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Archive for category News
Kyrgyzstan and the Russian Resurgence
Posted by Brian in News, Threat Watch on 14/Apr/2010 21:14
This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR
By Lauren Goodrich
This past week saw another key success in Russia’s resurgence in former Soviet territory when pro-Russian forces took control of Kyrgyzstan.
The Kyrgyz revolution was quick and intense. Within 24 hours, protests that had been simmering for months spun into countrywide riots as the president fled and a replacement government took control. The manner in which every piece necessary to exchange one government for another fell into place in such a short period discredits arguments that this was a spontaneous uprising of the people in response to unsatisfactory economic conditions. Instead, this revolution appears prearranged.
A Prearranged Revolution
Opposition forces in Kyrgyzstan have long held protests, especially since the Tulip Revolution in 2005 that brought recently ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to power. But various opposition groupings never were capable of pulling off such a full revolution — until Russia became involved.
In the weeks before the revolution, select Kyrgyz opposition members visited Moscow to meet with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. STRATFOR sources in Kyrgyzstan reported the pervasive, noticeable presence of Russia’s Federal Security Service on the ground during the crisis, and Moscow readied 150 elite Russian paratroopers the day after the revolution to fly into Russian bases in Kyrgyzstan. As the dust began to settle, Russia endorsed the still-coalescing government.
There are quite a few reasons why Russia would target a country nearly 600 miles from its borders (and nearly 1,900 miles from capital to capital), though Kyrgyzstan itself is not much of a prize. The country has no economy or strategic resources to speak of and is highly dependent on all its neighbors for foodstuffs and energy. But it does have a valuable geographic location.
Central Asia largely comprises a massive steppe of more than a million square miles, making the region easy to invade. The one major geographic feature other than the steppe are the Tien Shan mountains, a range that divides Central Asia from South Asia and China. Nestled within these mountains is the Fergana Valley, home to most of Central Asia’s population due to its arable land and the protection afforded by the mountains. The Fergana Valley is the core of Central Asia. Read the rest of this entry »
“To a soldier or a pilot, it can look like life or death.†Psychologists Explain Airstrike Video
Posted by Jack Sinclair in News on 8/Apr/2010 00:21
“In recent days, many veterans have made the point that fighters cannot do their jobs without creating psychological distance from the enemy. One reason that the soldiers seemed as if they were playing a video game is that, in a morbid but necessary sense, they were.
Military training is fundamentally an exercise in overcoming a fear of killing another human, said Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of the book “On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society,†who is a former Army Ranger. ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/world/08psych.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Mexico and the Failed State Revisited
Posted by Brian in News, Threat Watch on 6/Apr/2010 14:38
This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR
By George Friedman
STRATFOR argued March 13, 2008, that Mexico was nearing the status of a failed state. A failed state is one in which the central government has lost control over significant areas of the country and the state is unable to function. In revisiting this issue, it seems to us that the Mexican government has lost control of the northern tier of Mexico to drug-smuggling organizations, which have significantly greater power in that region than government forces. Moreover, the ability of the central government to assert its will against these organizations has weakened to the point that decisions made by the state against the cartels are not being implemented or are being implemented in a way that would guarantee failure.
Despite these facts, it is not clear to STRATFOR that Mexico is becoming a failed state. Instead, it appears the Mexican state has accommodated itself to the situation. Rather than failing, it has developed strategies designed both to ride out the storm and to maximize the benefits of that storm for Mexico.
First, while the Mexican government has lost control over matters having to do with drugs and with the borderlands of the United States, Mexico City’s control over other regions — and over areas other than drug enforcement — has not collapsed (though its lack of control over drugs could well extend to other areas eventually). Second, while drugs reshape Mexican institutions dramatically, they also, paradoxically, stabilize Mexico. We need to examine these crosscurrents to understand the status of Mexico. Read the rest of this entry »
Jihadism and the Importance of Place
Posted by Brian in News, Threat Watch on 29/Mar/2010 16:34
This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR
By Scott Stewart
One of the basic tenets of STRATFOR’s analytical model is that place matters. A country’s physical and cultural geography will force the government of that country to confront certain strategic imperatives no matter what form the government takes. For example, Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia all have faced the same set of strategic imperatives. Similarly, place can also have a dramatic impact on the formation and operation of a militant group, though obviously not in quite the same way that it affects a government, since militant groups, especially transnational ones, tend to be itinerant and can move from place to place.
From the perspective of a militant group, geography is important but there are other critical factors involved in establishing the suitability of a place. While it is useful to have access to wide swaths of rugged terrain that can provide sanctuary such as mountains, jungles or swamps, for a militant group to conduct large-scale operations, the country in which it is based must have a weak central government — or a government that is cooperative or at least willing to turn a blind eye to the group. A sympathetic population is also a critical factor in whether an area can serve as a sanctuary for a militant group. In places without a favorable mixture of these elements, militants tend to operate more like terrorists, in small urban-based cells.
For example, although Egypt was one of the ideological cradles of jihadism, jihadist militants have never been able to gain a solid foothold in Egypt (as they have been able to do in Algeria, Yemen and Pakistan). This is because the combination of geography and government are not favorable to them even in areas of the country where there is a sympathetic population. When jihadist organizations have become active in Egypt, the Egyptian government has been able to quickly hunt them down. Having no place to hide, those militants who are not immediately arrested or killed frequently leave the country and end up in places like Sudan, Iraq, Pakistan (and sometimes Jersey City). Over the past three decades, many of these itinerant Egyptian militants, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, have gone on to play significant roles in the formation and evolution of al Qaeda — a stateless, transnational jihadist organization.
Even though al Qaeda and the broader jihadist movement it has sought to foster are transnational, they are still affected by the unique dynamics of place, and it is worth examining how these dynamics will likely affect the movement’s future. Read the rest of this entry »
Jihadism: The Grassroots Paradox
Posted by Brian in News, Threat Watch on 25/Mar/2010 16:14
“This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR”
By Scott Stewart
Last week, rumors that Adam Gadahn had been arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, quickly swept through the global media. When the dust settled, it turned out that the rumors were incorrect; the person arrested was not the American-born al Qaeda spokesman. The excitement generated by the rumors overshadowed a message from Gadahn that the al Qaeda media arm as Sahab had released on March 7, the same day as the reported arrest. While many of the messages from al Qaeda figures that as Sahab has released over the past several years have been repetitive and quite unremarkable, after watching Gadahn’s March 7 message, we believe that it is a message too interesting to ignore.
The Message
In the message, which was titled “A Call to Arms,†Gadahn starts by telling jihadists to strike targets that are close to them. He repeats the al Qaeda doctrinal position that jihad is a personal, religiously mandated duty for every able-bodied Muslim. He then tells his audience that “it is for you, like your heroic Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan, to decide how, when and where you discharge this duty. But whatever you do, don’t wait for tomorrow to do what can be done today, and don’t wait for others to do what you can do yourself.â€
As the message progresses, Gadahn’s praise of Fort Hood shooter Hasan continues. Gadahn lifts up Hasan as an example for other Muslims to emulate: “the Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan is a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role-model who has opened a door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among the unbelievers and yearns to discharge his duty to Allah.†He adds that Hasan was the “ideal role model†for Muslims serving in the armed forces of Western countries and of their Muslim allies. Gadahn’s message is clearly intended to encourage more jihadists to emulate Hasan and conduct lone wolf terrorist attacks. Read the rest of this entry »
The Real Gun Guys
Real Gun Guys Blog
UK: Two brothers filmed Al Qaeda-style propaganda, stockpiled weapons, convicted of terrorist offences.
Posted by Jack Sinclair in News, Threat Watch on 20/Mar/2010 13:32
Jailed: Abbas Iqbal, who gathered a stockpile of weapons at his family home in Blackburn, was found guilty of dissemination of terrorist publications and preparing for acts of terrorism
“Two brothers who filmed Al Qaeda-style propaganda in a park and dubbed themselves ‘The Blackburn Resistance’ were yesterday convicted of terrorist offenses.
Abbas Iqbal, 24, gathered a stockpile of weapons at the family home in Blackburn, while his brother, Ilyas, 23, studied and compiled information on guerrilla warfare.
During the four-week trial, the jury was shown mobile phone footage off all three men dressed in camouflage and crawling across a town centre park in broad daylight.”
Recognize this Photo? Well, Some Professional Journalists Don’t
Posted by Jack Sinclair in News on 16/Mar/2010 23:23
The Chicago Tribune’s Ron Grossman writes:
“I took a quick survey in the newsroom the other day, something between a Rorschach test and a pop quiz, asking younger colleagues to identify an iconic photograph of World War II.”
While some instantly recognized the image, others couldn’t quite place it.
“I know I ought to know it,” one co-worker said. “It was in the movie, ‘Flags of Our Fathers.'” Some, seeing uniforms, realized it must be a war photo. Maybe Vietnam? One got the era right but the battlefield wrong. She guessed it was D-Day, not, as it was, the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima.
Is this historical ignorance more of a generational thing, or is it more evidence of a general overall media ignorance?”
Terrorism: Defining a Tactic
Posted by Brian in News, Threat Watch on 16/Mar/2010 18:05
This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR
By Fred Burton and Ben West
In the evening of March 4, as U.S. Department of Defense workers were wrapping up their day, a man wearing a suit and displaying what guards later referred to as a “nervous intensity†approached the entrance to the Pentagon. As he walked up to the guard booth, he reached into his pocket and took out a semi-automatic 9 mm pistol and began firing at the two security personnel stationed at the entrance. The guards retreated behind ballistic glass and returned fire at the man, who rushed the entrance. Seconds later, a third guard armed with a .40-caliber submachine gun confronted and shot the gunman, delivering a fatal head wound that ended the incident.
The gunman in this case was John Patrick Bedell, a native Californian who had driven from California to Washington to carry out his one-man attack on the Pentagon. Given the available details (e.g., a cross-country trek, business attire), it appears that Bedell had planned his attack well ahead of time. He had a history of mental illness as well as minor criminal offenses, such as growing marijuana and resisting arrest. More notable, though, is a series of recordings and writings he posted on the Internet in November 2006 in which he criticized the federal government and said the 9/11 attacks were a government-led conspiracy.
The March 4 shooting came right on the heels of another attack against the U.S. government, this one in Austin, Texas, where software engineer and pilot Joseph Stack crashed his single-engine Piper Cherokee into a building Feb. 18 that housed offices of the Internal Revenue Service. In another previous attack, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, opened fire at a troop processing facility at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 people. While many government officials are denying that these incidents were terrorist acts, we at STRATFOR disagree. Arguments used to not classify these attacks as terrorism include the failure to generate large numbers of casualties, a lack of foreign ties and the absence of a larger conspiracy. This dismissal of terrorism as a factor in these attacks ultimately has a long-term impact on past and future investigations, and it also seems to ignore the legal definition, as set out in Title VIII, Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act:
[An] act of terrorism means any activity that (A) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life that is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State; and (B) appears to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping.
Marine’s Intramural 3-Gun
The U.S. Marines held the first intramural 3-gun competition in 2009.
New To 3-Gun
Posted by Brian in Matches and Competitions, News on 16/Mar/2010 17:25
Jerry the geek describes his first experience with a USPSA 3-Gun match.
NRA Blog
Official Blog of the National Rifle Association