Quotes of the Day:
"If the consent of the citizens is required in order to decide that war should be declared...nothing is more natural than that they would be very cautious in commencing such a poor game, decreeing for themselves all the calamities of war."
- Kant, 1795
“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger, but in calculating risk and acting decisively.”
- Machiavelli
"To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
1. Differences Splinter U.S. Team Negotiating With Iran on Nuclear Deal
2. On the Brink of War With Russia, Ukrainians Are Resigned and Prepared
3. Drop in Public Trust in US Military Officers Portends Danger
4. Correcting Misinformation around the Smith-Mundt Act Seventy-Seven Years after it was Introduced
5. Pentagon Puts 8,500 Troops On ‘Heightened Alert’ Over Russian Threat To Ukraine
6. Can threats of a US-Backed Ukraine Insurgency Deter a Russian invasion?
7. Opinion | The ‘Havana syndrome’ is still a mystery. It is too soon to stop investigating.
8. What Scenarios Might Emerge in Ukraine?
9. How a Russian cyberwar in Ukraine could ripple out globally
10. Joint Hypersonic Transition Office Hosts First Hypersonic Workforce Event
11. US Special Operations Command picks Anduril to lead counter-drone integration work in $1B deal
12. US provided ‘limited ground support’ to Syrian fighters battling ISIS
13. SOCOM boss tests positive for COVID-19
14. Your own CIA jail? Lithuania to sell secret U.S. 'rendition' site
15. C.I.A.-Backed Afghan Fighters Are Still Waiting to Reach U.S.
16. Threatened and Beaten, Afghan Women Defy Taliban With Protests
17. Hong Kong's Isolation Deepens as Covid-19 Wears on
18. 2 U.S. Aircraft Carriers Now in South China Sea as Chinese Air Force Flies 39 Aircraft Near Taiwan
19. Houthis Renew Attack on Abu Dhabi With Ballistic Missiles
20. Lost Innocents - The U.S. Military’s Shameful Failure to Protect Civilians
21. Follow the Netherlands's example: Don’t fund terrorist fronts
22. As Ukraine Faces Russian Aggression, What Should Small Countries Take Away from the Crisis?
23. China digging Cambodia a deep-water naval base
24. Forced Prison Labor in China: Hiding in Plain Sight
1. Differences Splinter U.S. Team Negotiating With Iran on Nuclear Deal
Not a good look. Regardless of your position on this issue we should not want to see the internal differences and disputes on public display. This obviously undermines our negotiation position whether the below report is accurate or not.
Differences Splinter U.S. Team Negotiating With Iran on Nuclear Deal
Some members of the U.S. team have left or stepped back after urging a tougher approach in talks on Iran’s nuclear program
Two other members of the team, which is led by State Department veteran Robert Malley, have stepped back from the talks, the people familiar said, because they also wanted a harder negotiating stance.
The divisions come at a pivotal time, with U.S. and European officials warning that only a few weeks remain to rescue the 2015 deal before Iran acquires the know-how and capability to quickly produce enough nuclear fuel for a bomb. Under the agreement, the U.S. lifted most international sanctions on Tehran in exchange for strict but temporary limits on Iran’s nuclear work. The Trump administration exited the agreement, seeing it as insufficient to restrain Iran, and the Biden administration is trying to reverse course.
Iran has refused to sit directly with the U.S. in the talks, though on Monday Iran’s foreign minister said Tehran would consider doing so if talks progress.
Richard Nephew, the deputy special envoy for Iran and an architect of previous economic sanctions on Iran, has left the U.S. negotiating team.
Photo: Susan Walsh/Associated Press
With no deadline set to end the talks, some Western diplomats doubt whether the Biden administration is prepared to call it quits. Doing so could trigger a crisis, with Iran accelerating its nuclear-enrichment program at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
A senior State Department official said that the administration at its highest levels has settled on a policy toward Iran after careful consideration of multiple viewpoints and that a return to the 2015 agreement offers an opportunity to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
The official confirmed Mr. Nephew’s departure from the negotiating team; he remains with the State Department. The official said another member of the negotiating team requested to be removed from the Vienna talks. No other team member has been sidelined, the official said, or departed for “anything other than normal personnel reasons.”
Strains within the U.S. team have been growing since the summer over a range of issues that have been debated—and sometimes decided—at the highest levels of the Biden administration, the people familiar with the negotiations said.
Some in the team urged leaving the talks in early December after a new Iranian negotiating team returned to Vienna and reversed most of the concessions the previous government made in the spring 2021, the people said.
Other tension points, the people said, included whether to get the United Nations’ atomic agency to censure Tehran last year for preventing inspectors from monitoring its nuclear work and its refusal to cooperate with a separate probe into nuclear material found in Iran. Differences also flared over how aggressively to enforce sanctions on Iran, especially with China over imports of Iranian oil.
Also debated, the people said, is at what point would it become impossible to restore a central aim of the 2015 deal—keeping Iran 12 months away from having enough nuclear fuel for an atomic weapon.
U.S. and European officials decided to plow on with the negotiations in December despite Iran’s toughening of its negotiating stance. They have also drawn back from taking action at the International Atomic Energy Agency board to censure Iran, a move that Tehran said could scuttle talks.
Mr. Nephew played a key role in designing the web of sanctions imposed on Iran from 2006-13 and was a senior member of the team that negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal. While he strongly backed that agreement, he has written that the use of broad sanctions was crucial in persuading Iran to negotiate seriously.
His appointment as deputy Iran envoy in March sparked criticism in Iran. A conservative Iranian newspaper, Vatan-e-Emrooz, photoshopped a poster from the 1997 horror film “The Devil’s Advocate,” in which an ambitious attorney becomes a lawyer for Satan. In the Iranian newspaper, Mr. Biden is depicted in the devil’s role, standing behind Mr. Nephew as the lawyer.
The talks in Vienna are aimed at agreeing on the steps Iran and the U.S. would take to re-enter the nuclear deal. A year after the Trump administration exited the deal in May 2018, Iran started expanding its nuclear program. It has now breached most limits in the 2015 accord, is producing near weapons-grade nuclear fuel and is thought to be just a few weeks from having enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb.
The Biden administration set restoring the nuclear deal as a foreign-policy goal, though it has kept almost all the Trump sanctions in place. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have criticized the administration for allowing Iran to build up its nuclear work even while the talks dragged on.
—Michael R. Gordon contributed to this article.
2. On the Brink of War With Russia, Ukrainians Are Resigned and Prepared
On the Brink of War With Russia, Ukrainians Are Resigned and Prepared
Although the nation has become used to instability, people there say something feels different this time
WSJ · by James Marson / Photographs by Anastasia Vlasova for The Wall Street Journal
“It became kind of normal to say, ‘What, again?’ ” said Mr. Kovzhun, 46 years old. “On the other hand, I tend to be panicky. I think it’s going to be a nightmare, like Syria. That’s the only thing Russians can do.”
Mr. Kovzhun is among those who in 2014 supported the army with clothes, food and equipment when forces were threadbare. Ordinary folk are ready to pitch in again, he said, adding, “We know the drill.”
Danylo Kovzhun, a computer engineer, has taught his children to handle a pistol and is planning to design weapons for the Ukrainian army.
In the eight years since Russia fomented a conflict in eastern Ukraine, life in the capital, Kyiv, has carried on. War has been confined to the east, where Ukraine’s army in recent years mostly traded sniper and artillery fire with Russian-led separatists along largely fixed front lines. Even though 14,000 people have died, the war barely registered for many.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is urging people to carry on as normal. The threat of a large-scale invasion is nothing new. Such talk, he said in a televised address on Wednesday, is “rumors among neighbors.”
Ukraine has experienced more than its share of pain and suffering, from mass starvation engineered by Stalin to some of the largest tank battles in World War II and devastation from the Chernobyl nuclear explosion in 1986. Since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, this land has struggled to find its feet.
Russia now looms over a nation that had begun to embrace Western mores and grapple with rampant corruption and widespread poverty. Many express determination that they have reason to fight to protect their fledgling democracy.
“There are millions buried here,” said Mr. Kovzhun. “There was heavy fighting here forever, every hundred years. We will have very heavy losses. But I don’t think Russia is capable of overcoming our country.”
The Remembrance Wall at St. Michael's Cathedral in Kyiv, which is dedicated to Ukrainian soldiers killed during the war in the east.
A woman walks her dog in the Podil area of Kyiv, known for its funky hipster cafes, art nouveau apartment buildings and Soviet-designed food market.
Ukrainian officials have in recent days urged people to remain calm, fearing that Russia could try to take advantage of panic. Officials complain that U.S. warnings that Russia appears ready to invade will provoke alarm.
Prominent Ukrainians are posting advice on Facebook with a hashtag in Ukrainian meaning #weareready, including a child psychologist describing how to prepare children for emergencies such as bombings and fires and how to explain war without traumatizing young ones.
The tactic of soothing the population seems so far to be working. There have been no bank runs. The currency has lost only a little value against the U.S. dollar compared with earlier crises that sent locals running to ditch their hryvnias.
The top news last Monday was the kind of domestic political strife that has hamstrung Ukraine’s 30-year efforts to establish itself as a country with aspirations to join the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Thousands gathered to support ex-President Petro Poroshenko, now an opposition leader, at a court hearing in a treason case.
The loud demonstration lasted all day near the Hyatt Regency hotel, where a group of visiting U.S. senators were staying, and continued the next day, when Mr. Poroshenko was allowed to remain free pending an investigation. He denies wrongdoing.
In the Podil district of Kyiv—known for its funky hipster cafes, art nouveau apartment buildings and Soviet-designed food market—people are largely carrying on as usual.
Locals gathering at a cafe on Kontraktova Square. Residents express a mix of trepidation and resignation about Russian intentions.
One recent day, an elderly lady walked through the snow with her pug dressed in matching coat and waterproof booties. Music echoed around an ice rink installed on a square for a winter market where locals sipped mulled wine.
The topic of war rears its head here and there. At an upscale hotel, an American guest asked whether he would still have to pay for his room if Russia invaded.
At the centuries-old Zhytniy Market, stall holders were more worried about an economic downturn and new wave of Covid infections. Customers who used to buy 1 kilogram of tvorog, a dairy product similar to cottage cheese, are now taking 200 or 300 grams, said a 69-year-old stall holder in a black fur hat who gave her name and patronymic, Valentina Mykhailivna.
“People don’t have any money, that’s why,” she said.
At Zhytniy Market, above, people are buying food in smaller amounts.
Ihor Ostapenko, 60 years old, who runs a fruit-and-vegetable stall with his wife, Svitlana, said they didn’t have anywhere else to go—a familiar note of resignation. “The leadership will go, the officials. Those who have millions. How can we leave? We don’t have money.”
Over the road at Pink Freud, Mr. Kyrychenko’s cocktail bar, the manager says he didn’t even know about the Russian troops on Ukraine’s border until his parents told him a couple of weeks ago.
The manager, 30-year-old Bohdan Chehorka, said he hadn’t noticed any alarm among patrons sipping coffee or cocktails. “My way to protect myself is not watching the news,” he said.
Mr. Kyrychenko, a 36-year-old with a buzzcut, said he sat his parents down at the end of last year to make plans for various emergencies, including if electricity is cut or phone connection lost. He said he’s packed a suitcase with essentials and arranged accommodation in the west of the country, closer to NATO members Poland and Slovakia, in case he needs to leave quickly with his family.
The scene at the Pink Freud bar in the Podil neighborhood, where the manager didn’t know about Russian troop movements until his parents mentioned it.
Vitaliy Kyrychenko, owner of the Pink Freud, has made detailed plans in case of an invasion. At the same time, he’s planning to invest in the bar.
Still, he said he’s investing in his bar and planning for summer food festivals. He is also plotting a route for a countrywide tour in a small truck that can transform into a pop-up bar in minutes.
Ukraine has been through several crises in recent years, he noted: A revolution in 2004, a tough economic crunch at the end of the 2000s, another revolution in 2014, as well as the war.
“You can’t live in fear the whole time,” he said. “Ukrainians’ skin just gets thicker, and you don’t pay attention.”
Cafe owner Mr. Nabozhniak, who sports a beard and a nose piercing, said that kind of attitude annoyed him at first when he returned from voluntary military service in 2016. Days after he finished his last operation, he was back in Kyiv where people were enjoying themselves in restaurants and nightclubs.
“It was a tricky situation to cope with,” he said. “I was living with the feeling, ‘People, there’s a war going on in Ukraine a few hundred kilometers from here.’ ”
The 31-year-old then realized that’s the way it should be: a professional army defending people’s way of life, while the rest of the country continues to live and work. He recalled his motivation for joining as defending his parents’ lives. “I don’t want them to live in a cellar,” he said.
Last week, he sent a note to employees with instructions for running the business, called Veterano Brownie, if he goes back to fight. He agreed with the landlord that if things get bad he can board up the cafe. He would try to keep paying rent and salaries as long as possible.
“I study, work, walk my dog. I even try to date women,” he said. “Life goes on whether Putin’s there or not.”
Mr. Kovzhun, the computer engineer, hatched a wartime business plan over beer at Barbakan, a dingy bar in the corner of a courtyard. He is aiming to harness his computer skills with business partners in Latvia to make weapons that can be used by the Ukrainian army.
“Life goes on whether Putin’s there or not,” said Roman Nabozhniak, a war veteran and small business owner, seen here in his cafe.
Russia may be able to wage war with airstrikes and tanks, but it wouldn’t be able to hold the whole of Ukraine, he said. Ukrainians had a generally positive attitude toward Russia until 2014, when Moscow seized Crimea and sent fighters and weapons to foment a separatist uprising in the east.
That turned many against Ukraine’s historic imperial ruler and fueled an outpouring of national pride. Ukrainians tore down most of the country’s Lenin statues. People switched to speaking Ukrainian rather than Russian. One-third of respondents in a survey at the end of last year said they would take up arms if the Russians invaded.
An unlikely alliance formed during the war between nationalists, who wanted to get to the front as fast as possible to fight Russians, and intellectuals, who collected money and supplies, ran public-relations campaigns and designed and produced equipment for the army, including surveillance drones and, in Mr. Kovzhun’s case, remote-controlled gun turrets.
Those groups are ready to go again, if needed, he said. He recently taught his children of 10 and 14 years how to disassemble and reassemble a pistol and a carbine rifle, as well as how to handle them.
“I would rather brew beer, buy a house by the seaside,” he said. “I can wish that I was not in this situation, but I am in this situation.”
Standoff With Russia
News and insights on the rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine and the West, selected by the editors
WSJ · by James Marson / Photographs by Anastasia Vlasova for The Wall Street Journal
3. Drop in Public Trust in US Military Officers Portends Danger
I have to ask, what is perception and what is reality? Are those of us who are judging senior leaders using our partisan views to judge their actions?
Excerpts:
If the U.S. military is going to reverse this dangerous decline in confidence, they are going to have to look inward and resolve to earn back the trust of Americans using the examples of Meyer and Shinseki to guide them.
Senior military officers must do everything they can to remain apolitical and tell Congress and the American public the inconvenient hard truths. As in most cases, the right path is normally going to be the most difficult one. But that’s the best choice for America.
Drop in Public Trust in US Military Officers Portends Danger
Gallup recently released a poll describing how American’s confidence in military officers had declined to its lowest level since they began measuring in 2001. The big news was that between 2017 and 2022, Americans who believe military officers possess “high ethics” declined by a full 10points down to 61 %.
An optimist could see this as unfortunate but tolerable, since military officers remain one of the most respected professions, falling only behind medical professionals and grade-school teachers. A more candid appraisal, however, would see this for what it is: a vote of declining confidence by America in its oldest and heretofore most trusted institution. The military needs to make the necessary course corrections to address this situation or be prepared to endure the consequences.
We should not be terribly surprised by these results. The public disaster that unfolded in Afghanistan in August shook Americans to their core. Many to this day cannot understand how the military was so unprepared for the sweep of the Taliban across Afghanistan. They do not understand how U.S. forces were forced to conduct an evacuation out of a civilian airport unsuited for that purpose and why America relied on terrorists to provide airport security.
Despite moments of candor—such as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley’s description of the Afghan war as a “strategic failure” —multiple days of congressional testimony failed to shed much light on these questions, and based on these poll results, Americans are not willing to let senior military leaders completely off the hook for the debacle.
But it probably isn’t just Afghanistan that led to this decline.
While it started well before the 2016 presidential campaign, it felt like a line was crossed when retired general officers joined candidates on stage at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions.
But of late, public concern has expanded to encompass officers serving on active duty.
The decline in trust occurred over four years, so without more information so it’s impossible to know what precisely caused it.
What is certain is how injurious a loss of confidence in the military leadership would be for the nation. A continuing loss of trust in military leadership will undermine military recruiting, frustrate the ability to secure the necessary funding for the military, and fundamentally harm U.S. national security.
Military recruiting is already in trouble. The Air Force has declared they are going to have a tough time meeting their targets for 2022, and the Army is already increasing bonuses to boost lagging numbers. Recruiting depends on the perception a potential recruit’s family and friends have of the military, and declining trust in military leaders will make it harder to persuade young people to join.
Furthermore, Congress and the American people trust military leaders to accurately portray the state of the U.S. military and success or failure in overseas commitments. Every spring, four-star admirals and generals are summoned to Capitol Hill to testify on their respective services and commands. If Congress and the public come to doubt the veracity of their testimony, it will undermine national security.
Like other federal agencies, the Defense Department has political appointees, in the Pentagon’s case over 40 of them. It is understood they are there to support the president’s agenda. There are also over a hundred generals and admirals working alongside the political appointees. It is common for a political appointee, such as a service secretary, to refer to the chief of staff of their service as their “battle buddy”—a special term of endearment in the military. And senior officers often make similar references to their civilian bosses.
Indeed, it is beneficial they have an effective working relationship. But they are not “buddies,” and such characterizations help no one.
There is a bright line that must never be crossed between appointees and senior military officers, who must remain above the fray of politics to gain and maintain the nation’s enduring trust.
Before any senior military official is confirmed by the Senate, they are required to affirmatively answer the question: “Do you agree, when asked before this committee, to give your personal views, even if your views differ from the administration?”
Often, this requirement places senior military officers in a conundrum, because contradicting the administration results in their removal or elimination for further advancement. Some officers navigate that dilemma by choosing a less than fulsome answer.
Others take a harder road. Two examples of the latter come to mind.
In 1980, testifying before Congress, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Edward “Shy” Myer reported the U.S Army was essentially “hollow,” and that stateside Army companies and platoons had been “zeroed out.” The headlines his statement created were not welcomed by the administration.
When in 2003 Congress asked Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki how many troops it would take to stabilize Iraq, he gave his personal, professional opinion of 500,000. It was not what the administration wanted to hear, and the deputy secretary of defense repudiated his testimony. In time, however, his judgment was vindicated.
If the U.S. military is going to reverse this dangerous decline in confidence, they are going to have to look inward and resolve to earn back the trust of Americans using the examples of Meyer and Shinseki to guide them.
Senior military officers must do everything they can to remain apolitical and tell Congress and the American public the inconvenient hard truths. As in most cases, the right path is normally going to be the most difficult one. But that’s the best choice for America.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
4. Correcting Misinformation around the Smith-Mundt Act Seventy-Seven Years after it was Introduced
I do not know anyone who knows more about Smith-Mundt and the history of psychological warfare, psychological operations, public diplomacy, USIA, information and influence activities, and political warfare than Matt Armstrong.
I have to admit that I used to believe that Smith Mundt prevented the dissemination of information in the US.
In the future, whenever I read or hear someone referencing Smith-Mundt, I am going to ask them if they have read this essay and history.
Correcting Misinformation around the Smith-Mundt Act Seventy-Seven Years after it was Introduced
On January 24, 1945, Congressman Karl Earl Mundt, Republican from South Dakota, introduced a bill “to transmit knowledge and understanding to the greatest number of people” across the Pan American Union. The method would be exchanging elementary and high school teachers in training. Put another way, the Mundt bill was a scholarship program for student-teachers in their junior year of college, provided they were in good standing with the American Association of Teachers Colleges. Before he was elected to the House in 1938, Mundt had been a schoolteacher, school superintendent, a college instructor, a co-founder of the National Forensic League (since renamed the National Speech and Debate Association), and both he and his wife were active with the South Dakota Poetry Society. Karl Mundt appreciated the value of words and ideas. The bill he introduced seventy-seven years ago today would go through several iterations before being signed into law three years and three days later by President Truman as the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. Originally intended to create and foster common understanding between peoples, to preemptively as well as reactively counter misinformation and disinformation, today its purpose and evolution are clouded by an ironic combination of misinformation and disinformation.
Unless you have been reading my writings on the Smith-Mundt Act over the past several years, what you think you know about the act is likely wrong. It is really that simple. Much of the academic and professional literature about the legislation’s origination, purpose, and evolution is based on backward projections of intentionally destructive modern narratives and demonstrably false assumptions. The result is a lot of articles, analyses, and recommendations that promulgate misinformation that does more than cloud history to prevent realizing the relevance of the past to the present, they also wrongly shift the focus of any remedy onto a symptom rather than on the underlying problems.
On this anniversary of the bill, I want to briefly address the falsified record of the Smith-Mundt Act’s original purpose and its trajectory. These details are relevant now as conversations happening today continue to open with and promulgate demonstrably false declarations about the legislation to support some talking point.
I will admit that some of my earlier writings on the subject did include some of these assumptions. When I saw inconsistencies and logical fallacies, I continued my research. For example, I previously accepted the logical argument heard repeatedly that “dissemination abroad” in the original legislation was restrictive language imposed onto the department. After all, the thinking went, the Congress was deeply concerned about the trustworthiness of the State Department, so it wanted to prevent it from influencing Americans at home. However, if this was true, where are the conversations and records supporting this remedy? When opposition to the information program was raised, including when that opposition was focused on distrust of the department, the prescription given denying the authorizing as an unnecessary expenditure or was simply absurd (such as having the Daughters of the American Revolution edit VOA scripts). When the “important controls and safeguards” for the information program were listed, never did the list nor any discussion around the list ever assert that a control or safeguard should be making sure Americans could never see what was said and done in their name and with their tax dollars abroad, despite what Zorinsky later claimed. The absence of evidence is not evidence.
Consider that the department at the time was under pressure to be more open with its activities both abroad and at home. Congress, and the press, wanted more transparency and oversight, not less. Knowing that it could not exercise the necessary oversight, Congress established two advisory commissions to provide experienced and focused oversight, one for the exchange programs and the other for the information program (these were later merged as the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, now a body whose membership, efficacy, and value bear no semblance to what it had or what is needed). The very position of the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, originally established in December 1944 as the Assistant Secretary for Public and Cultural Relations, reflected the department’s overdue appreciation for the importance of public opinion at home, in Congress, and abroad to the department and the nation’s foreign policy. The public information function before December 1944 was under the assistant secretary for administration. The new position was charged with the department’s domestic and foreign information portfolios, the department’s information policy, coordinating the department’s information policy with other departments and agencies, and managing the department’s exchange programs, which were also influence operations. How did this square then with the narrative that “dissemination abroad” was a preventative measure? It did not because those words were requested by the State Department to explicitly grant global authority for the informational programs as I found in several transcripts. Those two words rendered moot confusion over the department’s existing authorities, which would be relevant as wartime special authorities expired, which were a mess and the department’s lawyers believed would ultimately severely restrict where the department’s information programs could operate. This is just one point of failure in prior research with the reality that is well-documented in my forthcoming book. There are many, many significant corrections to the history before the Smith-Mundt Act, the evolution of the bills, various intentions during the three years and three days, and the evolution of the Act afterward (my book goes through to 2013). My favorite in the category of misreported intentions is the significant two-year effort to move the Voice of America into a government-funded non-profit overseen by a board of trustees and with a full-time chief executive officer, who would be paid a market and not government rate. This effort that ranked higher on the State Department’s legislative priorities than the authorities it required for its global public affairs in the Mundt bill.
The mythology of the Smith-Mundt Act generally looks something like this: Since 1948, the Smith-Mundt Act prohibited the State Department and USIA from disseminating government-produced programming within the US over fears these agencies would “propagandize” the American people. If you’ve read this far, you probably sense this statement is false. There is more proof this is false beyond the “dissemination abroad” phrase above and beyond the pressure placed on the State Department to be more transparent. Now, I’m not saying limitations did not appear later, but I’ll get to those.
First, there is a big difference between “disseminate” and “make accessible.” The federal court that ruled USIA material was exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests due to Zorinsky’s 1985 amendment that failed to account for the distinction. The State Department’s informational programs included books, libraries, speaker tours, posters, various engagements by public affairs officers abroad (forgotten is a key feature of the Smith-Mundt Act was increasing the entertainment expense limit for PAOs), various educational programs (language to work skills, including accounting at one post), and radio programs operating before the Smith-Mundt Act passed, most of which were inherited from the Office of War Information and the Office of Inter-American Affairs in September 1945 pursuant to an executive order of 31 August 1945 and continued under implicit authorities of appropriations. Much of these materials were not in English nor aimed at the US mainland. As the department’s Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs wrote in 1949, the public merely needed to ask for the materials, which would be a request. Indeed the “on request” point is important, but that’s for the next point. Sticking with “disseminate” versus “make accessible,” two of the “important controls and safeguards” come into play. The first was Sec. 502 of the original Act, which I refer to as the “sunset clause.” This section, which is 22 USC 1462 today, has the government standing down “whenever private information dissemination is found to be adequate.” Central to the discussions around the broad information programs, which were broader than most modern view of “information,” was the point the department repeated ad nauseam: the government’s role was to be temporary and facilitative and not to compete with private media. This brings in Sec. 1005 (today 22 USC 1437, it’s not a coincidence that both 22 USC 1437 and 22 USC 1462 are highlighted in the “modernization” amendment of 2013 as I successfully argued to include references to these two sections) which instructs the department to rely on private industry as much as possible. This does not mean the department was silenced domestically. In fact, it was quite vocal and active domestically through several channels, including NBC’s University of the Air and other programs to reach Americans directly, and through private media. As specific programs intended for audiences abroad, they were not seen as relevant to Americans, but they could access them if they wished.
Next up is how some commentators point to the “on request” language in the general authorization section of the Act (Sec. 501) as another barrier to domestic access. They are partly correct in that view but for a substantially different reason than they typically argue. The “on request” was an intentional hurdle to prevent blanket requests for scripts and materials. It would also be interpreted to mean the materials could not be unilaterally be sent to an American or an American audience, a point that later ossified as requiring ultimately formal Congressional requests for materials while forgetting the reason why. The State Department, and Members of Congress, expected some Members, and some in the press, would make broad and timeless requests for “every script from yesterday.” The department thus asked for the “on request” language arguing that if this slight administrative hurdle was not in place, the department would have to ask for a larger appropriation to cover the translators, filing clerks, and filing cabinets to satisfy blanket demands for a constant flow of reams of paper to offices that would never be read. This point of accessibility is what Fulbright targeted with his amendment in 1972 in PL 92-352. Fulbright added “for examination only to Members of Congress” to intentionally restrict who may access the material and how they may use it after another Senator broadcast USIA material on the Senator’s public access channel which the Acting Attorney General of the US argued was allowable under the Act.
For Senator Edward Zorinsky, Democrat from Nebraska, this left open a “loophole” he sought to close. In 1985, Zorinsky compared USIA to a Soviet propaganda agency should its material be available to Americans. Zorinsky’s beef with USIA is never explored by those who invoke his amendment, though authors seemingly love to cite his statement, leaving out the context, of course: “The American taxpayer certainly does not need or want his tax dollars used to support U.S. Government propaganda directed at him or her.” I already mentioned above how a federal court interpreted Zorinsky’s amendment, which cemented the view the Smith-Mundt Act was some kind of “anti-propaganda” law, which it wasn’t.
It amazes me how law review articles argue that Smith-Mundt is a blanket anti-propaganda law. Not one of the articles that I have reviewed, and I’ve reviewed a painful number over many years, address the point that multiple government agencies speak to the American public, including those involved in foreign affairs, and yet statutory language in Title 20 (foreign affairs) that specifically calls out the State Department, USIA, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (established in 1994 under USIA, becoming an independent federal agency in 1999, and since renamed the US Agency for Global Media) somehow applies to the whole of government, including those activities specifically under different statutory titles and their limits. Further, the Act did not even apply to the whole of the State Department. None of the law review articles or other academic papers explore the narrative role played by USIA “partisans” to assert Smith-Mundt’s “firewall,” as the Fulbright-Zorinsky barrier came to be known (though without an understanding of the roots with the “Since 1948” and all that), as a way to keep “public diplomacy” isolated within the State Department after 1999 when USIA was finally shuttered. (See The Irony of Misinformation and USIA.) I literally, not figuratively, had more than one USIA alumni yell at me that my work to fix the perceptions and language of the Smith-Mundt Act would “destroy” public diplomacy. Myths are hard to let go, especially after decades of hearing them.
The last point I want to make about correcting the narrative of the Smith-Mundt Act is the legislation was originally and fundamentally about connecting people. Mundt’s bill that he introduced seventy-four years ago today was an exchange bill aimed at teachers. Truth be told, it was not his first such bill. In March 1943, he introduced a bill “to promote solidarity among the republics represented in the Pan American Union” by increasing familiarity and understanding between cultures. Mundt believed in engaging people early and at young ages so he focused on elementary and high school teachers (literally to teach the teachers, an expression some readers may be familiar with). The bill would have authorized scholarships of $1,000 to 1,000 students at US teaching colleges, and equal value and number at equivalent schools across the Pan American Union. The Secretary of State liked the idea, but wrote, “In view of the fact that the majority of students who wish to come to the United States to study do not possess funds to provide for their transportation expenses, tuition and laboratory fees it is apparent that the sum of $1,000 for each scholarship holder is inadequate. Since the cost of living varies from place to place, some students would probably need $125.00 a month, which would amount to $1,500 for a twelve-month period.” The Secretary proposed doubling the scholarship for each student and requiring language proficiency, or language training, “to derive the maximum benefit from their scholarships.” This 1943 bill of Mundt’s failed to move due to the war, as did a similar bill from California Congressman Jerry Voorhis (whose seat was later taken by Richard Nixon) introduced two months earlier. Mundt’s 1945 bill was quickly amended in October 1945 after the President’s executive order moving the information programs of the Office of War Information and the Office of Inter-American Affairs to the State Department pending a plan of action and proposed structure to be delivered to the President by the end of the year. Ultimately, the Mundt bill would support a massive exchange program across all disciplines and not just education. An amendment to the Surplus Property Act in 1946, which the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs named the Fulbright Act, relied on monies from the future Smith-Mundt Act to operate. See my The Incompleteness of the Fulbright Paradox, which could be alternatively titled “Busting the Lie About the Fulbright Act.” This reality was erased by the ego of Fulbright with the Fulbright-Hayes Act of 1961 and our collective view of exchanges has since been reduced to a focus on education and culture, with some elitist elements sprinkled in (aka “they were a Fulbright scholar”).
On this anniversary of the Smith-Mundt Act’s true introduction, and after today, my ask of you is the next time you hear someone claim they cannot do something because of the Smith-Mundt Act or they tell you the Act is an anti-propaganda law or otherwise invoke the legislation, ask them why they think that. Most likely, they’ll have no evidence but the myths they were told in some foreign affairs class, a government schoolhouse (Service War Colleges, National Defense University, Defense Information School, Foreign Service Institute, etc.), or simply at work (notably in some government office). The misinformation around this legislation is truly ironic.
5. Pentagon Puts 8,500 Troops On ‘Heightened Alert’ Over Russian Threat To Ukraine
Pentagon Puts 8,500 Troops On ‘Heightened Alert’ Over Russian Threat To Ukraine
The force would not seek to stop an invasion, but to protect NATO’s Eastern flank.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin put about 8,500 U.S.-based troops on heightened alert Monday to be ready to deploy to Europe and support NATO if Russia invades Ukraine.
Some of those units—which include logistics, medical, transportation, and intelligence and surveillance support elements—could join a multinational NATO response force of about 40,000 troops. Other U.S. forces already in Europe could be sent to NATO’s eastern flank: Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland.
The call-up occurs one day after the State Department ordered all family members of U.S. diplomatic staff to leave Ukraine, citing increased indications that Russia may invade. The U.S. is sending pallets of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine to help those forces defend themselves.
Russia has amassed more than 100,000 troops along the Ukrainian border and has been conducting large military exercises in Belarus.
“It’s very clear that the Russians have no intention right now of de-escalating,” said Pentagon press secretary John Kirby.
Kirby said no decision has been made to deploy the forces that are now on alert, nor where in Europe they might go.
“It does not mean they are going to be jumping on gray tails and leaving” right away, Kirby said, referring to the Air Force’s airlift capabilities of forces and equipment.
The call-up builds on other Western responses to the Russian moves. Last week, the Pentagon announced that the Truman carrier strike group would be conducting large-scale naval exercises in the Mediterranean. On Monday, NATO officials said the strike group was operating under alliance command, a post-Cold War first.
The United Kingdom has flown anti-tank weapons into Ukraine as well.
The U.S. already has some forces in Ukraine. For example, elements of the Florida National Guard are currently deployed there as part of a regular rotational force that trains and equips Ukrainian forces.
6. Can threats of a US-Backed Ukraine Insurgency Deter a Russian invasion?
An insurgency implies a successful Russian invasion and occupation. We should think in terms of resistance to both the attack and the attempt to occupy and help the Ukranians drive the cost of the attack and attempted occupation to a level the Russians cannot sustain. And more importantly before the attack the Ukranians should demonstrate unconventional deterrence to show the Russians the costs would be so high due to popular resistance in support of Ukrainian and partner conventional military capabilities that Russia could be deterred.
Can threats of a US-Backed Ukraine Insurgency Deter a Russian invasion?
Prospects for a guerrilla war in Donbas and Crimea are dim, analyst Stephen R. Weissman says
U.S. officials, including members of Congress, have warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that if he orders an invasion of Ukraine, America and its allies will help Ukrainians mount an armed resistance. To amplify their point, the U.S. has been expediting shipments of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and other weapons to the beleaguered Ukrainians. CIA and Special Forces paramilitary teams meanwhile, have reportedly been helping prepare their army and citizen militias for the kind of long haul gueriilla war not seen since in Europe since the Nazi occupations of World War Two.
Is it real, or a bluff? Whatever, officials need to stop and reflect upon the real historical experience of recent CIA-supported insurgencies in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. They should further take into account the challenging political and cultural environment facing the U.S. and its allies in the areas of Ukraine that Russia would most likely occupy.
According to the New York Times, in late December the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, told a Russian General that while an invasion could “probably roll over” Ukrainian forces, it would be followed “by a bloody insurgency similar to the one that led to the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan more than three decades ago.” Milley and other top officials are contemplating a Ukrainian version of CIA covert aid to the Afghan They seem fascinated by the role of U.S.-supplied Stingers in potentially neutralizing the Soviets’ air power and helping force their withdrawal. Indeed, the U.S. has just given Baltic countries permission to transfer Stingers to Ukraine.
However, careful studies by respected political scientists and historians who have combed through declassified Soviet documents suggest that the decade-long CIA program was not by itself sufficient to drive the Soviets out. While the mujahiddeen fighters imposed great financial and human costs on the Soviets, the decisive factor in the Red Army ’s withdrawal was the political agenda of President Mikhail Gorbachev, who wished to concentrate on domestic economic reforms (perestroika), and whose key advisers were disillusioned with the effort to impose social customs-violating programs on Afghanistan. Gorbachev also believed cooperation with the West in resolving regional conflicts would facilitate arms control and trade agreements beneficial to perestroika. In contrast, Vladimir Putin has no such reform agenda. And he seems determined to prevent his Western flank from falling under the influence of NATO, a strategic objective far more important to him than the distant Afghanistan was to Gorbachev.
As for the Stingers, it is now known that the Soviets made the key decisions to depart Afghanistan barely a month and a half after the first Stinger “kills”—hardly enough time for them to have made a major impact on the war. And, according to political scientist Alan Kuperman, founding coordinator of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project at the University of Texas, the Soviets “fairly quickly” developed “technical and tactical” means to mitigate their effects.
Worlds Apart
The most likely Putin ploy would be to occupy the Eastern Donbas, half of which is controlled by Russian-supported separatist forces, plus areas adjoining the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed following the pro-Western Maidan revolution of 2014. These zones contain populations that have consistently voted for “pro-Russian” parties. While it is difficult to know precisely how these people feel today about the Ukrainian government, the separatists and the Russians, these areas are not promising terrain for an anti-Russian guerilla campaign. That’s quite a contrast with the main constituencies for the U.S.-backed insurgencies in Afghanistan (rural anti-Communist Muslims), Libya (the long disaffected eastern region) and Syria (politically excluded Sunni Muslims). In Eastern Donbas, the prospect of U.S. support for an insurgency is unlikely to give pause to the Russian behemoth. Worse, if put into effect, it could provoke a brutal retaliation, as in the Syrian civil war, where Russia’s air escalation helped defeat CIA-backed rebels.
Target Kyiv?
Meanwhile, there’s a new wrinkle: An alleged Putin plan for destabilization and regime change in Kyiv, iBritish intelligence reports that Russia is “developing plans” to install a pro-Russian leader in Kyiv and has been in contact with Ukrainian political figures to that effect. The report is notably vague on the details. Also, the U.S. Treasury Department has designated two current members of Ukraine’s parliament and two former officials for sanctions on grounds that they have acted to further Russian “influence” and “destabilization.” Yet neither report connects these potentially subversive activities to a planned invasion. Furthermore, U.S. intelligence officials have recently said that “the least likely possibility was a full-scale invasion in which the Russians try to take the capital.” And they have pointed to Russian plans for so-called “false flag” sabotage attacks in Eastern Ukraine that could be used to justify an invasion, presumably in that region.
In the unlikely event of a successful Russian-backed coup provoking large-scale violent resistance, one could certainly imagine a large military invasion encompassing Kyiv. Still, as indicated by the circumstances of Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and Putin’s. conception of Russian strategic interests, it is also unlikely that U.S. and allied support for an insurgency would dissuade Putin from moving forward.
Both sides should want to avoid military conflict, whether confined to Eastern and Southern Ukraine or encompassing a broader area. This could motivate them to jumpstart the dormant 2015 Russia-Ukraine Minsk II agreement, which provides for the withdrawal of Russian and separatist forces from the Donbas in return for regional autonomy and cooperation with Russia—thus providing an exit ramp to avoid a conflict that could spiral out of hand. Both sides say they are for it, but for the moment, at least, they’re not engaging.
Policy makers in the executive and legislative branches should consider realities, not historical myths, in contemplating possible support of an insurgency against a major regional power.
Stephen R. Weissman, former Staff Director of the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Africa, has written widely on CIA covert action as well as U.S. policy toward civil wars in Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya and Syria.
7. Opinion | The ‘Havana syndrome’ is still a mystery. It is too soon to stop investigating.
Like Agent Orange, Gulf War Syndrome, and burn pits (among others), we are not done with Havana Syndrome. More work needs to be done.
Opinion | The ‘Havana syndrome’ is still a mystery. It is too soon to stop investigating.
The CIA’s interim finding that a single global power is probably not carrying out attacks on U.S. intelligence and diplomatic officials abroad is hardly the last word. The intelligence community must continue to hunt for who or what is behind it, and the Biden administration must show compassion to a large cohort of government employees in distress.
What’s been called “Havana syndrome” began in 2016, when U.S. officials stationed in Cuba reported symptoms that included headaches, dizziness, blurred vision and memory loss after hearing strange noises and feeling odd sensations. A report from the National Academy of Sciences in 2020 suggested a cause for the injuries could be the use of “directed, pulsed radio frequency” energy. As the number of cases blossomed, the diagnoses became more varied. The perpetrator has never been identified.
Much speculation has focused in recent years on Russia, which has denied responsibility. Now a senior CIA official has announced, “We have assessed that it is unlikely that a foreign actor, including Russia, is conducting a sustained, worldwide campaign harming U.S. personnel with a weapon or mechanism.” This statement does not exclude the possibility that lesser actors — perhaps subcontracted — are responsible for the attacks, nor does it rule out that multiple sources are to blame. That might explain the diverse locations where the victims report being hit, although if such a large group of attackers was afoot, it might also increase the chances the culprits would be caught. So far, no one has. The intelligence community must keep burrowing into the question, and we hope that a report from a panel of experts who have scrutinized the classified material will be forthcoming soon.
President Donald Trump and his administration fumbled a response to the problem. President Biden and Congress have done a considerably better job over the past year, with the signing into law of a bill to address the needs of those affected. Initially, there were a few dozen cases, and a subset of those victims reported very similar symptoms. In the past year, however, the number of cases has exploded to more than 1,000 with a heterogeneity of symptoms. The two major clusters have been from Havana and Vienna, although other cases have occurred around the world.
This poses a difficult but not insurmountable challenge for the CIA and the administration. They must address all — and we mean every last one — of the employees with the care and attention befitting Americans who went abroad to serve their country. No doubt among such a large group there will be conditions that can be explained by other factors, such as environmental hazards and extremely stressful duty, but no one should be excluded casually. The administration must show all those considering a post abroad that the United States will have their back, no matter what. At the same time, there is a smaller group of victims with injuries that may help point the way to a cause and perpetrators, and there is every reason to focus on them for forensic clues. This troubling challenge is not yet resolved.
8. What Scenarios Might Emerge in Ukraine?
From the Moscow Times. For your scorecards to keep track.
Annexing the Donbas
"Limited Operation"
Full invasion
Unconventional War
What Scenarios Might Emerge in Ukraine? - The Moscow Times
As Western countries recall diplomats from Kyiv amid fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, The Moscow Times asked experts what likely scenarios could emerge in the coming weeks.
Here’s our roundup:
Annexing the Donbas
Annexing the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics — unrecognized states proclaimed by pro-Russian separatists in East Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2014 — has been a constant of Russia’s political agenda.
Vocal supporters of the idea include RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and leaders of the loyal “systemic” opposition parties in the State Duma.
In December, President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of committing “genocide” against the local Russian-speaking population.
Such comments could provide a pretext for formally deploying Russian troops to the Donbas, perhaps seizing the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions controlled by Kyiv.
A Ukrainian diplomat who wished to remain anonymous told The Moscow Times that the introduction of troops to the Donbas might be a first step for Russia, which would then gauge Western reaction before moving further.
Though Russian forces are widely believed to have been present in the Donbas since the earliest days of the spring 2014 uprising, Russia has always denied its involvement in the region.
Moscow maintains that the war in Donbas is an internal Ukrainian conflict, and that it has no troops deployed in the territory.
For the Donbas People’s Republics, which have always stated their desire to join Russia over independence, official recognition could well be a prelude to Crimea-style annexation by Russia.
However, annexing the Donbas would mark a sea-change in Russian strategy toward Ukraine, which has counted on the territory’s eventual reincorporation into Ukraine.
Under the 2015 Minsk Agreements, which ended full-scale war in the Donbas, the region was to receive broad autonomy within Ukraine, which Moscow hoped would serve as a veto on Kyiv’s pro-Western ambitions.
"Limited Operation"
A second possible scenario is a so-called “limited operation.”
Falling short of a full-scale invasion, this option would see Russia refrain from occupying territory and instead focus on dealing a short, sharp defeat to the Ukrainian army.
This option attracted some attention after Joe Biden appeared to suggest that Washington would react less harshly to a limited incursion than to an all-out war.
A model for such an operation could be Russia’s August 2008 war with Georgia, when a Georgian attack on the breakaway province of South Ossetia prompted a massive Russian attack which quickly defeated the Georgian army and briefly occupied much of the country.
In the Ukrainian case, said Mark Galeotti, an analyst at the UK’s Royal United Services Institute think tank, such an operation would be aimed at demonstrating Russia’s ability to defeat Kyiv’s armed forces, while also exposing the West’s inability to help.
“It would be a way of getting Ukraine to think again about Minsk-2,” said Galeotti, referring to the stalled peace process Moscow imposed on Kyiv after its forces routed Ukraine’s from the Donbas in 2015.
But while such an operation would spare Russia the costs of long-term occupation of a hostile population, it might not result in its desired goals being achieved.
With Moscow having made clear that its primary goal remains a brand new settlement keeping Ukraine out of Nato, the example of Georgia — where military defeat did not fundamentally change the country’s pro-Western orientation — may look less attractive.
“The issue at stake here is Ukraine as such,” said Berlin-based Donbas analyst Nikolaus von Twickle, who suggested that Moscow’s goals outstrip a limited incursion.
“Ultimately this is about whether Kyiv is pro-Western or pro-Moscow,” he said.
Full invasion
Experts believe a full-scale invasion of Ukraine is the least likely of the possible scenarios.
Though Russia has deployed around 175,000 troops along the length of the Ukrainian border, an all-out offensive — which would likely involve storming large cities including Kharkiv, Kyiv and Odesa — would likely come at enormous cost to the Russian army, and incur the harshest possible sanctions from the rest of the world.
“The Russian army has always struggled in cities. Just look at Grozny,” said Galeotti, the Chechen capital, which was devastated by air bombardment after Russian troops failed to take it.
For Galeotti, a similar attack on Kharkiv or Kyiv is much harder to imagine, given the cultural proximity that many Russians feel with Ukrainians.
Though U.S. and British intelligence have claimed that Russia is lining up pro-Moscow Ukrainian politicians to head a new administration in Kyiv — presumably after a successful bid at regime change — experts have cast doubt on the idea.
However, the enormous difficulties that an invasion would entail does not necessarily rule out the prospect altogether.
With Putin himself deeply personally invested in the Ukrainian question, and his decision-making privy only to a handful of top advisors, the Russian president may be underestimating the resistance that a Russian attack would meet in Ukraine.
“Moscow has repeatedly shown that it has a very limited ability to understand what is going on in Ukraine,” said Galeotti, who drew an analogy with the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan, which was opposed by the U.S.S.R.’s political leadership, and opposed by its military top brass.
“A lot depends on the quality of briefing in Moscow,” Galeotti added.
Unconventional War
One way for Moscow to pressure Ukraine without the downsides of open combat would be through unconventional methods, including escalated cyber and psychological warfare.
On Monday, an article in the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper by a group of Ukrainian military experts argued that Russian troop numbers on the border had not reached the required level for an all-out offensive, and that in the immediate term escalated cyberwarfare from Moscow was more likely.
“A full-scale invasion to capture most or all of Ukraine in the near future seems unlikely,” they wrote.
Instead, they described a scenario in which Russia escalates disinformation and cyberwarfare to soften up Ukraine before an eventual attack.
Earlier this month, a major cyberattack on Ukrainian government facilities was blamed on Belarusian hackers, possibly acting with Russian support.
However, the extent to which such “hybrid” warfare tactics could achieve Moscow’s goal of bringing Ukraine back into its fold is unclear.
With Russia’s goals of forcing fundamental political change on Kyiv likely requiring either a deal with Washington or some level of military conquest of Ukraine, hybrid warfare may only get Moscow so far.
“The country must prepare for war,” wrote Ukrainska Pravda. “This is the main thing.”
9. How a Russian cyberwar in Ukraine could ripple out globally
This could be the first conflict with a major cyber component that affects more than military operations and governmentsa.
Excerpts:
Leaks and disinformation have continued to be important tools for Moscow. US and European elections have been plagued repeatedly by cyber-enabled disinformation at Russia’s direction. At a moment of more fragile alliances and complicated political environments in Europe and the United States, Putin can achieve important goals by shaping public conversation and perception as war in Europe looms.
“These cyber incidents can be nonviolent, they are reversible, and most of the consequences are in perception,” says Hultquist. “They corrode institutions, they make us look insecure, they make governments look weak. They often don’t rise to the level that would provoke an actual physical, military response. I believe these capabilities are on the table.”
How a Russian cyberwar in Ukraine could ripple out globally
Related Story
Russia and Ukraine promised to cooperate and help catch the world’s most successful hackers. But things didn’t quite go to plan.
Russia has sent more than 100,000 soldiers to the nation's border with Ukraine, threatening a war unlike anything Europe has seen in decades. Though there hasn’t been any shooting yet, cyber operations are already underway.
Last week, hackers defaced dozens of government websites in Ukraine, a technically simple but attention-grabbing act that generated global headlines. More quietly, they also placed destructive malware inside Ukrainian government agencies, an operation first discovered by researchers at Microsoft. It’s not clear yet who is responsible, but Russia is the leading suspect.
But while Ukraine continues to feel the brunt of Russia’s attacks, government and cybersecurity experts are worried that these hacking offensives could spill out globally, threatening Europe, the United States, and beyond.
On January 18, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned critical infrastructure operators to take “urgent, near-term steps” against cyber threats, citing the recent attacks against Ukraine as a reason to be on alert for possible threats to US assets. The agency also pointed to two cyberattacks from 2017, NotPetya and WannaCry, which both spiraled out of control from their initial targets, spread rapidly around the internet, and impacted the entire world at a cost of billions of dollars. The parallels are clear: NotPetya was a Russian cyberattack targeting Ukraine during a time of high tensions.
“Aggressive cyber operations are tools that can be used before bullets and missiles fly,” says John Hultquist, head of intelligence for the cybersecurity firm Mandiant. “For that exact reason, it’s a tool that can be used against the United States and allies as the situation further deteriorates. Especially if the US and its allies take a more aggressive stance against Russia.”
That looks increasingly possible. President Joe Biden said during a press conference January 19 that the US could respond to future Russian cyberattacks against Ukraine with its own cyber capabilities, further raising the specter of conflict spreading.
“My guess is he will move in,” Biden said when asked if he thought Russia’s President Vladimir Putin would invade Ukraine.
Related Story
Washington has sanctioned Russian cybersecurity firm Positive Technologies. US intelligence reports claim it provides hacking tools and runs operations for the Kremlin.
Unintentional consequences?
The knock-on effects for the rest of the world might not be limited to intentional reprisals by Russian operatives. Unlike old-fashioned war, cyberwar is not confined by borders and can more easily spiral out of control.
Ukraine has been on the receiving end of aggressive Russian cyber operations for the last decade and has suffered invasion and military intervention from Moscow since 2014. In 2015 and 2016, Russian hackers attacked Ukraine’s power grid and turned out the lights in the capital city of Kyiv— unparalleled acts that haven't been carried out anywhere else before or since.
The 2017 NotPetya cyberattack, once again ordered by Moscow, was directed initially at Ukrainian private companies before it spilled over and destroyed systems around the world.
NotPetya masqueraded as ransomware, but in fact it was a purely destructive and highly viral piece of code. The destructive malware seen in Ukraine last week, now known as WhisperGate, also pretended to be ransomware while aiming to destroy key data that renders machines inoperable. Experts say WhisperGate is “reminiscent” of NotPetya, down to the technical processes that achieve destruction, but that there are notable differences. For one, WhisperGate is less sophisticated and is not designed to spread rapidly in the same way. Russia has denied involvement, and no definitive link points to Moscow.
NotPetya incapacitated shipping ports and left several giant multinational corporations and government agencies unable to function. Almost anyone who did business with Ukraine was affected because the Russians secretly poisoned software used by everyone who pays taxes or does business in the country.
The White House said the attack caused more than $10 billion in global damage and deemed it “the most destructive and costly cyberattack in history.”
Since 2017, there has been ongoing debate about whether the international victims were merely unintentional collateral damage or whether the attack targeted companies doing business with Russia’s enemies. What is clear is that it can happen again.
Accident or not, Hultquist anticipates that we will see cyber operations from Russia’s military intelligence agency GRU, the organization behind many of the most aggressive hacks of all time, both inside and outside Ukraine. The GRU’s most notorious hacking group, dubbed Sandworm by experts, is responsible for a long list of greatest hits including the 2015 Ukrainian power grid hack, the 2017 NotPetya hacks, interference in US and French elections, and the Olympics opening ceremony hack in the wake of a Russian doping controversy that left the country excluded from the games.
Hultquist is also looking out for another group, known to experts as Berserk Bear, that originates from the Russian intelligence agency FSB. In 2020, US officials warned of the threat the group poses to government networks. The German government said the same group had achieved “longstanding compromises” at companies as they targeted energy, water, and power sectors.
“These guys have been going after this critical infrastructure for a long, a long time now, almost a decade,” says Hultquist. “Even though we’ve caught them on many occasions, it’s reasonable to assume that they still have access in certain areas.”
Related Story
And why it could take months more to discover how many other governments and companies have been breached.
A sophisticated toolbox
There is serious debate about the calculus inside Russia and what kind of aggression Moscow would want to undertake outside of Ukraine.
“I think it’s pretty likely that the Russians will not target our own systems, our own critical infrastructure,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, a longtime expert on Russian cyber activity and founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator in Washington. “The last thing they’ll want to do is escalate a conflict with the United States in the midst of trying to fight a war with Ukraine.”
No one fully understands what goes into Moscow’s math in this fast-moving situation. American leadership now predicts that Russia will invade Ukraine. But Russia has demonstrated repeatedly that, when it comes to cyber, they have a large and varied toolbox. Sometimes they use it for something as relatively simple but effective as a disinformation campaign, intended to destabilize or divide adversaries. They’re also capable of developing and deploying some of the most complex and aggressive cyber operations in the world.
In 2014, as Ukraine plunged into another crisis and Russia invaded Crimea, Russian hackers secretly recorded the call of a US diplomat frustrated with European inaction who said “Fuck the EU” to a colleague. They leaked the call online in an attempt to sow chaos in the West’s alliances as a prelude to intensifying information operations by Russia.
Leaks and disinformation have continued to be important tools for Moscow. US and European elections have been plagued repeatedly by cyber-enabled disinformation at Russia’s direction. At a moment of more fragile alliances and complicated political environments in Europe and the United States, Putin can achieve important goals by shaping public conversation and perception as war in Europe looms.
“These cyber incidents can be nonviolent, they are reversible, and most of the consequences are in perception,” says Hultquist. “They corrode institutions, they make us look insecure, they make governments look weak. They often don’t rise to the level that would provoke an actual physical, military response. I believe these capabilities are on the table.”
10. Joint Hypersonic Transition Office Hosts First Hypersonic Workforce Event
I saw this headline and I thought it signaled some kind of leap in productivity for a hypersonic workforce.Maybe we will be able to work at warp speed in the future. (note attempt at humor).
Joint Hypersonic Transition Office Hosts First Hypersonic Workforce Event
The Joint Hypersonic Transition Office (JHTO) University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics (UCAH) hosted a student meet and greet at the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) SciTech Forum in San Diego, California, on January 5, 2020.
AIAA SciTech Forum is the world’s largest aerospace research, development, and technology event. The meet and greet was a chance for interested students to talk to professionals in the community, gain insight, and understand career and scholastic opportunities. Seventy experts from across the spectrum of the hypersonic community joined more than 50 students at the event.
“This meet and greet was an opportunity to inspire students and to understand the future of hypersonics;” stated Dr. Gillian Bussey, Director, JHTO. “The JHTO is planning to move out across a spectrum of workforce strategies that include surveys, research, curricula, internships, scholarships, and today’s event provided momentum for these student activities in 2022.”
In October 2021, the JHTO selected 18 U.S. university-led research teams from UCAH as awardees for prototyping contracts totaling $25.5 million. The government anticipates awarding numerous prototyping/research projects each fiscal year. The project topics will span various areas within applied and advanced research.
About the University Consortium of Applied Hypersonics (UCAH)
UCAH is a collective network of universities partnering with government, industry, national laboratories, federally funded research and development centers, and university-affiliated research centers to serve the U.S. Department of Defense requirements in hypersonics-related science and technology workforce development, and technology transition. UCAH is a five-year, $100-million consortium funded by the Joint Hypersonics Transition Office and led by Dr. Rodney Bowersox, executive director, UCAH, and associate dean for research, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station. For more information about UCAH, contact Rebecca Marianno, UCAH program director, TEES, ucah@tamu.edu.
About the Joint Hypersonics Transition Office (JHTO)
The JHTO, operating within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, is responsible for accelerating hypersonics technology development, developing the nation’s future hypersonics workforce, and facilitating the transition of ready technologies into operational capabilities. For more information about the JHTO Office, contact Taisha Cobb, Frontier Technology, Inc., contractor, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (R&E)/JHTO, tcobb@mail.mil.
11. US Special Operations Command picks Anduril to lead counter-drone integration work in $1B deal
I would think that countering UAVs is a common service problem and not SOF-unique. Hopefully SOCOM R&D will come up with solutions that can become service-common which SOCOM has a good track record of doing.
But when I think about what $1 billion could do in terms of long duration employment of SOF to support unconventional deterrence, develop the relationships that are necessary for long term advising and assistance in implementation of resistance operating concepts in support of integrated deterrence and effective operations in the gray zone, I wish these kinds of efforts would receive similar resource priorities. Of course Congress would much rather resource things that can be built (in a congressional district) rather than difficult to quantify concepts such as relationships and resistance. I guess that is why "irregular warfare is far more intellectual than a bayonet charge." (TE Lawrence)
US Special Operations Command picks Anduril to lead counter-drone integration work in $1B deal
WASHINGTON — U.S. Special Operations Command has picked California-based Anduril Industries to lead its counter-drone systems integration work in a $1 billion deal, according to a contract announcement and company statement.
As the integration partner, “Anduril will deliver, advance and sustain [counter-unmanned systems] capabilities for special operations forces wherever they operate,” the Jan. 24 company statement read.
Anduril’s family of systems designed to counter drone threats is run by the Lattice operating system and includes its Sentry tower and the small unmanned aerial system Anvil. The system also brings in “best-of-breed” third-party sensors and effectors “for a layered defensive approach,” according to the company.
The Lattice system is able to provide autonomous detection, classification and tracking of targets at the edge of the battlefield and alerts users to the detected threats. It also prompts users with solutions to engage and destroy the threats, the company described.
The Sentry tower is comprised of an onboard radar and optical sensors within embedded computing cores that can process data through machine-learning algorithms to detect, identify and track threats.
Anduril said it will deliver capability through “traditional means,” but will also deploy the capability as a service and configure the system to carry out specific missions as threats evolve or new threats emerge. And under the contract, it must design, prototype and develop new counter-UAS technology.
“Anduril’s software-first approach and its open and interoperable Lattice operating system enables sensor modularity and massive scalability,” the statement said. “As the SIP, Anduril will maintain continuous system updates, develop and deploy new capability, and integrate best-in-class third-party sensors and effectors, future-proofing deployed systems at no additional cost to the customer.”
Under the SOCOM contract, Anduril will perform the work both within and outside of the continental United States. The contract is expected to be completed by Jan. 19, 2032, according to the Defense Department contract announcement.
Eleven other proposals were received in response to a publicly posted SIP, or system integration partner, prototype opportunity notice.
Anduril has also adapted existing technology developed for base and border protection over the course of 11 months so it could detect another major threat: cruise missiles. The company demonstrated the capability at the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System demonstration in 2021 using autonomous Cruise Missile Defense Sentry Towers. The towers were integrated into the company’s Lattice open-platform command-and-control system like they are for the c-UAS capability
Anduril also grew its capability portfolio in April 2021 with the acquisition of Area-I, a Georgia-based, air-launched effects company, with plans to incorporate its mission autonomy and intelligent teaming technology into Area-I’s unmanned systems.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts from Kenyon College.
12. US provided ‘limited ground support’ to Syrian fighters battling ISIS
Out of sight, out of mind?
US provided ‘limited ground support’ to Syrian fighters battling ISIS
The U.S. has provided “limited ground support” to Syrian Kurdish fighters deployed inside a prison in northeast Syria on Monday, a Pentagon spokesman said Monday afternoon.
“We have helped provide real-time surveillance during the event,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday. “We have conducted a series of strikes through this days-long operation to include the precision targeting of ISIS fighters who were attacking the SDF from buildings in the area.”
The U.S. has “provided limited ground support, strategically positioned to assist security in the area ― for instance, putting Bradley Fighting Vehicles across access points to help block his obstacle,” said Kirby. “So there’s been some limited ground support.”
Kirby deferred further questions to Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve. Officials from the task force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The U.S.-backed SDF force are closing in on the facility’s last wing controlled by militants for days, the SDF and a war monitor said. The raid follows the surrender of hundreds of Islamic State fighters and aims to end one of the most brazen attacks by the group in years.
Forces took over buildings near the prison’s northern wing, said Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. That’s where dozens of IS militants have been holed up since Thursday.
Shami said SDF forces advanced after about 300 IS militants surrendered early Monday.
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The airstrikes were in response to the ISIS group unleashing its biggest attack in Syria since the fall of its “caliphate” three years ago.
Over a dozen Kurdish fighters and more than 100 militants have been killed in clashes since the assault began, according to the Kurdish-led force. The number of fugitives remain unclear.
Journalists at the scene said Kurdish officials asked them to step away from the vicinity of the prison earlier Monday, apparently in anticipation of a military operation.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported a buildup of Kurdish forces backed by U.S. armored vehicles around the prison.
Witnesses in the city of Hassakeh, where the prison is located and is under a tight security cordon, said buses arrived at the prison apparently to transport militants who had turned themselves in to another location. Coalition helicopters were hovering overhead, a resident said.
By Monday evening, more than 96 hours after the initial assault, clashes resumed between the SDF and accompanying forces and militants still holed up in the prison wing, said Siamand Ali, another spokesman for the SDF.
The Kurdish-led administration had announced a weeklong curfew in Hassakeh starting Monday. The International Committee of the Red Cross said tens of thousands of people fled their homes in the city seeking safety and were in need of shelter, food and health services during the harsh winter season.
The standoff followed a bold assault on Gweiran Prison on Thursday. Militants rammed vehicles through its walls, enabling a number of imprisoned fighters to escape and take hostages. Clashes have continued since then, including with militants holed up in adjacent residential areas. The U.S.-led coalition carried out a number of strikes on suspected militants who had taken control of the prison’s northern wing.
On Sunday, Shami said the militants were using hundreds of minors detained in the prison as human shields. More than 3,000 suspected IS militants, including over 600 minors, are held in Gweiran, the largest of a dozen detention facilities in Syria housing militants.
Save the Children and Human Rights Watch said Monday that audio testimony they received suggests that children were among the dead and wounded.
“Reports that children have been killed or injured are tragic and outrageous,” said Sonia Khush, Save the Children’s Syria response director, calling for the immediate evacuation of children.
Many of the boys caught in the fighting have been held in Gweiran for almost three years, including about 300 who are from Iraq and other countries, according to Human Rights Watch.
Letta Tayler, associate crisis and conflict director at HRW, said one foreign boy in an audio message described “a lot of people dead, a lot of people injured.” Tayler said the boy was speaking from the kitchen where he described coming under fire.
It was not clear if the boys, who are normally held in separate wings, were brought to the kitchen after the assault began. Earlier in the assault, SDF officials said the group had lost contact with kitchen staff, suggesting they were among hostages taken by IS.
“While the responsibility for this siege rests squarely with (IS), this does not absolve the U.S.-led coalition and the local authorities of their responsibility to take all feasible steps to protect these prisoners from harm, including hundreds of boys trapped inside who have never been charged with any crime,” Tayler said.
Khush, of Save the Children, called for foreign children to be repatriated with their families. “The international community cannot have the blood of any of these children on their hands,” she said.
Rami Abdurrahman, the head of the Observatory, said scores of minors, some as young as 15, had been moved to another prison facility to the south soon after the assault began.
The SDF said about 27 of its fighters were killed in the assault. Abdurrahman put the figure at 52, adding that about 100 militants were killed. The SDF said about 100 escaped and were arrested by the total number of fugitive is still not clear.
Dozen of facilities in northeastern Syria run by the SDF house thousands of suspected IS militants, including foreigners, since the defeat of the extremists in 2019. The Kurdish-led administration has said the facilities are a strain on its resources and had repeatedly appealed for countries to repatriate their nationals.
Thousands of IS family members and supporters are also held in displacement camps in what amounts to detention facilities mostly for women and children.
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members. Follow on Twitter @Meghann_MT
13. SOCOM boss tests positive for COVID-19
Get well soon, Sir.
SOCOM boss tests positive for COVID-19
Clarke is fully vaccinated, according to a Monday release, and has received a booster.
“He has very mild symptoms and is able to fully perform all his duties remotely,” the release said.
Clarke, who works out of MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, has not met in person with any of DoD’s civilian leadership, or the Joint Chiefs of Staff, since the new year, according to the release.
Unrelatedly, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger have contracted COVID-19 this month.
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Positive? Close contact? Asymptomatic? These are the new rules.
Austin’s office announced Jan. 3 that he had tested positive, with mild symptoms. He was back in the office Jan. 10, after symptoms had subsided. The Pentagon requires masks unless individuals are alone in an office with a closed door.
Both Milley and Berger announced they had tested positive on Jan. 17 and would be working remotely.
DoD policy requires anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 to isolate for at least five days, or until symptoms improve, then wear a mask at work for another five days regardless of local mask rules.
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members. Follow on Twitter @Meghann_MT
14. Your own CIA jail? Lithuania to sell secret U.S. 'rendition' site
Your own CIA jail? Lithuania to sell secret U.S. 'rendition' site
- Summary
- Barn in pine forest outside Vilnius was CIA detention centre
- Lithuania plans to sell it, unlike KGB jail which now a museum
- CIA prisoners were held in windowless, soundproof rooms
ANTAVILIAI, Lithuania, Jan 24 (Reuters) - A huge steel barn outside Lithuania's capital, whose long corridor and windowless rooms with carpets and soundproof doors once served as a CIA detention centre, will soon go on sale.
Washington's so-called "rendition programme", under which suspected Islamist militants from conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq were spirited to jails outside U.S. jurisdiction, remains shrouded in secrecy more than a decade after it ended.
But the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed that the 10-room building, in snowy pine forest in the village of Antaviliai outside Vilnius, was used by the CIA to hold terrorist suspects from 2005-2006.
It was known as "Project No. 2" or "Detention Site Violet".
"This was a heavily guarded building where one could do whatever you want. What exactly was going on there, we did not determine," Arvydas Anusauskas, who led a Lithuanian parliamentary investigation into the site in 2010, told Reuters.
A former Russian KGB jail in central Vilnius, where 767 people were executed during an anti-Soviet uprising in the 1940s and thousands were tortured, is Lithuania's top tourist attraction. But the state has no such plans to turn the former CIA facility into a museum.
In fact, the government's real estate fund, which handles assets no longer needed by the state, is preparing to offer the barn to the market at a yet-to-be-decided price.
BLINDFOLDED AND SHACKLED
1/5
Aerial view of a building used by CIA to house prisoners in Vilnius, Lithuania, January 20, 2022, Picture taken on January 20, 2022. REUTERS/Janis Laizans
The real estate fund took over the site from Lithuania's intelligence service which used it as a training facility from 2007-2018.
Previously, CIA inmates were held there in solitary conditions with constant light and high-intensity noise, the European rights court heard in 2018. They were shaven on arrival and continually blindfolded or hooded, with legs shackled.
The court ordered Lithuania to pay 100,000 euros ($113,000) compensation to Abu Zubaydah, a high-ranking al Qaeda figure who the court determined was subjected to human rights violations while jailed there.
Other prisoners said to have been at the Vilnius site included Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the court heard.
The site was closed in 2006 after Lithuania refused to admit a third known prisoner, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, to hospital.
All three are now at the U.S. detention centre in Guantanamo Bay.
At the Lithuanian site, served by its own power generator and water supply, fluorescent lighting and the hum of air conditioning dominate the now-empty rooms.
"We don't push any buttons, so as not to turn anything on by accident," said a representative of the real estate fund, who asked not to be named.
($1 = 0.8841 euros)
Reporting by Andrius Sytas; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne
15. C.I.A.-Backed Afghan Fighters Are Still Waiting to Reach U.S.
C.I.A.-Backed Afghan Fighters Are Still Waiting to Reach U.S.
Commandos who played a key role in helping American forces are waiting for visas in the United Arab Emirates, and are among the last of the evacuated Afghans to get a chance to reach the United States.
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Thousands of Afghans waited outside Kabul’s airport in August as they tried to flee the country. Afghan commandos trained by the C.I.A. provided security at the airport.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Jan. 25, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — During the frantic evacuation from Afghanistan in August, the American troops securing the Kabul airport against suicide bombers and other dangers were not alone. At the direction of the C.I.A., agency-trained Afghan counterterrorism squads helped patrol the perimeter, secure the gates and get American citizens through them.
Those Afghan commandos stayed to the end, and were among the very last allies to be evacuated. But even as some 80,000 other Afghan refugees quickly reached the United States, hundreds of the C.I.A.-backed fighters and their families are among thousands who remained stuck at a sprawling refugee compound in the Emirati desert.
As weeks have turned into months, some members of the C.I.A.-backed squads — which at times over the past two decades were accused of killing civilians and other wartime abuses — say they feel abandoned, victims of a chaotic withdrawal in which the speed with which departing Afghans reached the United States was often determined by nothing more than what kind of plane they left on.
Biden administration officials say they are on track to eventually come to the United States.
But the plight of the commandos underscores the issues continuing to plague the extensive evacuation, vetting and resettlement efforts five months after the abrupt Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August.
At the most basic level, all of the Afghans who helped the NATO forces during the 20-year Afghanistan war and are now in Abu Dhabi are fortunate: They got out with their families and are safe. Since August, there have been a slew of nonjudicial killings carried out against former government security force members who remained in Afghanistan.
But interviews with half a dozen officials involved in the effort and people familiar with the accounts provided by some of the commandos help illustrate the major differences in how Afghans who got out are being treated based on which planes they boarded at the Kabul airport.
Afghans who got onto American military planes are the more fortunate: They were taken to bases where deals with host countries allowed them to stay for only a few weeks. After they were vetted at such temporary transit locations, the Homeland Security Department invoked a rarely used “humanitarian parole” power to swiftly move them to the United States.
As a result, nearly all of those roughly 80,000 Afghans have now already been able to reach the United States. Most of them have been resettled and are starting new lives — even though their applications for permanent status with a Special Immigrant Visa, or S.I.V., are still being processed.
By contrast, those Afghans who boarded non-American evacuation flights, such as charters operated by the United Arab Emirates, were taken to facilities in host countries where they can stay indefinitely, including the U.A.E.-run compound known as Emirates Humanitarian City. A significant portion of its roughly 9,000 refugee residents are C.I.A.-trained fighters and their families, according to people familiar with the matter.
Because those Afghans in places like Humanitarian City are safe, the United States is processing them through regular bureaucratic order, officials said. As a result, they are being required to wait there until their S.I.V. applications are completed — which can take many months. Requirements for vaccinations and medical tests can further slow the process.
Biden administration officials were reluctant to talk about or acknowledge the C.I.A.-backed squads specifically. But they insisted that all the evacuees in Humanitarian City and other countries would be treated fairly.
“We’re working to develop a standardized process that ensures we make good on our commitments to our Afghan allies,” Emily Horne, a National Security Council spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We cannot underestimate the anxiety that they and their families must feel. Those of us working on this want to alleviate that anxiety as best we can and make good on our country’s pledge to them.”
One official said that about 500 S.I.V. applicants a week reach a stage in the process where the State Department places them in a queue for eventual transfer to the United States, and that about a quarter of the population of refugees in Humanitarian City is now at that stage.
But that official also said even for that group, it was likely to be several more months at best before those applicants would complete other steps in the visa process. Another official said it was likely to be another five months before the C.I.A. fighters and their families were able to come to the United States.
A crowd in Kabul last year applying for the Special Immigrant Visa program, which has resettled thousands of Afghans and their family members.
The fighters are unlike most other refugees in a number of respects, not least the key role they played in working with the C.I.A. on the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns, in which they were often sent to kill or capture high-profile targets such as those in the Taliban’s violent Haqqani network and Al Qaeda.
Their American trainers saw them as efficient and reliable at fighting the Taliban. But many Afghan civilians accused them of their own acts of terror: violently raiding rural villages, indiscriminately killing civilians and abusing prisoners.
In 2019, a report by Human Rights Watch accused the C.I.A.-trained counterterrorism forces of killing civilians during night raids meant to strike at terrorist cells. The report detailed 14 cases where C.I.A.-trained units committed “serious abuses” between 2017 and 2019.
Multiple senior American officials said that the counterterrorism fighters were not being evaluated with greater caution because of the type of role they played in the war, and that they were on track to receive S.I.V. status. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of the work done by the Afghans in conjunction with the C.I.A.
And after The New York Times began asking questions about the group, American officials have tried to reassure them that they will get visas to enter the United States in the next three to six months, according to people briefed on the conversations.
That two-tiered system in which some Afghans must complete their visa process before entering, another official said, reflects the scale of the challenge: American programs that resettle refugees are already overwhelmed, having been cut back in the Trump years and then being faced with the huge influx of Afghans. There are still about 12,000 Afghans at domestic military bases awaiting matching with resettlement agencies that will move them to a city and help them get started, officials said.
There are also smaller groups of Afghan refugees still hoping to come to the United States scattered about elsewhere, including about 250 at a transit zone in Qatar. And there are about 200 at a NATO base in Kosovo, comprising several dozen men who were weeded out in the initial vetting of those otherwise eligible for humanitarian parole and so are undergoing additional screening, along with relatives staying with them.
But even as American officials counsel patience, those who find themselves still waiting in the desert outside Abu Dhabi are growing frustrated. Those feelings appear particularly sharp among the counterterrorism units, who say they served the United States at significant personal risk to the end — even as other units surrendered to the Taliban or melted into the countryside.
“These guys should get credit for doing what they did for 20 years — fight our common enemy, Al Qaeda and the Taliban,” said Mick Mulroy, a retired C.I.A. paramilitary officer and Afghanistan veteran.
Mr. Mulroy said he was not criticizing the Emirates, and praised the U.A.E. for taking in the Afghan refugees. But he said the United States, within procedures, should speed their passage to America.
In conversations with Americans, the fighters have described conditions in Humanitarian City as strained and increasingly unpleasant, adding to their sense of being forgotten.
The facility is essentially a collection of makeshift hotels designed for short-term stays. It was established in 2003, initially to be a hub to help aid workers traveling to disaster areas. Last August, the Emirates agreed to host 5,000 evacuees at Humanitarian City, though far more are there now.
While food is plentiful, people familiar with the daily lives of residents said it had been a source of recurring complaints among the refugees.
In particular, one of the people described the food as cooked and spiced in an Indian style, saying the Afghan evacuees find it unpalatable. It is also sometimes spoiled: The person provided The Times with pictures and videos showing moldy eggs, spoiled meat, rice served with shreds of paper mixed in and rotting potatoes. The person said some children had food poisoning this month, forcing a temporary halt in meal service.
Lines to see a doctor to obtain vaccinations required for admission to the United States or other medical care are hours long, the people familiar with residents’ complaints said, and the medicines are often out of stock when they seek to fill their prescriptions. Most of the medical personnel are Indian or Ugandan, requiring translators.
In a statement, the Emirati Embassy in Washington said it had assisted in the evacuation of more than 40,000 people from Afghanistan. The Emirates has provided food and health services along with schooling and recreational activities in the air-conditioned facilities of Humanitarian City, the embassy said. The facilities in Humanitarian City were designed to house people only temporarily, the embassy said, and the United States is leading the effort to transfer evacuees.
A senior administration official said conditions in Humanitarian City were as good as or better than those of refugees still at American military bases, which have also been strained because they were not designed to house large numbers of refugees for a long time.
But Afghans in the Emirates said they would rather be in the United States while going through the visa process so they can begin their search for work and a new life immediately. And the longer they wait, the more the Afghans worry they may not make it to the United States.
Former C.I.A. officers who worked with them said their efforts on behalf of America should be recognized.
“These guys have literally been fighting every night for 20 years,” Mr. Mulroy said. “They are really skilled. They have proven themselves.”
16. Threatened and Beaten, Afghan Women Defy Taliban With Protests
The Taliban cannot put the genie of freedom back in the lamp.
Threatened and Beaten, Afghan Women Defy Taliban With Protests
The Taliban have begun cracking down harder as women insist on their rights and as Western governments call for reforms.
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Protesting for women’s rights under the Taliban in Kabul, Afghanistan, in October.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Jan. 24, 2022
KABUL, Afghanistan — On a raw January morning, Khujasta Elham trudged through a snowstorm to sign her name on a government register.
Before the Taliban seized power in August, Ms. Elham was director of women’s programs for Afghanistan’s Civil Service Commission. But she and most other female government workers were prevented from returning to work by the Taliban’s new Islamic Emirate.
Now Ms. Elham, who says she has not been paid since August, is required to sign in at her old job site once a month — a fiction that allows the Taliban to deny that they have fired female government workers. The grim routine also diminishes any hope for Ms. Elham that she will one day return to work.
The dismissal of female workers is one of many indignities that have prompted small bands of women like Ms. Elham to take to the streets in protest, risking beatings or arrest. Taliban gunmen have pointed weapons at the demonstrators, sprayed them with pepper spray and called them “whores” and “puppets of the West,” Human Rights Watch said. Bearing placards and raising their fists, the women have resisted persistent attempts to erase them from public life.
The protests rarely last for long. Taliban enforcers have roughed up women, beaten them and sprayed them with chemical irritants, activists say. Ms. Elham and others say they have received threatening phone calls from intelligence officers, warning them to stay silent or face unspecified “consequences.”
“He asked me if I knew they had prisons for people like me,” Ms. Elham said of a Taliban intelligence officer who ordered her to end the demonstrations she has helped to organize.
Khujasta Elham was the director of women’s programs for the Afghan Civil Service Commission. She says the Taliban have kept her from returning to work, though she has been forced to sign an attendance sheet as if she had.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
As the Taliban continue to demand humanitarian aid and diplomatic recognition, the United States and other countries and international bodies have insisted that Afghanistan’s new rulers roll back their limits on women’s rights. The issue is a main point of discussion this week as Taliban delegates have begun meeting with international officials in Oslo, Norway.
Among the most dramatic consequences of the Taliban takeover has been the swift reversal of gains made by women for two decades following the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the previous Taliban government in 2001. Women attended schools and universities and served in Parliament and government. They served in the army, the police force and as lawyers and judges.
Women once made up at least a quarter of the government work force. But the Taliban have allowed only a handful of female medical workers and educators to retain their government jobs.
Most Afghan girls above the sixth grade have not attended school since August. In September, the Taliban converted the Ministry of Women’s Affairs building into offices for the religious morality police. Last month, the Taliban banned women from taking long journeys without a male relative and from using public transport without a hijab, a type of head scarf.
The Taliban have also targeted activists protesting the restrictions. To avoid arrest, Ms. Elham and other demonstrators say they rotate among safe houses and communicate only by encrypted phone apps.
Rokhshana Rezai, 27, a prominent activist, said she once dressed as a man to pass through Taliban checkpoints after receiving threatening calls from Taliban officials. But she has continued to attend protests. Video from one recent demonstration shows her defiantly pulling away from a Talib who had grabbed her arm and tried to drag her away.
“We are getting more afraid,” Ms. Rezai said. “They are not going to respect our rights and dignity.”
Taliban officials have said that prior approval was required to hold a protest. But when the women have requested permission, Ms. Rezai said, “They don’t allow it, and they never will.”
Women marching in support of the Taliban in Kabul in October, in a tightly managed and restricted demonstration.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
On Jan. 19, three days after women protested the hijab directive, two activists were taken at gunpoint from homes in Kabul, said Zarifa Yaqoobi, 28, a leader of a group called the Afghan Powerful Women’s Movement. Ms. Yaqoobi said the women’s family members told her the women were taken away at night by armed men.
Ms. Yaqoobi said family members identified the activists as Tamana Zaryab Paryani and Parwana Ebrahim Khel. She said three of Ms. Paryani’s sisters also disappeared. The New York Times attempted to speak to the families directly without success.
A video posted on social media shows Ms. Paryani screaming for help and shouting that the Taliban were pounding on her door. The Taliban have publicly denied any involvement in the detainment of Ms. Paryani and others.
Qari Saeed Khosty, a Ministry of Interior spokesman, said that Ms. Paryani’s video had been fabricated “to create a case” intended to attract international attention.
“They are liars, and I don’t want to talk about it,” said Gen. Mubeen Khan, a police spokesman in Kabul, said of media reports about the disappearances. In a follow-up call, he told The Times: “Anyone who disrupts the public must be arrested. An order has gone to all security forces to arrest them and bring them to justice.”
Shouting down a heckler at the women’s rights protests in Kabul in October.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
The crackdown on women’s demonstrations in Afghanistan has raised concerns among human rights organizations. Human Rights Watch said it represented “an alarming and unlawful escalation of efforts to suppress peaceful protest and free speech in Afghanistan.” The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has called on the Taliban to provide information about the missing women.
Women’s rights activists and human rights groups have also called on the Taliban to provide information about the disappearance of Alia Azizi, a prison official in the western city of Herat. Ms. Azizi never returned home from work on Oct. 2.
Heather Barr, associate director of women’s rights at Human Rights Watch, said “the extremely muted response” from the international community coupled with the crackdowns on the Afghan news media had emboldened the Taliban.
“This is a sign that the Taliban feel these protests now need to be entirely stopped, whatever level of brutality that takes,” she said.
The disappearance of the two female activists was raised by an activist from Afghanistan at a conference that opened in Oslo on Sunday among the Taliban, and representatives from the United States and European nations, The Associated Press reported.
High school students in Maza-i-Sharif in October. At schools, the black, red and green flag of the previous Afghan republic has been replaced by the Taliban’s stark black-and-white flag.Credit...Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times
For the Taliban, the conference offers a platform to present their new Islamic Emirate as less oppressive than the Taliban government of the 1990s. For the United States and European nations, the meeting provides an opportunity to confront Taliban leaders face-to-face to demand improved human rights, an inclusive government, women’s rights and other reforms.
Afghans critical of the conference have protested outside the foreign ministry in Oslo, saying the Taliban should not be awarded an international platform.
On Jan. 23, Monisa Mubariz, co-founder of the Afghan Powerful Women’s Movement, and Ms. Yaqoobi held a brief, clandestine news conference in a private home inside a walled compound. They asked the small group of journalists who attended not to livestream the event for fear of alerting the Taliban.
Under the Taliban, Ms. Mubariz told the journalists, “Women have been deprived of the right to work and to participate and political and economic life. They are consistently repressed, punished illegally, insulted and humiliated.”
Such public criticism only heightened the risk of Taliban reprisals, Ms. Yaqoobi acknowledged. “That’s why we have to operate in secret,” she said. “But we will never stop raising our voices.”
Monisa Mubariz and Zarifa Yaqoobi, left and right at the head of the table, with other activists at a news conference in Kabul on Jan. 23.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Days before the news conference, Ms. Mubariz spoke in a coffee shop’s family section, set aside for women to keep them separated from men. Before the Taliban takeover, several coffee shops in Kabul allowed women to sit and socialize with men — a quiet symbol of progress that has slowly eroded under the Taliban.
Ms. Mubariz said her parents and friends have begged her to cease her protests — or at least to wear body armor to protect herself. She wiped away tears as she described the overwhelming sense of loss she felt since losing her job and watching women’s rights being stripped away.
For Ms. Rezai, the Taliban threats and crackdowns have eroded her once boundless faith in Afghanistan’s future.
“Whatever goals, freedoms, wishes, dreams, choices, education and jobs women once had are gone,” she said. “I am feeling angry — my body is without a soul and all our dreams are nothing now.”
Beauty shop advertisement featuring women were defaced in Kabul in October.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
17. Hong Kong's Isolation Deepens as Covid-19 Wears on
Hong Kong's Isolation Deepens as Covid-19 Wears on
An international financial hub becomes a luxurious prison
By: Tim Hamlett
A question is popping up in expat circles in Hong Kong: if the incubation period for the Omicron version of the Covid-19 virus is five days, why are arriving travelers from most places required to stay in quarantine for three weeks?
The city, keen to retain its status as a financial hub, has had a good epidemic so far, if there is such a thing, with 13,000 cases and only 213 deaths, although the Omicron variant, which seemingly has the ability to travel where other variants can’t, has been found in increasing numbers over the past three weeks, prompting intensive efforts to keep it under control. In one case reported by the South China Morning Post, three people who passed through a railway station wearing masks nine seconds apart transmitted the Omicron variant to a kindergarten teacher.
It is difficult for an international city to avoid an international epidemic, as officials are learning, despite their best efforts against Omicron. Plans for a “travel bubble” with Singapore have repeatedly collapsed because of new cases in one or the other city. The resumption of travel to and from the mainland – much desired by Hong Kong officials – remains a distant hope.
In a sense, Hong Kong is caught between a rock and a hard place. International status requires constant interaction with the wider world, and this implies at best a steady trickle of new infections. But as a mainland city, it is required to follow the mainland's zero-Covid policy.
Unsympathetic observers point out that Hong Kong's low vaccination rate among the most vulnerable age groups, and heavy reliance on the Sinovac vaccine – which doesn’t seem terribly effective – leave it little choice.
On the whole, people were willing to live with the earlier requirement that international travelers from most places stay for two weeks of quarantine in designated hotels, forbidden to leave their rooms.
The arrangement spawned an elaborate advice network offering tips on how to survive, or even enjoy, a fortnight in what is effectively solitary confinement. Reluctant victims reported their successful resort to various refuges from boredom: yoga, meditation, video games, studying Cantonese... Future inmates were offered detailed reviews of the various hotel offerings and their quality of food, Wi-fi, views from the window, and other important details.
The famed Mandarin Oriental Hotel, for instance, offers “one of our luxurious rooms or suites (above) with state-of-the-art technology. Full board meal arrangement prepared by our culinary team includes breakfast, 2-course lunch & 3-course dinner daily. Vegetarian options are available. Meals will be served at the pre-determined time period of your choice. 20 percent discount on in-room menu for any additional F&B orders (the discount does not apply to mini bar). All for HK$3,300 (US$423), or the equivalent of US$8,830 for a 21-day stay.
The lengthening of the quarantine period to three weeks seems to have passed some mysterious tipping point. Some people who were overseas at the time flatly refused to come back at all.
Businesses now complain bitterly that recruiting overseas, or transferring people from other places to a Hong Kong branch, has become difficult if not impossible. Travel in the rest of the world involves health checks, test certificates, and other inconveniences. But three weeks in the cooler – even a fairly luxurious one – is a different matter.
A further refinement for arrivals from countries regarded as “high-risk” (which include the US) is that the first week of the three must be spent in a government quarantine camp, originally intended only for the local contacts of confirmed cases. Following complaints from visitors accustomed to more comfortable surroundings, the camp has raised its game. It is, though, hardly the Mandarin Oriental.
The rules are particularly onerous for families with children, and some business people have complained that they can only recruit staff too young to have offspring or too old to bring them to a new posting.
The American Chamber of Commerce reported that 40 percent of its members told a survey that they were likely to leave Hong Kong, mostly citing travel restrictions as the reason. A former chair of the Canadian Chamber wrote that “Hong Kong’s positioning as Asia’s world city is looking increasingly farcical.”
Immigration Department statistics bear out the claim that something has changed. In 2019 its general employment program admitted more than 40,000 investors and professionals. In 2020 the number was 15,000. Figures for 2021 are not yet out but will be even lower.
Officials insist that Hong Kong remains an attractive place for business and the number of overseas offices and branches continues to increase. Bankers and lawyers respond that many offices are moving functions out – usually to Singapore – to reduce the stress caused to staff by travel restrictions.
The Hong Kong government defends restrictions as necessary in the interests of the population as a whole. But it is not clear that decisions on this matter are being made by local officials at all. Mainland counterparts pulling the strings may well prefer an old thought suitable for the “China rising” era: that foreigners have nothing to offer that China needs.
18. 2 U.S. Aircraft Carriers Now in South China Sea as Chinese Air Force Flies 39 Aircraft Near Taiwan
2 U.S. Aircraft Carriers Now in South China Sea as Chinese Air Force Flies 39 Aircraft Near Taiwan - USNI News
Nimitz-class aircraft carriers USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), left, and USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) transit the Philippine Sea on Jan. 22, 2022. US Navy Photo
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Two U.S. Navy carrier strike groups are currently drilling in the South China Sea amid the latest show of force of Chinese aircraft into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone on Sunday.
The Carl Vinson CSG and Abraham Lincoln CSG began dual-carrier operations in the South China on Sunday, the same day Taiwan said the People’s Liberation Army Air Force flew 39 planes in Taiwan’s ADIZ.
The CSGs “will engage in joint operations to include enhanced maritime communication operations, anti-submarine warfare operations, air warfare operations, replenishments-at-sea, cross-deck flight operations and maritime interdiction operations to strengthen maritime integrated-at-sea operations and combat readiness,” the U.S. Navy said in a news release, adding that training will take place in accordance with international law in international waters.
Throughout the last year there have been multiple incursions of Chinese aircraft in Taiwan’s ADIZ, heightening tensions between the both the U.S. and China and Taiwan and China.
“Our ability to rapidly aggregate and work collectively alongside CSG 3, highlights the U.S. Navy’s ability to deliver overwhelming maritime force, when called upon, to support a free and open Indo-Pacific region,” Rear Adm. Dan Martin, the commander of CSG 1, said in the Navy news release. “We are committed to ensuring the lawful use of the sea and free flow of commerce while deterring those who challenge the shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific now and into the long-term future.”
The two American CSGs conducted an exercise in the Philippine Sea last week with the Essex Amphibious Ready Group, the America Expeditionary Strike Group and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer helicopter carrier JS Hyuga ( DDH-181) and destroyer JS Myoko (DDG-175).
In a news release issued today, the JMSDF said the exercise took place in the vicinity of Oki Daito Island, an uninhabited island 315 kilometers, or about 196 miles, southeast of Okinawa. In December, the People’s Liberation Army Navy aircraft carrier Liaoning (16) conducted flight operations in the same area.
CSG 1, which is the Carl Vinson CSG, currently includes aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) with embarked Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 2, cruiser USS Lake Champlain (CG-57), destroyers USS Stockdale (DDG-106) and USS Chafee (DDG-90), replenishment ship USNS Yukon (T-AO-202) and dry cargo and ammunition ship USNS Washington Chambers (T-AKE-11). The Abraham Lincoln CSG, CSG 3, includes USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) with embarked Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 9; cruiser USS Mobile Bay (CG-53); and destroyers USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62), USS Gridley (DDG 101), USS Sampson (DDG-102) and USS Spruance (DDG-111). Sampson has since been detached and is now heading to Tonga to assist in relief efforts following the eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai underwater volcano earlier this month.
JMSDF landing ship tank JS Osumi (LST-4001), Royal Australian Navy landing helicopter dock HMAS Adelaide (L01), United Kingdom Royal Navy patrol ship HMS Spey (P234) and Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) multi-role support vessel HMNZS Canterbury (L421) are also heading to Tonga to join the relief effort. RNZN offshore patrol vessel HMNZS Wellington (P55) and replenishment ship HMNZS Aotearoa (A11) are already on the scene conducting relief operations. Osumi departed today from Kure, while the others are already in transit to Tonga. The French Navy is sending Patrol Vessel FNS Arago (P675) Offshore Patrol Vessel FNS La Glorieuse (P686).
“The Self-Defense Fleet has been making efforts to deepen friendly relations and strengthen cooperation with the Pacific island nations by conducting goodwill visits and training exercises at ordinary times, with the aim of realizing a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific.’ In this mission, we will do our best to support the reconstruction of our friend, the Kingdom of Tonga, hoping for its early recovery and sustainable development,” Vice Adm. Hideki Yuasa, the commander of the Joint Task Force for International Disaster Relief Operations in Tonga, said in a JMSDF news release about the departure.
Osumi, Adelaide and Canterbury all have embarked helicopters on board to assist in airlifting supplies and with carrying integral landing crafts. Osumi is carrying two Japan Ground Self-Defense Force CH-47 Chinooks and two Landing Craft Air Cushions. Adelaide is carrying three Australian Army CH-47s and likely its full capacity of four LCACs, while Canterbury is carrying two Royal New Zealand Air Force NH-90s and two landing craft.
Tonga’s Fua’amotu International Airport has now been cleared of volcanic ash, allowing Royal Australian Air Force C-17s, Japan Air Self-Defense Force C-2s and C-130s, and RNZAF C-130s to fly in relief supplies and equipment.
In other developments, German Navy Chief Vice Adm. Kay-Achim Schönbach resigned on Saturday following a furor over his comments in India on Friday, when he downplayed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions over Ukraine.
“Is Russia really interested in … a small, tiny strip of Ukraine’s soil? No, this is nonsense,” Schönbach said during a session at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, which was uploaded to Youtube. The admiral added that “what he really wants is respect. And my God, giving someone respect is low cost, even no cost … so if I was asked, it is easy to even give him the respect he really demands, and probably also deserves.”
He went on to say that “Russia is an old country. Russia is an important country. Even we, India, Germany, we need Russia, because we need Russia against China.”
The German Navy Chief also remarked that “the Crimea peninsula is gone. It will never come back, this is a fact,” a statement that contradicts Western nations’ position that the annexation was unacceptable and that the territory should be returned.
His remarks came amid criticism of the German government for its unwillingness to supply Ukraine with weapons, while other NATO countries were doing so in an effort to deter Russia, which has massed troops along its border with Ukraine.
Schönbach announced his resignation on Saturday in a release stating: “I have just asked the Federal Minister of Defense to release me from my duties and duties as Inspector of the Navy with immediate effect. The thoughtless comments I made in India on security and military policy are increasingly weighing on my office. In order to prevent further damage from the German Navy, the Bundeswehr, but above all from the Federal Republic of Germany, I consider this step to be necessary. The Federal Minister accepted my request. The Commander of the Fleet and Deputy Inspector of the Navy, Rear Admiral Kaack, will lead the German Navy until a successor decision is made.”
Schönbach only recently took over as German Navy Chief in March of 2021.
Schönbach was in India in conjunction with the visit of German Navy Frigate FGS Bayern (F217), which arrived on Friday in Mumbai during the final leg of its seven-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific. Bayern departed today from Mumbai and conducted a passage exercise with Indian Navy destroyer INS Visakhapatnam (D66) as it left.
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19. Houthis Renew Attack on Abu Dhabi With Ballistic Missiles
Houthis Renew Attack on Abu Dhabi With Ballistic Missiles | FDD's Long War Journal
On Monday morning, Abu Dhabi came under ballistic missile attack by Yemen’s Houthis, according to a statement by the United Emirates Ministry of Defense.
“The Ministry of Defense announced on Monday that its air defense forces had intercepted and destroyed two ballistic missiles targeting the UAE, which were fired by the Houthi terrorist militia. The ministry confirmed that there were no casualties resulting from the attack, as the fragments of the ballistic missiles fell in different areas around the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi,” the statement read.
A statement from the Saudi government also confirmed it “recently” came under assault, which resulted in the injury of two civilians.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has condemned the repeated attacks by the Iran-backed terrorist Houthi militia on civilian objects and vital installations in the south of the Kingdom and Abu Dhabi, most recently targeting the city of Dhahran Al-Janub and the industrial zone in the southwestern Jazan that resulted in two minor injuries to residents of Bangladeshi and Sudanese nationalities,” the statement read.
Yahya Sare’e, a spokesperson for the Houthis, confirmed in a Twitter statement the militant group targeted Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia.
“In response to the escalation of the US-Saudi-Emirati aggression and its crimes against our dear people. The missile force and the air force carried out a large-scale military operation,” Sare’e stated.
Sare’e also added that Al-Dhafra Air Base, which hosts the U.S. military’s 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, was targeted with ballistic missiles.
The U.S. Air Force “intervened” in the offensive and “successfully reacted to multiple inbound threats during an attack near Abu Dhabi,” according to a report in The New York Times.
Monday’s ballistic missile strike was the second significant operation launched by the Houthis against the Emirates in one week. The previous week’s assault targeted several sites in the UAE including Abu Dhabi International Airport that resulted in the killing and wounding of civilians.
In recent weeks, the Saudi-led coalition increased it attacks against Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen. Additionally, the coalition reportedly killed Houthi leader Abdullah Qassem al-Junaid, who headed the College of Aviation and Defense, according to an Al-Ayn report.
In response to retaliatory strikes for last week’s UAE attack, Houthi spokesperson Yahya Sare’e hinted in a tweet that a response against the UAE may be imminent.
“After the crimes committed by US-Saudi-UAE aggression today against Yemeni people, we advise the foreign companies in Emirates to leave because they invest in an unsafe country and the rulers of this country continue in their aggression against Yemen,” Sare’e stated.
The UAE has largely avoided strikes since its involvement in the Yemen conflict, but a few notable operations have been claimed by the Houthis inside Emirati territory.
In 2018, the Houthis claimed an attack using a Samad-3 drone against Abu Dhabi International Airport.
The previous year, the Houthis claimed responsibility for assaulting the Barakah nuclear reactor in the Gharbiya region of Abu Dhabi.
It’s unlikely these high-profile operations against the Emirates would have occurred without approval by the Houthis chief backer, Iran. Much like the Islamic Republic’s history of using its proxies in Iraq to attack American-led coalition bases, it is using a similar game plan in Yemen by supplying the Houthis with offensive armaments to use against Saudi Arabia and at an increasing rate against the Emirates.
Joe Truzman is a contributor to FDD's Long War Journal.
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20. Lost Innocents - The U.S. Military’s Shameful Failure to Protect Civilians
I do not want to engage in "whataboutism" (but I guess I am). Yes, we make tragic mistakes. Yes, we have some people who do not follow the rules. Yes, we do not always hold people we think should be accountable who we think should be held accountable. Yes, we can (and must) do better. But I will put our genuine efforts to protect civilians, to correct mistakes, and to hold those accountable for negligence actions against any of our adversaries. Show me the investigations and disciplinary actions taken by our adversaries for the atrocities they commit.
Excerpts:
Congress has failed to ask questions for a long time, but some members are paying attention now. Several committees are considering hearings. Thirty-nine representatives and 11 senators signed a letter to Biden, led by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), urging him to prioritize civilian protection in new counterterrorism policies. Several more members have privately sent letters to the administration.
In December, John Kirby, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, blamed the botched August strike in Kabul on "a breakdown in process and execution in procedural events, not the result of negligence, not the result of misconduct, not the result of poor leadership.” This is profoundly and precisely incorrect. The lack of due care is the very definition of negligence, and the lack of leadership and accountability are what allows it to occur again and again.
When The New York Times revealed the truth about who died in the disastrous Kabul strike last August, General Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, remarked that “combat … is an inherently messy, imprecise, bloody business. And we would like for it to be antiseptic. We would like for it to be perfect. It often is just not going to reach those standards of excellence.”
No one is expecting perfection (though, when it comes to deciding who dies, it’s hoped for). But Americans do expect excellence from their armed forces and the civilian leaders whose job it is to oversee them—and there is no reason that standard should not apply to the task of preventing needless civilian deaths.
Lost Innocents
The U.S. Military’s Shameful Failure to Protect Civilians
January 25, 2022
Eight years ago, it looked like the U.S. military was making progress in reducing the harm its operations caused to civilians. The counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan meant winning the hearts and minds of the population. Lessons from the Vietnam War about the strategic imperative to not kill civilians were ubiquitous in conversations with U.S. commanders. With civilian protection seen as critical to a successful mission, the U.S. military was taking steps in Afghanistan and Iraq to investigate civilian casualties, track the aftereffects of its operations, and compensate victims.
“These practices are not perfect, even today, but they represent marked improvements in the conduct of war,” I wrote at the time for Foreign Affairs. As an advocate for minimizing war’s unintended casualties, I had seen these incremental gains accumulate over a decade. The progress wasn’t anywhere near adequate, but it was something. I even went to work as the first (and as yet only) senior adviser on human rights in the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Many of us working on this issue felt the United States was turning the corner and could truly become the standard-bearer for protecting civilians in war.
Even as I applauded the U.S. military’s improvement, however, I worried these gains could prove temporary if not properly institutionalized. Painfully learned lessons were being applied on an ad hoc basis, and no one at the Pentagon was “specifically responsible for monitoring civilian harm or figuring out ways to respond to it,” I noted at the time. The U.S. military was at risk of letting its progress slip away.
In 2014, a year after I wrote my essay, a top-secret U.S. strike cell made up of special operations forces was created to go after Islamic State (also known as ISIS) targets in Syria. Over the course of five years, it struck many enemy positions. But a recent New York Times investigation revealed that it also killed an untold number of civilians—deaths that were never officially counted and have only recently been acknowledged by the Defense Department after intense media pressure. Military officials who worked with the task force told the Times that the group would often claim its actions were taken in self-defense to circumvent the rules meant to minimize civilian casualties.
The unearthing of these strikes in Syria came only months after the U.S. military admitted that a high-profile drone strike in Afghanistan last August killed ten civilians, including seven children—and not a suspected terrorist, as the Pentagon first claimed. And in December, the Times released a trove of Defense Department documents that reveal careless targeting, years of civilian deaths, and little accountability in Washington. Together, these events underscore that the U.S. military’s overall record on civilian harm is shameful. Many of these newly revealed strikes appear to be violations of the laws of armed conflict; others represent possible war crimes. Worse yet, many of the problems now coming to light are the same ones that Human Rights Watch, where I work now, and other groups have been documenting for years—to little avail.
In November, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the U.S. military “must work harder” to reduce civilian casualties. That pledge has been made before and it’s no longer enough. For anyone to take seriously Austin’s commitment to change, the U.S. military needs to finally address the systemic flaws—problems the Defense Department itself has acknowledged in internal reviews—and allow an independent review of the civilian harm caused by its operations.
I believed the Defense Department back in 2013 when it said protecting civilians was a priority. And when I worked side by side with so many good officers in the Joint Staff, I had hope that their deep belief in how hard the U.S. military tries to avoid killing civilians would make it true. But my trust has been shattered. More important, the credibility of the United States as a moral, lawful actor in armed conflict is in jeopardy.
MAKE NO MISTAKE
Civilians will suffer in conflict. That’s a given and should be a major factor for policymakers when considering whether to use force. Even strikes that take every precaution to avoid killing civilians can result in lost lives, lifelong injuries, and crippling damage to infrastructure like homes and water supplies. The U.S. military says it abides by international laws that try to limit these harms, but its actual record shows a pattern of dubious adherence to those laws, repeated mistakes, evidence of recklessness, and outright violations of the law. Even if every single civilian death by U.S. strike were considered legal, the sheer number of them and the similarities between them would be major cause for concern.
The August strike in Kabul was a tragic, recent example of the sorts of flaws that lead to avoidable civilian deaths—flaws well known to anyone who has been paying attention to civilian casualties over the last two decades. In the Kabul case, U.S. drone operators tracked a man named Zemari Ahmadi for eight hours, convinced that he was a terrorist. Days earlier, the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan, known as ISIS-K, carried out a bomb attack at the Kabul airport, killing an estimated 170 Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. service members. The pressure was on the U.S. military to prevent more attacks. After conducting hours of surveillance, the U.S. military killed Ahmadi and the other civilians around him with a Hellfire missile. But Ahmadi was the wrong man, a humanitarian aid worker going about his ordinary business.
In the wake of the Kabul attack, the Pentagon did what it nearly always does when it is called out in the media for killing civilians. First it denied that civilians were killed, insisting that the strike was “righteous” and the target legitimate—a suspected ISIS suicide bomber. Then, days later, in the face of damning evidence, it called the strike a “mistake” and opened a classified investigation. Finally, as has been the result of nearly every civilian casualty investigation for the last 20 years, the Pentagon found no officials or service members at fault and announced that no one would be held accountable.
The credibility of the United States as a moral, lawful actor in armed conflict is in jeopardy.
Lieutenant General Sami Said, the inspector general of the U.S. Air Force, called the Kabul strike “unique” because of the conditions on the ground in August. It’s true that Kabul was particularly tense after the ISIS-K airport bombing, but there is nothing unique about an edgy environment in theaters of war. The truth is that drone operators did what they have done so many times in the last two decades. They allowed themselves to be misled by what’s known as confirmation bias—the tendency to interpret information in a way that confirms one’s prior beliefs. Fearing another attack by ISIS-K, they mistook water bottles for explosives and Ahmadi for a suicide bomber. The operators were thinking more about the threat and less about the available evidence contradicting the conclusion that Ahmadi was a threat—for example, the fact that he had visited the office of a California-based U.S. humanitarian organization earlier that day.
It would be bad enough if this were an aberration. It isn’t. Larry Lewis, a scientist who led or participated in every official U.S. study on civilian harm, conservatively estimates there’s been at least one civilian casualty incident per week for over 20 years, since the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Nobody knows how many deaths these incidents caused; the U.S. government doesn’t even know. What is known is that many civilians were needlessly killed by a military that publicly carries a banner of moral, legal, and operational superiority into every battle.
GETTING IT WRONG
Confirmation bias isn’t the only problem plaguing the system. Like many civilians killed by the U.S. military, Ahmadi had been misidentified as a legitimate target. That is, he was not the victim of a strike intended to kill someone else. The positive identification of valid military targets is one of the most critical functions of air strike teams since it leads to decisions about who lives and who dies. Yet such teams have misidentified civilians as legitimate targets in case after case after case. For example, a 2013 report by Lewis described how the majority of civilian casualties caused by U.S. military actions from 2007 to 2012 were the result of misidentification. A 2018 Pentagon study I was part of also contained significant evidence that civilians were misidentified as targets and killed in the 2016 U.S. military campaign to retake Mosul, Iraq, from ISIS and again during the effort to push ISIS out of Raqqa, Syria in 2017.
Another documented flaw in U.S. operations is that drone strikes repeatedly miss the presence of civilian bystanders. Drone operators tend to zoom in when conducting surveillance on a possible target. Although this makes it easier to see the suspect, it also makes it more difficult to see what could be around that target, including civilians coming and going. Strike teams can mitigate this risk by zooming out to look for civilians before launching an attack. The team that carried out the strike in Kabul last August apparently did not do that, judging from a Defense Department fact sheet and comments from officials. Seven children just outside the frame were killed.
Bad communication during an operation can also lead to civilian deaths. That’s because within a drone operation there is a ground team, a higher command team based elsewhere in the region, an imagery team often based in the United States, and a separate team taking the strike. They’re not necessarily all speaking to each other. So, an imagery analyst trying to discern whether a person is male or female might relay their finding to the command center, but the command center may not share the finding with the trigger-puller or may misinterpret the finding when passing it on. There are ways to make this function better but the U.S. military hasn’t done it. Said, the inspector general who conducted the Kabul strike investigation, indicated that members of the strike cell did not alert others on the team that they were about to launch the attack. The CIA also had eyes on the target in the Kabul strike and saw the children nearby but was not able to get the information to the drone operators in time. The reason why has not been made public.
The most common pattern in U.S. air strikes is how rarely anyone is held responsible for civilian deaths. Repeated internal investigations have resulted in little punishment, perhaps in part because units are investigating themselves. If military personnel and civilian officials knew they might lose their jobs on account of mistakes that led to civilian deaths, they would take greater care to avoid future mistakes. The U.S. military should also reform its justice system to ensure its independence from the chain of command—and criminal liability should be on the table for those who intentionally kill civilians. These and other consequences should be brought to bear in the military coverup of some 70 civilian casualties recently uncovered by a New York Times investigation of a 2019 air strike in Baghuz, Syria, carried out by the classified special operations unit, known as Task Force 9. The Pentagon is conducting an internal investigation of this incident, but it’s magical thinking to expect any accountability.
TOP DOWN
What’s perhaps most galling about this pattern of civilian death is that U.S. forces have shown progress is possible when there is pressure from the top to improve. Military commanders and civilian defense leaders have grappled with these problems and have found solutions that save lives. When leadership makes protecting civilians a priority, subordinates take it seriously.
In 2005, U.S. commanders in Iraq realized their forces were killing civilians at checkpoints at alarmingly high levels and brought the problem under control by 2006. In 2009, General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of international forces in Afghanistan, made changes to military tactics that led to a 28 percent drop in civilian casualties. Similarly, the average number of civilians killed in errant airstrikes in Afghanistan dropped more than 40 percent after a 2010 tactical directive, a document that provides guidance for troops on the ground, instructed that keeping civilians alive during U.S. military operations was a priority. In 2011, Lewis convinced the U.S. command in Afghanistan to analyze strike data and civilian harm to see if it could lower the risk to civilians. After doing the analysis, he sent the then-commander, General David Petraeus, some suggestions on how to improve, which Petraeus implemented. Civilian deaths started to go back down.
But these changes didn’t last. Over time, the solutions one commander found useful—not just for saving lives but maintaining local support for U.S. military efforts—were eschewed by his replacement. Guidance that once saved civilian lives was loosened to make way for some other priority. As this played out, the military forgot what it learned, or worse, didn’t care enough to make improvements last. For example, in 2009, Admiral Michael Mullen created and led the Joint Staff civilian casualty working group, putting a much-needed spotlight on ways to reduce civilian deaths in Afghanistan. But after some progress, the Pentagon disbanded the group and any improvements were lost.
The same cycle of learning and forgetting happened in the White House, too. Progress made under President Barack Obama—like tightened rules about ensuring civilians weren’t present before a strike—were undone by his successor, President Donald Trump. Indeed, Trump’s overall tone on this issue gave elements of the U.S. military the leeway they wanted to not be so careful about civilian harm. During his campaign for president, Trump promised to “bomb the shit” out of ISIS and target their families, which is a violation of international law. His first defense secretary, retired General James Mattis, told a meeting of U.S. counterterrorism partners that the president directed the U.S. military to “annihilate ISIS.” It’s hard to believe that rhetoric didn’t pave the way to care less about the civilian population in places where the U.S. military was fighting.
WHERE THE BUCK STOPS
Austin’s pledge to “work harder” to limit civilian harm hasn’t produced any tangible steps that give me hope. But the White House is ultimately responsible for setting the tone for how the United States engages in the world and how it fights wars. President Joe Biden has said nothing publicly about the Baghuz or Kabul strikes, although his press office says he supports a full investigation into what went wrong in Kabul. The president requested a review of U.S. counterterrorism policy early in his administration, but he has not yet tasked his defense secretary with fixing the pattern of civilian harm. Biden has not, for example, set up even that most ubiquitous of bureaucratic solutions—an expert working group—to review the past 20 years of civilian harm.
The Pentagon and the White House, over multiple administrations, have shown they cannot—or will not—fix these problems with solutions that stick. There is no other option than to look to Congress for leadership and accountability. But before members of Congress can solve the problems, they need to understand them. They can start by reading the dozens of existing Defense Department studies on the topic. These reports all include recommendations that, had they been implemented, would have spared civilian lives.
Once members of Congress are armed with information, they should hold hearings on the subject. Congress will quickly learn that the Pentagon has no plan in place to curb civilian casualties. Members should ask senior officials for their civilian protection policy (there isn’t one). Ask for their analysis of data on civilian deaths in the past 20 years (that analysis doesn’t exist). Ask what actions have been taken in response to recommendations made over the years on how to prevent civilian harm (very few). Ask who oversees these efforts at the Pentagon and how many resources are devoted to solving the problem of civilian harm (a handful of people are working on civilian harm, none of whom see the issue as their main task, and only pennies on the dollar are dedicated to it, given the Pentagon budget). Ask how many victims’ families have heard directly from the U.S. government (a couple dozen at most in recent years). Ask what the criteria are for holding anyone accountable in cases of mass civilian casualties (there aren’t any). Order them to provide this information and set a prompt deadline. Congress should also remember that these questions only get at civilian casualties caused by the U.S. military and do not cover operations carried out by the CIA.
When leadership makes protecting civilians a priority, subordinates take it seriously.
Congress has failed to ask questions for a long time, but some members are paying attention now. Several committees are considering hearings. Thirty-nine representatives and 11 senators signed a letter to Biden, led by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), urging him to prioritize civilian protection in new counterterrorism policies. Several more members have privately sent letters to the administration.
In December, John Kirby, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, blamed the botched August strike in Kabul on "a breakdown in process and execution in procedural events, not the result of negligence, not the result of misconduct, not the result of poor leadership.” This is profoundly and precisely incorrect. The lack of due care is the very definition of negligence, and the lack of leadership and accountability are what allows it to occur again and again.
When The New York Times revealed the truth about who died in the disastrous Kabul strike last August, General Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, remarked that “combat … is an inherently messy, imprecise, bloody business. And we would like for it to be antiseptic. We would like for it to be perfect. It often is just not going to reach those standards of excellence.”
No one is expecting perfection (though, when it comes to deciding who dies, it’s hoped for). But Americans do expect excellence from their armed forces and the civilian leaders whose job it is to oversee them—and there is no reason that standard should not apply to the task of preventing needless civilian deaths.
21. Follow the Netherlands's example: Don’t fund terrorist fronts
Excerpts:
With evidence mounting, institutions worldwide have started to cut ties with the PFLP NGO network. In recent years, credit card companies have terminated services to al Haq, the UAWC, and the DCI-P for their ties to the PFLP. As of December 2021, Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers confirmed that they would no longer provide services to the UAWC and DCI-P respectively.
But these NGOs have received tens of millions of dollars from the United Nations, the European Union , European charities , and individual European countries , particularly Sweden, Spain, and Norway. As the evidence continues to mount, it’s time to halt all aid to these terrorist-funding NGOs.
Follow the Netherlands's example: Don’t fund terrorist fronts
The bomb that ended Israeli teenager Rina Shnerb’s life in August 2019 also ended Dutch support for the nongovernmental organization that employed her killers. It just took about two years to happen.
Last Wednesday, the Dutch Cabinet upheld its decision to cut funding to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, a Palestinian nonprofit group whose stated goal is to help local farmers. Faced with incontrovertible evidence, the Dutch couldn’t deny that the UAWC simply had too many employees who moonlight for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or vice versa.
The United States , European Union , Canada , Israel, and others have branded the PFLP as a terrorist group. The group gained notoriety in the 1960s and 1970s for high-profile hijackings and attacks against Israelis. In the early 2000s, it carried out the only assassination of an Israeli minister by a terrorist group. In 2014, the PFLP claimed responsibility for an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue that left six dead, including three American rabbis. And then there was the PFLP cell that killed Shnerb in 2019.
Soon after, the Dutch government began to hear reports that the PFLP was working with a Palestinian charity, the UAWC, that enjoyed Dutch state funding. While the allegations mounted, Amsterdam halted funding to the UAWC in July 2020. The Dutch government also hired an outside investigative firm to get to the bottom of the UAWC’s ties to the PFLP.
In the end, the findings were damning: Dutch government funding for the UAWC partly covered the salaries of Shnerb’s killers; 34 UAWC individuals worked with the PFLP between 2007 and 2020, when the Dutch government funded the UAWC. Of those 34, 28 were UAWC board members, indicating their senior roles in the organization. A dozen of these people served in both organizations simultaneously.
Admittedly, the report failed to nail down the financial flows between the UAWC and the PFLP. This partly stemmed from a Dutch Cabinet requirement that all information be verifiable, which excluded certain evidence, such as government intelligence.
But the episode was far from over. The Shnerb murder also prompted an Israeli investigation into the PFLP NGO network. Immediately following the attack, Israel confiscated numerous weapons and arrested some 50 PFLP members. This included the suspects, who were current or former employees of the UAWC, Addameer, and the Union of Health Work Committees Palestinian NGOs.
In January 2020, Israel declared the UHWC to be an illegal organization. Then, in October 2021, with information gathered during the counter-PFLP operation, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz designated the UAWC, al Haq, the Bisan Center, Defence of Children International-Palestine, Addameer, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees as fronts for the PFLP.
Israel has not yet and might never publicly release the evidence behind this decision. The designations came amid a murder investigation, so Israel’s judicial system cannot release information that might influence the trial or that would compromise its intelligence collection.
However, a leaked Israeli dossier provides a clearer picture. It depicts a network of NGOs illicitly transferring funds from European donors to the PFLP. In a confession included in the dossier, Said Abedat, a former accountant for the UHWC, stated: “The institutions affiliated with the PFLP are interconnected and constitute a lifeline for the organization from an economic and institutional standpoint, that is, money laundering and funding of the PFLP’s activities.”
Wiretaps and other confessions in the dossier detail how Palestinian NGOs overinvoiced, well above the actual cost of projects, and sent the difference to the PFLP. According to the dossier, NGOs even worked with local contractors to produce fake receipts to justify the inflated figures.
With evidence mounting, institutions worldwide have started to cut ties with the PFLP NGO network. In recent years, credit card companies have terminated services to al Haq, the UAWC, and the DCI-P for their ties to the PFLP. As of December 2021, Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers confirmed that they would no longer provide services to the UAWC and DCI-P respectively.
But these NGOs have received tens of millions of dollars from the United Nations, the European Union , European charities , and individual European countries , particularly Sweden, Spain, and Norway. As the evidence continues to mount, it’s time to halt all aid to these terrorist-funding NGOs.
David May is a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow David on Twitter at @DavidSamuelMay .
22. As Ukraine Faces Russian Aggression, What Should Small Countries Take Away from the Crisis?
Conclusion:
While the already critical situation in Ukraine has the potential to turn into an even more deadly conflict it also carries some important lessons for other countries that should not be ignored. Small countries are at historic turning point. They should realize that unconventional approaches such as resistance can not only prove tactically effective, but can form the foundation of a potent and resilient grand strategy for small states. However, such strategy can only deliver the most optimal outcomes if it is executed by a purpose-built force and small states are willing to replace conventional concepts, military organizations, and their associated fighting machines with new ones. The only question is whether they, and their larger allies like the United States, are ready to accept and act upon the inevitable.
As Ukraine Faces Russian Aggression, What Should Small Countries Take Away from the Crisis? - Modern War Institute
This consensus is indicative of a broader but long-ignored truth—that small countries do not have a realistic fighting chance against Russian military might (or that of other great powers like China or the United States) in a conventional sense and their only viable alternative is indeed modern resistance. Such a realization should not be surprising since several wargames and simulations in the Baltic region and in Poland yielded this conclusion years ago. While these results led to the introduction of resistance-based “total defense” strategies and the establishment of territorial defense forces and other paramilitary organizations in many countries to address the potential need for resistance, a bias toward traditional military formations remained in place. However, the situation now in Ukraine should incentivize small countries to take another look at their approaches to defense and conduct a sober and emotionless reevaluation of the usefulness of their existing conventional military frameworks. Such reevaluation should lead to the realization that small countries’ traditional militaries do not carry much value for them anymore and it is time to go back to the drawing board to design a brand new defense solution that fits the twenty-first-century reality of small states.
In his 2001 article, “How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict,” Ivan Arreguín-Toft studies the outcome of asymmetric wars between 1800 and 1998 and finds the frequency of weak-actor victory against large conventional enemies increasing over time. His findings show that this tendency is especially strong between 1950 and 1998, when 55 percent of conflicts ended with weak-actor victory. According to the author this result is due to the fact that the final outcome of any conflict is the result of the interaction of the adversaries’ strategies. Arreguín-Toft argues that the confronting strategies can be reduced to two distinctive forms: direct (conventional approach) and indirect approaches (irregular approach). Direct strategies focus on the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces and, through this, its capacity to continue fighting. The indirect strategy aims for the destruction of the enemy’s will to fight. The author argues that when in a conflict both sides use the same strategic approach, either direct against direct or indirect against indirect, the stronger actor almost always wins, since there is nothing to mediate or deflect a strong actor’s power advantage. However, when opposite strategic approaches interact, it more frequently correlates with victory of the weaker actor, since the stronger party’s advantages are deflected. Recent simulations and wargames as well as the current situation in Ukraine all suggest that the only way for small countries to have a chance for victory is through an indirect approach—namely, resistance.
While some counties have taken initial steps toward developing their own resistance capabilities—for instance, by establishing reserve territorial defense forces and other paramilitary organizations—conventional military frameworks and concepts remain in place. This is a mistake. Just as professional, conventional militaries are designed, organized, trained, and equipped to fight a very specific type of war, small countries need completely new force design, organization, training, and equipment to fight and win modern resistance wars. As Martin van Creveld suggested in his seminal book, The Transformation of War, new defense establishments created for new types of conflict should be radically different from military organizations as we understand them today. Universally accepted principles that have long shaped conventional militaries should be fundamentally reimagined, if not abandoned entirely. Just like the phalanx, heavy knights, and light cavalry of past centuries went away, along with the doctrine and weapon systems associated with them, small states must be willing to place current organizations, training and education structures, and even military rank systems and uniforms on the chopping block, to be replaced by solutions specifically addressing the requirements of resistance operations. To find initial ideas for such groundbreaking changes one must conduct a rigorous study of historical cases of resistance. However, it is paramount not to limit these studies to romanticized, Western models from World War II, but to also study contemporary examples such as Chechen resistance against Russia, Hezbollah`s defense against Israel, the Iraqi and Taliban insurgencies, and the Syrian insurgency.
The time for cautious steps that do nothing to break down outdated and irrelevant military concepts should be over. If small states want to survive aggression by a more powerful counterpart, they must start harvesting from the edges of strategic thinking instead of blindly following historically rooted conventional military ideas. They must stop reflexively pursuing “high-tech” approaches and adopt a “right-tech” approach instead. And they must also move away from the idea of having a small number of large, expensive things—weapon systems, vehicles, and other equipment—in favor of having a large number of small, replaceable things. Small countries need purpose-designed and -built weapons and equipment that were created specifically for resistance operations. Technological development enables a nation to choose its way of fighting first and then develop or procure the proper hardware to support the fight. Instead of trying to compete against a tank with a tank or against an airplane with an airplane, nations should focus on technologies that eliminate the modern systems’ advantages or make them irrelevant. Resistance weapons and equipment must enable fighters to move quickly while delivering lethal effects. Resistance forces must utilize cutting-edge technologies such as unmanned and remote-controlled platforms, weaponize commercially available robots, and develop high-tech and easily concealable explosive devices. The fielding of such technologies should also be reflected in the establishment of new military branches and formations that would form the basis of the new defense establishment.
Such changes in small states would require a significant reevaluation of the way the United States approaches foreign military assistance and its entire alliance and partnership system. Instead of trying to export US solutions and turning every small state`s military into a miniature version of the US military it is crucial to start incentivizing and supporting small countries to find and develop their own defense solutions that fit their own realities. This is a major challenge since US servicemembers are trained and educated based on the perceived objective superiority of US military principles and practices. But objective superiority has no bearing when the conditions surrounding each country’s defense requirements are fundamentally unique. It is simply not optimal for US assistance to be premised on the notion that partners must implement US solutions instead of trying to come up with new solutions. Instead of endlessly elevating the notion of interoperability among allies and partners to a position of absolute primacy, the United States should reward individual solutions and find ways to enable and support the small countries’ ways of fighting. US advisors, therefore, should not be trained and educated to advise others how to fight, but rather how to understand others’ ways of fighting and discover the best way for US military capabilities to support and enable small countries resistance activities.
While the already critical situation in Ukraine has the potential to turn into an even more deadly conflict it also carries some important lessons for other countries that should not be ignored. Small countries are at historic turning point. They should realize that unconventional approaches such as resistance can not only prove tactically effective, but can form the foundation of a potent and resilient grand strategy for small states. However, such strategy can only deliver the most optimal outcomes if it is executed by a purpose-built force and small states are willing to replace conventional concepts, military organizations, and their associated fighting machines with new ones. The only question is whether they, and their larger allies like the United States, are ready to accept and act upon the inevitable.
Sandor Fabian is a former Hungarian special forces officer with twenty years of military experience. Currently Sandor is a NATO special operations subject matter expert, curriculum developer, and advanced studies team leader at LEIDOS, supporting the NATO Special Operations School. Sandor is also a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Central Florida and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Lance Cpl. Jacqueline Parsons, US Marine Corps
23. China digging Cambodia a deep-water naval base
Excerpts:
Cambodia’s potential dependence on China’s possible naval presence at Ream as insurance against Thailand and Vietnam has implications for Cambodia’s position in ASEAN. Cambodia blocked ASEAN from issuing a joint statement in 2012 and 2016 over the South China Sea disputes, where China is locked in simmering confrontations with the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam.
This has led to accusations that Cambodia is acting on behalf of China’s interests in ASEAN, in return for economic and possibly security guarantees. That, in turn, has led to the erosion of ASEAN’s credibility as a regional security conductor, a reputation which was already in doubt due to its inability to forge a united position on the South China Sea and its ineffective responses to the Rohingya refugee crisis and Myanmar coup.
China digging Cambodia a deep-water naval base
Satellite imagery shows Chinese dredgers working at Ream Naval Base in an expansion that could open the way for Chinese warships to dock
The imagery shows two clamshell dredgers just off the coast of Ream accompanied by barges for collecting the dredged sands, according to ATMI, a unit of the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank in Washington DC. The dredgers first arrived between January 13-15 and have since remained fixed in their positions, the ATMI report said.
The report noted the dredging represents a potential significant upgrade as the base’s shallow waters currently allow it to host only small patrol vessels and not major warships. The report also featured satellite imagery showing ongoing onshore construction work at the base, including clearing for roads and the development of concrete lots along the coast.
In 2020, Cambodia demolished its US-built Cambodian Navy tactical headquarters facility at Ream, raising US concerns that the demolition was connected to Cambodia’s alleged 2019 secret agreement to host Chinese naval assets and military personnel at the base.
Cambodian officials have consistently denied any such deal exists, which if so would violate legal provisions barring the stationing of foreign troops on Cambodian soil.
Satellite images of Chinese dredgers at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base. Images: ATMI/CSIS via Maxar
A potential Chinese naval presence at Cambodia’s Ream base would allow China to balance against the US in the Malacca Strait chokepoint, secure its emerging interests in the Gulf of Thailand and establish a southern flank on the South China Sea. In addition, Cambodia can use China’s naval presence as insurance against long-simmering threats from neighboring Thailand and Vietnam.
Significantly, a naval presence at Ream would give China a forward naval presence closer to the Malacca Strait to counterbalance, monitor and even potentially pre-empt against the US naval presence in Singapore. The US has a logistics base in Singapore that hosts rotational deployments of littoral combat ships (LCS) and P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft.
China’s possible future naval presence at Ream may be crucial in solving its “Malacca Dilemma”, wherein its dependence on the Malacca Strait waterway for the passage of its trade, including in the past as much as 80% of its fuel imports from the Middle East, makes it vulnerable to a US naval blockade in a conflict scenario.
China’s development of the Kyaukphyu deep-sea port in Myanmar provides one hedge against the Malacca Strait through the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, a highway and pipeline system connecting Kyaukphyu port to the southern landlocked Yunnan province in China.
However, the escalating insurgency in Myanmar, the junta’s botched Covid-19 pandemic response, and the possibility of Myanmar becoming a failed state may have caused China to doubt Myanmar’s capacity to secure its infrastructure projects in the country.
Thailand’s long-proposed Kra canal and land bridge between the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Thailand would potentially offer an alternative, but Thai concerns of becoming a target of great power competition, massive costs, physical separation of the nation and environmental issues have kept the project on the drawing board despite Beijing’s expressed interest.
The Thais have said they would only consider the project as a multinational undertaking, rather than one dominated by China.
China’s potential naval presence at Ream would also bolster its position in the South China Sea, particularly vis-à-vis rival claimant Vietnam. Access to Ream combined with its southern naval bases would potentially allow it to envelop and overstretch Vietnam’s limited naval, maritime militia and law enforcement agencies in a two-front campaign. This, in turn, would increase the odds of miscalculation leading to a potential lopsided confrontation.
Moreover, Indonesia might perceive China’s Ream naval presence as another threat to its Natuna Islands. While Indonesia is not a direct claimant in the South China Sea, there is an overlap between Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and China’s unilaterally proclaimed nine-dash line, with the Natuna Islands at the center of this overlap.
While China acknowledges Indonesia’s sovereignty over the Natuna Islands, it has argued that the waters surrounding them are its “traditional fishing grounds.” Indonesia and China have already had confrontations at the Natuna Islands. A Chinese naval presence at Ream would thus further exacerbate maritime tensions between the two sides, and deepen the latter’s involvement in the South China Sea disputes.
China is helping Cambodia to develop its Ream Naval Base. Image: Facebook
Cambodia could also view China’s naval presence at Ream as insurance against its larger and stronger neighbors Thailand and Vietnam. Thailand and Cambodia are locked in a long-simmering maritime dispute involving oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Thailand that could escalate, particularly if Thailand’s fuel supplies from neighboring Myanmar are jeopardized by that country’s escalating armed conflict.
Vietnam and Cambodia have a long history of conflict, as Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979 and occupied the latter until 1989. More recently, Cambodia is pitted in a border dispute with Vietnam, with Cambodian activists claiming their country has been losing farmland to Vietnam, as the Cambodian government is demarcating borders based on a 1985 treaty signed during the Vietnamese occupation.
More potently, Vietnam recently established a new maritime militia unit in its Kiem Giang province bordering Cambodia’s Kampot province in apparent response to growing Chinese influence in Cambodia – and perhaps in anticipation of China’s possible naval deployments at Ream.
Cambodia’s potential dependence on China’s possible naval presence at Ream as insurance against Thailand and Vietnam has implications for Cambodia’s position in ASEAN. Cambodia blocked ASEAN from issuing a joint statement in 2012 and 2016 over the South China Sea disputes, where China is locked in simmering confrontations with the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam.
This has led to accusations that Cambodia is acting on behalf of China’s interests in ASEAN, in return for economic and possibly security guarantees. That, in turn, has led to the erosion of ASEAN’s credibility as a regional security conductor, a reputation which was already in doubt due to its inability to forge a united position on the South China Sea and its ineffective responses to the Rohingya refugee crisis and Myanmar coup.
24. Forced Prison Labor in China: Hiding in Plain Sight
Forced Prison Labor in China: Hiding in Plain Sight
Two years after a 6-year-old discovered a plea for help in a package of Christmas cards, newly released prisoners detail their accusations – and the prison’s cover up when the scandal broke.
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Ancient Mogilev, a former city of the medieval Duchy of Lithuania and now part of Belarus close to the border with Russia, cradled along the River Dnieper, is a most unlikely spot for an interview about forced prison labor in China. But this is the home to which Dima Siakatsky returned after his release from Shanghai’s Qingpu Prison, where he witnessed foreign prisoners being coerced into labor, packaging goods for foreign and Chinese brands.
China’s foreign prisoners come from all over the planet. I was interviewing Siakatsky by video at his home in Mogilev several months after his return, when he pulled out a handful of Christmas cards made for the Tesco supermarket chain and waved them at the screen. “Here is the evidence that prisoners at Qingpu Prison were packaging these cards,” he said. “I kept some of the cards and smuggled them out with me as proof.”
During our interview, Siakatsky recounted that on Christmas Day in the prison in 2019, cheers broke out when he got into a fight with another prisoner and dumped a plate of hot food on the other man’s head. Guards rushed to break up the fracas, and Siakatsky, who was deemed to have provoked the fight, was hauled off to spend 80 days in solitary confinement.
Siakatsky had attacked an inmate who was cooperating in the prison’s attempt to cover up the forced labor scandal that was inadvertently exposed when a young English girl found a message from prisoners at Qingpu scrawled in a Tesco Christmas Card.
In 2019, Florence Widdicombe, then a 6-year-old London schoolgirl, discovered a despairing message from Shanghai prisoners forced to pack boxes of Christmas charity cards bound for British supermarkets.
Her discovery made headlines around the world. I wrote up the story for the Sunday Times and followed it up with another one about the prisoners packaging Quaker oatmeal.
There were quick denials by Chinese media and Beijing’s foreign ministry at the time, and I came under a vicious personal attack in a 30-minute CGTN program assassinating my character.
Over the past two years I have gradually pieced together the reaction inside the jail after my Sunday Times story was published on December 22, 2019. Several of the prisoners involved have been released from Qingpu over the past year and have described the panic that erupted after Chinese authorities learned of Florence’s find.
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When the story came out, a pair of new foreign prisoners who hadn’t been involved in the smuggled messaging were persuaded to deny everything for visiting Chinese state media television cameras. Emotions in the foreign prisoners’ “Brigade Eight” cell block boiled over.
“The guards arranged for the TV crews to film tables stacked with good food to present the impression the prisoners were treated well,” said Siakatsky, who is a furniture trader.
As one of the prisoners who had packaged the cards, Siakatsky secreted away several as evidence and took them with him when he was released last summer after serving 40 months for allegedly carrying a fake credit card. During his video interview with me, he produced them for the camera. They were identical to the Tesco cards that Florence’s father, Ben, handed to me two years ago.
Dima Siakatsky holding Tesco Christmas cards, smuggled out from Qingpu prison. Photo by Peter Humphrey.
He said the prison governor, Li Qiang, went on camera and denied the prison had any involvement with the cards.
“This was a blatant lie,” Siakatsky proclaimed. “The Christmas cards were packed exactly in Brigade Eight by the hands of prisoners in the same room where they eat and spend their time. In this room there were stands with information about who and how many cards and other products each prisoner made.
“Then the officers, and some prisoners under orders, began urgently to remove all evidence that prisoners worked in the brigade. By evening it became clear why.”
Siakatsky said the prosecutors based in the prison came to interrogate two prisoners who had committed genuinely serious crimes, and persuaded them to talk to the TV crews. “I told them that I also wanted to testify about the Christmas cards and that I had proof, holding up some of the cards. To which they replied that they did not need my testimony and evidence,” he said.
“At dinner time, reporters and senior officers of the Prison Bureau arrived at the brigade. Jailers were posted to prevent me from seeing what was happening at first. The guards knew very well that I might intervene. So I could only see the journalists through a window. I saw the police look at the fake dinner on the tables and nod their heads and grin in approval,” Siakatsky said.
“I went up to the officers, took out some cards, raised my hand and said that the Christmas cards were made here and I want to testify. The next moment captains Wei and Zhao took the cards and pushed me out of the room. I said that the governor had lied on TV,” Siakatsky continued.
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“The next day I saw a report on the Chinese channel that they had filmed the day before. One prisoner, an Italian pedophile, said that in this prison there was a good attitude towards prisoners and good food. This was also a complete lie.”
Siakatsky was outraged that learned that an Italian prisoner convicted of sex crimes was apparently seeking to curry favor with guards by denying the practice of forced labor within the prison. “So during dinner, I took my dinner plate and poured it over his head. Captain Wei was on duty that day. He handcuffed me, applied force to me and sent me to solitary where I spent 80 days.” This was the longest time a foreign prisoner in Qingpu had ever spent in solitary.
“The statement that the cards were not produced in prison and the demonstration of good food seemed to me complete hypocrisy,” Siakatsky said.
The 2019 Christmas Card Discovery
Campaigners and critics have long claimed that Chinese jails coerce inmates into “slave labor” on a wide range of both foreign and domestic products. I personally witnessed coerced labor by prisoners packaging foreign-branded wares at Qingpu when I was held there in 2014-2015 in my own widely-publicized arbitrary imprisonment. Florence Widdicombe’s shocking discovery provided unmistakable evidence that China had found a way to sidestep international scrutiny of its manufacturing and packaging supply chains.
“We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu prison China,” read the message written in capital letters inside a Christmas card purchased by the Widdicombe family. “Forced to work against our will. Please help and notify human rights organization.” The message also urged the reader to contact me personally.
The message Florence Widdicombe found inside a purchased Christmas card in December 2019. Photo by Ben Widdicombe.
Tesco terminated its dealings with the factory that had made the cards and insisted that “we do not allow the use of prison labor in our supply chain.” Inside Qingpu’s Brigade Eight, which houses more than 300 foreign prisoners, officers were panicking.
“There was chaos, the prison officials were shaking with fear,” recalled Romeo Papava, another former inmate, whom I interviewed by video from his home in Tbilisi, Georgia, after his release from Qingpu last year.
Captain Zhao Minfeng, the officer in charge of prison labor in Brigade Eight, was demoted for allowing the message incident to occur. Captain Wei Wei, an officer who prisoners say abused and beat prisoners – Wei was my tormentor during my own time at Qingpu – led a search to try to unmask the message writers but failed. Even so, he was rewarded for his heavy-handedness with a promotion and is now in charge of the brigade, Papava said.
The prison blocked television news broadcasts for two days, but word quickly spread about the secret message in the Christmas card and the fact that the authorities were denying everything.
Anatomy of a Cover-up
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The 2019 scandal ignited feverish activity by the Chinese propaganda apparatus to cover up and deny the naked truth. “It is such an imaginative story, the opposite of efforts to reform prisoners,” prison governor Li Qiang told Communist Party (CCP)-controlled Central Chinese Television (CCTV).
“Prisoners only work voluntarily,” Li said. “The prisoners get reasonable payment for their work.” By this he was referring to a paltry maximum of 120 renminbi (under $20) for one month of full-time work.
A broadcast on Xinhua TV labeled the story “fake news” and said it had been “denied by foreign prisoners in Qingpu.” “An Italian and a Burundian inmate said they were not forced to do anything,” it reported. The owner of the Christmas card factory said the story was “fabricated” and that he did not even know the contact details of the prison.
Another broadcast from an outlet of Shanghai United Media Group showed foreign prisoners acting in a drama, accessing video lessons, playing chess, writing, and making handicrafts. It showed the Italian and Burundian pretending to do Chinese calligraphy. This is quite remarkable, considering they had only been in China for a short time and did not know the Chinese language. The Italian even claimed he was studying the saxophone. But prisoners say such activities are rare and are only for a privileged few prisoners who collaborate with their captors.
CCTV also aired a clip with the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang denying the story and alleged that I had “fabricated a farce” in my reporting. Geng even bizarrely denied the existence of labor at all in the Chinese prison system, even though it is actually written into China’s prison law.
The Cover-up as Seen From Inside the Prison
“On Christmas Day they sent Chinese TV to the prison to do a cover-up and to show how wonderful our life was in there,” said Papava, an import-export trader who served a four-and-a-half year sentence for an alleged theft. “Two prisoners – an Italian rapist and a Burundian car thief – were put in front of the cameras to lie. They said exactly what they were told to say.”
Papava said the two men were rewarded with “merit points” that gave them extra prison privileges.
In this screenshot from a video report by The Paper, prisoners from Italy and Burundi practice calligraphy. The text reads, in Chinese, “We can also study Chinese history, ancient Chinese poetry, and Chinese language.” Other prisoners say the interviews and activities that appeared on camera in Chinese state media reports about Qingpu Prison were elaborately staged.
Released prisoners, including one of the authors of the messages, have told me the officers never succeeded in finding the authors of the letter Florence discovered. Their identities were disguised in my original Sunday Times piece. One author remains in the prison, and I have withheld his identity to protect him.
In the aftermath of the Tesco story, “all work stopped because they stopped delivering raw materials,” Siakatsky said. Prisoners were later pressed to sign a “voluntary consent” form to show that they participated willingly in prison labor. Signing the forms became part of the formula that earned prisoners sentence reduction points.
“If you want to leave prison earlier … you have to be sure to work,” said Siakatsky.
Prisoners in both foreign and Chinese cell blocks there were also afterwards forbidden to take pens into work areas “so that no one could write a message and hide it inside a product,” said Siakatsky. While work on commercial products resumed for Chinese prisoners, foreign inmates were, for a time, restricted to goods that were seemingly bound for domestic markets.
Recently released prisoners said they worked last year on clothing for Hotwind, a Chinese streetwear fashion brand; others worked on prison guard uniforms and the lettering on computer keyboards that bore no brand names while they handled them. A Nigerian named Thursday, freed last July, said prison work on commercial products was continuing when he came home.
“I was there on that Christmas when it happened. They denied we were working on the Tesco Christmas cards. We were so upset when these two prisoners lied to Chinese media. They were trying to control China’s image to the world,” said Thursday, now a real estate broker in Nigeria’s Delta. “They stopped the labor for some months and then started again. They were still doing it when I was released.”
Forced Prison Labor: The Norm, Not the Exception
Forced labor is in fact the norm across the Chinese prison system. When I was in the pretrial Shanghai Detention Center in 2013-2014 they had just abolished manufacturing labor there, ending the production of Christmas lights for export. But I witnessed prison labor in Qingpu. I saw thousands of Chinese prisoners march daily across the campus in military style to the prison factory, which made textiles for famous labels including Adidas and Nike and electronic parts.
In Brigade Eight I personally witnessed the making of packaging materials for H&M, C&A, and 3M, which I wrote about in 2018. All these companies denied any knowledge of this activity and I am inclined to believe them, especially as H&M was my own former consultancy client.
Today, prisoners have told me that if you refuse to do this work, you will not be considered for sentence reduction and early release, and you will lose other privileges such as prison shopping and family telephone calls. So most foreign prisoners reluctantly do it, especially as anyone who refuses becomes a target for abuse.
It is also well-known that interned Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been forced to labor on cotton farms and in textile factories over the past few years as part of the CCP’s genocidal policies in that region. But the practice is not unique to the Uyghurs. Forced labor is in fact pervasive throughout the entire Chinese prison system, and is present in all Chinese incarceration facilities, which hold many millions of prisoners.
The “message-in-a-bottle” tactic is used from time to time to seek foreign help, as it was in the Tesco incident. But it carries high risks. Some years ago a Chinese prisoner in a labor camp at a place called Masanjia smuggled out a letter inside Halloween decorations that ended up in a Wal-Mart store in Seattle and became a sensation. After his release, he moved to Indonesia where he was killed. There are suspicions he was murdered by Chinese agents for blowing the whistle.
Every Chinese prison relies on income from commercial manufacturing contracts to fund itself, and officers earn bonuses for bringing in business and reaching financial targets. The senior officer in my Brigade Eight earned a luxury holiday in Fiji while I was there. Forced labor is embedded in the prison system. China’s prison network is an enterprise and an industry.
The Christmas Card Incident: Echoes Today
Florence Widdicombe still remembers the sense of bewilderment she felt when she pulled a card from the box her parents had bought from their local Tesco branch, and was annoyed to discover that someone had “already written in it.”
Two years later, with COVID-19 restrictions easing in England, I visited the Widdicombes’ south London home before Christmas for a sandwich lunch and met Florence for the first time. I asked her how she felt about the viral media attention that she got in 2019.
“I didn’t really understand why it was so important,” she told me with a little grin. “My teachers all knew about it. My teacher said I did a good thing.”
Her father Ben, a civil servant who specialized in criminology, realized at once what his daughter had found. The impact from her discovery is still being felt in Qingpu Prison to this day.
While finishing off this report, I received a handwritten document from a foreign prisoner that was smuggled out of Qingpu. The document, titled “The Black Curtain,” is a protest letter covering a wide range of topics, including forced labor and the Christmas card episode.
“Not only was there forced labor, but labor performance was interlaced with inmate shopping grades and most importantly your sentence remission and commutation,” the writer complained. ”In plain language it means that if you do not perform your labor, your remission and commutation of sentence would be impossible.”
He described the scene on that Christmas Day and confirmed Siakatsky’s starring role in the protest against the cover-up. Graciously, he exonerated prison governor Li Qiang by saying, “don’t blame it on Li, he is just one of thousands of puppet officers molded from the production line of the Chinese Communist Party.”
He ended the topic with an appeal: “We hope the international human rights organizations Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Interights, the U.N. High Commission, seek more aggressive actions against China.”
For my original report in 2019 I traced and interviewed a dozen ex-prisoners on five continents who had been released from Qingpu that year and combined their narratives with information buried in letters sent to me by prisoners still in Qingpu. For the current report, I interviewed prisoners who were released in 2020 and 2021. Not all of them have been named in this story. I anticipate further prisoner releases and updates in 2022.
Peter Humphrey
Peter Humphrey has been a China specialist for 46 years. He is an external research associate of Harvard University’s Fairbank Center. He was a foreign correspondent for 20 years and later spent 15 years as an anti-fraud due-diligence consultant for Western corporations in China, including 10 years heading his own company, ChinaWhys. He and his Chinese-born American wife spent two years imprisoned in Shanghai on charges which have been widely recognized as false.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
