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Tuesday, December 30, 2008

JINSA News - India: A Weak Link in the Counter-Terror Chain

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Dear JINSA Supporter,
 
It is with great pleasure that we send to you the first of a series of analytical essays from India, courtesy of longtime JINSA interlocutor Dr. M.D. Nalapat, Professor of Geopolitics at India's Manipal University. I hope you find these "India Briefs" as informative and thought provoking as I do.
 
Sincerely,
 
Tom Neumann
Executive Director

India: A Weak Link in the Counter-Terror Chain

By M.D. Nalapat

The "Jihad International," despite its bickering and its factions, often operates as a unified field. Each element learns from the experience of the others, and opportunistic combinations of groups are formed to carry out missions, this fusion helping to ensure success in major operations. Which is why the West needs to be concerned about the softest jihadi target, India, because each victory on the battlefield gives oxygen to the jihadists to plan more devastating hits. The 1999 Indian capitulation at Kandahar, when key terrorists were released in exchange for the passengers of a hijacked aircraft, may have led to the restraints being removed from the 9-11 operation, for example. Unless there is a unity of purpose and response between the major democracies, the weakest link - in the present situation India - will create vulnerabilities for every other state. A compromise by India can lead to increased danger to other states in the same way that the Indian government's confused response to the five mass terror attacks on India since 2008 alone generated an operation that included nationals of the West as specific targets, for the first time in India outside Kashmir
    
George Tanham (RAND) used to point out that India lacked a "strategic culture." The country also lacks a genuine national security leadership team - the multiple agencies tasked with this responsibility being each led by superannuated officials, none with internal security experience. The National Security Advisor comes from the Intelligence Bureau, an agency that has not changed its essentially political focus since the 1880s. Other security czars come from the Foreign Service or administrative backgrounds. Small wonder that when the terrorists entered the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel, the Chabad Center and other sites in Mumbai there was a gap of nearly 16 hours before a response could begin to be implemented. This response was itself deficient in equipment and slow in gaining the initiative.
    
The Indian government chose to send in the National Security Guards (who are trained for VIP protective duty). This was a mistake. The Indian Army's commandos (especially those with Kashmir experience) should have been the units sent in. With their close combat, urban warfare, night-fighting capabilities, such forces would have taken far less than the shameful 59 hours that was needed by the National Security Guards to sanitize the three locations where terrorists remained operational. Tellingly, it was only by accident that a terrorist was captured alive. Even in the Chabad Center encounter, when it was known before the location was stormed that the hostages had been tortured and killed, the National Security Guards were unable to capture any of the terrorists there alive. To a national security team that has never experienced any form of combat, such a decision on the type of forces to send in was beyond their capabilities.
 
India is a country where the fear of coups within the political leadership during the period 1947-1984 led to the exclusion of the military from the matrix of national security decision-making. And although a few police elements have been included among the retired officials, diplomats and journalists that comprise India's national security establishment, the reality is that fighting terror is very different from battling crime and that therefore standard police experience is of only limited value. The experience gathered by the Indian Army, which has significant counter-terror expertise and capabilities, yet has been excluded from the higher command of the country's homeland security network.
    
India today is where Pakistan was during the early period of the 1990s, on the cusp of a significant domestic escalation in the support base of jihad. In Pakistan during that fateful decade, the primary jihad-nourishing force, the military, was permitted by the international community to continue to arm, fund and train jihadi groups for operations in Kashmir. The U.S. State Department's South Asia bureau formed significant linkages (through the Pakistan army) with the Taliban elements that took power in Kabul in 1996. Until a post-mortem is completed of U.S. South Asia policy during the 1990s, there will not be enough known on the ways in which the jihadi chemistry in Pakistan became so much more effective than the moderate elements during that lost decade and the ways in which U.S. policy ignored such a development. Instead, had Pakistani civil society been strengthened vis-à-vis the military and had attempts not been made to continue to co-opt religious extremists in Afghanistan the way they were during the 1980s, the situation in Pakistan may now not have been so dire.
    
Should India follow Pakistan in creating a fertile internal medium for the nourishing of jihad, the results could be catastrophic. The national security structure within India was and is incapable of ensuring security even for itself, much less the populace. What is needed is for a complete examination of the gaps in the system in India and how the international community can help plug at least some of these. This is a time for correctness not political correctness. Any social group that takes the assistance of jihadist forces to try and advance its agenda needs to know that such a linkage spells death to any such aspirations no matter where they are located - Kashmir, the Middle East or elsewhere. Zero tolerance for terrorism implies a corollary zero tolerance for any political or other objective promoted by terror. Should a political or other objective sought by the terrorists become fulfilled that would give them the same oxygen as repeated Indian failures on counter-terrorism have. India's weakness of response has meant that it has suffered more mass terror attacks since 9-11 than the rest of the globe barring Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. There is a lesson in this for those in favor of "soft" options.
 
If India ever becomes part of (what is today's) Greater Middle East, the world is in trouble. Rather than the so-called Greater Middle East, India needs to be dealt with as part of what may be termed the Greater West. Now that the U.S. electorate has voted in its 44th President, Barack Obama, it is clear that ethnicity is not the core criterion for inclusion in this democratic, secular and moderate geopolitical group. India, Israel, Turkey and Singapore are part of the Greater West and, as such, India needs its partners to help its own ramshackle administrative structure negotiate away from the danger that jihad will get implanted in the country as securely as has happened in Pakistan, there because of the errors made by the international community in the 1990s, in India because of failures in domestic policy.
 
It took 9-11 for policymakers in the United States to accept the need to take out the Taliban. But while most bases in Afghanistan got destroyed, the roots were allowed to survive, especially the Taliban leadership and its principal backers, the jihadist elements within the Pakistan army. As a consequence, this evil has regenerated. The United States ought not to wait for a repeat of 9-11 before taking out - in conjunction with allies - the regenerated Taliban in all its lairs. This time, the "roots" to be attacked are the poison spewed by the religious schools in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan as well as the Bangladesh and Pakistan militaries that sought to co-opt extremists as auxiliaries but have increasingly themselves become the auxiliaries of the terror networks. Barack Obama is right. The entire region needs to be looked at as a single theater of operations in the War on Terror. But he is wrong in believing that concessions of territory anywhere to jihadist-backed groups will stanch the flow into the jihadi forces. If the response of Britain and France to Germany during the 1930s had been different, the world would have been different. For the War on Terror, this is that time.

M.D. Nalapat became India's first professor of geopolitics in 1999 at Manipal University in India's Karnataka state. Since 1992,he has held that Wahabbism-Khomeinism and authoritarianism are the twin threats faced by the international community and that the "unified field" of terrorism mandates a similar response. In 2003,he partnered with JINSA in organizing the first of four annual India-Israel-U.S. Conferences. Professor Nalapat, who first put forward the idea of forming an "Asian NATO," believes that Israel, India, Turkey and Singapore form part of the "Extended West", rather than an "extended Middle East", and that the countries in this group need to work in concert to promote prosperity, democracy and freedom from terror.


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JINSA Report #840 Homegrown Terrorists and Terrorist Money

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JINSA Report #840
December 30, 2008
Homegrown Terrorists and Terrorist Money

Four Muslims living in the United States - two illegally - were regular downloaders of jihadist videos, including many produced by al-Sahab, the media wing of al Qaeda. They taped themselves on a trip to the mountains where they went to shooting and paintball ranges, and spouted jihadist slogans. A video store clerk alerted police to what he thought was terrorist training.  

The FBI used informants to capture the four on tape buying AK-47 assault rifles and taking drives to East Coast military bases, during which one talked about killing American soldiers, and others talked "incessantly," according to the police, of jihad and weapons. They were familiar with the layout of Ft. Dix, New Jersey through pizza deliveries they had made there. They were arrested.

At the trial, the defense made three points: a) nothing actually happened, b) nothing would have happened, and c) the four were led on by the informants to do things they wouldn't otherwise have done. Mohamed Younes, president of the American Muslim Union, was quoted saying, "I don't think they actually meant to do anything. I think they were acting stupid, like they thought the whole thing was a joke."

According to the jury, "acting stupid" is not a defense, and the four were convicted of conspiring to kill American military personnel. They face life in prison.

But there is a larger issue. "Homegrown terrorists" are not only people who plot jihad against America. They are also Americans who collect money for those who would plot terrorism and jihad against others.

This week, the Israel Air Force blew up a facility at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG). The Jerusalem Post reported that two laboratories that served as research and development centers for Hamas were targeted. The development of explosives was done under the auspices of university professors, and university buildings were used for meetings of senior Hamas officials.

Leave it to bloggers - Pajamas Media, in this case - to discover that "the IUG science and technology lab was financed and constructed with the assistance of the Dublin, Ohio-based Arab Student Aid International (ASAI)... the IUG website has a page dedicated to ASAI's ongoing contributions to the Hamas institution and specifically mentions the labs financed by the Ohio Islamic group...the ASAI website promotes its assistance in creating the IUG science and technology center, which was completed in 2002."

Prince Turki Ben Abdel Aziz of Saudi Arabia is chairman of the Board of Trustees of ASAI - the website lists him as a donor of "tens of millions of dollars."  We wonder if he knew where his money went. We suspect he did.

As Israel takes necessary military action to ensure that Hamas stops firing rockets and missiles at Israeli citizens, it is worth pondering the swampy nexus of money, ideology and chemical bombs - how much of it exists in our country and where it is going.

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Monday, December 29, 2008

JINSA Report #839 Euro-amnesia

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JINSA Report #839
December 29, 2008
Euro-amnesia

Faced with Israel's attack on Hamas in Gaza, the leadership of France and Britain condemned Hamas attacks against Israel and called on Hamas to stop. It was rather pro-forma though, and it appears the reason they did it was to get to the other end of the sentence so they could tell Israel what to do.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, "Israel needs to meet its humanitarian obligations, act in a way to further the long-term vision of a two-state solution, and do everything in its power to avoid civilian casualties." His opposition, Conservative Party leader David Cameron, said that though he understood Israel's right to protect its citizens, both sides must show restraint. "In the end, the only progress will be political progress and a settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. That is what's desperately needed." French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he "firmly condemns the irresponsible provocations that have led to this situation, as well as the disproportionate use of force."

It was Sarkozy's remark that reminded us of an (apocryphal?) incident more than 25 years old. During Operation Peace for Galilee, precipitated by a rain of Katuysha fire from PLO positions, then-Congressman Charlie Wilson was talking with a French journalist. The Frenchman agreed that the Palestinians were the aggressors and that Israel was within its rights. "But I wish they could have done it some other way," he is alleged to have said. "What way?" asked Wilson. "Without all the bombing." "Oh," said Wilson, "We could have done Normandy without all the bombing, too, but the effect wouldn't have been the same."  

We're fairly serious students of history and war, and we don't remember the French president calling for humanitarian assistance to the residents of Dresden. We don't remember the British - in power or in the opposition - saying that in the end, a political process with Hitler would produce political progress. Who called the Allied response to Hitler's "irresponsible provocation" "disproportionate"? [Well, actually, if you read Andrei Cherny's The Candy Bombers (you should), you find the Germans really unhappy about the "disproportionate" allied bombings of German cities. They complained bitterly to the occupying forces in 1945. Having ended the war, the Allies didn't care much.]

There was a time when even Europeans understood that naked aggression requires a response and that a government is ultimately responsible for the safety and security of its own people, not those who actively work to kill them. It was necessary for the allies - our fathers and grandfathers - to slog through Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and ultimately Germany, pushing back the Nazis until they controlled the territory from which the terror had come and making the rules for the future.  

It is disconcerting to hear the descendants of Hitler's non-Jewish victims demand of Israel the opposite of what they wanted when they were under the gun. 

Interestingly, German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger declined to criticize Israel even when repeated pushed to do so, saying only, "We are confident that the Israeli government will carry out with responsibility the decision it has taken."





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JINSA Report #838 Controlling the Terms of the War

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JINSA Report #838
December 29, 2008
Controlling the Terms of the War

"Our goal is not to reoccupy the Gaza Strip," said Israel's Foreign Minister. Asked if Israel was out to topple Gaza's Hamas rulers, she said, "Not now."

If not occupy, then control. And there is no better time than now.

Until the weekend, Hamas has determined the timing and intensity of its attacks against Israeli citizens. Israel adopted a generally defensive position, with occasional pinpoint strikes that left much of the Hamas/Iranian infrastructure intact. Now that Israel has launched a big, multipronged strike, a reasonable question is, "What does Israel have to accomplish to make this operation worthwhile?"  

Israel has to make the attacks stop. How to do it is Israel's business and Israel's alone.  But why assure the Hamas leadership that it will remain in power and Israel will stop short of occupying the territory from which terrorism is planned, organized and launched? To do so is to set up the future Hamas victory in precisely the way Israel inadvertently set up the Hezbollah victory in 2006. For Israel to "win," it has to achieve security for its people. For Hamas (like Hezbollah) to "win," it only has to remain viable after the battle. There should be no reason for Hamas to expect that it will.

Retaliation for the misery Hamas has inflicted on Israel is appropriate, if messy. But in the long run, Israel has to return to the principles that kept it safe in the past.  

Facing enemies with larger populations and less sensitivity to civilian casualties (or, in fact, who find civilian casualties useful for propaganda purposes), the IDF had two principles: a) small country; short war and b) small country; fight on the enemy's battlefield and don't permit a war of attrition against your people to develop.  

These principles were lost in the early days of the Second Intifada, when bombings and attacks inside Israel were met with bigger and better metal detectors. After the Passover Seder Massacre, however, the IDF went on the offensive. First in Jenin then elsewhere, the old Areas A, B and C of Oslo were abolished and the IDF began to root out the terrorist infrastructure. They took security control and made it nearly impossible for the Palestinians to organize and execute terrorist acts. Six years later, Palestinian security forces are beginning to take over the day-to-day police functions, but Israel remains in control of counter-terrorism.  

To those who say, "There is no military solution" - horse hockey! There may be no military way to make Palestinians like Israelis, but who really cares? There certainly is a military way to make Palestinian terrorists and their leadership stop rocketing Israelis. Whoever has security control of the territory from which terrorism is launched has control of the terms of the war.   

Israel painfully proved in the West Bank that it is possible to win a war against terrorists; in Lebanon, it painfully allowed the terrorists a victory by default. In Gaza, Israel has no choice but to ensure that control of territory is in Israel's hands - at a minimum by maintaining the ability to strike when and where necessary.





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Friday, December 19, 2008

December 2008 JINSA Newsletter

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JINSA News
December 2008
In This Issue
Admiral Michael Mullen
JINSA Fall Board Meeting
Taiwan and Barak Obama
Visit to Quantico
Florida Office Opens


  New LEEP Information Page with Video

Click here to visit the new LEEP information page

  New JINSA Website!

JINSA has a new look!  Please visit the newest version of JINSA Online, and check back for updates, featured articles and upcoming events.

www.jinsa.org

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs'
Speech to JINSA

On December 8, 2008, Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the recipient of the prestigious Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson Award. The following video is Admiral Mullen's keynote address at JINSA's 2008 Jackson Award dinner.

Click here to watch Admiral Mullen's keynote address.

An Array of Speakers at the JINSA
Fall Board Meeting

On December 8th and 9th, JINSA held its Fall meeting of the Board of Directors.  Highlights of the two day meeting were a panel anchored by Michael Ledeen discussing the internal dynamics of Iran, the presentation of the Grateful Nation Awards, and presentations by Dr. Michael Oren of the Shalem Center and Dr. George Friedman, founder of Stratfor.  Check JINSA's website regularly over the coming weeks for full reports on all of the speakers at this two-day event.

Taiwan's Reaction to the Election
of Barak Obama


JINSA Advisory Board Member Ambassador Harvey Feldmen explains in an exclusive article that it would be difficult to think of an American president who disdained Taiwan more than George W. Bush. In Taipei, however, they think Democrats are more likely to succumb to the lure of China and in doing so, sacrifice Taiwan's interests.

Click here to read the full article.

JINSA Visits Marine Corps Base Quantico

On November 18-19, a JINSA delegation co-chaired by Board of Directors members Jonathan Hochberg and Jonathan Loew visited Marine Corps Base Quantico to observe the making of United States Marine Corps officers.

Click here to read the full article.

JINSA Opens New Office in Florida

JINSA opened its first satellite office on October 28 in Davie, Florida (metro Miami). The office will house members of JINSA's development team. The local Jewish Journal newspaper covered the Open House event hosted by members of JINSA's professional staff.

Click here to read the article in the local Jewish Journal newspaper.


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Thursday, December 18, 2008

JINSA Report #837 Policy Principles: Part II (Israel, again)

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JINSA Report #837
December 18, 2008
Policy Principles: Part II
(Israel, again)


President-elect Obama called the status quo between Israel and the Palestinians "unsustainable" and that "Israel has a security interest in solving this." Solving what?  

Certainly Israel has a security interest in stopping the barrage of increasingly long-range and accurate rockets and missiles from Gaza and the continuing attempts by West Bank Palestinians to carry explosives through those "humiliating" IDF checkpoints. Whether Israel has a security interest in the establishment of a Palestinian state in part of the West Bank and/or Gaza while Hamas and Fatah are engaged in a civil war (including on the West Bank) and Hamas is engaged in a war against Israel is entirely debatable.  

Of great concern is the idea afloat in American circles that a Palestinian state should be established before Israel achieves verifiable Palestinian acceptance of its legitimacy, and that such a state should be established on the West Bank, leaving Gaza in abeyance. Gen. James Jones, in his job as State Department envoy to the Israelis and Palestinians, was charged with determining a "security architecture" that would, in his view, make Israel secure enough to do that. He suggested a NATO contingent, possibly including American troops, and was irritated, it seems, that Israel didn't like his plan. One might assume he will take that plan to his new position as National Security Advisor to the President.

Short-circuiting the need for Palestinians and Israelis to make their own peace, allowing the Palestinians to bypass Israel and work with the United States, and substituting the U.S. view of "how much security" Israel needs for the Israeli government's view is the second-worst possible idea. Putting American soldiers in between Israelis and people who would kill them is the first-worst possible idea. No American - or NATO soldier - should stand on Israel's border to defend it, ever. Period.  

The UNIFIL experience, in which the force was supposed to help the Lebanese government fulfill its sovereign obligation to its own people, NOT protect Israel from Hezbollah, has increased the risk to Israel by providing Hezbollah a barrier behind which to restore its military capabilities. Despite the hopes of some that UNIFIL would actually help disarm Hezbollah, it does not and will not. It simply means that Israel has to calculate a European presence if it has to defend itself again from Hezbollah. The presence of the UN in Jenin and in Gaza has also given protection to Fatah and Hamas forces in their acquisition of military/terrorist capabilities. No American - or NATO - soldier - should stand where a terrorist army can form behind it, ever. Period.

It is clear that the incoming administration believes "solving" the "Palestinian problem" is a high priority. It wants to solve the wrong problem. The question is how to bring the Arab states and the Palestinians to verifiably accept the legitimacy to which Israel is entitled. The Palestinian state would follow close behind that. But if Israel's quest for legitimacy, which would bring it security without foreign forces, is denied, then Israel should be responsible for defending its people, and the Palestinians should understand that their aspirations for statehood will remain unfulfilled.  

Status quo - sadly sustainable.

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Wednesday, December 17, 2008

JINSA Report #836 Policy Principles: Part I (Israel-centrism)

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JINSA Report #836
December 17, 2008
Policy Principles: Part I
(Israel-centrism)


The outline of the incoming Obama Administration's Middle East Policy is becoming clearer. It includes the belief that the "Palestinian-Israeli conflict" must be resolved in order to make progress on other, vital security issues.  

The President-elect said, "The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable."

This is the Israel-centric - though not necessarily anti-Israel - view. It hopes that fixing the "Israel problem" will result in less anti-American feeling in the Muslim world. It is nothing new - Presidents Bush 41 and 43 and Clinton tried it. But if "anti-American militant jihadists" are not on a rampage over Palestine (the President-elect called it "an excuse") to ignore the real sources of jihadism and its success in acquiring recruits puts an unjust burden on Israel and runs the risk of pressuring Israel to make dangerous security compromises in a vain attempt to buy quiet.  

And it lets America off the intellectual and political hook.  

Islamic jihad is about the belief that expansion of Islamic law and practice is the wave of the future. To that extent, it is a positive impulse - encouraging young men with little hope of success in the modern world to join a cause larger than them. It is popular in part because it is countercultural, making a virtue of hating what it cannot have and offering its rewards in the afterlife. It is popular in the region in part because it rails against corrupt and repressive regimes. The radical Islamic agenda that permeates European Muslim communities and prompted the NYPD (wisely and bravely) to study the roots of homegrown jihadism is anti-American and anti-Western because our political thinking is based on individual liberty and consensual, secular government. It is antithetical to the jihadist view of both individuals and government, and "anti" the many Muslims who take the more modern, individualist position.

"Anti-American militant jihadists" wage war against the West - and insufficiently compliant Muslims - for reasons that are unlikely to change either with our new President or with the creation of a small, corrupt state wedged between Jordan and Israel.  

The good news for the United States is that the Muslim world is not Israel-centric (although there is plenty of anti-Israel and old-fashioned anti-Semitic venom running through it). Recent overtures by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to Israel acknowledge that jihadists - particularly Shiite Persian ones - threaten them in ways Israel never did.  Jihadists, Sunni Arab ones, overplayed their hand in Iraq and turned the tide along with the "surge."

Defeating jihadist ideology will by no means be simple, but it would help to understand what it demands and know that a great many Muslims hope we will not write off the possibility of modern government in their part of the world. It would be a step backward for the new administration not to acknowledge that "anti American militant jihadism" is, at its core, religion/governance-centric, not Israel-centric.

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