Feral Jundi

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Afghanistan: Gunmen Kidnap Development Alternatives Inc. Contractors

Filed under: Afghanistan,Kidnap And Ransom — Tags: , , , , , , , — Matt @ 10:20 PM

Ziayee said the woman was wearing a burqa when the party was last seen at around 10.30am travelling through the district of Chowki. He said that she was “kidnapped by the opposition” after a brief fight with local police, who gave chase into the mountains.

An official with the Kunar criminal investigation unit said local insurgents were responsible, led by a man called Mullah Basir and an associate called Qari Ruhullah. At midday, a group of 12 senior elders from the area were sent into the area where the hostages were believed to be to try to secure their release. 

*****

     I do not know any other details other than what has been reported.  My heart goes out to the friends and families, and I certainly hope the kidnapers do not do to these folks like what happened earlier this year to the medical team. DAI has not had very good luck these days and perhaps they should reevaluate their security protocols?

     If there was only one security guy for this entire party then I don’t call that very smart. Low profile is a great method of travel, but obviously this team was busted off the get go as having a British contractor in it. Perhaps someone sold them out or they got careless? Either way, tough deal and I hope they survive. –Matt

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Afghanistan: gunmen kidnap Briton and three co-workers

British woman and Afghan colleagues part of convoy intercepted by insurgents in Kunar province

Jon Boone in Kabul and James Meikle

Sunday 26 September 2010

A British woman working for an American company and at least three Afghan co-workers have been kidnapped by unidentified gunmen in Afghanistan. They were in a two-vehicle convoy intercepted by insurgents in Kunar province.

Neither the Foreign Office in London nor Washington-based Development Alternatives Inc (DAI) would confirm the woman’s identity, but DAI, a contractor with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said it was working “on a suspected abduction” and would be issuing a statement. The FO said relatives had been told and appealed to the British media not to name her.

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Industry Talk: Dept. Of State Daily Briefing–Contractors And The Challenge Of Iraq

Filed under: Industry Talk,Iraq — Tags: , , , , , , , — Matt @ 3:30 AM

QUESTION: Does the Department intend to hire enough private contractors to make up the shortfall of what the military now provides in terms of security, transportation, communications, and all the other services?

MR. TONER: Well, Charley, the responsibility of security, obviously, on the ground there falls under our Bureau of Diplomatic Security. And it’s up to them, obviously, to provide a safe and secure environment. And that’s going to involve, obviously, the use and participation of contractors. These contractors will provide protective services, advice, training, support. And in terms of actual numbers on the ground, I’ll leave that for them to sort of decide what’s appropriate for the security situation. 

*****

     Despite the grilling that congress gave DoS the other day about this very ambitious new phase, it sounds like they are still pressing forward.  Some of the issues they are coming up against is that DoD has not committed to giving them the stuff they want (Blackhawks, MRAPs, etc.).  Their past history with managing contracts is giving congress a pause as well.  And finally, the missions that contractors could potentially be presented with is causing congress to raise some inherently governmental questions. David Isenberg had a post on the matter.

    No word yet on who got what for WPPS/WPS.  If this is the current position of DoS though, I would assume that it is all systems go. Although I am sure they would like to do as much as they can to give congress some confidence in their mission. Good luck. lol –Matt

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Mark C. Toner

Acting Deputy Department Spokesman

Daily Press Briefing

Washington, DC

September 24, 2010

(a portion of the briefing is posted below)

QUESTION: Can we stay on Iraq for a second?

MR. TONER: Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah.

QUESTION: Yesterday on Capitol Hill, the State Department came up against some pretty sharp criticism about its ability to oversee reconstruction once the U.S. military pulled out. Special Inspector General Bowen said the State Department had failed so far to oversee a lot of these projects. And today he repeated that and said as far as he could see, the State Department did not have the core ability to oversee reconstruction at, say, tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money. What’s the State Department going to do?

MR. TONER: Well, we cooperated, actually, on that report and have made every effort to keep Congress informed of additional resources needed or required, rather, for the transition. That is, in fact, ongoing. Certainly we recognize the enormous challenge of, and are devoting considerable effort to, the military-to-civilian transition, working in close collaboration with the Department of Defense. And we’re – obviously, our overarching goal is to ensure the safety and security of our personnel in Iraq, but also ensure an appropriate level of contract and operational oversight, and then thirdly, to make sure that the mission there – our mission, rather, succeeds.

And then finally, I just would say that this is a tremendous challenge, but the State Department does have experience in this. Looking back from an historical perspective, from post-war Germany and Japan, to the unrest in Central and South America in the 1970s, to more recently East Timor and Bosnia, we’ve put staff, personnel in these challenging locations. Their goals were to stabilize the governments, provide foreign assistance, promote stable and functional host governments. And so we believe that we are up to the challenge in Iraq.

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Aviation: Air Power On The Cheap

Filed under: Aviation — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Matt @ 1:14 AM

In aerial combat, then, low tech may be the new high tech. And there is one other advantage that the turboprop has over the jet, at least according to Mr Read—who flew turboprops on combat missions in Cambodia during the 1970s. It is that you can use a loudspeaker to talk to potential targets before deciding whether to attack them. As Winston Churchill so memorably put it: “When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.” 

*****

     Warfare on the cheap is all the rage these days and this is an excellent little article from the Economist on the subject of cheap air power.  I just talked about Colombia’s use of these types of aircraft in their war against the FARC and I thought I would add further information behind the concept. I should also note that PMC’s like Executive Outcomes had their own air assets for operations, and that too could be classified as ‘air power on the cheap’.  If it gets the job done and you are dealing with an enemy that has no air power, then these ideas make sense.

     The one thing I keep thinking about though, is that I like cheap air power that has a high probability of survival. Or better yet, is cheap and unmanned. I think as soon as we can put robotics into these cheap propeller type aircraft, then we are effectively creating cheaper drones with built in supply and maintenance systems. Imagine an unmanned Cessna Caravan doing these types of military missions?

     Or an unmanned cargo carrier like a 747 with a payload of JDAM type munitions that could be dropped from extreme heights? There are plenty of these old, yet still working aircraft that could be outfitted with robotics. Cheap drones produced from such aircraft could be a market all by itself, and especially as smaller nations join the larger nations in their desire to have this capability– for a fraction of the price.

     Not to take away from the value of having a human in the cockpit, which to me is still the smartest computer out there. I think there will always be a need for this man and machine relationship, and especially if future small wars will require extreme discipline and precision, along with common sense and a feel for the battle field. Only a guy in the plane can really get that feel for their little patch of war and how to dominate the enemy and work with other forces. We might get there one day with UAVs, but I still think humans will have a place. –Matt

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Super Tucano

The Super Tucano, made by Embraer.

Air power on the cheap

Small, slow and inexpensive propeller-driven planes are starting to displace fighter jets

Sep 20th 2010

JET fighters may be sexy in a Tom Cruise-ish sort of way, but for guerilla warefare—in which the enemy rarely has an air force of his own with which to dogfight—they are often not the tool for the job. Pilotless drones can help fill the gap. Sometimes there is no substitute for having a pilot on the scene, however, so modern air forces are starting to turn to a technology from the yesteryear of flying: the turboprop.

So-called light-attack turboprops are cheap both to build and to fly. A fighter jet can cost $80m. By contrast the 208B Caravan, a light-attack turboprop made by Cessna, costs barely $2m. It also costs as little as $500 a hour to run when it is in the air, compared with $10,000 or more for a fighter jet. And, unlike jets, turboprops can use roads and fields for takeoff and landing.

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Colombia: FARC Military Leader Mono Jojoy Death Is Blow To Four-Decade Insurgency

Filed under: Aviation,Colombia,Strategy,Technology — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — Matt @ 12:26 AM

They said Operation Sodom, as it has been dubbed, started on Tuesday 21 September, when the heads of all three branches of the Colombian military, the police and the Ministry of Defence met in Bogota to finalise details of the attack.

In the early hours of Wednesday 22 September, 78 aircraft headed for the area known as La Escalera in the Macarena mountain range in Meta province.

They dropped dozens of bombs on Mono Jojoy’s camp, which Defence Minister Rodrigo Rivera has described as “the mother of all lairs” for its size and the number of hidden tunnels it had.

About 400 members of the Colombian special forces then abseiled from helicopters and surrounded the camp.

After hours of fighting, another 400 soldiers and police moved in on the camp, taking it in the early hours of Thursday morning. 

*****

     What can I say?  This is an incredible stroke of luck for the Colombian government in their war against the FARC, and bravo to them for pulling off such an operation.

     The first thing that jumped up at me was how they were able to find out who the boot manufacturer was that Mono used to make his custom made jungle boots.  Because from that little tip, this entire operation was grown.  Basically, once they had a fix on these boots, they were able to slip a GPS tracking device into them and follow the path these boots made from shop to secret jungle camp.

     Once the location was found, you can see from the quote up top that the government forces quickly took advantage.  They knew what they had, and they put everything they had into being successful.

     The use of their Embraer Super Tucanos in this operation is very interesting.  With these things, the cost of the air operation is significantly cheaper.  This aircraft is also getting a lot of looks from other countries who are fighting insurgencies where their enemies do not have jet aircraft or any serious air power.  The reasoning here is that why use multi-million dollar jets that cost thousands of dollars an hour to fuel and maintain, when you can accomplish the same task with cheaper prop aircraft?  Colombia is definitely proving the validity of the concept.

     The capture of computer hardware is impressive as well. I would suspect that the FARC is sweating bullets right now because everyone on Mono’s hard drive will now be a target. Expect to see more clean up operations designed to demoralize the FARC, and drive them to either dissolve or just surrender. I certainly hope that Colombia is able to break their will and sink this pathetic drug fueled organization. (Mexican drug cartels, you’re next. lol)

     Now onto some lessons here. The whole GPS in the boot trick is pretty damn cool and I think any chance we can do the same thing with other enemies in today’s various insurgencies would be a good thing. I say the smaller you can make the device, the better, and make it sturdy enough to insert in all and any objects.  Even troops in Afghanistan could be putting GPS devices in all types of things that the enemy could possibly pick up and want to use. These devices should not be just the tools of specialists, and they should be viewed as the tool of modern day combat trackers.

     One area that the GPS trick might be well served, is in the endeavor to track animals for anti-poacher operations.  Eeben Barlow talked about the Rhino poaching problem in South Africa the other day, and I think small GPS tracking devices would be very helpful in anti-poaching operations.

    Better yet, Joseph Kony of the LRA could be tracked using the same method the Colombians used against Mono Jojoy. Either set up some child’s AK with a GPS in the stock, or introduce several of these devices somehow into the possession of this group.  Any way possible to track these folks should be looked at and planned for. If you strive to know your enemy, you should be able to find some weakness or opening at one point in your hunt for him. The imagination is the only limit and the pay off would be incredible. –Matt

FARC Military Leader Suárez’s Death Is Blow to Four-Decade Insurgency

Colombian police examine Farc rebels’ laptops

A chip hidden in the boots of Mono Jojoy allowed to locate in the jungle

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FARC Deaths

The bodies of guerrillas killed, including Mono Jojoy.

Colombia Kills Guerrilla Chief

FARC Military Leader Suárez’s Death Is Blow to Four-Decade Insurgency

By JOSé DE CóRDOBA And DARCY CROWE

BOGOTA—Colombia’s army killed the military leader of the country’s communist guerrillas in a two-day battle that involved airstrikes against his jungle bunker, dealing a major blow to the four-decade insurgency, officials said Thursday.

Victor Suárez, 57 years old, nicknamed “Mono Jojoy,” was the second in command and top field marshal of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Latin America’s biggest and oldest guerrilla group. To many ordinary Colombians, his thick moustache and Che Guevara-style black beret were synonymous with the FARC.

“Mono Jojoy is dead,” Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos told reporters in New York, where he is attending the United Nations General Assembly. “This is the most devastating blow ever dealt to the FARC.”

The strike was a big boost for Mr. Santos, who took office in August. He dubbed the military mission, which involved more than 30 aircraft, “Operation Welcome.” In his role as defense minister under Colombia’s previous president, Álvaro Uribe, Mr. Santos oversaw some notable blows against the FARC.

(more…)

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Al Qaeda: AQIM Getting Rich, Using Mercenaries, And At War With France And The West

Filed under: Africa,Al Qaeda,France,Niger — Tags: , , , , , , , — Matt @ 1:31 AM

“A disproportionate number of terrorist attacks … fail simply because ideological conviction is not sufficient to have technical and operation capabilities,” he says. “What this group is doing is they’re increasing their probability of success by hiring people who understand the terrain, and have the know-how.” 

*****

“Mokhtar (Belmokhtar) is one of the more innovative terrorist leaders,” Pham said. “He’s expanded into Mali and Mauritania and built this nexus of criminal activity which raises money for terrorist operations. Every time after he collects a ransom or some other funding, he plows that money right back into the organization by hiring even better people to handle the next operation, thus ensuring its success.” 

*****

     I found this to be very intriguing, just because this Mokhtar guy is doing some things that will undoubtedly be copied by others.  The ransom game, along with collecting passage fees in drug trafficking zones in Africa, is turning out to be very lucrative for AQIM. As more countries like Spain continue to pay ransoms, groups like this get rich and are able to do more kidnappings and terrorist operations. It is a terror/crime cycle that feeds itself and only gets bigger. Kind of like the whole piracy thing.

    With that said, close protection in these parts of the world should be a top priority of companies and countries that endorse the companies as they work abroad. Every payment made for ransoms, will only make these groups stronger.  So having a means to defeat these hired jijadist mercenaries that conduct these types of operations should be a top priority for companies. I say companies in general, because I could see this type of thing replicated throughout the world and by all types of terrorist organizations.

     Nothing new in the world of terrorism, but as you can see, every once in awhile you get an enterprising booger eater who has figured out a niche. Hopefully France is able to kill or capture this guy and put this group in check.  Spain and these other ‘weak kneed’ countries need to learn as well that paying ransoms will not make the problem disappear. Much like ransoms have done for the piracy game, it will only make these groups stronger, and things worse for westerners operating in these countries. –Matt

When Crime Does Pay: The Threat of an Emboldened al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

France’s War Deepens With Desert Al-Qaida Ally

An Al Qaeda affiliate getting rich in Niger

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When Crime Does Pay: The Threat of an Emboldened al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

September 23, 2010

J.Peter Pham, PhD

(the last paragraphs are posted)

……In this context, the resurgence of AQIM should be cause for grave concern—all the more so because the payment of ransoms and the release of jailed militants have given the terrorist group a considerable boost, not just in terms of material and human resources, but also in terms of prestige among extremists. Exacerbating the threat that an emboldened AQIM poses is that its leadership has shown itself to be rather pragmatic in their using the resources which come their way to “professionalize” their operations, that is, employing mercenaries like Omar le Sahraoui and others willing to work for hire for the terrorist organization irrespective of their ideological commitments. The six killed in the failed French raid on AQIM in July, for example, included three Tuareg, an Algerian, a Mauritanian, and a Moroccan. By using personnel who are either trained or who have superior knowledge of the geographic or social space in which operations are to take place, AQIM’s terrorist activities not only stand a greater chance of success, but in the event of failure and capture, authorities do not gain much by way of entry into or leverage with the terrorist group itself. Given how this threat has been evolving, it may turn out to be fortuitous that al-Qaeda’s franchise has provoked what is apparently a rather robust reaction from the French at this time, rather than later after it has had more time to consolidate its position.

Story here.

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France’s War Deepens With Desert Al-Qaida Ally

Sept. 21, 2010

Dana Kennedy

NICE, France (Sept. 21) — More than 80 French counter-terrorism troops in long-range reconnaissance planes are scouring a vast no-man’s land on the edge of the Sahara for seven hostages taken last week in Niger.

It’s the latest battle in what is beginning to look like a deepening war between France and a group that calls itself al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

“France will do everything to free the hostages,” government spokesman Luc Chatel has told reporters, but the French Foreign Ministry said it had not yet received any proof that the hostages are alive or any demands for money from any group.

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