Tuesday December 19, 2006
Did a Viktor Bout Company Help Divert Weapons to Insurgents?
In one of the strangest twists of recent Bout-related events, a company in Bout's business orbit was found to have flown several hundred thousand AK-47 assault rifles from Bosnia to Iraq, theoretically for use by the new, U.S.-traine Iraqi army and police. Unfortunately, there is no record of the weapons ever actually landing in Iraq, although it appears that the now-defunct air freighter, Aerocom, did make the flights.
This was first reported in a new report by Amnesty International report and I have confirmed the basic outlines from other intelligence sources.
Aerocom shared an address and telephone number in Moldova with Jetline, a company publicly named as a Bout company by then senior Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz. But when the first the Aerocom flights were made (Aug. 7, 8, 21, 22, 2004) , the airline had lost its vital Air Operating Certificate, issued by Moldova. The AOC expired on Aug. 6, 2004 and has not been renewed.
As the AI investigation found, there is no record of the 200,000 AK-47s flown from the U.S-military controlled Eagle Base near Tuzla, Bosnia, ever actually reached Iraq. The End User Certificate were from the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority and the interim Iraqi administration.
Yet there is no record of the aircraft landing or the weapons being signed over. So what happened? We will likely never know. But Bout has double-dealt with all sides of every war he has supplied. He has routinely rerouted weapons shipments for his own commercial gain, and that does not inspire much confidence. A person who can supply the Taliban and the Northern Alliance at the same time, and who has experience dealing weapons in Bosnia, would be unlikely to flinch at the thought of further weapons diversions.
U.S. and European intelligence sources said the flights took place but that it was an extremely sensitive operation and the details are highly classified. Air freighters on the ground know about the shipments, but not where the weapons actually ended up.
There are several things wrong with the picture to begin with. The most obvious is that Iraq did not need to import weapons, as it has a surplus. Bosnia is supposed to be destroying weapons, not selling them. The sales can only proceed with the permission of EUFOR, the EU-led peacekeeping body that remains in charge of much weapons issues in Bosnia. There were many other air freighters available if this unusual weapons transfer in fact did have to happen. Why Aerocom? Why no paper work at the end?
As the AI report said, "The arms brokering and freight forwarding network can be viewed in this case as a pyramidal structure with a primary contractor sitting at the apex astride a collection of largely unregulated, secretive companies operating out of private apartment buildings and gunshops but involved in an arms deal worth tens of millions of dollars."
That sums up Bout's operations in a nutshell. Congressional overseers should begin demanding answers. If they are going to hire Bout, they should at least make sure he delivers the weapons to the proper place.
This was first reported in a new report by Amnesty International report and I have confirmed the basic outlines from other intelligence sources.
Aerocom shared an address and telephone number in Moldova with Jetline, a company publicly named as a Bout company by then senior Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz. But when the first the Aerocom flights were made (Aug. 7, 8, 21, 22, 2004) , the airline had lost its vital Air Operating Certificate, issued by Moldova. The AOC expired on Aug. 6, 2004 and has not been renewed.
As the AI investigation found, there is no record of the 200,000 AK-47s flown from the U.S-military controlled Eagle Base near Tuzla, Bosnia, ever actually reached Iraq. The End User Certificate were from the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority and the interim Iraqi administration.
Yet there is no record of the aircraft landing or the weapons being signed over. So what happened? We will likely never know. But Bout has double-dealt with all sides of every war he has supplied. He has routinely rerouted weapons shipments for his own commercial gain, and that does not inspire much confidence. A person who can supply the Taliban and the Northern Alliance at the same time, and who has experience dealing weapons in Bosnia, would be unlikely to flinch at the thought of further weapons diversions.
U.S. and European intelligence sources said the flights took place but that it was an extremely sensitive operation and the details are highly classified. Air freighters on the ground know about the shipments, but not where the weapons actually ended up.
There are several things wrong with the picture to begin with. The most obvious is that Iraq did not need to import weapons, as it has a surplus. Bosnia is supposed to be destroying weapons, not selling them. The sales can only proceed with the permission of EUFOR, the EU-led peacekeeping body that remains in charge of much weapons issues in Bosnia. There were many other air freighters available if this unusual weapons transfer in fact did have to happen. Why Aerocom? Why no paper work at the end?
As the AI report said, "The arms brokering and freight forwarding network can be viewed in this case as a pyramidal structure with a primary contractor sitting at the apex astride a collection of largely unregulated, secretive companies operating out of private apartment buildings and gunshops but involved in an arms deal worth tens of millions of dollars."
That sums up Bout's operations in a nutshell. Congressional overseers should begin demanding answers. If they are going to hire Bout, they should at least make sure he delivers the weapons to the proper place.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Tuesday December 19, 2006
Somalia Presents Vital, Little-Watch Front in Fight Against Radical Islamists
Somalia, reeling from decades of strife, civil war and chaos, has emerged as an important front in confronting the spread of armed Islamist groups with links to al Qaeda. Recent fighting in and around the rubble of what remains of Mogadishu has been the first armed response by a coalition of unsavory warlords against the growing strength of Islamist militias that have moved to impose sharia law on the land.
The warlord's coalition is a self-styled "anti-terrorism alliance" aimed at pushing back against gains made by Islamist militias that contain members who trained in Afghanistan and elsewhere by al Qaeda and its allies. Osama bin Laden's men helped train the Somali militias that downed the U.S. Blawkhawk helicopter in 1994 and dragged the bodies of U.S. troops through the streets. In the years since, bin Laden has mentioned Somalia as a possible venue for a "third war," after Afghanistan and Iraq, to tie up U.S. troops and weaken the West.
There are reports of U.S. support for the warlords, who have blood on their hands from years of brutal warfare but resent and fear the growing strength of the Islamist militias. The U.S. has not confirmed or denied the reports of support for the alliance, but Somalia presents another variation of the constant set of poor options available to U.S. counter-terrorism policy: support bad people who will fight the enemy to the death, or allow the Islamists to gain access to another safehaven with easy access and the multiple advantages of operating unfettered in a geographic region.
The question is not hard to answer. Somalia provides not only easy access to much of East Africa, where al Qaeda has long been active, but to the conflict theaters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere.
Failed states where terrorists can teach, receive ideological and religious indoctrination and train militarily are vital for the Islamist network to regenerate and improve itself. Somalia offers all of that, and more. It offers access to highly trained fighters with years of experience to share. It offers, as Afghanistan did, the possibility of more permanent structures that allow for experimentation with biological and other weapons in rugged, uncontrolled terrain.
The Islamist groups began to push forward in the imposition of sharia law and the taking over of key roadblocks around the city in October. The Islamists set up Islamic courts to judge even non-Muslims. They also began forcing the shutdown on entertainment centers. The nation's fragile Transitional Federal Governmet (TFG) has no presence in Mogadishu and is barely functioning. There is no state military or other structure to push back.
So the warlords, setting aside some of their differences and with possible outside assistance, decided to act. This month the fighting in Mogadishu between the Islamists and warlords has been the heaviest in years.
This is the type of engagement, not through boots on the ground but aiding those who want to fight, that the United States should be doing on a larger scale. This will not topple a legitimate government or thwart a democratic process. It will simply keep the Islamists from taking root in a distant but vital battleground.
The warlord's coalition is a self-styled "anti-terrorism alliance" aimed at pushing back against gains made by Islamist militias that contain members who trained in Afghanistan and elsewhere by al Qaeda and its allies. Osama bin Laden's men helped train the Somali militias that downed the U.S. Blawkhawk helicopter in 1994 and dragged the bodies of U.S. troops through the streets. In the years since, bin Laden has mentioned Somalia as a possible venue for a "third war," after Afghanistan and Iraq, to tie up U.S. troops and weaken the West.
There are reports of U.S. support for the warlords, who have blood on their hands from years of brutal warfare but resent and fear the growing strength of the Islamist militias. The U.S. has not confirmed or denied the reports of support for the alliance, but Somalia presents another variation of the constant set of poor options available to U.S. counter-terrorism policy: support bad people who will fight the enemy to the death, or allow the Islamists to gain access to another safehaven with easy access and the multiple advantages of operating unfettered in a geographic region.
The question is not hard to answer. Somalia provides not only easy access to much of East Africa, where al Qaeda has long been active, but to the conflict theaters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere.
Failed states where terrorists can teach, receive ideological and religious indoctrination and train militarily are vital for the Islamist network to regenerate and improve itself. Somalia offers all of that, and more. It offers access to highly trained fighters with years of experience to share. It offers, as Afghanistan did, the possibility of more permanent structures that allow for experimentation with biological and other weapons in rugged, uncontrolled terrain.
The Islamist groups began to push forward in the imposition of sharia law and the taking over of key roadblocks around the city in October. The Islamists set up Islamic courts to judge even non-Muslims. They also began forcing the shutdown on entertainment centers. The nation's fragile Transitional Federal Governmet (TFG) has no presence in Mogadishu and is barely functioning. There is no state military or other structure to push back.
So the warlords, setting aside some of their differences and with possible outside assistance, decided to act. This month the fighting in Mogadishu between the Islamists and warlords has been the heaviest in years.
This is the type of engagement, not through boots on the ground but aiding those who want to fight, that the United States should be doing on a larger scale. This will not topple a legitimate government or thwart a democratic process. It will simply keep the Islamists from taking root in a distant but vital battleground.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Tuesday December 19, 2006
Hayden's Challenge at the CIA
If Gen. Michael V. Hayden is confirmed as CIA director, he will inherit an organization with several overwhelming problems: morale is near rock-bottom; almost an entire generation of senior agents and managers have walked out the door; the large recruiting classes are bringing in smart people but hardly any with real-world experience or institutional knowledge; and bureaucratic infighting has left the agency in a much weaker institutional position than it was when Porter Goss took over.
While recruiting classes are large and the quality of recruits high, it is almost impossible to overstate the feeling foreign intelligence officials, retired officers and others have when they deal with the agency that the agency is operating with little adult supervision. There is no doubt reform was desperately needed after the end of the Cold War, as state threats merged with the threat of non-state actors sliding through the seams of globalization.
But those who left were not just the dinasours who couldn't change. There were also people who know how to successfully run clandestine operations, who think about exploiting the slight cracks among the different groups that emerge as enemies, those who know how to run covert information and disinformation campaigns. All of this must be done in a radically different world than the world that existed before the early 1990s, but the skills themselves are still vital. And the talent charts in the agency of those who have them is slim indeed.
Publicly floating the idea of bringing back Stephen R. Kappes as Hayden's deputy is a direct slap at the Goss legacy. Kappes resigned less than two months after Goss took over as CIA director in late 2004.
His fight was Goss was one of the first, and bringing him back may well open the door to the return of others who felt Goss politicized the agency and had little understanding of how the tradecraft had evolved in the three decades since he had been an agent. Goss' willingness to let former Congressional aides assume key decision-making and personnel spots even though they had little or no experience in intelligence matters other than as consumers, cost the agency dearly.
Hayden would have several advantages as well. He knows John Negroponte well and has worked with him. He may have to clout to push back on the Pentagon efforts to assume control of virtually all of the human intelligence apparatus. He understands, if anyone does, what the new intelligence architecture is supposed to look like and the overall vision of integrating the intelligence community. Many, myself included, are not at all sure such a vision or plan really exists.
Hayden, despite all the rumblings on Capitol Hill about his active duty status in the military, is well-liked personally by Republicans and Democrats alike. He has not picked fights and has shown a willingness to at least tip his hat to Congressional oversight and concerns, both things that Goss did.
However, the overwhelming challenge remains: how to remake the CIA into a premiere, functional intelligence-gathering operation that can speak truth to power and help policymakers navigate in the rapidly changing world. At its best, it would have been a tremendous challenge for the CIA to move forward after 9-11. Unfortunately, the missteps since then have left the CIA far from its best.
While recruiting classes are large and the quality of recruits high, it is almost impossible to overstate the feeling foreign intelligence officials, retired officers and others have when they deal with the agency that the agency is operating with little adult supervision. There is no doubt reform was desperately needed after the end of the Cold War, as state threats merged with the threat of non-state actors sliding through the seams of globalization.
But those who left were not just the dinasours who couldn't change. There were also people who know how to successfully run clandestine operations, who think about exploiting the slight cracks among the different groups that emerge as enemies, those who know how to run covert information and disinformation campaigns. All of this must be done in a radically different world than the world that existed before the early 1990s, but the skills themselves are still vital. And the talent charts in the agency of those who have them is slim indeed.
Publicly floating the idea of bringing back Stephen R. Kappes as Hayden's deputy is a direct slap at the Goss legacy. Kappes resigned less than two months after Goss took over as CIA director in late 2004.
His fight was Goss was one of the first, and bringing him back may well open the door to the return of others who felt Goss politicized the agency and had little understanding of how the tradecraft had evolved in the three decades since he had been an agent. Goss' willingness to let former Congressional aides assume key decision-making and personnel spots even though they had little or no experience in intelligence matters other than as consumers, cost the agency dearly.
Hayden would have several advantages as well. He knows John Negroponte well and has worked with him. He may have to clout to push back on the Pentagon efforts to assume control of virtually all of the human intelligence apparatus. He understands, if anyone does, what the new intelligence architecture is supposed to look like and the overall vision of integrating the intelligence community. Many, myself included, are not at all sure such a vision or plan really exists.
Hayden, despite all the rumblings on Capitol Hill about his active duty status in the military, is well-liked personally by Republicans and Democrats alike. He has not picked fights and has shown a willingness to at least tip his hat to Congressional oversight and concerns, both things that Goss did.
However, the overwhelming challenge remains: how to remake the CIA into a premiere, functional intelligence-gathering operation that can speak truth to power and help policymakers navigate in the rapidly changing world. At its best, it would have been a tremendous challenge for the CIA to move forward after 9-11. Unfortunately, the missteps since then have left the CIA far from its best.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Tuesday December 19, 2006
What Happened to Bank al Madina?
Investigators of terrorist financial issues are growing increasingly interested in Bank al Madina, a looted bank in Beirut that seems to have been a center for terror finance, Saddam Hussein's food-for-oil scam of billions of dollars, West African blood diamonds, Syrian government payoffs and massive criminal money laundering. In other words, a worthy successor to the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
By far the best thing publicly available on this is in Fortune Magazine's May 15 issue.
The bank collapsed in 2003 after being looted of some $1.65 billion, and, as Mitchell Prothero points out in his fine Fortune piece, several of the key players in the fraud were named in the U.N. report as participating in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. One of the reasons seems to be that Hariri was planning on reopening the stalled investigation into the collapse of the bank, and had accused the Syrians of financial corruption.
"Was the scandal part of the reason Hariri was killed?" asks Marwan Hamade, Lebanon's Minister of Telecommunications and a Hariri confidant who was himself the target of a car-bomb assassination attempt. "Absolutely. It was certainly one of the cumulative reasons. If he had been reelected, Hariri would have reopened the file, which we know goes directly to [Syrian President Bashar] Assad through the [Lebanese] presidential palace in Baabda."
Prothero, the UN investigators and others have documented the Syrian ties to the bank. Another point of interest is the ties of the bank to the network of Lebanese traffickers in "blood diamonds" from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Angola and elsewhere. Hezbollah has long used the diamond trade to raise money through taxing diamond merchants. Al Qaeda has used the same network to store value of its assets. The al-Madina Bank seems to have played a central role in both aspects.
Belgian police investigators found that the Lebanese diamond merchant handling sales for al Qaeda through his Antwerp-based company divereted much of the money to Lebanon. They suspect the money was laundered through al-Madina.
U.S. financial investigators are interested but short-handed, especially since many of the documents are in Arabic. There is little stomach just now for a protracted investigation into an overseas bank that may not reveal many direct U.S. ties.
The key bank documents now accessible, however. It would be worth the time and energy to unravel the secrets of the bank. Terrorists and organized criminal groups operate through networks, and Bank al-Madina was an important part of several networks. Understanding how those work is of vital importance.
By far the best thing publicly available on this is in Fortune Magazine's May 15 issue.
The bank collapsed in 2003 after being looted of some $1.65 billion, and, as Mitchell Prothero points out in his fine Fortune piece, several of the key players in the fraud were named in the U.N. report as participating in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. One of the reasons seems to be that Hariri was planning on reopening the stalled investigation into the collapse of the bank, and had accused the Syrians of financial corruption.
"Was the scandal part of the reason Hariri was killed?" asks Marwan Hamade, Lebanon's Minister of Telecommunications and a Hariri confidant who was himself the target of a car-bomb assassination attempt. "Absolutely. It was certainly one of the cumulative reasons. If he had been reelected, Hariri would have reopened the file, which we know goes directly to [Syrian President Bashar] Assad through the [Lebanese] presidential palace in Baabda."
Prothero, the UN investigators and others have documented the Syrian ties to the bank. Another point of interest is the ties of the bank to the network of Lebanese traffickers in "blood diamonds" from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Angola and elsewhere. Hezbollah has long used the diamond trade to raise money through taxing diamond merchants. Al Qaeda has used the same network to store value of its assets. The al-Madina Bank seems to have played a central role in both aspects.
Belgian police investigators found that the Lebanese diamond merchant handling sales for al Qaeda through his Antwerp-based company divereted much of the money to Lebanon. They suspect the money was laundered through al-Madina.
U.S. financial investigators are interested but short-handed, especially since many of the documents are in Arabic. There is little stomach just now for a protracted investigation into an overseas bank that may not reveal many direct U.S. ties.
The key bank documents now accessible, however. It would be worth the time and energy to unravel the secrets of the bank. Terrorists and organized criminal groups operate through networks, and Bank al-Madina was an important part of several networks. Understanding how those work is of vital importance.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Tuesday December 19, 2006
Competition Between the Brothers and Al Qaeda?
Across Europe, according to intelligence sources, the international Muslim Brotherhood is competing for recruits and cash with armed, radicalized Islamist groups operating in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The competition is not over the ultimate goal of the Islamist project: the recreation of a Muslim caliphate in the areas of the world once ruled by Muslims and the eventual Islamization of the entire world. Rather, it appears that the Brotherhood, long able to recruit among the best and brightest Islamists in Europe and the Arab peninsula, is now struggling to make its more staid message of incremental change relevant to those who would join the Islamist movement.
The Brotherhood has long served as a key financial node for different Islamist groups, and the intelligence officials say that has not changed signficantly. What has changed is the unwillingness of many potential young recruits to play the long-standing double game that the Brotherhood has mastered. This includes a moderate public discourse, particularly for non-Islamist audiences; deception; denial of the true goals and aims of the Brotherhood; and the stated need to portray the Brotherhood as modern and open to assimilation in the West.
With the Islamist insurgency in Iraq led by Zarqawi recruiting heavily Europe and the existence of visible battlefields where Islamists can go and wage jihad, the Brotherhood message is being drowned out in some circles. Why assimilate, blend in and pretend to be moderate when you can join a group that openly states its claim to Islamic legitimacy, can wage a hot war against the infidels and makes no attempt to hide its agenda? Increasingly, the best in the Islamist mosques are opting for the latter course of action.
The Brotherhood of Yousef Nada, Idriss Nasreddin, Gahlib Himmat and others is an organization that moves easily in the corridors of power in much of the Gulf, despite recent difficulties with the Saudi regime. While they can and do support the Islamist project, it is part of the existing power structure. Zarqawi and others represent the chance to go out and do something NOW, not the multi-generational, long-term view the Brotherhood has traditionally taken. Those that move in the corridors of power are often viewed as the enemy, even if their money is not.
The Brotherhood has the financial infrastructure. The jihadists are getting the recruits. How this plays out in Europe, particularly, will have a significant impact on the shape of jihad in coming years.
The competition is not over the ultimate goal of the Islamist project: the recreation of a Muslim caliphate in the areas of the world once ruled by Muslims and the eventual Islamization of the entire world. Rather, it appears that the Brotherhood, long able to recruit among the best and brightest Islamists in Europe and the Arab peninsula, is now struggling to make its more staid message of incremental change relevant to those who would join the Islamist movement.
The Brotherhood has long served as a key financial node for different Islamist groups, and the intelligence officials say that has not changed signficantly. What has changed is the unwillingness of many potential young recruits to play the long-standing double game that the Brotherhood has mastered. This includes a moderate public discourse, particularly for non-Islamist audiences; deception; denial of the true goals and aims of the Brotherhood; and the stated need to portray the Brotherhood as modern and open to assimilation in the West.
With the Islamist insurgency in Iraq led by Zarqawi recruiting heavily Europe and the existence of visible battlefields where Islamists can go and wage jihad, the Brotherhood message is being drowned out in some circles. Why assimilate, blend in and pretend to be moderate when you can join a group that openly states its claim to Islamic legitimacy, can wage a hot war against the infidels and makes no attempt to hide its agenda? Increasingly, the best in the Islamist mosques are opting for the latter course of action.
The Brotherhood of Yousef Nada, Idriss Nasreddin, Gahlib Himmat and others is an organization that moves easily in the corridors of power in much of the Gulf, despite recent difficulties with the Saudi regime. While they can and do support the Islamist project, it is part of the existing power structure. Zarqawi and others represent the chance to go out and do something NOW, not the multi-generational, long-term view the Brotherhood has traditionally taken. Those that move in the corridors of power are often viewed as the enemy, even if their money is not.
The Brotherhood has the financial infrastructure. The jihadists are getting the recruits. How this plays out in Europe, particularly, will have a significant impact on the shape of jihad in coming years.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH