Tag: War

  • Japan's Intelligence Ambitions

    This piece in SpyTalk.co, a popular Substack where Founding Editor Jeff Stein and a “team of veteran reporters” provide “original reporting, scoops and analysis on national security topics, with an emphasis on U.S. intelligence operations, both foreign and domestic,” talks about the problems Japan is facing in strengthening its spy program: 

    “Japan’s efforts to re-arm in response to escalating threats from China and North Korea are well-known. Less understood are controversial efforts by some in Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to reestablish world class intelligence and counterespionage capabilities.” 

    Apart from the resistance that such efforts have historically faced from the public in view of “World War Two memories” of “militarism, neighborhood informants, and other mass spying against the population,” there are geopolitical concerns: 

    “Though further efforts to consolidate and strengthen Japan’s intelligence and counterintelligence organizations might seem logical in Washington, such plans face significant opposition from those government institutions, politicians, and parts of the business community that support closer relations with Beijing.” 

    Interestingly, “[t]hose opposed to strengthening intelligence perceive China as rising and America in decline.” The author says that the “prickly challenge” ahead for Washington is “to persuade not only Japanese elites, but the country’s voters, of American resolve, reliability, and support.” 

    It is yet to be seen if a third, “more independent policy dubbed “autonomous defense,”” advocated by the late Shinzo Abe, is totally out of the window. 

    Read the full article here.

  • Buying Russian Oil with Chinese Currency: Pakistan Flirts with De-dollarisation

    As widely reported, including in this report in The Cradle, “Pakistan paid for its first imports of discounted Russian crude oil in Chinese currency.”

    As the report goes on to point out, this is significant because:

    “Pakistan’s purchase takes advantage of new opportunities arising from the war between Russia and Ukraine. Due to western sanctions, Moscow lost its European markets for oil and natural gas exports and has instead redirected its sales toward other nations, notably India and China.

    Large quantities of oil paid for in non-US denominated currency and at reduced prices comes at a crucial time for Pakistan, which suffers from a balance of payments problem that risks the country defaulting on its external debt. The Pakistan central bank’s foreign exchange reserves are currently only sufficient to cover a month of controlled imports.”

    Read the full report here.

  • Germany to Purchase Israel-made Air Defence System

    As multiple reports have pointed out, including this one in the European version of Politico, Germany is set to purchase the Israeli Arrow-3 air defence system. 

    The purchase is part of Germany’s efforts “to modernize its military under a €100 billion fund.” The anti-missile system has apparently “been in use in Israel since 2017 as part of its Iron Dome protection network.” 

    The cost of the procurement is not insignificant: 

    “Eventually, Germany’s expenditure on Arrow-3, which is designed to intercept ballistic missiles, is expected to reach €4 billion.”

    This is only one instance of “a splurge in defense spending across Europe following Russia’s war on Ukraine.” 

    Read the full Politico report here.

  • Amnesty Releases Report on Taliban's War Crimes in Panjshir

    As this article reports, Amnesty International has published a new report that claims “[t]he Taliban have committed the war crime of collective punishment against civilians in Afghanistan’s Panjshir province.” 

    The area has a number of “members of the security forces of the former Afghan government” who “fled to Panjshir with equipment and arms, and joined the National Resistance Front (NRF).” 

    This has led to a retributive crackdown in the area by the Taliban resulting in “torture and unlawful killings,” “[m]ass arbitrary arrests and detention intended to intimidate local population,” and detainees being “subjected to extrajudicial executions.” 

    As the article states:

    “While many of the acts taken by Taliban forces individually constitute war crimes, the entirety of those acts – plus the additional arbitrary detentions and restrictions on the civilian population – also constitute the war crime of collective punishment.”

    Read the Amnesty International article covering the report here. Read the full original report here.

  • The Long Road to Peace in Colombia

    This piece in The New Humanitarian, “the trusted news source on humanitarian crises,” by Bogotá-based journalist Joshua Collins is a useful resource in understanding the durability and effectiveness of long-term peace efforts. The writer reports on the aftermath of the 2016 peace deal in Colombia: 

    “Despite a historic peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) ending more than a half-century of civil war in 2016, conflict has been surging since in many rural areas of the country. 

    New armed groups have moved into the vacuum left behind when FARC fighters laid down their weapons and are now vying for territorial control with other older criminal organisations, with the lucrative production and smuggling of cocaine continuing to drive the violence.” 

    Even though the government of Gustavo Petro, famously the first leftist President of Colombia, “announced ceasefires with four of the five largest armed groups in Colombia,” the problem is that “none of the groups signed official written agreements.”

    Civil society organisations were reportedly “cautiously supportive of the ceasefire strategy.” While the government had claimed that the ceasefires “will allow for much-needed assistance to reach civilians in conflict zones,” humanitarian organisations raised questions about “whether they will actually improve conditions on the ground for civilians.” What makes matters worse is that many of the affected regions “are also effectively stateless as they’ve been neglected for decades – across administrations – by the national government in Bogotá.” 

    The scale of the problem is sobering: 

    “The UN estimates that 7.7 million Colombians are in need of some type of immediate humanitarian assistance, including hundreds of thousands of people who have suffered due to rising levels of conflict in recent years, in particular displacement and confinement.”

     The issues raised in the article take on more significance in light of recent reports that “[t]he administration of Colombian President Gustavo Petro has announced it is suspending a ceasefire agreement with a rebel group accused of killing four Indigenous people in a recent attack.” 

    Read the full article in The New Humanitarian here.

  • How Dangerous is ISIS Today?

    This article published by Observer Research Foundation discusses how “[e]ven as ISIS as a group today is severely depleted, the threat perception remains constant.” 

    “[T]actically and strategically, ISIS is a mere shadow of what it was,” the author writes. After all, the terror group once “had control of the geography between Syria and Iraq, bigger than the landmass of the United Kingdom.” But “ideologically, it remains a potent force”: 

    “Pro-ISIS propaganda online remains in wide circulation, and other groups that align with it such as those in parts of Africa and Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) in Afghanistan continue to operate as local insurgencies and terror ecosystems using ISIS for its brand equity in an effort to attract attention, recruitment, and finance.” 

    The group’s ‘caliphate’ has long collapsed and “counterterror operations against ISIS in Syria, largely led by the US, have seen incredible success in the recent past.” Reportedly, “[t]he US has also moved away from an over-reliance on drone strikes as a mainstay of its counterterror thinking” and is instead using “special operations troops”: 

    “This method, while increasing risk of American fatalities on the ground exponentially, decreases the chances of civilian casualties, an issue that has repeatedly plagued and undermined US counter-terror operations in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan alike over the past two decades.” 

    Read the full article here.

  • International Peace Mission Prepares to Withdraw from Somalia

    As this report in Africa Defense Forum, a quarterly security magazine published by U.S. Africa Command, summarises: 

    “After 18 years and three multinational peace missions, Somalia is getting ready to take full control of its own security. The 1-year-old African Union Transitional Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) is preparing to withdraw 2,000 troops from the embattled Horn of Africa nation by June 30, 2023, the first of three drawdowns in its transition plan.”

    ATMIS is supposed to withdraw completely by December 31, 2024, and this is a test run of sorts for that.

    As the report states, there has been an arms embargo on Somalia since 1992, which has since “been modified several times and remains in force until at least November 17, 2023.”

    As far as Somalian self-reliance goes, “Somalia intends to gradually ramp up its force levels to about 23,000 and take over when ATMIS liquidates its assets and fully withdraws.” 

    Read the full report here.

  • The Conflict in Myanmar

    According to this report in The Diplomat, “a group of Myanmar’s neighbors, India, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Laos, seem adamant about treating the junta like a single sovereign entity and nursing it back to strength.” This is the same “military junta that attempted to seize control of Myanmar in February 2021.” 

    While the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which had “been placed by the United Nations and the wider international community in the driving seat of international Myanmar policy,” had been “inching towards a more moderate and critical position on Myanmar,” Thailand is reported to have “launched a separate track of talks aimed at undermining this approach.” 

    According to the author, an obvious flaw in this approach is that the “junta is just not able to implement its political or economic decisions across most of the country’s territory.” Some maps are said to “demonstrate just how limited the Myanmar army’s movement has become since the coup, as a result of the widespread nationwide uprising.” Having been on the ground, the author reports: “The situation varies greatly on the ground, but the maps provide an accurate bird’s eye picture.” 

    Meanwhile, the army has resorted to all sorts of violence including rape and terror attacks. “Millions of people in resistance areas live under constant remote surveillance by drones, knowing that at any moment this could be followed by a devastating air force sortie.”

    Read the full report here.

  • Social Media, Disinformation, and the Sudan Conflict

    This newsletter from Coda Story paints a grim picture of how “Big Tech is ‘failing the Sudanese people.’” 

    Reportedly, the conflict in Sudan has led to a situation on social media platforms “that bore many hallmarks of a coordinated disinformation campaign.”

    A Twitter account with a blue checkmark that “looked like the official account of the RSF” falsely announced the death of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, “the leader of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces — the paramilitary organization formerly known as the Janjaweed, notorious for carrying out the genocide in Darfur in the early 2000s”: 

    “In the current situation, the disinformation — whether it’s a bogus tweet claiming the general is dead or one claiming that attacks have taken place where they haven’t — could affect how the fighting plays out and how civilians make decisions about where to take shelter or how to traverse dangerous territory.”

    Adding to the chaos of the conflict are factors like internet connections “faltering or collapsing altogether” and social media being “a jumble of real news, hearsay and propaganda.” 

    “With blue ticks available to anyone for a fee, it’s become exponentially harder to know who’s really speaking.” 

    Read the full report in the Coda newsletter here.