A News Aggregator That Covers The World's Major Wars And Conflicts. Military, Political, And Intelligence News Are Also Covered. Occasionally We Will Have Our Own Opinions Or Observations To Make.
TAMPA — Between peace and all-out war exists the Gray Zone.
To Army Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, the Gray Zone is a familiar place of ambiguity. It’s a place where the Islamic State operates. A place where Russia has taken on Ukraine.
And it’s home to many other spots, hot, lukewarm or otherwise, around the globe.
“The Gray Zone,” said Votel, “really defines this area between ... for the most part healthy economic, political competition between states, and open warfare.”
It’s a place, he said, where “actors, sometimes state actors and sometimes non-state actors, act in a manner just below what would normally take us into normal open warfare.”
In September, Socom, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base, issued a paper on Gray Zone challenges. The paper says that while traditional war might have been the dominant means of deadly conflict, Gray Zone challenges have now become the norm, and that countering foes like the former Soviet Union in many ways proved far less complex than taking on current adversaries.
WNU Editor: This is not an easy subject to discuss or comment on. I need to think about it, and yes .... I will be posting more on this topic at a future date because I do not think we are winning these conflicts .... not even close.
Three times a month, Mohammad al-Kirayfawai hands $300 to fighters from the Islamic State for the privilege of driving his refrigerated truck full of ice cream and other perishables from Jordan to a part of Iraq where the militants are firmly in charge.
The fighters who man the border post treat the payment as an import duty, not a bribe. They even provide a stamped receipt, with the logo and seal of the Islamic State, that Mr. Kirayfawai, 38, needs for passing through other checkpoints on his delivery route.
Refuse to pay and the facade of normality quickly falls away. “If I do not,” Mr. Kirayfawai explained, “they either arrest me or burn my truck.”
Across wide expanses of Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State, with the goal of building a credible government, has set up a predatory and violent bureaucracy that wrings every last American dollar, Iraqi dinar and Syrian pound it can from those who live under its control or pass through its territory.
WNU Editor: Oil revenues do help the Islamic State make ends meet, but it is collecting money using other methods (taxes, duties, owning businesses, revenues on rent, etc.), that makes up a lion share of the SIS's budget.
Without the Iraq war, Islamic State wouldn't exist today, former US special forces chief Mike Flynn openly admits. In an interview, he explains IS' rise to become a professional force and how the Americans allowed its future leader to slip out of their hands.
Michael Flynn, 56, served in the United States Army for more than 30 years, most recently as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he was the nation's highest-ranking military intelligence officer. Previously, he served as assistant director of national intelligence inside the Obama administration. From 2004 to 2007, he was stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq, where, as commander of the US special forces, he hunted top al-Qaida terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the predecessors to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who today heads the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq. After Flynn's team located Zarqawi's whereabouts, the US killed the terrorist in an air strike in June 2006.
In an interview, Flynn explains the rise of the Islamic State and how the blinding emotions of 9/11 led the United States in the wrong direction strategically.
Russia has received additional intelligence confirming that oil from deposits controlled by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) goes through Turkey on an industrial scale, President Vladimir Putin said speaking on the sidelines of the climate change summit in Paris.
Moscow has grounds to suspect that the Su-24 was downed by Turkish jets on November 24 to secure illegal oil deliveries from Syria to Turkey, he said.
“At the moment we have received additional information confirming that that oil from the deposits controlled by Islamic State militants enters Turkish territory on industrial scale,” he said.
“We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure security of this oil’s delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers,” Putin said.
WNU Editor: On the day that the Russian military jet was shot-down I had mentioned in this blog that I found it to be quite a coincidence that this happened a few days after Russia began bombing the Islamic State's oil facilities and tanker trucks in Syria. Is there a Turkey - ISIS link over oil .... I do not know. But that oil has to be going somewhere, and since the neighbouring states of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are not interested in this oil .... one can only guess it has to be going to Turkey.
More News on Russian President Putin Accusing Turkey Of Shooting Down The Russian Military Jet To Protect Islamic State Oil Trade
The more seriously you take the need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, the angrier you should be.
Negotiators from around the world gather in Paris this week to finalize an international climate change agreement, capping a years-long process on which hopes have been riding for global action to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. When those demanding U.S. action speak of the need to show “leadership” and foster international progress, they speak of building momentum toward Paris.
“This year, in Paris, has to be the year that the world finally reaches an agreement to protect the one planet that we’ve got while we still can,” said U.S. President Barack Obama on his recent trip to Alaska. Miguel Cañete, the EU’s chief negotiator, has warned there is “no Plan B — nothing to follow. This is not just ongoing UN discussions. Paris is final.”
Commentaries, Analysis, And Editorials -- November 30, 2015
World leaders launched an ambitious attempt on Monday to hold back rising temperatures, with the United States and China leading calls for the climate summit in Paris to mark a decisive turn in the fight against global warming.
In a series of opening addresses to the U.N. talks, heads of state and government exhorted each other to find common cause in two weeks of bargaining to steer the global economy away from its dependence on fossil fuels. French President Francois Hollande said the world was at a "breaking point".
Russian Su-34 bombers, additionally equipped with air-to-air missiles, have set out on their first mission in Syria, said Igor Klimov, spokesman for the Russian Air Force.
“Today, Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers have made their first sortie equipped not only with high explosive aviation bombs and hollow charge bombs, but also with short- and medium-range air-to-air missiles," Klimov said.
"The planes are equipped with missiles for defensive purposes," he added.
The missiles have target-seeking devices and are “capable of hitting air targets within a 60km radius,” he said.
WNU Editor: This is a clear message to NATO.
More News On Reports That Russian Fighter Jets Are Now Armed With Air-To-Air Missiles For The First Time Over Syria
* Russian pilots have been given handguns and AK-47s to defend themselves
* New measures come after the death of Russian pilot Lt-Col Oleg Peshkov
* Kalashnikovs will be hidden in their seats which eject with them
Russia is issuing its warplane pilots on missions over Syria with pistols and Kalashnikov machine guns in case they are forced to eject and defend themselves on the ground.
This comes as images emerged of the Kremlin's most advanced missile defence system - the S-400 - deployed to protect its air force pilots in the war-ravaged country.
Russia has threatened to use the S-400's devastating firepower to defend its air strikes in Syria, which the West claims are targeted at moderate opponents of the Assad regime as well as ISIS jihadist terrorists.
The Greek Prime Minister took direct diplomacy to a rather more public forum last night as he sent a series of barbed tweets to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Daily Mail
Greece and Turkey fought a brief dogfight on Twitter over Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane due to an error by an aide in Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' office, a Greek official said on Monday.
It began in the middle of a summit between Turkey and the European Union on Sunday, when a message appeared on Tsipras' Twitter account saying: "To Prime Minister Davutoglu: Fortunately our pilots are not as mercurial as yours against the Russians."
A second tweet issued in Tsipras' name referred to near-miss aerial incidents between Greek and Turkish planes over the Aegean Sea, saying: "What is happening in the Aegean is outrageous and unbelievable".
A third tweet added: "We're spending billions on weapons. You - to violate our airspace. We - to intercept you."
More News On Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' Tweets To Turkey
With Wall Street shops like Goldman Sachs (GS) and government officials in Venezuela signaling oil could go to the mid-$20 per barrel range next year, analysts at places like RBC Capital Markets have been warning that chronically low oil prices plunging towards seven-year lows means increasing social chaos in countries on the edge—including those battling ISIS.
Five countries are high on the radar screen for societal risks from low oil prices, which RBC Capital Markets has labeled the “Fragile Five.” They are Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, and Venezuela. ISIS operatives are believed to be in most of these countries.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two senior U.S. senators called on Sunday for Washington to nearly triple military force levels in Iraq to 10,000 and send an equal number of troops to Syria as part of a multinational ground force to counter Islamic State in both countries.
Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham criticized President Barack Obama's incremental Islamic State strategy, which relies on air strikes and modest support to local ground forces in Iraq and Syria, and said the need for greater U.S. involvement was underlined by this month's Paris attacks.
"The only way you can destroy the caliphate is with a ground component," said Graham who is seeking his party's presidential nomination. "The aerial campaign is not turning the tide of battle."
WNU Editor: There is a zero chance for such a deployment to happen now. Later .... who knows.
More News On Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham Advocating The Deployment Of 20,000 U.S. Soldiers To Iraq And Syria
It is strange that the man who first started the debate on global cooling .... followed by global warming .... followed by the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 .... and to where we are today (i.e. climate change) .... should pass away a week before today's COP21 summit. I am not going to air all the dirty laundry on the man (Google it to find out), but I do remember him as an intense man who believed that mankind had (and has) an impact on global climate, and that his industrial activities must be limited. I met him a year after the Rio Earth Summit (it was 1993 or 1994 when he was with Ontario Hydro), wanting him to know if he was interested in helping an anti-pollution cause that I was a part of back in Moscow .... but he was not interested. I was disappointed, but I sensed even at that time that his agenda was something bigger .... which we are not seeing it discussed in Paris today.
World leaders launched an ambitious attempt on Monday to hold back the earth's rising temperatures, with French President Francois Hollande saying the world was at a "breaking point" in the fight against global warming.
Some 150 heads of state, including U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, will urge each other to find common cause in two weeks of bargaining to steer the global economy away from its dependence on fossil fuels.
They arrived at United Nations climate change talks in Paris armed with promises and accompanied by high expectations. After decades of struggling negotiations and the failure of a previous summit in Copenhagen six years ago, some form of landmark agreement appears all but assured by mid-December.
Sharif, Ghani meet in Paris as step toward mending bilateral ties
The leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan met Monday and discussed the resumption of peace talks between the Kabul administration and the Taliban, Pakistani officials said, in an attempt to revive the stalled reconciliation process in Afghanistan that aims to end the long-running war.
After months of strained ties, the meeting was seen by analysts as the first step toward mending bilateral ties, which is essential for Pakistan-brokered peace talks to resume. The peace process is being actively encouraged by the U.S. and China, with the hope that talks with the Taliban can be resuscitated in the next few weeks.
WNU Editor: This is pointless, the Taliban and now the Islamic State are not interested in peace talks.
More News On The Leaders Of Pakistan And Afghanistan Meeting To Discuss Resuming Afghan-Taliban Peace Talks
Nearly three months ago, Haji Abdul Zaher Qadir took a leave of absence from his position as deputy speaker of the lower house of parliament to address deteriorating security in his native Nangarhar province.
Faced with an increased presence of militants vowing loyalty to Islamic State, not to mention Taliban fighters, Qadir said he saw an immediate need to challenge the armed opposition directly.
Qadir said the central government in Kabul is doing little to thwart the growing ranks of foreign fighters in Nangarhar, east of the capital, and he has armed hundreds of men across the province to take on the two foes.
Last week, he dispatched a cadre to the eastern district of Shinwar, which he says has become the "ISIS factory of Afghanistan," using an acronym for Islamic State.
Qadir, who headed President Ashraf Ghani's campaign in the eastern zone during last year's hotly contested election, has become increasingly negative about the government in Kabul.
WNU Editor: More evidence that the Afghans are not ready to face this growing insurgency.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul warned American citizens in Afghanistan on Monday that officials had received “credible reports of an imminent attack,” and urged them to be careful when traveling in the area.
The embassy said in a statement that the reports indicated that an attack could happen in the capital “within the next 48 hours.”
“During this period of heightened threat, the U.S. Embassy strongly urges U.S. citizens to exercise extreme caution if moving around the city,” the embassy said in the release. It added that there were no further details regarding the targets, timing or method of the planned attack.”
More News On U.S. Warnings Of An Imminent Attack In Kabul
High-level climate talks have begun in Paris, aimed at signing a long-term deal to reduce global carbon emissions.
More than 150 world leaders have converged to launch the two-week talks, known as COP21.
The last major meeting in 2009 ended in failure. But French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is chairing the meeting, said a deal was within reach.
Most of the discussions are expected to centre on an agreement to limit global warming to 2C (3.6F).
Assessments of the more than 180 national plans that have been submitted by countries suggest that if they were implemented the world would see a rise of nearer to 3C.
Moscow has deployed its most advanced S-400 air defense system, said to have no equals globally, to guard the skies over Syria after a Turkish F-16 fighter shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber over Syrian territory on Tuesday.
The S-400 Triumf (NATO codename SA-21 Growler) is an anti-aircraft and anti-missile system, which is capable of intercepting all types of modern air weaponry, including fifth-generation warplanes, as well as ballistic and cruise missiles at a maximum range of nearly 250 miles. It has a tracking range of over 370 miles.
The system uses three types of long- and medium-range missiles and can simultaneously engage as many as 36 targets.
Military And Intelligence News Briefs -- November 30, 2015
Amos Gilad says Bashar Assad’s grip on his country is failing and it has become ‘a land without rule’
The nation state of Syria has collapsed, a fact that Israel must internalize about its northern neighbor, a senior Israeli defense official said Saturday.
“Syria is a dead state, and Israel must understand this and prepare accordingly,” Amos Gilad, the director of the political-security division in the Defense Ministry and a former senior Military Intelligence official, told a cultural event in Beersheba.
“[Syrian President Bashar] Assad’s grip on the country is faltering, it is a land without rule,” Gilad said, according to Army Radio.
With swathes of Syria falling into the hands of opposition forces, including jihadist groups, Assad has increasingly relied on support from allies Iran and the Lebanon-based terror group Hezbollah, both sworn enemies of Israel.
WNU Editor: The Western strategy is to replace Assad and replace him with a moderate coalition .... but if this senior Israeli Intelligence officer is to believed .... it is not going to happen.
The incident was 'an error' and marks the only failure so far in military coordination between the two countries over Syria, Moshe Ya'alon said.
Military coordination between Israel and Russia over Syria broke down once, said Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Sunday.
Speaking on Israel Radio, Ya’alon said that despite Israeli and Russian efforts to coordinate military operations in Syria, on one occasion a Russian plane penetrated Israel's airspace by one mile. Ya'alon said that Israel immediately made contact and the plane immediately returned to Syrian airspace.
He defined the incident as an “error," caused by the pilot’s flying in close proximity to the Golan Heights. The Israeli and Russian air forces have been conducting talks in recent months, regarding coordination measures that will prevent “misunderstandings” when their military forces, particularly the air forces and navies of both countries, operate in the theater.
More News On The Israeli Defense Minister's Remarks That A Russian Military Jet Violated Israeli Airspace
US denies peshmerga claims after Obama last year announced redeployment of 300 military advisers to Iraq, saying US combat troops would ‘not be fighting’.
On a damp afternoon in Iraqi Kurdistan, a 29-year-old peshmerga fighter named Peshawa pulls out his Samsung Galaxy mobile phone, flicks hurriedly through his library until he finds the video he wants, and presses play.
The clip, filmed just after dawn on 11 September, shows four tall and western-looking men in the heat of a battle against Islamic State militants in northern Iraq. “These are the Americans,” says Peshawa in a secretive tone.
One is crouched behind a machine gun firing round after round from the top of a fortified mound; another lies on his front a few feet away, legs outstretched and taking aim at the enemy with a long rifle. A third wields a long-lens camera taking photo after photo, and the last stands back, apparently overseeing the others during the combat south-west of the city of Kirkuk.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan will not meet in Paris, where they are both currently attending a summit on climate change, Russian media reported Monday, citing Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
“There are no plans to meet Erdogan [in Paris], there are no talks about such a meeting. There will be no such meeting,” Peskov was cited by the TASS state-owned news agency as saying Monday.
An unidentified Turkish official confirmed to Reuters on Monday that there will be no meeting, the RBC news agency reported.
WNU Editor: Their positions are so far apart that even I do not see the point of such a meeting. In fact .... it will probably only aggravate the situation, especially since Turkey is refusing to "apologize", and Russia now seeing Turkey as a "hostile" power.
More News On Presidents Putin And Erdogan Not Meeting At The Paris Climate Conference
Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) shakes hands with U.S. President Barack Obama as they meet during the World Climate Change Conference 2015 (COP21) at Le Bourget, near Paris, France, November 30, 2015. REUTERS/Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/Kremlin
U.S. President Barack Obama met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the sidelines of the climate summit in Paris on Monday and discussed the Syrian crisis as well as the situation in Ukraine, a White House official said.
Obama told Putin he believes Syrian President Bashar al- Assad must leave power as part of a political transition, the official said.
WNU Editor: No specific details have been released on what was discussed, but I can only presume that Syria was on the top of the agenda followed by Ukraine. Was anything agreed upon .... probably not.
Three high-ranking army officials were arrested Sunday on charges of espionage and leading an armed terrorist organization.
General İbrahim Aydin and a retired colonel, Burhanettin Cihangiroğlu, have been found guilty of forming and leading an armed terrorist organization as well as spying and trying to oust the Turkish government.
General Hamza Celepoğlu was also accused of forming and leading an armed terrorist organization and of trying to overthrow Turkish government by Istanbul prosecutor, İrfan Fidan.
The three suspects were called to an Istanbul courthouse on Saturday as part of an investigation involving the search of trucks belonging to the Turkish intelligence (MİT) in 2014.
WNU Editor: The above video shows the weapons that these military officers discovered.
More News On Turkey Charging Military Officers For Uncovering Shipments Of Arms To Syrian Rebels
Turkey has begun a defacto blockade of Russian naval vessels, preventing transit through the Dardanelles and the Strait of Bosporus, between the Black Sea and Mediterranean.
According to the AIS tracking system for the movement of maritime vessels, only Turkish vessels are moving along the Bosphorus, and in the Dardanelles there is no movement of any shipping at all.
At the same time, both from the Black Sea, and from the Mediterranean Sea, there is a small cluster of ships under the Russian flag, just sitting and waiting. The image below shows the situation with the ships using the GPS transponder onboard each vessel:
China hopes stamp of approval will improve yuan’s desirability among investors and undermine hegemony of US dollar as global reserve currency.
China’s efforts to make the yuan an international currency on a par with the US dollar are to receive a fillip with the International Monetary Fund widely expected to add it to a special basket of global currencies.
Analysts say the shareholders in the Washington-based IMF will vote on Monday to include the yuan, also known as the renminbi, as the fifth member of its special drawing rights currency basket alongside the dollar, the Japanese yen, sterling and the euro.
China has been lobbying for the IMF to add the yuan to its basket of reserve currencies, which it uses to lend to sovereign borrowers. A vote to include the currency in the SDR basket would mark a significant milestone for Beijing, according to experts.
WNU Editor: It is only a question of time before it is added to the IMF's basket of global currencies. The real question that concerns everyone is the long term is .... will the Chinese yuan become the world's reserve currency replacing the U.S., as the U.S. did with the British pound over a century ago.
A-10s of the 81st Fighter Wing sit at Spangdahlem Air Base in 2012. At top — A-10s from the 188th Fighter Wing take part in an exercise. Air Force photos
WASHINGTON — Air Force Col. Martha McSally was leading a squadron of A-10 attack jets over Afghanistan when they encountered U.S. forces engaged in a desperate fight against Islamist insurgents.
One of the embattled troops signaled his unit’s location with a small mirror that reflected sunlight upward. McSally, the first American woman to fly in combat, and the other pilots flew to the light and opened fire with the seven-barrel Gatling cannons nestled in the A-10s’ noses. The fire, at 65 rounds per second, devastated the enemy. The surrounded Americans lived.
“They didn’t have time to figure out the eight-digit coordinates of the enemy or to put a laser spot on the target because they were on the run with their lives in danger,” McSally recalled in a recent interview. “The other (jet) fighters were above the weather, so they could not get down to save these guys. They were not going to live, but we went down and saved their asses. We were able to get below the weather in the mountains because the A-10 is slow and maneuverable.”
WNU Editor: It looks like this plane will have a few more years left.
