TBR News July 2, 2017

Jul 02 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., July 2, 2017:”The only reason why Washington wants to maintain a strong military presence in Afghanistan is not to bring True Democracy and Freedom to the Afghan people but to protect the areas where opium poppies are grown.

The crop of Yen Shee or raw opium, is very large and of excellent quality.

A portion of this, which looks like baseball-sized lumps of rubber cement, goes north to the refineries in Kosovo from whence it travels north on the Adriatic, through southern Austria, into Germany and up, through the Baltic, to Russia.

The bulk of the crop is crated, put into the holds of large commercial aircraft and flown to Columbia where it is converted to heroin and trans-shipped to the United States via the Mexican drug cartels.

Who owns these transport planes?

The CIA does.

And that explains why America is so determined to bring True Democracy and Freedom to the Afghan people and protect the opium.

All one has to do is to look on the Internet and see the maps showing the current opium fields and then look at other public maps showing the general positions of American military to see the truth of the matter.

And does the Pentagon profit from this?

Does the White House?

No, but Langley does.”

 

Table of Contents

  • Inside Trump’s Disastrous ‘Secret’ Drug War Plans for Central America
  • How the Pentagon Uses “Jeopardy” to Train Its Special Operations Forces
  • As the Islamic State falls in Syria, one city offers a preview of the country’s future
  • Trump plays Nostradamus with wild Syrian chemical weapon prediction
  • Closures, overcrowding, rats: New York City commuters face ‘summer of hell’
  • Israeli Invasion of Lebanon, 2006: Fact and Fiction

 

Inside Trump’s Disastrous ‘Secret’ Drug War Plans for Central America

At closed-door meetings in Miami, Trump and his generals plotted a muscular military response to violence in Central America. Been there. Done that. It’s a disaster.

July 1, 2017

by Jeremy Kryt

thedailybeast

Nothing really puts you in your place quite like getting shot at in another country. All gringo arrogance vaporized in an instant. Choking from teargas. Lungs aflame. Reeling blind through unknown streets just ahead of the death squads. Abandoned by your fellow correspondents, who were all shrewd enough to have put on their gas masks and taken cover before the soldiers launched shock grenades and opened fire on the crowd.

Yes, whenever a quick and brutal dose of humility is called for I can always flash back to the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa in the summer of 2009, during the U.S.-backed military coup against elected president Manuel “Mel” Zelaya. A swift recall of live rounds slamming into unarmed demonstrators—of my own self at the mercy of those sadistic soldados—and all false pride just fades away.

The crowds had come in their thousands and their tens of thousands to protest the army’s kidnapping of old Mel, who was as famous for his cheesy sombrero-and-mustache look as he was for his tepidly liberal politics. In any case, soldiers arrived at his house one pleasant morning in late June, frogmarched him in his PJs to the massive American airbase just outside Teguc, and—wham, whack, whoosh—Mel was gone from the country within hours. The military then forged a letter of resignation, installed a sham replacement as head of state, and the coup was complete.

Or so they thought. But then came the massive marches. Made up of indigenous Garifuna and Linca and Meskit peoples. Campesinos, feminists, and constitution-lovers of all stripes. These motley flocks of patriots rose up in small villages and major cities across the nation to sing and and chant, to beat drums and dance, and to demand their country back.

Like many of its neighbors in Central America, the “U.S.S. Honduras” is run by a small and incestuous clan of oligarchs. These right-wing cliques also control the military, and are closely allied with the American corporations (like Dole and Chiquita) that gifted us with the handy phrase “Banana Republic” in the first place. Well, those Honduran overlords had had enough of Mel Zelaya daring to raise the minimum wage, lobbying for lunch programs at public schools, and suggesting democratic plebiscites on constitutional reforms. So he had to go.

And all the folks marching in the street? Of course they had to go, too. Back to the barrios from whence they came! Back to the banana and palm-oil plantations! To affect the end of the protest fiesta, the authorities broke out the state-of-the-art weaponry—including sonic disruptor cannons—that Uncle Sam had given them for waging the “War on Drugs.” They then commenced to blast away at peaceful protesters, or anybody else who got in their way, including a foolish-proud, white-boy reporter who thought he could hack it without a gas mask.

Scores were killed or wounded during what Hondurans still call El Golpe de Estado (the phrase means “coup d’état”; those who backed it are called golpistas). To further intimidate the opposition, and break the will of the nonviolent Resistencia movement, human rights centers sheltering victims were deliberately targeted by government troops. Well, we all learned the hard way back in those days. But at least we did learn just how dangerous democracy-hating, Third-World warmongers can be.

The same can’t be said of the Trump administration. As of now, it’s set to double down on the same hard-line, authoritarian strategies that enabled the Honduran president-snatching in the first place—and resulted in the country’s descent into a gang-ridden, apocalyptic nightmare from which it has yet to awaken.

The “Northern Triangle” Tangle

The corner of the Central American isthmus consisting of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras is referred to by military strategists and policy geeks as the “Northern Triangle.” Over the last 10 years or so it’s become one of the deadliest regions on earth. Young people are particularly impacted. The homicide rate among youths is a staggering 90 per 100,000, in part due to rampant gang violence. Based on murders per capita, the Triangle is far more dangerous than Mexico, no matter what Mr. Trump says on Twitter.

The Triangle is an important stopover on the smuggling routes that connect the cocaine breadbaskets of South America with their cartel distributors in Mexico. As such it suffers under powerful maras (gangs) with names like Barrio 18 and the Salvatruchas—both of which originated in the U.S. prison system, incidentally, and arrived in Honduras thanks to mass deportations.

These street gangs are tangentially linked to the cartels operating out of Mexico, as well as places like Colombia. The maras are often hired to hack out small airstrips in the jungle for drug-smuggling planes, or to run overland narcotics shipments across international borders. And they find plenty of time to torture local residents. The gangs rule entire neighborhoods, specializing in rape, forced recruitment tactics, abduction for ransom, drug dealing. Blackmail is rampant, and they often collaborate with local authorities in shaking down their victims.

Gang violence is one of the driving factors behind the Central American migrant crisis, which has sent hundreds of thousands fleeing northward, many of them children.

All that mayhem finally caught the attention of the Trump regime. But, as usual when it comes to narcotics interdiction efforts under Trump, the proffered solution seems to be more show than substance—all at the expense of American taxpayers.

A shadowy summit last month in Miami brought together Vice President Mike Pence, high-powered cabinet members like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the leaders of all three Triangle nations, and officials from at least nine other countries. The plan they espoused? Spend untold millions more dollars on a strategy that, according to experts, is guaranteed to fail. So what’s not to like about that?

Co-hosted by Mexico, the two-day session was grandly touted as “The Conference for Prosperity and Security.” The first phase focused on wealth creation; it went down at Florida International University on June 15, and was immediately met by protests on campus.

“We’re in this together,” Pence told Central American leaders at the end of the day. He then went on to emphasize that sense of fellowship by adding, “President Trump has already taken decisive action to protect the American people from the harshest consequences of illegal immigration…” In other words: We’re here for you, neighbors—just stay the hell on your side of The Wall.

The second stage was geared toward the “Security” side of the equation, and took place the next day behind closed doors at the SOUTHCOM military base. Because press access was restricted, it’s hard to know all the specifics that were discussed. But there are clues that point to a coming crackdown.

Despite the cloak-and-dagger staging of the conference, some of the Trump administration’s harsh plans for escalating the Drug War have already been hinted at in speeches, budget proposals, and conference calls with the press. And critics contend this “old-is-new” approach is unlikely to result in either “Prosperity” or “Security” in the region.

An editorial on the conference by the watchdog group InsightCrime referred to the Trump doctrine for the Northern Triangle as “heavy-handed” and “going backwards.” It also pointed out that all three leaders from the Triangle countries in attendance had been accused of corruption or involvement with drug traffickers or both—in fact the vice president of El Salvador showed up in Miami already under indictment back home.

The InsightCrime op-ed concluded by lambasting Trump’s vision “that the main threats to U.S. national security come from impoverished migrants, the majority of whom have no ties to the organized crime groups, gangs, or drug traffickers that safely operate under state protection in Central America.” (Italics added.)

The statement issued by Doctors Without Borders about the goals set forth in Miami is even more damning. Likening conditions in the Triangle to those found in “some of the world’s deadliest war zones,” the group estimates the number of immigrants bee-lining it out of their native countries to be about 500,000 a year.

As for the solutions proposed by Trump’s proxies, Doctors Without Borders accused conference planners of “turning a blind eye” to the emergency and went on to say, “Addressing the crisis in Central America cannot only be about future prosperity and security; it must also be about saving and protecting lives today.”

Militarization Nation

There are two schools of thought on how you help countries climb out of multifaceted maelstroms like the one currently walloping the Northern Triangle. The first, as favored by the Obama administration, is an aid-based approach, usually involving democracy-building incentives, humanitarian programs, and the strengthening of law enforcement and judicial actors.

Obama’s legacy in the region is far from pristine, but to his credit he intuited that the coup in Honduras was a mistake not to be repeated. (He also understood the importance of development to affect positive change even if, as with Afghanistan, he thought the military had to play a major role.)

The second method is just to send on down millions of dollars for “security assistance”—oversight be damned—and hope for the best. Care to guess which strategy Team Trump prefers?

POTUS’ congressional budget proposal called for a $54 billion increase in military spending, with an undisclosed amount of that earmarked for ramping up the counter narcotics campaign and barricading borders against migrants. Meanwhile the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would see their budgets slashed by about 39 percent from last year’s levels under the Trump budget.

Economic aid and assistance to Central America is projected to fall from $520 million down to about $300 million, according to a study by the Washington Office on Latin America. All that “charity” chopping will directly endanger social and educational programs in the Northern Triangle—further reducing quality of life overall, and making immigration (legal or otherwise) all the more tempting, observers say.

The focus of the Trump agenda is not about solving the root problems like poverty and government corruption that drive gang violence and narcotics trafficking, says Jake Johnston, a research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, D.C.

Johnston refers to the Trumpite approach as “outsourcing security to countries with checkered pasts [on] human rights.” Far from winning the Drug War, or curbing the flood of migrants, he tells The Daily Beast, “empowering these sectors is only going to exacerbate those problems.”

But strong-arming our way to victory remains a popular fantasy, especially among Trump’s all-gringo cabinet. Johnston says Homeland Security boss Kelly—also a retired general and the former director of SOUTHCOM—seems determined to apply the belligerent approach in Central America, and is responsible for the “reprioritization” away from programs like USAID, which directly targeted problems like economic inequality in the region.

“It’s unprecedented that the conference took place behind the gates of a military barracks,” says Johnston. “The security apparatus and the Pentagon’s specific plans [for the Triangle] are incredibly opaque,” although the overall implications are clear enough.

“The writing’s on the wall that this is a shift away from soft power to hard power,” says Johnston, who’s been conducting research into Latin American economic issues for the last decade.

During a Senate hearing in late May, police officers from multiple jurisdictions in the U.S. lectured lawmakers about just how ineffective, even dangerous, the Trump administration’s brand of steroidal, community-alienating policing can be when it comes to fighting entrenched gangs like the Salvatruchas.

Nevertheless, says Johnston, “in the future, U.S. diplomacy in the region will likely be wearing a uniform instead of a suit.”

Cops, Soldiers, and Cartels on the Same Team

Over the last two decades of the Drug War, the Pentagon’s penchant for propping up repressive generalissimos in places like Mexico, Colombia, and Central America has caused widespread suffering among the populations of those nations, including a plague of extrajudicial killings.

To get a precise read on current conditions in heavily occupied regions of the Triangle zone, I reach out to the national coordinator for the Honduran Solidarity Network (HSN), Karen Spring, who is based in Tegucigalpa.

“Honduran society is already very militarized,” said Spring, in a phone interview on the eve of the Miami conference. “Since the 2009 coup they’ve created a whole series of new police and military units like the Tigres, who are vetted and trained by the U.S. government.”

Following the 2009 coup the U.S. has sent some $200 million in security aid to Honduras, despite a petition signed by dozens of American congressmen asking for a boycott over human rights concerns. And yet in spite of all that martial funding the country remains mired in one long, slow-burn Armageddon, with one of the highest homicide rates on the planet.

At the same time, says CEPR’s Johnston, the post-coup years have also seen “a real spike in poverty and economic inequality” despite the millions flowing south from Washington.

According to Spring, of the Solidarity Network, the militarization craze has also sparked a rise in human rights abuses, including right-wing death squads tasked with eliminating political dissidents. The fact that “the military is not trained to be providing civilian security” is part of the problem Spring says. But the troubles go far deeper than that.

“The police and military are known to be linked to, or infiltrated by, the drug cartels,” says Spring, who first went to Honduras eight years ago as a human rights worker sent down in the wake of the Zelaya takedown.

(Full disclosure: I knew Karen Spring back in those woeful, post-coup days in Honduras, and have seen this brave young woman stand her ground against civil abuses by armed actors more than once.)

“Even high-level military officials are known to be involved in drug trafficking,” she says, and yet, “impunity rates have not gone down. If you are not punishing people who are corrupt—especially people in positions of power—what deters them from committing crimes?”

Indeed, that corruption permeates Honduran politics at the highest levels, according to a recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (PDF), which describes the country as being run by “intertwined, or ‘integrated,’ … kleptocratic networks.” Even the son of the former president was recently accused in a New York courtroom of working with organized crime.

Death and (War) Taxes

“The way that gangs down here are portrayed in the international press and by the government is that they’re these autonomous actors that take over communities and prisons,” says Spring, when our conversation turns to the dreaded maras.

“That’s an elaborate narrative,” she adds, and a false one.

“I work in urban communities every day—and nobody here believes gangs are acting on their own.” Instead, they “work alongside and are enabled by a corrupt police force.”

In Spring’s eyes, the social-aid-first ethos espoused by President Obama—who also took his fair share of flack for sending down questionable military aid to Honduras—has done little or nothing to curb connivance between authorities and organized crime. Trump’s hardball tactics, on the other hand, are “much worse for everybody.”

“I don’t think any aid from the U.S. to Honduras has made any changes for the majority of the population,” she says, and as evidence cites the fact that “60 percent of the country is still in poverty.”

The soft-power initiatives seem to have proven useful in some cases, but Spring also accuses them of “promoting very specific interests” that don’t “have an impact on security or why people live in fear.”

Johnston, of CEPR, also wonders if the soft programs are adequate. “State and USAID have rolled out a number of community-driven crime prevention programs and held them up as illustrative of their success but the reality is we have little knowledge about their actual effectiveness.”

The playbook on social development might need fine-tuning or expansion, but it’s far better than indiscriminately empowering crooked goon squads. As human rights worker Spring puts it, “hard power just doesn’t do anything to address the problems that are perpetuating” Honduras’ downward spiral.

To illustrate the failure of the stick-before-carrot strategy, she goes on to describe a neighborhood where she works in Tegucigalpa:

“The 18 Street gang controls the community,” Spring says, and all local business owners must provide a regular quota for the privilege of living under thug tyranny, or risk being shot.

“It’s literally called a war tax,” she says. “An impuesto de guerra,” and from taxi and bus drivers to “the women selling tortillas,” everyone has to pay it.

A special unit of military police set up a permanent base on the same barrio’s soccer field, back in 2013, which has put the kibosh on local futbol games as well—one of the few innocent pastimes formerly available to local kids.

Although the borough is now an occupied zone, “everybody is still paying the war tax,” Spring continues. “Extortion is still going on. There’s still a high level of control in the neighborhood by the gang.”

In fact, the barrio taxi stand “is right in front of the military-police base—but the drivers are still paying” tribute to the gangs. And that’s not a coincidence.

The blackmailing goes on in front of the barracks where the officers “eat, sleep, and live,” and not by accident, but because “the police are involved in organized crime.” Everyone in the area knows “they’re working with the gangs, extorting people for profit.”

Far from being independent entities, she says, the gangs are often tools of the authorities, who “use them for their own purposes.”

Most citizens know they can’t “call the Honduran police for help” when they’re targeted themselves since “they assume [officers] are involved” with the maras.

“You can’t just walk into a community with a complex social structure and take it over,” Spring says. “Militarization is not solving the problem—it’s making it worse.”

Drug War Redux

As a general rule, when arming oppressive regimes, lack of accountability is the root of all evil. When we send military aid to tropical tyrants we shouldn’t be shocked when they commit atrocities with those expensive and deadly toys.

Take the March 2016 murder of Berta Cáceres, a well-known Honduran activist and winner of the prestigious Goldman environmental prize. During the counter-coup movement, Cáceres gained fame for her habit of striding out to meet with army commanders in the streets of Tegucigalpa, in an effort to stem the assaults on protesters. So it wasn’t a great surprise when her killers were found to have ties to the Honduran military.

(Since her death, at least two other members of Cáceres’ NGO have been assassinated.)

One oft-proffered solution by hawks in Washington is to improve screening and background checks on individual units south of the border. The sad truth, however, is that even our best attempts to vet security forces engaged in the Drug War in Mexico, Central, and South America have proven fruitless.

A prime example of this futility went down in the remote Ahuas region of Honduras, during a botched DEA raid on an indigenous village in Moskitia that left four innocent people dead, and several others wounded.

A State Department chopper team, working with a vetted Honduran unit, opened fire on a boatload of locals after mistaking them for drug smugglers.

“The Honduran door gunner didn’t fire until he received orders from the DEA agent,” according to CEPR’s Johnston, who co-authored an article on the incident. (The DEA declined to respond to an interview request for this story.)

As reported by The Daily Beast last year, another badly bungled Drug-War op took place in Mexico’s Coahuila state, in 2011, when DEA officers shared intelligence with Mexican officers—who then leaked that intel to the Zetas cartel, resulting in a massacre that wiped out parts of an entire town.

“We know from experience that the violent model that has been in place in Mexico is to be intensified in the Central American countries as well,” says Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Program, in Mexico City. Some 160,000 people have lost their lives since Mexico’s Narco Guerra began in 2006.

“Lack of justice and collusion between [authorities] and organized crime,” are hallmarks of the war in Mexico, Carlsen says. “In cases of assassinations of journalists and attacks on human rights defenders, at least 50 percent of the perpetrators are identified as government officials.” And yet conviction rates hover in the single digits.

Mexico’s Other Wall

A preview of what’s to come in the Northern Triangle is already on display along Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala. That’s where the Pentagon and [DHS Director] Kelly “have placed a real emphasis on militarizing,” says Americas Program director Carlsen.

That plan for shutting down the border—or the Frontera del Sur initiative—was also on the docket at the recent conference in Miami, where Vice President Pence bragged about how it’s already stifled immigration from Triangle-land by 70 percent. Carlsen describes the clampdown as another attempt to “make Mexico pay for The Wall again—only this time on its own southern border.”

Thanks to Frontera del Sur, Mexico now deports more Central American migrants than does the U.S. And in fact our own Border Patrol reports that illegal immigration from the isthmus has been halved since this same time last year. And yet that reduction has come with a price.

The crackdown on the Guatemalan border “has had a devastating impact on migrants,” says Carlsen, who has worked in Mexico since the mid-1980s.

The refugees “are fleeing very serious violence in their country.” Yet instead of offering succor, Mexico is now “attempting to box them in,” in part to curry favor with President Trump and his advisers ahead of upcoming NAFTA negotiations.

Mexican cartels are “delighted at these kinds of policies,” she goes on, “because they criminalize migrants, and turn them into into prey.”

For Carlsen, the Trump team’s script for the Drug-War reboot has “much more to do with repressing people than trying to solve deeper social problems that they’re facing.”

CEPR economist Johnston believes the Trumped up approach to immigration and the Drug War will actually worsen Central America’s ongoing crisis. Nothing presented at the Miami conference will “address the problems that are actually driving people to leave these countries,” he says.

Karen Spring agrees. But she also holds that it shouldn’t be left to the Trump administration to implement ham-fisted fixes in the Triangle. Viable solutions have already been put forth by those closest to the violence, who know the risks and realities best of all—if only the ruling junta would hear them out:

“There has never been a space in Honduras to really listen to some of the proposals that are put forward by local communities and organizations,” explains Spring, who laments what she calls a “failure of democracy” in the Northern Triangle.

Former President Zelaya tried to listen, but his modest attempts to fight economic inequality got him shanghaied by his own troops. Trouble-making crusaders like Bertha Caceres have been assassinated for daring to suggest land-ownership reforms that challenge traditional elites and transnational corporations.

“It’s the voices which have typically been excluded that are trying to promote an alternative,” Spring says, “and for doing so they’re being killed, criminalized, and silenced.”

 

How the Pentagon Uses “Jeopardy” to Train Its Special Operations Forces

July 2, 2017

by Nick Turse

The Intercept

Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, Delta Force operators. You know them for night raids and assassinations and drone strikes. They’re the tip of the spear, the elite of the elite, shadow warriors fighting shadow wars from Somalia to Syria, Iraq to the Philippines.

U.S. Special Operations forces use special weapons and employ special tactics, of course. What you probably didn’t know is that they also employ a special version of the $25,000 Pyramid game show. And a special version of the game show Jeopardy. And before their actual secret missions, they may well have played a video game called “Secret Mission.” But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s start at the start. U.S. Special Operations Command operates a school to teach courses that are germane to special operators. The self-professed mission of Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) at MacDill Air Force base in Florida is “to prepare Special Operations Forces (SOF) to shape the future strategic environment by providing specialized joint professional military education.”

To that end, JSOU offers courses like “Strategic Utility of Special Operations” and “Covert Action and SOF Sensitive Activities.” It also offers a course that is called “Introduction to Special Operations Forces.” Think of it as Special Ops 101. Its goal, Special Operations Command spokesman Ken McGraw told me, “is to educate the student about the core activities, primary functions, organizations, capabilities, and doctrinal employment of U.S. Special Operations forces along with key concepts and terms.” An online course, it runs continuously and, says McGraw, is geared toward those “who have been identified to serve on a joint special operations staff, staff members at U.S. Special Operations Command, its subordinate commands and theater special operations commands.”

“Introduction to Special Operations Forces” offers five interactive lessons that guide the student through the basics of special ops. Not, that is, the artful application of camo face paint or how to use an M-32 grenade launcher, but what sets commandos apart from conventional forces, the difference between “low visibility” and “clandestine” missions, and a discussion of the increased strategic, physical, and political risk of special ops missions. The course then moves to a more advanced curriculum with lessons on everything from the composition of SOF to the concept of “Special Operations Forces Peculiar” (their unusual gear). This curriculum includes a recycled interview of former SOCOM commander Admiral William McRaven by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, as well as a mind-paralyzing explanation of the funding mechanism that pays for all the command’s rifles, night vision goggles, and floppy emerald headgear.

In many ways, however, the introductory course is more shadowy than the Special Operations forces themselves. We know a great deal about where these forces are deployed around the world (138 nations in 2016), and where they’ve been involved in firefights this year (Somalia, for example), and where they prop up allies (the Philippines, for one), and where they train and advise allies and proxies (like Syria). But it’s a mystery who dreamed up the idea of using game show knockoffs to instruct America’s elite warriors.

“We do not,” McGraw told me, “have the information about who created the course, when it was created, how much it cost, or how many have used it.”

The command might just want to forget the whole thing. The Intercept got its hands on a copy of Special Ops 101 through the Freedom of Information Act and its video games are lame — what you might expect from a low-bid government contract, except for the capstone tests. The video games are epic but not in a good way. Those of a certain age – the Reagan and Rubik’s Cube set — will remember PC games like this.

There’s a rudimentary quiz done up like the game show Jeopardy — “Humans are more important than hardware … What is one of the five SOF truths?” — right down to its earworm of a theme. There’s also, inexplicably, another Jeopardy clone with the (ironic?) title “Game Show Game.” Then there’s a special ops version of “$25,000 Pyramid” that looks like it cost 25 cents to program. Instead of Jamie Farr (of M*A*S*H fame) offering clues to get a contestant to say the words “things that are packed” (try “suitcase”), the Special Ops version just asks straightforward questions like: “What is the primary mission of the AC-130H Spectre and AC-130U Spooky airplanes?” In this version, you get a “Correct!” instead of $25,000 for the right answer.

Yes, this is some of the training for the most elite forces, from the most elite military school, run by the most elite command, in the “finest fighting force in the history of the world.” Sad but true, your grandmother probably wouldn’t deign to play these video games on her flip phone. Except maybe “Secret Mission” – a quiz game where you take on the role of a sapper (sort of) on a military base loaded with fighter jets, tanks, barracks and bombers (sort of). You’ll be asked: “What are actions taken directly against terrorist networks and indirectly to influence and render global and regional environments inhospitable to terrorist networks?”

If you answer B – counterterrorism – get ready for the fireworks (sort of).

 

As the Islamic State falls in Syria, one city offers a preview of the country’s future

July 1, 2017

by David Ignatius

The Washington Post

TABQA, SYRIA- The Islamic State’s headquarters in this city at the western gateway to Raqqa has been crushed like a sandcastle by American bombs. At a dam complex on the Euphrates River where the Islamic State was torturing prisoners and hurling alleged homosexuals from a giant concrete tower, all that’s left of the extremists are militant slogans scrawled on the wall and a pile of trash.

It’s far too soon to say that life is returning to normal here after liberation, but much of the horror is over. Mines and improvised explosive devices were cleared here last week. Young children flash V-for-victory signs. Islamic beards have nearly disappeared. The most visible people sporting full beards on Thursday were American Special Operations forces who accompanied visiting U.S. special envoy Brett McGurk.

The city is strewn with rubble, and Ahmad al-Ahmad, the co-president of the newly formed Tabqa Civil Council, described it as a “city of ghosts,” with perhaps 40 percent of its buildings damaged. The electricity, water-distribution and school systems have been largely destroyed. Young boys who were indoctrinated at Islamic State training camps are trying to find their balance in a new world where beheadings and the chanting of Islamist slogans are over.

To look at people’s wary faces, uncertain but with a trace of hope in their eyes, it’s like they’re waking up from a nightmare. The newly formed town council is meeting, created by the Kurdish-led military force that cleared the town, and it seems to be getting cooperation from local Arabs. A new internal security force is policing the streets and occasionally pops off warning fire. At a warehouse near the town center, the first shipment of American food arrived on Wednesday; sacks of flour and rice are stacked on pallets, ready for distribution, and much more is coming in the next week, says veteran U.S. relief coordinator Al Dwyer.

A boisterous group of young Syrian men is gathered outside a tire and vehicle-parts shop across from the warehouse. American military advisers aren’t sure at first that it’s safe to talk with them, but the men press eagerly toward two visiting reporters. Abdul-Qadr Khalil, 22, dressed in a bright blue-nylon jacket, speaks for the group. He complains that there’s not enough food, water, gas or bread, and there are no jobs. But he dismisses the idea that the Islamic State will ever take hold here again.

“No, never!” says Khalil, and the young men around him nod in unison. “It will be impossible to live if they come back. They will kill all of us.”

Nothing is permanent in this shattered country, but there are tipping points when the momentum shifts, and this seems to be one. As the battle for Raqqa begins in earnest, this city offers a preview of what’s ahead:

  • ●The black balloon of the Islamic State caliphate is deflating quickly in Syria, as in Iraq. There may be up to a year of hard fighting left, but the surprise for U.S. officials is that the battle in eastern Syria is going faster and better than expected. In a symbol of that advance, Kurdish commanders gave McGurk the ring of an Islamic State emir who once used it to seal orders to kill Tabqa’s inhabitants. The emir blew himself up when he was surrounded in May, leaving behind the ring and its now-empty claim of authority.
  • The confrontation with Syria and Russia that led to the shoot-down of a Syrian fighter jet just south of here two weeks ago seems to have eased, at least for now. Despite the Russians’ public protests, they quietly agreed last weekend on a roughly 80-mile “deconfliction” line that stretches from a few miles west of here to a village on the Euphrates called Karama. That line appears to be holding, and it’s a promising sign that broader U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria may be possible.
  • The Kurdish-led militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces has shown it can defeat the Islamic State, so long as it’s backed by U.S. air power. The Tabqa battle in May was perhaps the most ambitious and daring operation of the war so far. Five hundred SDF soldiers were airlifted across Lake Assad in V-22 Osprey aircraft in a raid that caught Islamic State forces by surprise. The SDF suffered about 100 killed and more than 300 wounded in the bloody operation, but it worked, and in this part of the world, success breeds success. Arab refugees are now streaming toward the Kurdish-led SDF, rather than away, and 8,200 U.S.-trained Arab forces are joining the front lines.

Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, who commands U.S. and coalition forces in Syria and Iraq, explains in an interview that the Kurdish military leadership here is “the thickener, the hardener you put on the glue to make it hold.”

McGurk repeats at every meeting with local officials that the United States’ ability to fix Syria is limited. America can help defeat the Islamic State, and it can provide quick stabilization support to repair water, electricity and other infrastructure. But it can’t do everything.

This sense of what’s achievable for the United States in Syria with its limited commitment, and what isn’t, is probably the biggest takeaway from our visit here. The United States seems to have found a way, in its almost accidental alliance with the Syrian Kurds, to drive the Islamic State from eastern Syria and stabilize this part of the country. But U.S. officials frankly admit they don’t have the resources or a clear strategy to repair Syria as a whole. The rubric seems to be: Do what you can with the forces available, and don’t promise more than you can deliver.

“This is not a work of beauty. This is pragmatism,” says Maj. Gen. Rupert Jones, the British deputy commander of coalition forces in Iraq and Syria who accompanied McGurk here. The United States and its partners are supplying potent Special Operations forces for training and air support. But the Syrian Kurds and their Arab allies are doing the fighting and the dying on the ground, and for better or worse, it’s their vision of governance that will take hold as the Islamic State falls.

Trump plays Nostradamus with wild Syrian chemical weapon prediction

July 1, 2017

by Robert Bridge

RT

The White House has accused the Syrian government of ‘possibly planning’ to use chemical weapons, a wholly unsubstantiated claim that will more than likely prompt Syrian rebels to devise a false flag event that the US will blame on President Bashar Assad.

For those who have been following the white-knuckle ride known as the Syrian War, the turns just got more wicked and unpredictable following a statement from White House spokesperson Sean Spicer, whose utterance falls somewhere between ‘unforgivably irresponsible’ and ‘willfully diabolical.’ I’m leaning towards the latter.

Fasten your seat belts, it’s all downhill from here.

“The United States has identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children,” Spicer said. “If … Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.”

One would sincerely hope and expect that such a grievous accusation leveled against the Syrian government would warrant at least some tantalizing scraps of physical evidence. Maybe some high-resolution satellite imagery, for example, which has cost the US taxpayer billions of dollars to research and develop? Apparently that would be asking for too much. No need to feel slighted, however, because it seems even the omnipotent Pentagon was left fumbling in the dark.

One official at US Central Command, the agency that oversees military operations in the Middle East, admitted to the New York Times that he had “no idea” what the administration was talking about.

In any event, although the White House statement may have sounded like an incriminating accusation against Assad, for the rebels and ‘moderate’ mercenary forces now attempting to depose him, Spicer’s words resonated loud and clear like an open invitation, or a direct order, for inciting some serious mischief.

After all, the Trump administration – despite what the likes of CNN and MSNBC would have us believe – is not totally incompetent. They certainly understand that it would be mere child’s play for al-Qaeda and company to get their dirty hands on chemical weapons, especially if it means getting the US superpower fully on board.

We already saw such a scenario played out in April when the town of Khan Shaykhun in Idlib was allegedly hit by a chemical attack. Naturally, Washington, the great conspiracy theorist, immediately pointed the finger at Assad. However, it was the rebels, not the Syrian leader, who had everything to gain from such a ruthless attack (The latest OPCW report on the Idlib chemical incident lacks sufficient evidence and is based on data provided predominantly by one side of the Syrian conflict without necessary verification, the Russian OPCW representative, Aleksandr Shulgin, told RT. Meanwhile, a report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in Die Welt asserts that “Trump issued the order [to attack the Syrian airbase] despite having been warned by the U.S. intelligence community that it had found no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon.”).

Russian President Putin slammed the chemical attack as a “provocation” and a “false flag” event, designed to undermine the Syrian government.

Damascus, noting that Islamic State and al-Nusrah were occupying the region at the time, and most likely staged the event, vehemently rejected the trumped up charges. Washington, however, refused to give the benefit of the doubt to the democratically elected leader of Syria, opting to place wild faith in known thugs and terrorists. Some would call that strange, until they recall the fate of other violated nations, like Iraq and Libya.

The US didn’t wait around for an investigation and the forensics, because that would make the whole venture transparent and legitimate, and we can’t have any of that. Again, strange, especially from the one country that is forever lecturing the world about such values. Instead, Donald Trump, ignoring his campaign chatter about cooperating with the Russians, opted to fire off 59 cruise missiles at Syria’s Shayrat Air Base, thereby dealing a blow to the very forces fighting against ISIS, while getting his first good press from a clinically deranged Liberal media.

It flies in the face of logic and common sense to suggest that Assad – who presently has the upper hand against the rebels, as well as ISIS – would obliterate his hard-fought achievements by resorting to chemical weapons. After all, Syria is not a primitive country; it has its share of modern military equipment. There is absolutely no need to go chemical here. Moreover, Bashar Assad – a doctor with far more brains than your average Western leader – can certainly appreciate the fact that Russia would immediately abandon his cause if the Syrian Army resorted to such detestable methods.

Setting up ‘the perfect crime’

Any honest and impartial look at the Syrian situation shows that it is far more likely for the rebels and their ‘moderate’ supporters to resort to chemical weapons, and certainly more so after the Trump administration’s latest utterance. However, the mere mention of such a glaringly obvious possibility only draws smirks and derision from US officials.

Heather Nauert, US State Department spokesperson, brushed aside from her power podium the obvious contradictions, relying instead on unsubstantiated claims peppered with nothing more than raw, emotional imagery.

“Are we supposed to buy what the Syrians are saying, that there are no chemical weapons preparations underway…because in the past, we know that they have killed their own people, which include women and children. So if they say that they’re not making any preparation, I’m not sure that we’re going to buy that.”

Meanwhile, not to be outdone in this American theater of the absurd, US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, must have been half awake when she tweeted: “Any further attacks done to the people of Syria will be blamed on Assad, but also on Russia & Iran who support him killing his won people.”

 

Closures, overcrowding, rats: New York City commuters face ‘summer of hell

  • The city’s aging subway has been declared ‘a state of emergency’.
  • Combined with closures on other rail lines, riders are bracing for the worst

July 1, 2017

by Tom McCarthy in New York

The Guardian

There was a time – somewhere between the 1990s exorcism of violent crime from much of New York City and Thursday, when a “state of emergency” was declared for the city’s transit system – when a nightmare scenario on the subway meant a rat crawling up your leg, over your chest and nearly into your hoody.

That remains a vividly awful prospect. But in the summer of 2017, rats are competing with a ballooning number of alternative potential torments for commuters (the term is used optimistically) who venture into the city’s aging underground.

Dangerously overcrowded platforms. Chronically delayed trains. Terrifying and injurious derailments. Tunnel strandings. Signal malfunctions. Fisticuffs. Electrical outages. Garbled announcements. Knockout stenches. Non-rat wildlife. Stairs, shoulders, backups, backpacks, bad attitudes and bad breath.

A particularly unlucky group of rush hour F-train riders last month were stuck inside overheating train cars for so long that video of their desperate fingers prizing open fogged-up doors looked not so much like the scene from a commute as footage from a zombie movie.

Veteran straphangers will recognize none of those headaches as particularly new, although derailments, like the one on Tuesday in Harlem that injured 34 people, are still thankfully rare. The increasing frequency and scale of such breakdowns, however, will combine on Saturday with major track closures at the Pennsylvania Station transport hub to create what observers on all sides are predicting will be a “summer of hell” for riders in 2017.

“We are now beginning to see what happens when mass transit systems break down,” said governor Andrew Cuomo on Thursday in declaring the state of emergency, which is supposed to allow the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to accelerate repairs and the purchase of material and equipment. “This has been caused over decades, we understand that. But, the delays are maddening New Yorkers. They’re infuriated by a lack of communication, unreliability, and now accidents.”

The stakes, for those who would save the trains, go beyond the comfort of the system’s 9 million daily commuters. In addition to being one of the best-known symbols of New York City around the world, the subway system binds the city together literally and metaphorically, carrying its commercial and cultural workforce but also carrying out the promise of the city as a great democratic proving ground, where natives mingle with new arrivals from every corner of the globe and where there is no such thing as first class or coach.

On the subway, everyone pays the same $2.75 – and suffers through the same power outages and armpit encounters. If the system breaks down, one of the last claims to populist credibility for a city that boasts more and more $100m homes and fewer and fewer starving artists will crumble with it.

“I know what the subway system was, and it can be the crown jewel of New York,” said MTA chairman Joe Lhota, who was recently lured back to the post after his successful leadership of the agency through its impressive recovery from flooding in Superstorm Sandy in November 2012.

Speaking alongside the governor at the emergency declaration in Albany, the state capital, Lhota urged anyone within earshot to join a contest the agency is calling the “genius transit challenge”, in search of ideas to fix the trains and buses. “No idea is too crazy,” Lhota said. “No idea is too ambitious.”

How did it come to this? The agency claims that more money is needed for system maintenance. But the presence of enormous management challenges at MTA, cash flow notwithstanding, is plain; the agency, which has an operating budget of $15bn, has suffered from years of graft, corruption and abuse.

The agency blames the electrical utility, Con Edison, for system outages; Con Edison blames the agency. The governor blames the city mayor for political dickering; the mayor blames the governor. A large portion of the subway’s signals system, which stops trains from colliding but also stalls trains when it blinkers out, dates to before World War II. Ridership, meanwhile, has spiked, from about 4 million a day in the 1990s to nearly 6 million today, severely taxing the ancient infrastructure.

As a result, on-time performance is down for every single line in the subway system, with incidents of delay climbing, according to the agency, from 28,000 a month in 2012 to more than 70,000 a month now.

“We know the system is decaying and we know the system is decaying rapidly,” Cuomo said. “I think of it as a heart attack – it happens all of a sudden and the temptation is to say, well something must have just caused it. No, a lifetime caused it. Bad habits caused it. Lack of exercise caused it. Smoking caused it. Cholesterol caused it.”

One of the thorniest features of the problem, for those trying to fix it, is the sense that everything is breaking at once. “Summer of hell” declarations were prompted by the announcement by the Amtrak commuter railroad (not part of the MTA) of multiple track closures to begin inside Penn Station, which with 600,000 riders a day is the busiest rail terminal in North America.

While commuter railroad passengers trying to navigate New Jersey Transit, the Long Island Rail Road or Amtrak itself are expected to bear the brunt of the Penn Station repairs, no one has dared predict that traffic on the two subway lines that pass through the station will be uninterrupted.

Peter S Kalikow, a former MTA chairman, wrote this week in a New York Times opinion piece that the problem facing the subway is at bottom a question of agency management and political leadership.

“Cries for ‘bottom-to-top reviews’ are designed to convince the public that swift action is coming,” Kalikow wrote. “But commuters have heard this before, and they are rightfully skeptical. Money is only part of the problem, and not the heart of it: To get real results, the governor needs to insist on accountability and strong MTA leadership.”

Even if their sanities do survive the summer of hell, New York commuters will not be in the clear. The L train, one of the major lines between Manhattan and Brooklyn, is scheduled to close for 15 months of track repair beginning in April 2019.

 

Israeli Invasion of Lebanon, 2006: Fact and Fiction

by Brian Harring

Editorial Note: Israel’s foray into Lebanon resulted a resounding military defeat for the Zionist state. According to a confidential French Foreign Office report, seen by Brian Harring, far from losing from 116 to 120 men, as it claims, IDF losses totalled 2300 – Ranimar

Subject: Causes of the attack

Both the State of Israel and the United States viewed Syria as a potentially dangerous enemy. Joint intelligence indicated that Syria was a strong supporter of the Hezbollah Shiite paramilitary group. Israel had planned a punitive military operation into Lebanon both to clip Hezbollah’s wings and send a strong message to Syria to cease and desist supplying arms and money to the anti-Israel group. Because of its involvement in Iraq, the United States indicated it would be unable to supply any ground troops but would certainly supply any kind of weapon, to include bombs, cluster bombs and ammunition for this projected operation.

A casus belli was created by the Israeli Mossad’s assassination of Rafik Haarri, a popular Lebanese politician and subsequent disinformation promulgated and instigated by both Israel and the United States blamed Syria for the killing.

The IDF was being supplied faulty and misleading intelligence information, apparently originating from Russian sources, that gave misinformation about Hezbollah positions and strengths and therefore the initial planning was badly flawed.

In full concert with the American president, the IDF launched its brutal and murderous attack on July 12, 2006 and continued unabated until the Hexbollah inflicted so many serious casualties on the Israeli forces and also on the civilian population of Israel, that their government frantically demanded that the White House force a cease fire through the United Nations. This was done for Israel on August 14, 2007 and the last act of this murderous and unprovoked assault was when Israel removed their naval blockade of Lebanese ports.

The contrived incident that launched the Israeli attack was an alleged attack by Hezbollah into Israeli territory where they were alleged to have ?kidnapped? two Israeli soldiers and subsequently launched a rocket attack to cover their retreat.

The conflict killed over six thousand people, most of whom were Lebanese, severely damaged Lebanese infrastructure, displaced 700,000-915,000 Lebanese, and 300,000-500,000 Israelis, and disrupted normal life across all of Lebanon and northern Israel. Even after the ceasefire, much of Southern Lebanon remained uninhabitable due to unexploded cluster bombs. As of 1 December 2006, an estimated 200,000 Lebanese remained internally displaced or refugees

During the campaign Israel’s Air Force flew more than 12,000 combat missions, its Navy fired 2,500 shells, and its Army fired over 100,000 shells. Large parts of the Lebanese civilian infrastructure were destroyed, including 400 miles of roads, 73 bridges, and 31 other targets such as Beirut International Airport, ports, water and sewage treatment plants, electrical facilities, 25 fuel stations, 900 commercial structures, up to 350 schools and two hospitals, and 15,000 homes. Some 130,000 more homes were damaged.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered commanders to prepare civil defense plans. One million Israelis had to stay near or in bomb shelters or security rooms, with some 250,000 civilians evacuating the north and relocating to other areas of the country.

On 26 July 2006 Israeli forces attacked and destroyed an UN observer post. Described as a nondeliberate attack by Israel, the post was shelled for hours before being bombed. UN forces made repeated calls to alert Israeli forces of the danger to the UN observers, all four of whom were killed. Rescuers were shelled as they attempted to reach the post. According to an e-mail sent earlier by one of the UN observers killed in the attack, there had been numerous occasions on a daily basis where the post had come under fire from both Israeli artillery and bombing. The UN observer reportedly wrote that previous Israeli bombing near the post had not been deliberate targeting, but rather due to “tactical necessity,” military jargon which retired Canadian Major General Lewis MacKenzie later interpreted as indicating that Israeli strikes were aimed at Hezbollah targets extremely close to the post.

On 27 July 2006 Hezbollah ambushed the Israeli forces in Bint Jbeil and killed eighteen soldiers. Israel claimed, after this event, that it also inflicted heavy losses on Hezbollah.

On 28 July 2006 Israeli paratroopers killed 5 of Hezbollah’s commando elite in Bint Jbeil. In total, the IDF claimed that 80 fighters were killed in the battles at Bint Jbeil. Hezbollah sources, coupled with International Red Cross figures place the Hexbollah total at 7 dead and 129 non-combatant Lebanese civilian deaths.

On 30 July 2006 Israeli air strikes hit an apartment building in Qana, killing at least 65 civilians, of which 28 were children, with 25 more missing. The air strike was widely condemned.

On 31 July 2006 the Israeli military and Hezbollah forces engaged Hezbollah in the Battle of Ayta ash-Shab.

On 1 August 2006 Israeli commandos launched Operation Sharp and Smooth and landed in Baalbek and captured five civilians including one bearing the same name as Hezbollah’s leader, “Hassan Nasrallah”. All of the civilians were released after the ceasefire. Troops landed near Dar al-Himkeh hospital west of Baalbeck as part of a widescale operation in the area.

On 4 August 2006 the IAF attacked a building in the area of al-Qaa around 10 kilometers (six miles) from Hermel in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. Sixty two  farm workers, mostly Syrian and Lebanese Kurds, were killed during the airstrike.

On 5 August 2006 Israeli commandos carried out a nighttime raid in Tyre, blowing up a water treatment plant, a small clinic and killing 187 civilians before withdrawing.

On 7 August 2006 the IAF attacked the Shiyyah suburb in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, destroying three apartment buildings in the suburb, killing at least 120 people.

On 11 August 2006 the IAF attacked a convoy of approximately 750 vehicles containing Lebanese police, army, civilians, and one Associated Press journalist, killing at least 40 people and wounding at least 39.

On 12 August 2006 the IDF established its hold in South Lebanon. Over the weekend Israeli forces in southern Lebanon nearly tripled in size. and were ordered to advance towards the Litani River.

On 14 August 2006 the Israeli Air Force reported that they had killed the head of Hezbollah?s Special Forces, whom they identified as Sajed Dewayer,but this claim was never proven.. 80 minutes before the cessation of hostilities, the IDF targeted a Palestinian faction in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in Sidon, killing a UNRWA staff member. Sixty two refugees had been killed in an attack on this camp six days prior to the incident.

During the campaign Hezbollah fired between 3,970 and 4,228 rockets. About 95% of these were 122 mm (4.8 in) Katyusha artillery rockets, which carried warheads up to 30 kg (66 lb) and had a range of up to 30 km (19 mi). An estimated 23% of these rockets hit built-up areas, primarily civilian in nature.

Cities hit included Haifa, Hadera, Nazareth, Tiberias, Nahariya, Safed, Afula, Kiryat Shmona, Beit She’an, Karmiel, and Maalot, and dozens of Kibbutzim, Moshavim, and Druze and Arab villages, as well as the northern West Bank. Hezbollah also engaged in guerrilla warfare with the IDF, attacking from well-fortified positions. These attacks by small, well-armed units caused serious problems for the IDF, especially through the use hundreds of sophisticated Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs). Hezbollah destroyed 38 Israeli Merkava main battle tanks and damaged 82. Fifteen  tanks were destroyed by anti-tank mines. Hezbollah caused  an additional 65 casualties using ATGMs to collapse buildings onto Israeli troops sheltering inside.

After the initial Israeli response, Hezbollah declared an all-out military alert. Hezbollah was estimated to have 13,000 missiles at the beginning of the conflict. Israeli newspaper Haaretz described Hezbollah as a trained, skilled, well-organized, and highly motivated infantry that was equipped with the cream of modern weaponry from the arsenals of Syria, Iran, Russia, and China. Lebanese satellite TV station Al-Manar reported that the attacks had included a Fajr-3 and a Ra’ad 1, both liquid-fuel missiles developed by Iran.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah defended the attacks, saying that Hezbollah had “started to act calmly, we focused on Israel[i] military bases and we didn?t attack any settlement, however, since the first day, the enemy attacked Lebanese towns and murdered civilians  Hezbollah militants had destroyed military bases, while the Israelis killed civilians and targeted Lebanon’s infrastructure.” Hezbollah apologized for shedding Muslim blood, and called on the Arabs of the Israeli city of Haifa to flee.

On 13 July 2006 in response to Israel’s retaliatory attacks in which 43  civilians were killed, Hezbollah launched rockets at Haifa for the first time, hitting a cable car station along with a few other buildings

On 14 July 2006 Hezbollah attacked the INS Hanit, an Israeli Sa’ar 5-class missile boat enforcing the naval blockade, with  what was believed to be a radar guided C-802 anti-ship missile. 24 sailors were killed and the warship was severely damaged and towed back to port.

On 17 July 2006 Hezbollah hit a railroad repair depot, killing twenty-two workers. Hezbollah claimed that this attack was aimed at a large Israeli fuel storage plant adjacent to the railway facility. Haifa is home to many strategically valuable facilities such as shipyards and oil refineries.

On 18 July 2006 Hezbollah hit a hospital in Safed in northern Galilee, wounding twenty three.

On 27 July 2006 Hezbollah ambushed the Israeli forces in Bint Jbeil and killed forty one soldiers, and destroyed 12 IDF vehicles and destroyed three armored vehicles and seriously damaged eight more. Israel claimed it also inflicted heavy losses on Hezbollah.

On 3 August 2006 Nasrallah warned Israel against hitting Beirut and promised retaliation against Tel Aviv in this case. He also stated that Hezbollah would stop its rocket campaign if Israel ceased aerial and artillery strikes of Lebanese towns and villages.

On 4 August 2006 Israel targeted the southern outskirts of Beirut, and later in the day, Hezbollah launched rockets at the Hadera region.

On 9 August 2006 twenty three Israeli soldiers were killed when the building they were taking cover in was struck by a Hezbollah anti-tank missile and collapsed.

On 12 August 2006 24 Israeli soldiers were killed; the worst Israeli loss in a single day. Out of those 24, five soldiers were killed when Hezbollah shot down an Israeli helicopter, a first for the militia. Hezbollah claimed the helicopter had been attacked with a Wa’ad missile.

One of the most controversial aspects of the conflict has been the high number of civilian deaths. The actual proportion of civilian deaths and the responsibility of it is hotly disputed.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch blamed Israel for systematically failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians, which may constitute a war crime, and accused Hezbollah of committing war crimes by the deliberate and indiscriminate killing of civilians by firing rockets into populated areas

On 24 July 2006, U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said Israel’s response violated international humanitarian law, but also criticized Hezbollah for knowingly putting civilians in harm’s way by “cowardly blending…among women and children”.

During the war, Israeli jets distributed leaflets calling on civilian residents to evacuate or move north.

In response to some of this criticism, Israel has stated that it did, wherever possible, attempt to distinguish between protected persons and combatants, but that due to Hezbollah militants being in civilian clothing

Direct attacks on civilian objects are prohibited under international humanitarian law. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) initially estimated about 35,000 homes and businesses in Lebanon were destroyed by Israel in the conflict, while a quarter of the country’s road bridges or overpasses were damaged. Jean Fabre, a UNDP spokesman, estimated that overall economic losses for Lebanon from the month-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah totaled “at least $15 billion, if not more.”] Before and throughout the war, Hezbollah launched over 4000 unguided rockets against Israeli population centers, seeking to terrorize the Israeli population. This was in direct response to Israel’s attack on residential sections and the deliberate targeting of civilians

Amnesty International published a report stating that “the deliberate widespread destruction of apartments, houses, electricity and water services, roads, bridges, factories and ports, in addition to several statements by Israeli officials, suggests a policy of punishing both the Lebanese government and the civilian population,” and called for an international investigation of violations of international humanitarian law by both sides in the conflict.

Israel defended itself from such allegations on the grounds that Hezbollah’s use of roads and bridges for military purposes made them legitimate targets. However, Amnesty International stated that “the military advantage anticipated from destroying [civilian infrastructure] must be measured against the likely effect on civilians.”

Human Rights Watch strongly criticized Israel for using cluster bombs too close to civilians because of their inaccuracy and unreliability, suggesting that they may have gone as far as deliberately targeting civilian areas with such munitions. Hezbollah was also criticized by Human Rights Watch for filling its rockets with ball bearings, which “suggests a desire to maximize harm to civilians”; the U.N has criticized Israel for its use of cluster munitions and disproportionate attacks.

Amnesty International stated that the IDF used white phosphorus shells in Lebanon. Israel later admitted to the use of white phosphorus, but stated that it only used the incendiary against militants. However, several foreign media outlets reported observing and photographing a large number of Lebanese civilians with burns characteristic of white phosphorus attacks during the conflict.

Hezbollah casualty figures are difficult to ascertain, with claims and estimates by different groups and individuals ranging from 43 to 1,000. Hezbollah’s leadership claims that 43 of their fighters were killed in the conflict, while Israel estimated that its forces had killed 600 Hezbollah fighters. In addition, Israel claimed to have the names of 532 dead Hezbollah fighters but when challenged by Hezbollah to release the list, the Israelis dropped the issue. A UN official estimated that 50 Hezbollah fighters had been killed, and Lebanese government officials estimated that up to 49 had been killed.

The Lebanese civilian death toll is difficult to pinpoint as most published figures do not distinguish between civilians and militants, including those released by the Lebanese government. In addition, Hezbollah fighters can be difficult to identify as many do not wear military uniforms. However, it has been widely reported that the majority of the Lebanese killed were civilians, and UNICEF estimated that 30% of those killed were children under the age of 13

The death toll estimates do not include Lebanese killed since the end of fighting by land mines or unexploded US/Israeli cluster bombs. According to the National Demining Office, 297 people have been killed and 867 wounded in such blasts.

Official Israeli figures for the Israel Defense Forces troops killed range from 116 to 120. The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs gives two different figures 117 and 119 the latter of which contains two IDF fatalities that occurred after the ceasefire went into effect. In September 2006, two local Israeli newspapers released insider information ensuring that the Israeli military death toll might climbed to around 540 soldiers. Israel refuses any outside agency access to its lists of the dead and wounded but an examination of all the accurate information available as of January 1, 2007 indicates that Israeli Defense Forces lost a total of 2300 killed with 600 of these dying in militatary hospital facilities subsequent to the conclusion of the fighting and an additional 700 very seriously wounded.

Hezbollah rockets killed 43 Israeli civilians during the conflict, including four who died of heart attacks during rocket attacks. In addition, 4,262 civilians were injured ? 33 seriously, 68 moderately, 1,388 lightly, and 2,773 were treated for shock and anxiety

In March, 2007, the Israeli comptroller released an interim report that accused the army and Olmert of leaving Israeli civilians virtually defenseless during the Lebanon war, in which Hezbollah guerrillas fired a barrage of rockets and missiles at northern Israel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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