information that could damage the governments
counter-terrorism efforts.”
ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer ridiculed
the government’s argument, noting that the drone program
is an open secret and that the Administration has
boasted about it to reporters. “The public is entitled to
know more about the legal authority the administration
is claiming and the war the administration is using it
for,” Jaffer said in a statement. The ACLU is calling on
Obama to reveal more information “about the process
by which individuals, including American citizens, are
added to government kill lists.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-record.html?_r=1
Mike Billington
Hits ‘Kill, Not Capture’ Policy ---
Obama Killer Drones Scored by UN Official
by Carl Osgood
June 25—Anyone who still doubts the Nazi-like character
of the Obama Administration needs to examine,
closely, how the U.S. killer-drone program operates in
Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other places. The Administration,
using the CIA and the military’s Joint Special
Operations Command, carries out targeted killings
in countries with which it is not officially at war, using
Reaper and predator drone aircraft, without any sort of
accountability or oversight or even any explanation of
the legal basis for this campaign.
Among its victims have been at least three American
citizens, killed in Yemen, whom the Administration
claimed were terrorist facilitators, without ever providing
evidence of its claims, never mind any due process
for the victims. The White House has refused to officially
acknowledge the program, despite Congressional
inquiries and Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.
However, leaks known to have come from the White
House bragged about how the perverse President takes
personal responsibility for choosing targets and directing
strikes.
Lyndon LaRouche minced no words in describing
what the drone program is on June 23. “You know,
when the people in the United States know they have a
Hitler running the U.S. government, which is what they
have—this drone business and similar processes, done
personally by the dictator, der Führer—that is a big
issue! That any one of you, anyone out there, can suddenly
disappear—then it reminds me of a case in Germany,
where the town, which was a quiet town, and
there’s a big smokestack in a wooded area around that
town, and occasionally great billows of smoke were
coming out of that smokestack. And life went on otherwise.
And millions of people were killed, in the course
of that, and the warfare, just because people didn’t
notice what the smokestacks had meant, back then.
“And that’s the same thing that’s going on in the
United States, under der Führer, now! And people who
are less old than I am—there’s only a million or fewer
other people still around doing things—but we remember;
and other people get the smell, which tells them
what we remember.”
Obama Violates Human Rights
This brutal, targeted killing by the Obama Administration,
with little regard for civilian casualties, has
damaged the United States in more ways than one. Not
only has the policy backfired in places like Pakistan and
Yemen, where the killings have turned the local populations
against the U.S., and increased sympathy for the
enemies we’re supposed to be fighting, but it has also
damaged our credibility in international fora. How can
the U.S. claim to be concerned about human rights violations
when it ignores human rights principles in its
operations in other countries?
By former President Jimmy Carter’s count, as published
in an op-ed in the June 24 New York Times, the
Obama Administration’s counter-terrorism policy violates
at least 10 of the 30 articles of the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, including the one against
“cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”
The killer-drone campaign has been the target of investigation
by the UN Human Rights Council for some
years, and the subject of a report, released last week by
Christof Heyns, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial
Killings, Summary and Arbitrary Executions.
Heyns’ report noted that his predecessor had raised
concerns about the program in 2008, but that the U.S.
has done nothing to bring about improved transparency
and accountability of the program since that time.
Heyns said that the program not only threatens 60
years of international law, but that some attacks may
even constitute war crimes. “Are we to accept major
changes to the international legal system which has
been in existence since World War II and survived nuclear
threats?” he asked. Some states, he said, “find targeted
killings immensely attractive. Others may do so
in the future. Current targeting practices weaken the
rule of law. Killings may be lawful in an armed conflict
[such as in Afghanistan], but many targeted killings
take place far from areas recognized as being an armed
conflict.” He added that there have been reports of secondary
drone strikes on rescuers helping the injured
from the first drone strike, and if these reports are true,
“those further attacks are a war crime.”
Heyns has put the questions of accountability and
transparency to the Obama Administration’s representatives,
but is not satisfied with the response. “I don’t
think we have a full answer to the legal framework and
we certainly don’t have the answer to the accountability
issues,” he told reporters on June 20. “How are these
decisions taken?” he asked. “Also the effect on citizens,
civilians, how are these decisions taken in the first place
and the numbers that are involved and also the effect in
terms of accountability when civilians are also killed?
The standards, also if one looks at the recent newspaper
reports that came out, how are the direct participants in
hostilities, how are they identified, the legitimate targets
as opposed to the civilians? Is it simply everybody
who’s around someone who’s considered to be a legitimate
target—those things are very worrying and certainly
those are things that I will follow up on.”
The U.S. response to Heyns’ report was to say that
most of the issues of concern are outside the purview of
the Human Rights Council, and besides, the rationale
and legal basis for the program has already been articulated,
in public speeches by Deputy National Security
Advisor John O. Brennan at Harvard Law School on
Sept. 16, 2011, and at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars on April 30, 2012 (Brennan simply claimed
that the use of drones passed every legal and "ethical" hurdle
and called their use "wise" because no US lives are endangered);
by Attorney General Eric Holder at Northwestern University
School of Law on March 5, 2012 (Holder said that the "due
process" required by the US Constitution did not mean "judicial"
process - it is adequate that the President approves); and by
Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson at Yale Law
School on February 22, 2012 (Johnson said that the entire world
is now our battlefield, and therefore any use of deadly force,
anywhere, is legal).
Heyns ridiculed the U.S. argument that the drone killings
are a legitimate response to 9/11. “It’s difficult to see
how any killings carried out in 2012 can be justified as in
response to events in 2001,” he said. “Some states seem
to want to invent new laws to justify new practices.”
Obama Sets Killer Precedent
The Human Rights Council session opened on June
19 with Heyns presenting his written report, which followed
up from the report of his predecessor in 2008,
which had taken notice of the lack of a legal framework
for drone killings and the lack of transparency into the
policy behind them. “The Special Rapporteur reiterates
his predecessor’s recommendation that the [U.S.] Government
specify bases for decisions to kill rather than
capture ‘human targets’ and whether the State in which
the killing takes place has given consent,” Heyns wrote
(emphasis added).
“It should also specify procedural safeguards in
place to ensure in advance that targeted killings comply
with international law, as well as the measures taken
after such killing to ensure that its legal and factual
analysis is accurate.” Heyns concludes that he “is seriously
concerned that the practice of targeted killing
could set a dangerous precedent, in that any government
could, under the cover of counter-terrorism imperatives,
decide to target and kill an individual on the
territory of any state if it considers that said individual
constitutes a threat.”
The figures Heyns reported were astounding.
Citing the Pakistan Human Rights Commission,
Heyns said U.S. drone strikes killed at least 957 people
in Pakistan in 2010 alone. Thousands have been killed
in 300 drone strikes there since 2004, 20% of whom are
believed to be civilians.
“Although figures vary widely with regard to drone
attack estimates, all studies concur on one important
point: there has been a dramatic increase in their use
over the past three years. While these attacks are directed
at individuals believed to be leaders or active
members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, in the context of
armed conflict, in other instances, civilians have allegedly
also perished in the attacks in regions where it is
unclear whether there was an armed conflict or not,”
Heyns said. Human rights law requires that every effort
be made to arrest a suspect, in line with the “principles
of necessity and proportionality on the use of force.”
There had been no official or satisfactory response to
demands issued by Heyns’ predecessor, Heyns wrote.
Heyns’ predecessor, New York University law professor
Philip Alston, was also sharply critical of the
U.S. killer drone program. In a September 2011 report
after he left the UN, Alston wrote that the use of targeted
killings by the Obama Administration “represents
a fundamental regression in the evolution of both international
law and United States domestic law.” Until
9/11, the trend on both international law and U.S. law
had been away from targeted killings and assassinations,
a trend reversed by the George W. Bush Administration
and, even more aggressively, by the Obama Administration.
The complete lack of transparency and
accountability of the program, Alston concluded,
“means that the United States cannot possibly satisfy its
obligations under international law for its use of lethal
force” thereby undermining international law and setting
precedents “which will inevitably come back to
haunt the United States before long, when invoked by
other states with highly problematic agendas.
‘The Public Does Not Have a Right To Know’
Not only did the Obama Administration representatives
in Geneva refuse to provide satisfactory answers
to Heyns’ questions, but back home, the Administration
made clear that it has no intention of clarifying the legal
basis for the killer-drone program, nor releasing any
other pertinent information to the American public regarding
the program. In response to an ACLU/New
York Times lawsuit, government lawyers told a Federal
judge in New York on June 21 that: “Whether or not the
CIA has the authority to be, or is in fact, directly involved
in targeted lethal operations remains classified.”
Furthermore, “Even to describe the numbers and details
of most of these documents [that the suit seeks] would
reveal information that could damage the governments
counter-terrorism efforts.”
ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer ridiculed
the government’s argument, noting that the drone program
is an open secret and that the Administration has
boasted about it to reporters. “The public is entitled to
know more about the legal authority the administration
is claiming and the war the administration is using it
for,” Jaffer said in a statement. The ACLU is calling on
Obama to reveal more information “about the process
by which individuals, including American citizens, are
added to government kill lists.”
Obama Killer Drones Scored by UN Official
Obama has now been condemned as a war criminal by the UN and by former President Jimmy Carter (backed by other former Democratic Party leaders), among others. The following article is in the current issue of EIR. For the op-ed by Jimmy Carter published in the NY Times, see:
Mike Billington
Hits ‘Kill, Not Capture’ Policy ---
Obama Killer Drones Scored by UN Official
by Carl Osgood
June 25—Anyone who still doubts the Nazi-like character
of the Obama Administration needs to examine,
closely, how the U.S. killer-drone program operates in
Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other places. The Administration,
using the CIA and the military’s Joint Special
Operations Command, carries out targeted killings
in countries with which it is not officially at war, using
Reaper and predator drone aircraft, without any sort of
accountability or oversight or even any explanation of
the legal basis for this campaign.
Among its victims have been at least three American
citizens, killed in Yemen, whom the Administration
claimed were terrorist facilitators, without ever providing
evidence of its claims, never mind any due process
for the victims. The White House has refused to officially
acknowledge the program, despite Congressional
inquiries and Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.
However, leaks known to have come from the White
House bragged about how the perverse President takes
personal responsibility for choosing targets and directing
strikes.
Lyndon LaRouche minced no words in describing
what the drone program is on June 23. “You know,
when the people in the United States know they have a
Hitler running the U.S. government, which is what they
have—this drone business and similar processes, done
personally by the dictator, der Führer—that is a big
issue! That any one of you, anyone out there, can suddenly
disappear—then it reminds me of a case in Germany,
where the town, which was a quiet town, and
there’s a big smokestack in a wooded area around that
of the Obama Administration needs to examine,
closely, how the U.S. killer-drone program operates in
Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other places. The Administration,
using the CIA and the military’s Joint Special
Operations Command, carries out targeted killings
in countries with which it is not officially at war, using
Reaper and predator drone aircraft, without any sort of
accountability or oversight or even any explanation of
the legal basis for this campaign.
Among its victims have been at least three American
citizens, killed in Yemen, whom the Administration
claimed were terrorist facilitators, without ever providing
evidence of its claims, never mind any due process
for the victims. The White House has refused to officially
acknowledge the program, despite Congressional
inquiries and Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.
However, leaks known to have come from the White
House bragged about how the perverse President takes
personal responsibility for choosing targets and directing
strikes.
Lyndon LaRouche minced no words in describing
what the drone program is on June 23. “You know,
when the people in the United States know they have a
Hitler running the U.S. government, which is what they
have—this drone business and similar processes, done
personally by the dictator, der Führer—that is a big
issue! That any one of you, anyone out there, can suddenly
disappear—then it reminds me of a case in Germany,
where the town, which was a quiet town, and
there’s a big smokestack in a wooded area around that
town, and occasionally great billows of smoke were
coming out of that smokestack. And life went on otherwise.
And millions of people were killed, in the course
of that, and the warfare, just because people didn’t
notice what the smokestacks had meant, back then.
“And that’s the same thing that’s going on in the
United States, under der Führer, now! And people who
are less old than I am—there’s only a million or fewer
other people still around doing things—but we remember;
and other people get the smell, which tells them
what we remember.”
coming out of that smokestack. And life went on otherwise.
And millions of people were killed, in the course
of that, and the warfare, just because people didn’t
notice what the smokestacks had meant, back then.
“And that’s the same thing that’s going on in the
United States, under der Führer, now! And people who
are less old than I am—there’s only a million or fewer
other people still around doing things—but we remember;
and other people get the smell, which tells them
what we remember.”
Obama Violates Human Rights
This brutal, targeted killing by the Obama Administration,
with little regard for civilian casualties, has
damaged the United States in more ways than one. Not
only has the policy backfired in places like Pakistan and
Yemen, where the killings have turned the local populations
against the U.S., and increased sympathy for the
enemies we’re supposed to be fighting, but it has also
damaged our credibility in international fora. How can
the U.S. claim to be concerned about human rights violations
when it ignores human rights principles in its
operations in other countries?
By former President Jimmy Carter’s count, as published
in an op-ed in the June 24 New York Times, the
Obama Administration’s counter-terrorism policy violates
at least 10 of the 30 articles of the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, including the one against
“cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”
The killer-drone campaign has been the target of investigation
by the UN Human Rights Council for some
years, and the subject of a report, released last week by
Christof Heyns, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial
Killings, Summary and Arbitrary Executions.
Heyns’ report noted that his predecessor had raised
concerns about the program in 2008, but that the U.S.
has done nothing to bring about improved transparency
and accountability of the program since that time.
Heyns said that the program not only threatens 60
years of international law, but that some attacks may
even constitute war crimes. “Are we to accept major
changes to the international legal system which has
been in existence since World War II and survived nuclear
threats?” he asked. Some states, he said, “find targeted
killings immensely attractive. Others may do so
in the future. Current targeting practices weaken the
rule of law. Killings may be lawful in an armed conflict
[such as in Afghanistan], but many targeted killings
This brutal, targeted killing by the Obama Administration,
with little regard for civilian casualties, has
damaged the United States in more ways than one. Not
only has the policy backfired in places like Pakistan and
Yemen, where the killings have turned the local populations
against the U.S., and increased sympathy for the
enemies we’re supposed to be fighting, but it has also
damaged our credibility in international fora. How can
the U.S. claim to be concerned about human rights violations
when it ignores human rights principles in its
operations in other countries?
By former President Jimmy Carter’s count, as published
in an op-ed in the June 24 New York Times, the
Obama Administration’s counter-terrorism policy violates
at least 10 of the 30 articles of the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, including the one against
“cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”
The killer-drone campaign has been the target of investigation
by the UN Human Rights Council for some
years, and the subject of a report, released last week by
Christof Heyns, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial
Killings, Summary and Arbitrary Executions.
Heyns’ report noted that his predecessor had raised
concerns about the program in 2008, but that the U.S.
has done nothing to bring about improved transparency
and accountability of the program since that time.
Heyns said that the program not only threatens 60
years of international law, but that some attacks may
even constitute war crimes. “Are we to accept major
changes to the international legal system which has
been in existence since World War II and survived nuclear
threats?” he asked. Some states, he said, “find targeted
killings immensely attractive. Others may do so
in the future. Current targeting practices weaken the
rule of law. Killings may be lawful in an armed conflict
[such as in Afghanistan], but many targeted killings
take place far from areas recognized as being an armed
conflict.” He added that there have been reports of secondary
drone strikes on rescuers helping the injured
from the first drone strike, and if these reports are true,
“those further attacks are a war crime.”
Heyns has put the questions of accountability and
transparency to the Obama Administration’s representatives,
but is not satisfied with the response. “I don’t
think we have a full answer to the legal framework and
we certainly don’t have the answer to the accountability
issues,” he told reporters on June 20. “How are these
decisions taken?” he asked. “Also the effect on citizens,
civilians, how are these decisions taken in the first place
and the numbers that are involved and also the effect in
terms of accountability when civilians are also killed?
The standards, also if one looks at the recent newspaper
reports that came out, how are the direct participants in
hostilities, how are they identified, the legitimate targets
as opposed to the civilians? Is it simply everybody
who’s around someone who’s considered to be a legitimate
target—those things are very worrying and certainly
those are things that I will follow up on.”
The U.S. response to Heyns’ report was to say that
most of the issues of concern are outside the purview of
the Human Rights Council, and besides, the rationale
and legal basis for the program has already been articulated,
in public speeches by Deputy National Security
Advisor John O. Brennan at Harvard Law School on
Sept. 16, 2011, and at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars on April 30, 2012 (Brennan simply claimed
conflict.” He added that there have been reports of secondary
drone strikes on rescuers helping the injured
from the first drone strike, and if these reports are true,
“those further attacks are a war crime.”
Heyns has put the questions of accountability and
transparency to the Obama Administration’s representatives,
but is not satisfied with the response. “I don’t
think we have a full answer to the legal framework and
we certainly don’t have the answer to the accountability
issues,” he told reporters on June 20. “How are these
decisions taken?” he asked. “Also the effect on citizens,
civilians, how are these decisions taken in the first place
and the numbers that are involved and also the effect in
terms of accountability when civilians are also killed?
The standards, also if one looks at the recent newspaper
reports that came out, how are the direct participants in
hostilities, how are they identified, the legitimate targets
as opposed to the civilians? Is it simply everybody
who’s around someone who’s considered to be a legitimate
target—those things are very worrying and certainly
those are things that I will follow up on.”
The U.S. response to Heyns’ report was to say that
most of the issues of concern are outside the purview of
the Human Rights Council, and besides, the rationale
and legal basis for the program has already been articulated,
in public speeches by Deputy National Security
Advisor John O. Brennan at Harvard Law School on
Sept. 16, 2011, and at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars on April 30, 2012 (Brennan simply claimed
that the use of drones passed every legal and "ethical" hurdle
and called their use "wise" because no US lives are endangered);
by Attorney General Eric Holder at Northwestern University
School of Law on March 5, 2012 (Holder said that the "due
process" required by the US Constitution did not mean "judicial"
process - it is adequate that the President approves); and by
Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson at Yale Law
School on February 22, 2012 (Johnson said that the entire world
School on February 22, 2012 (Johnson said that the entire world
is now our battlefield, and therefore any use of deadly force,
anywhere, is legal).
Heyns ridiculed the U.S. argument that the drone killings
are a legitimate response to 9/11. “It’s difficult to see
how any killings carried out in 2012 can be justified as in
response to events in 2001,” he said. “Some states seem
to want to invent new laws to justify new practices.”
Heyns ridiculed the U.S. argument that the drone killings
are a legitimate response to 9/11. “It’s difficult to see
how any killings carried out in 2012 can be justified as in
response to events in 2001,” he said. “Some states seem
to want to invent new laws to justify new practices.”
Obama Sets Killer Precedent
The Human Rights Council session opened on June
19 with Heyns presenting his written report, which followed
up from the report of his predecessor in 2008,
which had taken notice of the lack of a legal framework
for drone killings and the lack of transparency into the
policy behind them. “The Special Rapporteur reiterates
his predecessor’s recommendation that the [U.S.] Government
specify bases for decisions to kill rather than
capture ‘human targets’ and whether the State in which
the killing takes place has given consent,” Heyns wrote
(emphasis added).
“It should also specify procedural safeguards in
place to ensure in advance that targeted killings comply
with international law, as well as the measures taken
after such killing to ensure that its legal and factual
analysis is accurate.” Heyns concludes that he “is seriously
concerned that the practice of targeted killing
could set a dangerous precedent, in that any government
could, under the cover of counter-terrorism imperatives,
decide to target and kill an individual on the
territory of any state if it considers that said individual
constitutes a threat.”
The figures Heyns reported were astounding.
Citing the Pakistan Human Rights Commission,
Heyns said U.S. drone strikes killed at least 957 people
in Pakistan in 2010 alone. Thousands have been killed
in 300 drone strikes there since 2004, 20% of whom are
believed to be civilians.
“Although figures vary widely with regard to drone
attack estimates, all studies concur on one important
point: there has been a dramatic increase in their use
over the past three years. While these attacks are directed
at individuals believed to be leaders or active
members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, in the context of
armed conflict, in other instances, civilians have allegedly
also perished in the attacks in regions where it is
unclear whether there was an armed conflict or not,”
Heyns said. Human rights law requires that every effort
be made to arrest a suspect, in line with the “principles
The Human Rights Council session opened on June
19 with Heyns presenting his written report, which followed
up from the report of his predecessor in 2008,
which had taken notice of the lack of a legal framework
for drone killings and the lack of transparency into the
policy behind them. “The Special Rapporteur reiterates
his predecessor’s recommendation that the [U.S.] Government
specify bases for decisions to kill rather than
capture ‘human targets’ and whether the State in which
the killing takes place has given consent,” Heyns wrote
(emphasis added).
“It should also specify procedural safeguards in
place to ensure in advance that targeted killings comply
with international law, as well as the measures taken
after such killing to ensure that its legal and factual
analysis is accurate.” Heyns concludes that he “is seriously
concerned that the practice of targeted killing
could set a dangerous precedent, in that any government
could, under the cover of counter-terrorism imperatives,
decide to target and kill an individual on the
territory of any state if it considers that said individual
constitutes a threat.”
The figures Heyns reported were astounding.
Citing the Pakistan Human Rights Commission,
Heyns said U.S. drone strikes killed at least 957 people
in Pakistan in 2010 alone. Thousands have been killed
in 300 drone strikes there since 2004, 20% of whom are
believed to be civilians.
“Although figures vary widely with regard to drone
attack estimates, all studies concur on one important
point: there has been a dramatic increase in their use
over the past three years. While these attacks are directed
at individuals believed to be leaders or active
members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, in the context of
armed conflict, in other instances, civilians have allegedly
also perished in the attacks in regions where it is
unclear whether there was an armed conflict or not,”
Heyns said. Human rights law requires that every effort
be made to arrest a suspect, in line with the “principles
of necessity and proportionality on the use of force.”
There had been no official or satisfactory response to
demands issued by Heyns’ predecessor, Heyns wrote.
Heyns’ predecessor, New York University law professor
Philip Alston, was also sharply critical of the
U.S. killer drone program. In a September 2011 report
after he left the UN, Alston wrote that the use of targeted
killings by the Obama Administration “represents
a fundamental regression in the evolution of both international
law and United States domestic law.” Until
9/11, the trend on both international law and U.S. law
had been away from targeted killings and assassinations,
a trend reversed by the George W. Bush Administration
and, even more aggressively, by the Obama Administration.
The complete lack of transparency and
accountability of the program, Alston concluded,
“means that the United States cannot possibly satisfy its
obligations under international law for its use of lethal
force” thereby undermining international law and setting
precedents “which will inevitably come back to
haunt the United States before long, when invoked by
other states with highly problematic agendas.
There had been no official or satisfactory response to
demands issued by Heyns’ predecessor, Heyns wrote.
Heyns’ predecessor, New York University law professor
Philip Alston, was also sharply critical of the
U.S. killer drone program. In a September 2011 report
after he left the UN, Alston wrote that the use of targeted
killings by the Obama Administration “represents
a fundamental regression in the evolution of both international
law and United States domestic law.” Until
9/11, the trend on both international law and U.S. law
had been away from targeted killings and assassinations,
a trend reversed by the George W. Bush Administration
and, even more aggressively, by the Obama Administration.
The complete lack of transparency and
accountability of the program, Alston concluded,
“means that the United States cannot possibly satisfy its
obligations under international law for its use of lethal
force” thereby undermining international law and setting
precedents “which will inevitably come back to
haunt the United States before long, when invoked by
other states with highly problematic agendas.
‘The Public Does Not Have a Right To Know’
Not only did the Obama Administration representatives
in Geneva refuse to provide satisfactory answers
to Heyns’ questions, but back home, the Administration
made clear that it has no intention of clarifying the legal
basis for the killer-drone program, nor releasing any
other pertinent information to the American public regarding
the program. In response to an ACLU/New
York Times lawsuit, government lawyers told a Federal
judge in New York on June 21 that: “Whether or not the
CIA has the authority to be, or is in fact, directly involved
in targeted lethal operations remains classified.”
Furthermore, “Even to describe the numbers and details
of most of these documents [that the suit seeks] would
reveal information that could damage the governments
counter-terrorism efforts.”
ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer ridiculed
the government’s argument, noting that the drone program
is an open secret and that the Administration has
boasted about it to reporters. “The public is entitled to
know more about the legal authority the administration
is claiming and the war the administration is using it
for,” Jaffer said in a statement. The ACLU is calling on
Obama to reveal more information “about the process
by which individuals, including American citizens, are
added to government kill lists.”
Not only did the Obama Administration representatives
in Geneva refuse to provide satisfactory answers
to Heyns’ questions, but back home, the Administration
made clear that it has no intention of clarifying the legal
basis for the killer-drone program, nor releasing any
other pertinent information to the American public regarding
the program. In response to an ACLU/New
York Times lawsuit, government lawyers told a Federal
judge in New York on June 21 that: “Whether or not the
CIA has the authority to be, or is in fact, directly involved
in targeted lethal operations remains classified.”
Furthermore, “Even to describe the numbers and details
of most of these documents [that the suit seeks] would
reveal information that could damage the governments
counter-terrorism efforts.”
ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer ridiculed
the government’s argument, noting that the drone program
is an open secret and that the Administration has
boasted about it to reporters. “The public is entitled to
know more about the legal authority the administration
is claiming and the war the administration is using it
for,” Jaffer said in a statement. The ACLU is calling on
Obama to reveal more information “about the process
by which individuals, including American citizens, are
added to government kill lists.”
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Insurgency and the Protracted War
from STRATFOR
Insurgency and the Protracted War
June 28, 2012 | 0901 GMT
Stratfor
By Scott Stewart
In recent weeks, insurgent forces in several countries have been forced to withdraw from territories they once held. Somalia's al Shabaab, which was pushed out of Mogadishu in October 2011, was ejected from Afmadow on May 30. The group now runs the risk of losing its hold once again on the port city of Kismayo, an important logistical and financial hub for al Shabaab.
In Syria, the Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups were forced out of the city of Idlib and Homs' Baba Amr district in March. They also withdrew from Al-Haffah on June 13.
Meanwhile in Yemen, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been forced to retreat from towns it took control of last year in southern Abyan province, including Jaar, Shaqra and Zinjibar. The organization controlled the area it seized from the government through its Ansar al-Sharia front organization. AQAP was able to capitalize on the infighting that began in Yemen in 2011 and successfully diverted the government's focus away from AQAP and other militant groups. But in February, the election of new Yemeni President Abd Rabboh Mansour Hadi allowed the rift created by the infighting to be slowly healed. As a result, a combination of Yemeni soldiers and local tribesmen, backed by U.S. intelligence and fire support, have been able to push back AQAP and Ansar al-Sharia in recent weeks.
Losing these cities will immediately and significantly affect AQAP's ability to reach its goal of establishing an emirate based on Sharia law in southern Yemen. However, the loss of this territory will not mean an end to the group, just as losses of territory by militants in Somalia and Syria do not mean those insurgent groups have been defeated definitively. The reason for this rests in the very nature of insurgent warfare. To insurgent groups, the loss of territory is a setback, but is only one episode in what they intend to be a very long war.
Ebbs and Flows
One of the basic tenets of modern Western warfare, as articulated by theorists such as Carl von Clausewitz, is the desire to destroy the enemy in quick, decisive battles that break the enemy's ability -- and will -- to fight. In contrast, one of the basic doctrines of insurgent warfare, as articulated by theorists such as Mao Zedong and Vo Nguyen Giap, is to decline decisive battle when the odds are not favorable and to live to fight another day. The insurgent wants to prolong the battle and create a drawn-out, grinding war that will gradually wear down the stronger enemy while insurgent forces build up enough strength to fight a conventional war and defeat their opponents. Western military leaders, then, seek to quickly resolve a war, while insurgents seek to prolong it by any means -- even if this means ceding control of territory until they can amass the strength to take it back.
In the modern jihadist context, this strategy was seen clearly in Afghanistan. The Taliban, when faced with overwhelming U.S. airpower in 2001, declined combat and permitted Northern Alliance ground forces to take control of Afghanistan's cities, rather than stand and fight until they were destroyed. The Taliban then launched a classic rural-based insurgency from the mountains using Pakistan as a haven for logistics and training. Iraqi government forces also took this approach when confronted by U.S. forces during the 2003 invasion.
Similarly, following the December 2006 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, Islamist militants from the Supreme Islamic Courts Council -- many of whom would later go on to form al Shabaab -- declined to fight decisive battles and instead took to harassing the Ethiopian army's extended supply lines. This forced the Ethiopians to pull back from key cities they had captured, like Kismayo, and allowed the militants to regain control of large portions of southern Somalia. It is not unusual, then, for insurgent forces to take territory, only to surrender it and reclaim it again later.
For insurgents, the operational concept is that if the enemy attacks in force, they retreat; if the enemy stays in place, they conduct harassing attacks; if the enemy tires, the insurgents press the attack; and if the enemy retreats, the insurgents pursue. The idea is to apply prolonged pressure, both physical and psychological, and to create a mounting number of casualties over time. At the same time, the insurgent organization works to strengthen its own organizational support base and military capability. The basic doctrine of counterinsurgency is to deny insurgents the ability to establish and strengthen their support base and improve their capability.
The support base is a critical element for any insurgency. By gaining the sympathy of the population -- the human terrain -- the insurgents can rely on the population not only for material support, recruits and shelter, but also for intelligence. It blurs the human terrain, making it more difficult to distinguish insurgents from the population. This is why the political element of the insurgent effort was stressed so heavily in the theories of men like Mao and Giap, who viewed their actions in terms of the people's war. They also believed that a population's long-standing grievances give the people the ability to endure suffering and heavy losses. The people therefore have a stronger will to fight than the privileged government combatant or the foreign imperialist invader. Having favorable human terrain also permits insurgents to apply pressure to the enemy by using unconventional warfare in rear areas with operations like sniper attacks, improvised explosive device attacks, assassinations and kidnappings.
Controlling Territory
It requires far more resources and effort to control and govern populated cities and towns than it does to conduct an insurgent campaign from the jungles or mountains. Maintaining control of a city requires many people to provide security while meeting the population's need for food, water, electricity and medical care. Such demands would use up many of the resources an insurgent organization would require to fight a protracted war of attrition, so it is not unusual for insurgents to abandon cities and foist the responsibility of caring for their populations upon the government. The goal in this approach is to force the government to expend its resources in order to meet the needs of the population, including security.
The insurgents can then come back to the cities with a small force to conduct harassing attacks on security forces or those cooperating with security forces, thus causing the government to invest even more resources in protecting the cities and reducing the number of forces available to pursue and fight insurgents in the countryside. Simply put, conducting insurgent attacks or terrorist attacks against the government's power center takes far less resources and manpower than it does to secure a town or city. Because of this, withdrawing from a city or town allows a militant group to actually increase the resources it has available to conduct attacks. But though there are benefits to harassing attacks, insurgents must be careful to avoid too many civilian casualties, because a high civilian death count can turn the population against the group, as happened with the umbrella militant organization Islamic State of Iraq in 2007.
Although there have been numerous urban guerilla movements -- and indeed, there is an entirely separate doctrine for urban guerilla organizations -- most insurgencies are based in rugged, ungoverned spaces. In such areas, fighters can seek refuge, build bases and train. Such ungoverned spaces have played an important role in the current insurgencies in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Mali. Another important consideration in many insurgent refuge spaces is the insurgents' ability to use an international border to keep the government from attacking them. This use of the borders was famously evidenced by the Viet Cong's use of Cambodia and Laos. More recently, this tactic has been utilized in the Taliban's use of Pakistan, the Iraqis' use of Syria and Iran, the Tuaregs' use of Libya and other Sahel countries, and the Syrian rebels' use of Turkey and Lebanon.
State sponsors can also provide significant help to insurgents. This was seen in the Soviet and Chinese help given to the Viet Cong and Viet Minh; and in more modern examples like the Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents, the Eritrean support for al Shabaab or the U.S., Turkish and Arab support for Syrian insurgents.
The real key in counterinsurgency is drying up the insurgents' base of support. Once that happens, the insurgents lose their ability to use the population as camouflage and as a source of recruits and material support, and the intelligence advantage is tipped toward the government. It is also helpful when the terrain available for insurgents to operate in is limited because it can allow counterinsurgents to systematically maneuver their armed forces in a way that forces the insurgents into open conflict. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, for example, waged an insurgency against the Sri Lankan government from 1983 to 2009. The Sri Lankan government defeated the insurgents after India and then China provided material, money and advisers to government forces. That Sri Lanka is an island also served to constrict the Tigers' movements and forced them to try to hold territory, which ultimately led to their failure. Another successful suppression of insurgency occurred in Malaya from 1948 to 1960, when the British army used forced migration to separate the insurgents from their population and economic base. This eventually forced the Malayan Races Liberation Army to fight in order to attain necessary resources that are usually provided by the local population. This alienated the insurgents from the population and eventually led to British success.
Undercutting an insurgent group's support is normally quite difficult, especially when the group has access to large areas of rugged terrain. In Yemen, AQAP has been able to pull back from the towns it controlled to the harsh and desolate hinterlands where it was born. In the wild, tribally controlled areas of Yemen, the combination of hostile physical and human terrain will make it difficult to find and kill insurgents. There have been jihadists in Yemen since the late 1980s. They have long found shelter with the conservative tribes from which many of the jihadists originally hailed and to which they returned after fighting in places like Afghanistan. Many of the foreign jihadists in Yemen and Pakistan have married into influential tribes to increase their local support.
Syria's demographic situation and its long history as an Alawite-dominated police state have cultivated a great deal of hostility against the regime. It will be very difficult for the government to undercut foreign or domestic support for the insurgents. As with Syria's past insurgencies, Damascus will have to threaten and coerce the Sunni population into submission to maintain its grip on power.
Somalia is a confusing jumble of competing clans that have withstood attempts to govern them since the early 1990s. Even if al Shabaab becomes severely damaged as an organization, clan-based Islamist militancy of one form or another will persist in the region for the foreseeable future.
The insurgent strategy of fighting a long, protracted war means that insurgents' recent withdrawals from cities and towns in Yemen, Syria and Somalia do not necessarily mean that the wars in those regions will end anytime soon.
Read more: Insurgency and the Protracted War | Stratfor
Insurgency and the Protracted War
June 28, 2012 | 0901 GMT
Stratfor
By Scott Stewart
In recent weeks, insurgent forces in several countries have been forced to withdraw from territories they once held. Somalia's al Shabaab, which was pushed out of Mogadishu in October 2011, was ejected from Afmadow on May 30. The group now runs the risk of losing its hold once again on the port city of Kismayo, an important logistical and financial hub for al Shabaab.
In Syria, the Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups were forced out of the city of Idlib and Homs' Baba Amr district in March. They also withdrew from Al-Haffah on June 13.
Meanwhile in Yemen, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been forced to retreat from towns it took control of last year in southern Abyan province, including Jaar, Shaqra and Zinjibar. The organization controlled the area it seized from the government through its Ansar al-Sharia front organization. AQAP was able to capitalize on the infighting that began in Yemen in 2011 and successfully diverted the government's focus away from AQAP and other militant groups. But in February, the election of new Yemeni President Abd Rabboh Mansour Hadi allowed the rift created by the infighting to be slowly healed. As a result, a combination of Yemeni soldiers and local tribesmen, backed by U.S. intelligence and fire support, have been able to push back AQAP and Ansar al-Sharia in recent weeks.
Losing these cities will immediately and significantly affect AQAP's ability to reach its goal of establishing an emirate based on Sharia law in southern Yemen. However, the loss of this territory will not mean an end to the group, just as losses of territory by militants in Somalia and Syria do not mean those insurgent groups have been defeated definitively. The reason for this rests in the very nature of insurgent warfare. To insurgent groups, the loss of territory is a setback, but is only one episode in what they intend to be a very long war.
Ebbs and Flows
One of the basic tenets of modern Western warfare, as articulated by theorists such as Carl von Clausewitz, is the desire to destroy the enemy in quick, decisive battles that break the enemy's ability -- and will -- to fight. In contrast, one of the basic doctrines of insurgent warfare, as articulated by theorists such as Mao Zedong and Vo Nguyen Giap, is to decline decisive battle when the odds are not favorable and to live to fight another day. The insurgent wants to prolong the battle and create a drawn-out, grinding war that will gradually wear down the stronger enemy while insurgent forces build up enough strength to fight a conventional war and defeat their opponents. Western military leaders, then, seek to quickly resolve a war, while insurgents seek to prolong it by any means -- even if this means ceding control of territory until they can amass the strength to take it back.
In the modern jihadist context, this strategy was seen clearly in Afghanistan. The Taliban, when faced with overwhelming U.S. airpower in 2001, declined combat and permitted Northern Alliance ground forces to take control of Afghanistan's cities, rather than stand and fight until they were destroyed. The Taliban then launched a classic rural-based insurgency from the mountains using Pakistan as a haven for logistics and training. Iraqi government forces also took this approach when confronted by U.S. forces during the 2003 invasion.
Similarly, following the December 2006 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, Islamist militants from the Supreme Islamic Courts Council -- many of whom would later go on to form al Shabaab -- declined to fight decisive battles and instead took to harassing the Ethiopian army's extended supply lines. This forced the Ethiopians to pull back from key cities they had captured, like Kismayo, and allowed the militants to regain control of large portions of southern Somalia. It is not unusual, then, for insurgent forces to take territory, only to surrender it and reclaim it again later.
For insurgents, the operational concept is that if the enemy attacks in force, they retreat; if the enemy stays in place, they conduct harassing attacks; if the enemy tires, the insurgents press the attack; and if the enemy retreats, the insurgents pursue. The idea is to apply prolonged pressure, both physical and psychological, and to create a mounting number of casualties over time. At the same time, the insurgent organization works to strengthen its own organizational support base and military capability. The basic doctrine of counterinsurgency is to deny insurgents the ability to establish and strengthen their support base and improve their capability.
The support base is a critical element for any insurgency. By gaining the sympathy of the population -- the human terrain -- the insurgents can rely on the population not only for material support, recruits and shelter, but also for intelligence. It blurs the human terrain, making it more difficult to distinguish insurgents from the population. This is why the political element of the insurgent effort was stressed so heavily in the theories of men like Mao and Giap, who viewed their actions in terms of the people's war. They also believed that a population's long-standing grievances give the people the ability to endure suffering and heavy losses. The people therefore have a stronger will to fight than the privileged government combatant or the foreign imperialist invader. Having favorable human terrain also permits insurgents to apply pressure to the enemy by using unconventional warfare in rear areas with operations like sniper attacks, improvised explosive device attacks, assassinations and kidnappings.
Controlling Territory
It requires far more resources and effort to control and govern populated cities and towns than it does to conduct an insurgent campaign from the jungles or mountains. Maintaining control of a city requires many people to provide security while meeting the population's need for food, water, electricity and medical care. Such demands would use up many of the resources an insurgent organization would require to fight a protracted war of attrition, so it is not unusual for insurgents to abandon cities and foist the responsibility of caring for their populations upon the government. The goal in this approach is to force the government to expend its resources in order to meet the needs of the population, including security.
The insurgents can then come back to the cities with a small force to conduct harassing attacks on security forces or those cooperating with security forces, thus causing the government to invest even more resources in protecting the cities and reducing the number of forces available to pursue and fight insurgents in the countryside. Simply put, conducting insurgent attacks or terrorist attacks against the government's power center takes far less resources and manpower than it does to secure a town or city. Because of this, withdrawing from a city or town allows a militant group to actually increase the resources it has available to conduct attacks. But though there are benefits to harassing attacks, insurgents must be careful to avoid too many civilian casualties, because a high civilian death count can turn the population against the group, as happened with the umbrella militant organization Islamic State of Iraq in 2007.
Although there have been numerous urban guerilla movements -- and indeed, there is an entirely separate doctrine for urban guerilla organizations -- most insurgencies are based in rugged, ungoverned spaces. In such areas, fighters can seek refuge, build bases and train. Such ungoverned spaces have played an important role in the current insurgencies in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Mali. Another important consideration in many insurgent refuge spaces is the insurgents' ability to use an international border to keep the government from attacking them. This use of the borders was famously evidenced by the Viet Cong's use of Cambodia and Laos. More recently, this tactic has been utilized in the Taliban's use of Pakistan, the Iraqis' use of Syria and Iran, the Tuaregs' use of Libya and other Sahel countries, and the Syrian rebels' use of Turkey and Lebanon.
State sponsors can also provide significant help to insurgents. This was seen in the Soviet and Chinese help given to the Viet Cong and Viet Minh; and in more modern examples like the Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents, the Eritrean support for al Shabaab or the U.S., Turkish and Arab support for Syrian insurgents.
The real key in counterinsurgency is drying up the insurgents' base of support. Once that happens, the insurgents lose their ability to use the population as camouflage and as a source of recruits and material support, and the intelligence advantage is tipped toward the government. It is also helpful when the terrain available for insurgents to operate in is limited because it can allow counterinsurgents to systematically maneuver their armed forces in a way that forces the insurgents into open conflict. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, for example, waged an insurgency against the Sri Lankan government from 1983 to 2009. The Sri Lankan government defeated the insurgents after India and then China provided material, money and advisers to government forces. That Sri Lanka is an island also served to constrict the Tigers' movements and forced them to try to hold territory, which ultimately led to their failure. Another successful suppression of insurgency occurred in Malaya from 1948 to 1960, when the British army used forced migration to separate the insurgents from their population and economic base. This eventually forced the Malayan Races Liberation Army to fight in order to attain necessary resources that are usually provided by the local population. This alienated the insurgents from the population and eventually led to British success.
Undercutting an insurgent group's support is normally quite difficult, especially when the group has access to large areas of rugged terrain. In Yemen, AQAP has been able to pull back from the towns it controlled to the harsh and desolate hinterlands where it was born. In the wild, tribally controlled areas of Yemen, the combination of hostile physical and human terrain will make it difficult to find and kill insurgents. There have been jihadists in Yemen since the late 1980s. They have long found shelter with the conservative tribes from which many of the jihadists originally hailed and to which they returned after fighting in places like Afghanistan. Many of the foreign jihadists in Yemen and Pakistan have married into influential tribes to increase their local support.
Syria's demographic situation and its long history as an Alawite-dominated police state have cultivated a great deal of hostility against the regime. It will be very difficult for the government to undercut foreign or domestic support for the insurgents. As with Syria's past insurgencies, Damascus will have to threaten and coerce the Sunni population into submission to maintain its grip on power.
Somalia is a confusing jumble of competing clans that have withstood attempts to govern them since the early 1990s. Even if al Shabaab becomes severely damaged as an organization, clan-based Islamist militancy of one form or another will persist in the region for the foreseeable future.
The insurgent strategy of fighting a long, protracted war means that insurgents' recent withdrawals from cities and towns in Yemen, Syria and Somalia do not necessarily mean that the wars in those regions will end anytime soon.
Read more: Insurgency and the Protracted War | Stratfor
China's Support Enables North Korea's 'Bad Behavior,' Panelists Say
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China's Support Enables North Korea's 'Bad Behavior,'
Panelists Say
Panelists Say
SEOUL (June 26, 2012) — North Korea’s attempted rocket launch in April was just the latest example of a country accustomed to reneging on international agreements, a panel of security experts told the East-West Center International Media conference in Seoul on Sunday.
The panel on Northeast Asian Security Issues touched on a wide range of topics, most of which related to North Korea, but it all boiled down to two words: distrust and misunderstanding.
“Since the first [North Korean] nuclear crisis broke out in the early 1990s, there have been repetitions of breakthroughs and breakdowns in the negotiation process,” said Ambassador Lim Sungnam, head of the South Korean delegation to the stalled Six Party Talks aimed at North Korean denuclearization.
China’s consistent support of North Korea enables the Pyonyang regime to flout international law, the panelists said, adding that Beijing views its support as a way to balance a region that Beijing sees as increasingly hostile.
South Korea’s efforts to increase coordination with the United States and Japan as a concerted effort to counter North Korea “has created a new regional order that China perceives that as a way of returning to the old Cold War structure,” said Moon Chung In, professor of political science at Yonsei University. “That’s bad news.”
“Beijing has shown a pattern of rewarding [North Korea’s] bad behavior,” said Peter Beck, South Korea country representative for the Asia Foundation. “China has shown – year in, year out – that it will steadfastly stand by North Korea, no matter what North Korea does, short of starting a war. If North Korea starts a war, I think China will watch.”
Although the North Korean leadership may often seem irrational to Western eyes, Beck said, self-preservation will always be a guiding force.
“It just makes no sense sometimes, but … the North Korean regime wants to survive, and, in that sense, will behave in a rational manner,” he said. “But if the regime has a death wish, if they think they’re going down, all bets are off.”
However, he said he doesn’t see that as a likely scenario in the immediate future. “What I worry about is not that North Korea has a death wish, but that they could miscalculate,” he said. “Koreans of all stripes are masters of brinksmanship, but the problem with brinksmanship is sometimes you go off the edge.”
Beck appealed to the journalists in attendance not to “get North Korea wrong.”
“Notice I did not say ‘get North Korea right,’ he added. “I don’t know how to get North Korea right.”
Beck said he doesn’t think internal forces will topple the Kim dynasty anytime soon.
“There are many in the media who say North Korea is unstable,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the correct word. I think what we face with North Korea is a lot of uncertainty right now, particularly regarding Kim Jung Un – who he is, what he really thinks, who he listens to and, most importantly, what path he will be choosing in the months and years to come.”
-- Reporting by Adam Aton, Missouri School of Journalism
Geithner and Bernanke Demand New Mega-Bailout of Europe
This leaflet is being mass distributed this morning across Europe and the United States. It should be widely distributed in Asia as well. Mike Billington
Geithner and Bernanke Demand New Mega-Bailout of Europe
June 26th, 2012 • 4:29 PM
Download and Distribute the PDF Leaflet of this Statement [1]
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Capitol Hill sources have confirmed that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are demanding that Congress prepare emergency legislation for yet another hyperinflationary bailout of the hopelessly bankrupt trans-Atlantic financial system. For the past week, the two men have been meeting secretly with leading Congressional Democrats and Republicans, demanding that they draft new legislation to bailout the banks on an even larger scale than after the 2008 collapse.
According to several congressional sources, Geithner and Bernanke have pledged that they will do everything in their power to flood European banks with bailout funds through the Federal Reserve, but they candidly admit that it may be impossible, and that congressional action may be required. If the crisis hits, they warn, there must be legislation already prepared, because the speed and magnitude of the crisis may require extraordinary intervention to "save the system."
Lyndon LaRouche today denounced the Bernanke-Geithner efforts as "tantamount to treason." "The current Trans-Atlantic system cannot be saved" LaRouche warned. "The only option is the immediate reinstatement of the original Franklin Roosevelt Glass-Steagall Act. It must happen now!" LaRouche warned that, as of Thursday or Friday of this week, the entire European financial system will explode. "Either Germany will hold firm and refuse to surrender the last vestiges of national sovereignty, or Europe will go into a hyperinflationary breakdown. It all hangs on Germany." German Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure from a swarm of British and Wall Street agents - from Geithner and Bernanke to George Soros - to agree to a German bailout of the entire euro system. "The reality is that the gambling debts of the European and Wall Street banks can never be paid. The only option is an orderly cancellation of all those trillions of dollars of gambling debts by reinstating Glass-Steagall."
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) has introduced H.R. 1489 to reinstate Glass-Steagall and the bill now has 69 co-sponsors from both parties. Last week, LaRouchePAC exposed the fact that former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker has been mobilized, on behalf of Geithner and Bernanke, to sabotage the passage of Glass-Steagall. Now, Geithner and Bernanke are pushing for another even bigger taxpayers bailout of Wall Street and London's gambling debts. According to Capitol Hill sources, even Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) rejected the Bernanke and Geithner demands!
Lyndon LaRouche reiterated that the only option is Glass-Steagall. "Anyone who is not fighting for Glass-Steagall now is going to be judged a traitor to humanity. The only way to save the viable commercial banks is to end the bailouts and go back to Glass-Steagall. If Glass-Steagall is not passed into law now, we face the danger of total chaos, when the system comes crashing down. It could happen as early as the end of this week, as the European crisis reaches a break point."
CALL YOUR FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVE AND TELL THEM: NO MORE BAILOUTS, RESTORE GLASS-STEAGALL
Links:
[1] http://larouchepac.com/node/23155
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