40% of Yemen’s water is used to cultivate qat, which is labeled as a narcotic, but it’s effect is similar to that of milder amphetamines. Fully 75% of all Yemeni men use this drug, which is both legal in the eyes of the government and accepted under the laws of Islam. The drug is commonly used there, as well as in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia.
The retired Marine colonel who cued me to this report opined that, “This is a hell of a lot closer to the mark than any Administration or DoS blathering.” I would be totally unsurprised to find him 100% spot-on. I invite your attention to the final para, highlighted. If that is true, the (in)actions of our government may have rendered us incapable, fiscally and operationally, of effective response. Another Task Force Smith, another Kaserine Pass could be the foreseeable result.
Embassy closures are a signal of the rapidly escalated intervention in the region by the US
There is one thing certain about the publicized threat to our embassies; it is not what it is presented to be. To accept the official explanation of a nebulous threat from al Qaeda as the reason for closing our embassies across the Middle East and North Africa is being dangerously naive and simplistic.
This is much more serious than what we are being told, but not for the reasons we are being given. We are seeing the consequences of a long running “Cold War” on two major fronts of political conflict that could escalate into military engagement with proxy nations of world super powers. The world, and life as we know it, could change in an instant should we awaken one morning to the news of bombs flying across the Middle East. That is a very real possibility, as we are now in a heightened proxy war environment. We are standing in a thick forest of dry tinder, and the smallest of sparks could ignite a conflagration the likes of which we have never before seen.
The US government has paid at least £100m to the UK spy agency GCHQ over the last three years to secure access to and influence over Britain's intelligence gathering programmes.
The top secret payments are set out in documents which make clear that the Americans expect a return on the investment, and that GCHQ has to work hard to meet their demands. “GCHQ must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight,” a GCHQ strategy briefing said.
Here in America it’s somewhat notable to meet up with someone who can identify all fifty of our states if presented with a national map that doesn’t have a legend. European weapons and European diseases made quick work of the native population and there are only a few areas where there is any political friction from the survivors, mostly remote places like Pine Ridge, South Dakota.
Click on Image to Enlarge
The ethnic, sectarian, and historical divisions of the Mideast are obscure and puzzling to us in general, and they remain puzzling to our policy makers. This is about expectations – the U.S. civil war was an anomaly. We had defined nation states, uniformed armies, a clear cut beginning, a fairly clean end, and while the meme has never died there hasn’t been any large scale violence since the cessation of the conflict, nearly 150 years ago. The Mideast is full and there are always tensions the likes of which we never experience here.
This being said, I am now going to put up a bunch of maps and engage in a bit of wild speculation about some things that aren’t all that likely to happen, but if they did … well … game changers.
When I wrote Mali Is Neither Afghanistan Nor Somalia in mid-January I was coming from a place of common sense. Mali does not have anything like Afghanistan’s opium poppy crop or Somalia’s piracy opportunities. The only shady business that goes on there is the keeping of western captives. It’s reported that half of all kidnap victims in all of Africa are kept somewhere in Azawad – the rebellious part of Mali north of the Niger river.
Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and their Implications for Policy, a 2006 paper on the analysis of 47 civil wars, provided a serious academic confirmation of what I had suspected – insurgencies without funding sources simply don’t last. What does this mean for Syria?
Coming back to work topics after a weekend of covering Twitter's endless nerdwars I am pretty horrified by the news coming out of Syria.
Ethnic Kurds are the largest group of stateless people in the world. Their population straddles the meeting point for Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. I read a few weeks ago that the Assad regime had recognized early on that Kurdish disinterest was in their best efforts and they left the far northeast provinces alone. That is apparently changing.
The new round of fighting broke out in Tel Abyad, a border town near Turkey in the rebel-held Raqqa province. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said clashes began after Kurdish militias in the area discovered fighters from an al Qaeda-linked rebel group trying to rig one of their bases with explosives.
Sounds like the equivalent of the US “coke can” nuke. Unverified information. Eight hours highly suspect unless pre-positioned in their embassies. Since US still cannot detect proliferation devices based on content rather than containers, and HUMINT is non-existent, we will just have to wait and see.
TERMINAL X SPECIAL REPORT – 001
Dated: July 20, 2013
SOURCE REPORT
Over the past few years, Pakistan’s strategic forces, responsible for the country’s primary deterrence program, have been doing extensive research into the design and development of smart weapons i.e. nuclear weapons that have a dynamic and compact form, and which can easily be transported from one location to another.
