http://news.antiwar.com/2013/01/11/obama-karzai-stay-ambiguous-on-us-troop-levels-in-afghanistan/
“Starting this spring our troops will have a different mission—training, advising and assisting Afghan forces,” Obama told reporters at the afternoon press conference, noting conspicuously the earlier-than-expected beginning of the transition while refusing to be specific about exact troop levels.
“[D]uring the protracted nation-building occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans still experienced the Times Square bomber, the underwear bomber, the Ft. Hood shooter, and other failed and foiled terrorist plots and near misses. In short, a residual U.S. presence of any size in Afghanistan ensures neither success nor failure against terrorism,” Innocent writes.
Though an African Union invasion to prop up the junta had been the initial plan, newmilitary gains by the Islamist factions which hold the northern two-thirds of Mali have convinced France to move quickly and directly in entering the war.
Obama, Karzai Stay Ambiguous on US Troop Levels in Afghanistan
More than a decade of military occupation hasn't managed to correct the problems in Afghanistan.
by John Glaser, January 11, 2013
Friday’s meeting between President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai was widely expected to produce an agreement on the pace of the US troop withdrawal and how many residual forces would remain after 2014, but neither was divulged in the press conference following their discussion in the White House except to vaguely say that the transition to Afghan rule would come quicker than expected.
“Starting this spring our troops will have a different mission—training, advising and assisting Afghan forces,” Obama told reporters at the afternoon press conference, noting conspicuously the earlier-than-expected beginning of the transition while refusing to be specific about exact troop levels.
There are now 66,000 US troops in Afghanistan, down from about 100,000 at the height of the surge in 2011. The remaining are supposed to gradually withdraw by 2014, at which point a new status of forces agreement is to be signed governing the presence of US troops going forward.
The top US military general in Afghanistan, John Allen, has recommended keeping 6,000-20,000 US troops in country after the vaunted and wildly misrepresented 2014 “withdrawal.” Anonymous administration officials told Reuters Obama is quietly considering slightly less troops to stay beyond 2014, with numbers like 3,000-9,000 floating about and some even claimed a complete withdrawal is being considered, although it is extremely unlikely.
The fact that specific troop numbers, either during the transition or after 2014, was not talked about at all, is notable. President Obama said he was still receiving recommendations from the Pentagon on that score.
The two leaders articulated the usual vague rhetoric without much substance, especially Obama on the US’s supposedly limited mission of destroying and dismantling al-Qaeda and its affiliates.
But as Malou Innocent, a Foreign Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute has written, no amount of US troops in Afghanistan will put a dent in the actual threat of terrorist attacks.
“[D]uring the protracted nation-building occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans still experienced the Times Square bomber, the underwear bomber, the Ft. Hood shooter, and other failed and foiled terrorist plots and near misses. In short, a residual U.S. presence of any size in Afghanistan ensures neither success nor failure against terrorism,” Innocent writes.
Indeed, US presence in Afghanistan, especially as its been used as a launching pad from which to bomb Pakistan with drones, directly contributed to the motivations of attackers like the Times Square bomber and the underwear bomber.
In his court statement, Faisal Shahzad, the so-called Times Square Bomber said he wanted to put a stop to “the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan and…the occupation of Muslim lands.” Killing American civilians in Times Square was justified, he said, because the drones, “they don’t see children, they don’t see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It’s a war, and in war, they kill people. They’re killing all Muslims….I am part of the answer to the US terrorising the Muslim nations. I’m avenging the attacks…”
President Obama’s refusal to disclose any specific promises about drawing down US troops, and their presence after 2014, was troubling in that it seemed to acknowledge the war in Afghanistan is nowhere near over. But so long as any foreign occupation exists in Afghanistan, and so long as any corrupt Kabul government is propped up from abroad, the insurgency will remain alive and well.
More than a decade of military occupation and nation-building hasn’t managed to correct the problems of governance and tribal Islamic extremism in Afghanistan. Continuing the same policies won’t either.
Syria proving to be too hard an egg to crack - Nato looking for a face saving war ?
France terror alert after Mali, Somali operations. Al Qaeda threatens hostages
DEBKAfile Special Report January 12, 2013, 9:34 PM (GMT+02:00)
French Special Forces in Mali war
French President Francois Hollande placed the country on high domestic terror alert Saturday, Jan. 12. lest al Qaeda retaliate for French operations against two of its Africa wings: a failed mission to rescue a French hostage from the Somali Shabaab rebels and air and commando aid to the Mali government’s drive against advancing Islamists. He made the announcement after a special war cabinet session in Paris.
DEBKAfile reported earlier Saturday.
French special forces failed early Saturday, Jan. 12, to rescue a hostage from the hands of the Qaeda-linked Somali Shabaab, while a second French air and commando force continued operations in support of the Mali government‘s drive to arrest an Islamist advance.
In Paris, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian denied a connection between the two French counter-terror operations taking place in the last 48 hours in East and West Africa – both against wings of al Qaeda. He reported a French soldier was killed in Somalia, another was missing and the fate of the hostage held for three years by Shabaab was unknown. Seventeen Islamist fighters were reported killed. In Mali, a French pilot was killed when his helicopter was shot down near the key northern city of Konna.
French special forces failed early Saturday, Jan. 12, to rescue a hostage from the hands of the Qaeda-linked Somali Shabaab, while a second French air and commando force continued operations in support of the Mali government‘s drive to arrest an Islamist advance.
In Paris, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian denied a connection between the two French counter-terror operations taking place in the last 48 hours in East and West Africa – both against wings of al Qaeda. He reported a French soldier was killed in Somalia, another was missing and the fate of the hostage held for three years by Shabaab was unknown. Seventeen Islamist fighters were reported killed. In Mali, a French pilot was killed when his helicopter was shot down near the key northern city of Konna.
Saturday, President Francois Hollande called his war cabinet into an unusual emergency session after the first direct French interventions in the fight against Islamist terrorism went awry and confronted him with his first military crisis.
By plunging into two fronts, Mali and Somalia, France offered two terrorist wings - the Somali Shabaab, which comes under Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and the Malian Ansar Dine, which is part of Al Qaida in the Maghreb (AQIM), to issue a joint ultimatum to Paris: Stop both missions immediately or else eight French hostages will be executed one by one. Among them, in Mali, are four nuclear engineers and technicians.
The Somali group kidnapped Denis Allex, an agent of France's DGSE intelligence service, in Mogadishu four years ago. His rescue was the object of the Somali operation Saturday. French helicopters executed several attacks on the hostage’s suspected place of captivity in Bula Marer south of the capital. They were forced to retreat with losses under heavy anti-aircraft fire.
The Somali group kidnapped Denis Allex, an agent of France's DGSE intelligence service, in Mogadishu four years ago. His rescue was the object of the Somali operation Saturday. French helicopters executed several attacks on the hostage’s suspected place of captivity in Bula Marer south of the capital. They were forced to retreat with losses under heavy anti-aircraft fire.
Saturday afternoon, French officials said the operation had failed. They had initially reported the hostage killed in the operation, then said his fate was unknown, after Shabaab spokesmen said Alex was not in the area of the French raid and was unharmed. The Islamists also claimed to have captured the missing commando from the French attack after finding him injured.
As for the French pilot in Mali, the French defense minister said only that he was fatally wounded in a helicopter raid Friday in support of Malian forces which were targeting a terrorist group advancing on the town of Mopti near the key northern city of Konna, 600 kilometers south of the capital, Bamako. He did not say whether the helicopter was shot down by ground fire. On both fronts, the French forces have encountered heavy anti-air fire from the ground.
A Malian defense ministry spokesman said that government forces had retaken Konna, with the help of French military forces, although he did not say whether they were in full control of the key city or that the Islamist fighters had been driven out.
Hollande said France had intervened in Mali because the wider Sahel region of West Africa was becoming an Afghanistan-like base for Islamist terrorists, and a terrorist state rising in Bamako would threaten all of Africa and bring Europe and France within range.
A Malian defense ministry spokesman said that government forces had retaken Konna, with the help of French military forces, although he did not say whether they were in full control of the key city or that the Islamist fighters had been driven out.
Hollande said France had intervened in Mali because the wider Sahel region of West Africa was becoming an Afghanistan-like base for Islamist terrorists, and a terrorist state rising in Bamako would threaten all of Africa and bring Europe and France within range.
Le Drian said that France had been in contact with US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta as well as African and fellow European governments. An administration spokesman in Washington said the US was considering extending intelligence and logistic aid to the French forces fighting al Qaeda in Mali.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the crises in Mali and Somalia caught President Hollande in the middle of another crisis involving terrorists - not this time al Qaeda but the separatist Kurdish PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) with which Turkey is at war.
Thursday, three Kurdish women were found dead of shots to the head at the Kurdish Information Center in Paris. One of the victims was identified as Sakine Cansiz, a founding member of the PKK organization. French Interior Minister Manuel Vallis said they had obviously been “executed.”
The president’s comment that one of the victims was known to him infuriated the Turkish government. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan called on Hollande to explain why he had met Kurdish militants with links to the PKK, which is viewed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the EU and the United States.
Erdogan also said that Turkey expected the French government to find those responsible for slaying the three Kurdish women in Paris. This incident occurred as Turkish intelligence officials were conducting talks with the PKK's jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan, in a bid to disarm the PKK and end a conflict which has cost thousands of lives in nearly two decades.
Erdogan also said that Turkey expected the French government to find those responsible for slaying the three Kurdish women in Paris. This incident occurred as Turkish intelligence officials were conducting talks with the PKK's jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan, in a bid to disarm the PKK and end a conflict which has cost thousands of lives in nearly two decades.
French, EU Troops Invade Mali for Azawad Offensive
Hollande: French Troops to Stay 'as Long as Necessary'
by Jason Ditz, January 11, 2013
French military forces, backed by air support from other as-yet-unnamed EU member nations, have deployed to Mali today, announcing a massive offensive aimed at retaking the country on behalf of the military junta that holds the southern third of the nation.
Though an African Union invasion to prop up the junta had been the initial plan, newmilitary gains by the Islamist factions which hold the northern two-thirds of Mali have convinced France to move quickly and directly in entering the war.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius says that the deployment was necessary to “stop the advance of criminal and terrorist groups,” with President Francois Hollande adding that the troops would stay “as long as necessary” to bring the nation under junta control.
Tuareg secessionists, bolstered with arms looted in the wake of the NATO war in Libya, initially took over the northern part of the country in March. In early April, the military took over the southern segment in a coup d’etat, vowing “total war” to unify the nation. The Tuaregs eventually lost to the Ansar Dine militant faction, which continues to rule the north. Though the international community initially took a dim view of the southern coup, officials have since abandoned calls for snap elections and have focused on imposing junta rule nationwide, insisting the Islamists are a threat to the entire planet.
US giving up on Syria - or baiting Assad to use his chemical wepons?
Panetta, Dempsey clear Pentagon desk of US military option for Syria
DEBKAfile Special Report January 11, 2013, 10:30 AM (GMT+02:00)
Syria's chemical weapons taken off US table
At a joint news conference Friday, Jan. 11, retiring Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs, Gen. Martin Dempsey, cleaned the Pentagon’s Syrian desk ready for incoming Secretary Chuck Hagel. Boiled down to essentials, their triple message was that Bashar Assad could not be stopped from using chemical weapons if he chose to do so, that securing the CW sites after Assad’s fall was the job of the “international community” and that no US ground troops would be sent to Syria.
Panetta and Dempsey essentially confirmed a fact first reported by DEBKAfile in the third week of November: US naval, air and marine forces were withdrawn from Syrian offshore waters following the White House's decision to stay clear of military involvement in the Syrian conflict. After extending Syrian opposition forces diplomatic support for nearly two years, the Obama administration is dumping the Assad headache in the laps of Syria’s immediate neighbors, Turkey, Jordan and Israel, and casting the rebels adrift.
Panetta and Dempsey essentially confirmed a fact first reported by DEBKAfile in the third week of November: US naval, air and marine forces were withdrawn from Syrian offshore waters following the White House's decision to stay clear of military involvement in the Syrian conflict. After extending Syrian opposition forces diplomatic support for nearly two years, the Obama administration is dumping the Assad headache in the laps of Syria’s immediate neighbors, Turkey, Jordan and Israel, and casting the rebels adrift.
This decision was spelled out with crystal clarity by Panetta and Dempsey at a joint Washington press conference in Washington:
“The United States is increasingly focused on how to secure Syria's chemical weapons if President Bashar al-Assad falls from power,” said the outgoing defense secretary. In reference to the problem while Assad is still in place, Panetta emphasized that the United States is not considering sending in ground troops.
At one stroke, he refuted Western and Israeli media claims of American and Israeli special forces operating at the chemical weapons sites.
At one stroke, he refuted Western and Israeli media claims of American and Israeli special forces operating at the chemical weapons sites.
His words also broadly hinted to Bashar Assad that, if he kept his hands off using his chemical arsenal, he would enhance his chances of staying in power, because after America’s exit from the war scene, no other military force would be around to help the opposition remove him.
Panetta was less clear about the so-called “international community” – an amorphous entity in every sense. He said: "I think the greater concern right now is what steps does the international community take to make sure that when Assad comes down, there is a process and procedure to make sure we get our hands on securing those sites. That I think is the greater challenge right now."
Panetta was less clear about the so-called “international community” – an amorphous entity in every sense. He said: "I think the greater concern right now is what steps does the international community take to make sure that when Assad comes down, there is a process and procedure to make sure we get our hands on securing those sites. That I think is the greater challenge right now."
The US government was discussing the issue with Israel and other countries in the region, he said, but ruled out deploying American ground forces in any "hostile" setting. He repeated: "We're not talking about ground troops."
The defense secretary did not say exactly how this international coalition would function or whether it would go into action if Assad himself embarked on chemical warfare. Neither did he refer to the claim leaked by British intelligence this week that the Syrian stock of 50 tonnes of un-enriched uranium, enough for weapons grade fuel for five nuclear devices, had gone missing and may have passed to Iran.
Gen Dempsey, addressing the same press conference, spoke about the current problem: He said that if Assad chose to use his chemical stockpiles against opposition forces, it would be virtually impossible to stop him. Preventing the launch of chemical weapons "would be almost unachievable,” he said “... because you would have to have such clarity of intelligence, you know, persistent surveillance, you would have to actually see it before it happened."
He added that “messaging” to the Syrian ruler publicly warning him that the use of chemical weapons would cross a red line, established a deterrent, because “he might think it would prompt outright US or international intervention leading to his downfall. But that’s different from preemption.”
Dempsey was repeating Panetta’s implied message to Assad that avoiding chemical warfare would extend the life of his regime, say our sources.
US military sources later told reporters that, while Dempsey and Panetta believe sarin gas will break down after 60 days – “That’s what the scientists tell us,” Dempsey said, US government sources have suggested that “Syrian sophistication with chemical weaponry may leave the combined, weaponized sarin deadly for up to a year.” Sarin, they say, is exceptionally hard to dispose of.
DEBKAfile reports: This confusion is compounded by the decoys used by the Syrian army to conceal its chemical weapons stocks, which are now believed to have been distributed among different Syrian Air Force bases.
Dempsey was repeating Panetta’s implied message to Assad that avoiding chemical warfare would extend the life of his regime, say our sources.
US military sources later told reporters that, while Dempsey and Panetta believe sarin gas will break down after 60 days – “That’s what the scientists tell us,” Dempsey said, US government sources have suggested that “Syrian sophistication with chemical weaponry may leave the combined, weaponized sarin deadly for up to a year.” Sarin, they say, is exceptionally hard to dispose of.
DEBKAfile reports: This confusion is compounded by the decoys used by the Syrian army to conceal its chemical weapons stocks, which are now believed to have been distributed among different Syrian Air Force bases.
Israel has responded to the US withdrawal from the Syrian arena with a decision announced by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that Israel has started erecting a special security fence along its 57-kilometer boundary with Syria.
Ankara's response has been to segregate Turkey from the Syrian conflict behind the six Patriot anti-missile batteries provided by NATO and place them on the border of its embattled neighbor in defensive array.
Indeed, both countries have retreated to defensive postures. However, neither the Patriots nor the wall will be much use should chemical weapons fall into rebel hands, including the Islamist terrorists in their ranks, and they decide to use them.
and....
Meanwhile , as the US retreats , the Islamic radical fighters push on.....
Meanwhile , as the US retreats , the Islamic radical fighters push on.....
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/01/2013111102729824698.html
Syria rebels capture key Idlib airbase | |
After days of fierce fighting, Jabhat al-Nusra and other rebels groups storm Taftanaz airbase in northern province.
Last Modified: 11 Jan 2013 21:22
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| Syrian opposition fighters have overrun Taftanaz airbase, the largest in northern Syria, after several days of fierce combat, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said. Anti-government activists said fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front) and other groups opposed to President Bashar al-Assad seized control of buildings, ammunition and military equipment in the sprawling Taftanaz airbase in northern Idlib province on Friday.
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