I continue to hear military and civilian IC folks belittle Open Source. I passed this around to show them what can be done and all I get is the response, “this should be classified”. They cannot believe it is from purely open source data…..link provided due to size of document…

The Haqqani Network: From Pakistan to Afghanistan

Key Findings

The Haqqani network, which has the backing of elements within the Pakistani security establishment, is one of Afghanistan’s most experienced and sophisticated insurgent organizations.

Although the Haqqani network is officially subsumed under the larger Taliban umbrella organization led by Mullah Omar and his Quetta Shura Taliban, the Haqqanis maintain distinct command and control, and lines of operations.

Siraj Haqqani, the son of the famous anti-Soviet fighter Jalaluddin Haqqani, is the current leader of the Haqqani network. Siraj is more extreme than his father and maintains closer ties to al-Qaeda and other foreign extremists in Pakistan.

The Haqqani network maintains a safe haven in North Waziristan, Pakistan, across Afghanistan’s southeastern border. The Pakistani Army has consistently refused to launch a military operation in North Waziristan despite the presence of al-Qaeda senior leadership.

Elements within the Pakistani security establishment continue to view the Haqqani network as a useful ally and proxy force to represent their interests in Afghanistan. To this end, Haqqani forces have repeatedly targeted Indian infrastructure and construction projects in Afghanistan.

The Haqqani Network Afghanistan Report #6 October 12, 2010 Jeffrey Dressler . . Haqqani_Network.pdf

Phi Beta Iota: It is now known that Pakistan successfully fooled the most experienced CIA officers in the world, leading them to believe for decades that the Pakistani ISI elements dealing with the Taliban were “renegades” whose misbehavior was not sanctioned by the government. We now know that every move, every word was sanctioned, and we now can calculate that at least half of the money from CIA intended for Afghanistan was siphoned off to fund Pakistani priorities and private bank accounts. If CIA cannot figure this out while it is happening, why should we trust them to figure anything else out? A major reason CIA did NOT know what it needed to know was because then and now it refuses to actually deal in depth with anyone lacking clearances or US citizenship. The one decent initiative CIA had, apart from Project GEORGE, was the Global Futures Partnership. Both died in infancy. Nothing has changed.

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2010/10/082010/10/08

Journal: NATO Blind to Supply Route Hollowness

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, Military, Officers Call

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends

Nato contractors ‘attacking own vehicles' in Pakistan

By Riaz Sohail

BBC News, Karachi,6 October 2010

Khyber Pass

• Up to 80% of Nato supplies for Afghanistan pass through Pakistan

• Majority are driven 1,200 miles (1,931km) from port of Karachi to Kabul via Khyber Pass

• 1,000 container lorries and tankers travel daily through the pass to Kabul

• Khyber Pass is 53km long (33 miles) and up to a height of 1,070m (3,444ft)

• About 150 lorries go via the southern supply route through Chaman to Kandahar.

Phi Beta Iota: Now here is the big picture. First, never get in a fight on the Asian landmass. Our politicians do not read a lot and can be considered very isolated from both reality and history. Second, understand your supply line vulnerabilities. This story tells the tale of the very contractors being hired by NATO bombing their own trucks, in part to conceal the fact that the trucks are near empty when bombed–they are optimizing profits three ways: sell and then burn; reimbursed for old trucks as if new; and premium pricing for risk they create themselves. Doesn't get much better than this.

POSTSCRIPT: The US and NATO are stuck with land routes because the US Air Force has for decades refused to be responsible for long-haul airlift at the same time that the US Army has been logistically insane and built a force that is not air mobile. We could not do a Berlin Airlift today, nor can we lift the minimal needed forces to a distant theater in anything near the Marine Corps 911 standard that we defined in 1992: a platoon with two Cobras in 24 hours, a company with Harriers in 48, a light battalion landing team with organic air in 72, and a full up Marine Amphibious Brigade in 96 (four days). The Navy is not much better, big ships and few of them mean that the Navy remains 5-7 steaming days away from anywhere that matters, and when they get there, they are out-gunned by Third World coastal artillery and missiles and have no Naval Gunfire capabilities because a series of Marine Corps Commandants have rolled over and played dead for the sake of getting along with the Chief of Naval Operations. Bottom line: US global strategy is non-existent; US force structure is incoherent, and the people responsible for it, past and present, lack integrity in the holistic sense of the word.

2010/10/02

Journal: US Government Funding the Taliban…

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Officers Call

David Isenberg

Author, Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq

Taliban to PSC: How May We Serve You?

Today we have news straight out of Mario Puzo. It seems the Taliban made local Afghan private security contractors an offer they could not refuse.

Yesterday the Inspector General's office at the U.S. Agency for International released a report that found that millions of dollars in American taxpayer funds may have been paid to Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan to provide security for a U.S. development project. The report says subcontractors hired to protect a development project near Jalalabad may have paid more than $5 million to the militants through local authorities.

Phi Beta Iota: INTEGRITY demands respect for reality. The U.S. Government is knowingly funding the Taliban as a “cost of doing business,” the “business” being the churning of the military-industrial complex–use everything up, wear everything out, so it has to be bought again new. This was done in Viet-Nam, and revisionist history is now showing that it was known that there would be a 50,000 US casualty cost beforehand. As long as the American public tolerates a two-party tyranny that excludes sane and sensible alternative candidates, and that allocates the taxpayer revenue behind closed doors and often without complying with the Constitution, the Republic will remain comatose.

Journal: Bin Laden, Dead or Alive, Makes Sense

01 Poverty, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Bin Laden Tape: Terror Leader Criticizes Muslim Governments For Military Spending

CAIRO — Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden called for the creation of a new relief body to help Muslims in an audiotape released Friday, seeking to exploit discontent following this summer's devastating floods in Pakistan by depicting the region's governments as uncaring.

It was the third message in recent weeks from al-Qaida figures concerning the massive floods that affected around 20 million people in Pakistan, signaling a concentrated campaign by the terror group to tap into anger over the flooding to rally support.

But while the earlier messages by subordinates were angry, urging followers to rise up, bin Laden took a softer, even humanitarian tone – apparently trying to broaden al-Qaida's appeal by presenting his group as a problem-solving protector of the poor.

“What governments spend on relief work is secondary to what they spend on armies,” bin Laden says on the 11-minute tape titled “Reflections on the Method of Relief Work.”

“If governments spent (on relief) only one percent of what is spent on armies, they would change the face of the world for poor people,” he said

Read rest of story online…

Phi Beta Iota: We believe Bin Laden to be dead or comatose, but it merits comment that some people do take on a life of their own after death, as with many prophets whose messages are refined or corrupted, but carried on. What should shock and awe here is that this message makes a great deal more sense than the current US strategy of spending trillions on elective occupations and Wall Street bail-outs, and nothing at all on eight of the ten high-level threats to humanity, with stark poverty in the USA and elsewhere being #1.

Review: Collapse–How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

2010/09/11

Journal: America’s Army–Tough, Isolated, Happy

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Military, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I suggest to you that this article is a keeper, that David Woods gets it. While it focuses on the Army, I think it's applicable in significant part to the other

DoD military Services, particularly to the Marine Corps, and to one or two non-DoD Federal agencies have been close partners in the national security effort.

V/R,

REDACTED

In the 10th Year of War, a Harder Army, a More Distant America

The U.S. Army now begins its 10^th continuous year in combat, the first time in its history the United States has excused the vast majority of its citizens from service and engaged in a major, decade-long conflict instead with an Army manned entirely by professional warriors.

This is an Army that, under the pressure of combat, has turned inward, leaving civilian America behind, reduced to the role of a well-wishing but impatient spectator. A decade of fighting has hardened soldiers in ways that civilians can't share. America respects its warriors, but from a distance.

EXTRAORDINARY BRILLIANT STUFF “MUST READ”

“A lot of us are here because society has no further use for us,” he said. “The Army has become home for a lot of restless souls who can never really go back.

2010/09/072010/09/07

Reference: Strategic Survey 2010 includes Afghanistan

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, Analysis, Monographs, Strategy, United Nations & NGOs

berto small — Berto Jongman Recommends...

This year's survey places strong emphasis on the global nature of economic and financial vulernability, and on Afghanistan. Below is a quote in two sections from the official press statement releasing the survey to the public.

Strategic Survey 2010 does not seek to lay out a new comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan. It does however argue that for Western states to be pinned down militarily and psychologically in Afghanistan will not be in the service of their wider political and security interests. The challenge of Afghanistan must be viewed and addressed in proportion to the other threats to international security and the other requirements for foreign-policy investment. With economic, financial and diplomatic activity moving at such a pace and with such varied outcomes internationally, military operations in general have to be all the more carefully considered. Precision and adaptability will be essential watchwords. For heavy, large, military deployment, the longue durée will be seen as an attitude for other times, other centuries.

The Afghan campaign has involved not just mission creep but mission multiplication; narrowing the political-military engagement to core goals as described will allow for proper attention to be paid to other areas posing international terrorist risks, and indeed to other matters affecting international security.

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Search: Strategic Analytic Model

2010/08/272010/09/16

Journal: Denmark Ceases on Afghanistan

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Military, Peace Intelligence

Afghanistan-Denmark-NATO: Today the Danish Foreign Minister said Denmark has turned down a NATO request to send F-16 fighters to Afghanistan because it believes it has done enough for the international military mission there.

“We are one of the countries that contributes the most to Afghanistan,” Foreign Minister Lene Espersen told the media after a meeting of parliament's foreign affairs committee. “This is why we rejected the NATO request” which was also made to other member countries, she said.

Espersen said the committee “has a strong desire to scale down engagement” in Afghanistan as the Danish defense budget was “under pressure” and the government “is under no obligation to do more” there. Denmark “can be proud” of its role in Afghanistan, she said, adding that “it's up to other countries to play a role and meet demands”.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: Denmark has 750 soldiers in Afghanistan serving in the International Security Assistance Force force, primarily in Helmand province. Its small contingent has sustained, proportionally, the heaviest losses of any ISAF nation with 34 combat deaths. The fight in Afghanistan is not popular in NATO. More countries may be expected to decline further involvement and pursue early withdrawal in 2011.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: Denmark spends more than most on waging peace, and its government is vastly more intelligent and holistic than the US Government (USG). The raw truth is that the US made a huge mistake in both Iraq and Afghanistan, Denmark felt obliged to honor its NATO commitment when NATO compounded the mistake by making Afghanistan a NATO mission (equivalent to asking Mexico to declare Cuba a threat to national security–we all die laughing). The USG is incapable of demonstrating any return on investment for its foreign and national security policies, and the US public is among the losers for this lack of intellectual integrity.

Category: 05 Civil War

Journal: That Should Be Classified….