ROSH HASHANAH

שנה טובה (ברכה לראש-השנה)

MIDDLE EAST CAN BECOME HEAVEN ON EARTH PROVIDED ARABS NATIONS WORK WITH ISRAEL AS THEIR PARTNER

Israel Innovation

India’s Independence Day

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/08/145923.htm

A video message can be viewed here: http://www.state.gov/video/?videoid=407524076001 andhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJThLeeS6E4

Each year on August 15^th, we join with Indians around the world to honor Mahatma Gandhi and the heroes of the Indian independence movement who proved that great change can be achieved through nonviolent resistance. Their courage and determination has inspired generations of leaders around the world, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who advanced America’s own struggle for civil rights and equality. Sixty-three years after Independence, India is a world leader, and the “Indian Dream” of freedom, tolerance, and prosperity continues to offer an example for people who yearn for democracy and liberty around the globe.

The United States is committed to further strengthening our cooperation and partnership with India. As President Obama noted during our Strategic Dialogue, the relationship between our two countries is unique. It is rooted in common interests, shared values and democratic traditions, and strengthened by our extensive people-to-people connections. We look forward to further developing these bonds when President Obama visits India this fall. Because it is only through dynamic, global cooperation between India and the United States that we can address the defining challenges of the 21^st century.

Once again, I congratulate the people of India on all you have achieved and wish you a safe and joyous Independence Day celebration.

Is the 9/11 Catastrophe Still Relevant?

The 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) happened some time ago, and for many who were not involved the memory fades.  No one wants to remember a Horror as the emotions can only take so much tragedy before gloom or depression sets in and that affects the enjoyment of one’s daily life, if such a life is enjoyable.

I suggest that it doesn’t really matter when an important event occurred so much as that it did occur.  Major events, even ancient events, form the furrows of character on a nation’s face.  Also, I suggest that a major event is not so important if it is only a ‘one off’ and unlikely to ever again be experienced.  9/11 is an event that is part of the present reality, it had a large impact on people’s lives, on the economy, and on how people saw their nation as being perceived by unrelated predators who were on a far horizon.  When something holds itself up as being good, then many arise who wish to conquer it, or tear it down.  New York is still a target, and 9/11 (or 1993) is a re-occurable event.  Why is that?   New York  represents the specialness of American culture.  It represents the ultimate success of that culture despite many real and unpleasant set-backs such as economic downturns.  A Phoenix, it ever arises from the ashes of the past.  An ever newly lit flame for the statue of Liberty.  So many tourists go to New York to visit that congested and expensive city, yet so many come away expressing a new dream of one day going back to live there.  A city of course is much more than just a friendly people, but a friendly people are always a necessity for an ideal city or home.  Home is not only where the heart is, it is where the heart is allowed to be free.

New York was attacked in recent times by terrorists, or if you will, by violent extremists, or by whatever they are called in the current jargon that does not to tread on delicate toes.  When one label gets tainted by too much blood and suffering it is stashed away and a new label applied, like one band-aid on top of another, for one must always be politically correct or suffer abuse as being demeaning and insensitive to a vicious enemy.  As blunt speaking may stir an enemy up to attack more often.  Diplomacy is not meant to be cowardice, but it is clearly interpreted as such by any enemy whose group culture only respects using force against whoever seems weak.  Apparent weakness, like a bull’s-eyed target, draws arrows.  One doesn’t want to offend a bully by calling him a criminal or use harsh words to describe harsh deeds, as that might require courage and courage is only honored by warriors, not by citizens drugged on dreams of peace.  A softer term for terrorists now-a-days is ‘The Bad Guys’ as that projects who is deemed right or wrong without bringing up images of deliberate beheadings of civilians, stoning of women, poison gassing schoolgirls who want to learn, blowing up these plus children in deliberate acts, all this not even being accidental as collateral damage in a war zone.  The Bad Guys are simply ‘Bad’, as gangsters see themselves jokingly as ‘Good’, as in ‘The Good Guys’.  That is ‘good’ for their own benefit not others.  They mean Good in an ironic sense.  As who holds and uses the ‘iron’, is who fires the bullets.

The original terrorist hijackers died in the attacks on the WTC, Pentagon and Washington years ago.  If that were all then it would have been a one-off event.  However those gangsters were not alone, they belonged to a group.  A group that still exists with changes in leaders and franchises and computer internet promotions.  They attacked in 1993, and 2001 and their intent, as they themselves express it, is to attack again.  Therefore the long ago attack on the WTC is very much relevant today.  Relevant except for those whose head is in the sand.  Those people tend to die first: as they are not even watching to take common safety steps, steps needed in any crisis.  Hopefully they have not buried their head next to an IED or land-mine.  Also the Bad Guys no longer only arise in far away lands where they are ignorant and do not experience any joys of American life.  Many Bad Guys are now home-grown, American citizens, even drawing benefits from the Treasury.  They know that there are joys in American life that are worth living for and fighting for, even though life is still a struggle.  If you want more struggle just try living somewhere else.  When people migrate from other parts of the world, even die trying to get to America, it tells you that they know on what side of the world’s bread the butter is on.  The trouble is that they are often people from scarred lands with scarred souls who bring their troubled mental baggage with them.

So I would say that America and its major cities are a prize that should be appreciated more by its own citizens, that there are Bad Guys intent on bringing it down, and that Americans should awake and fight for what their culture represents, even if is very imperfect, for if they don’t they will be a chapter in future history books.  Reading: There was a great civilization once, like Rome, called the U.S.A., and like all great civilizations that fought many enemies and that are now no more, it died from a disintegration from within.

Thinking About the Business of Intelligence:What the World Economic Crisis Should Teach Us

Thinking About the Business of Intelligence

What the World Economic Crisis Should Teach Us

By Carmen Medina and Rebecca Fisher

This article is based on a presentation made to a conference on the future of intelligence in May 2009.

There is much for intelligence professionals to learn from the follies of economists, and from this folly in particular.

“Why did economists not do a better job anticipating the crisis?” was the question everyone seemed to be asking as the global economy began to unravel last fall. The consensus seems to be that most economists not only failed to see the crisis coming but also were downright hostile to the few who argued that The Great Moderation—the era of economic stability brought about by modern banking system controls—wasn’t so great after all.

New York Times columnist (and 2009 Nobel Prize winner in economics) Paul Krugman was ridiculed for much of this decade.1 Another harbinger named Danny Schechter wrote a book that 30 publishers rejected because they believed he was exaggerating. His book, Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, finally went to print in September 2008, just as the implosion was getting under way.

As economists wrote about not having done a better job anticipating the meltdown, it became apparent that there were parallel take-aways for analysis in the field of intelligence. There is, in fact, much for intelligence professionals to learn from the follies of economists, and from this folly in particular. Warren Buffet’s 2002 Berkshire Hathaway annual report hinted at such an association when he used the term “financial weapons of mass destruction” to describe the derivative asset class. When one of the world’s most respected businessmen borrows from the intelligence lexicon, turnabout is fair play.

Though we probably don’t need much reminding, it may be helpful to recall how the economic crisis evolved and the extent to which it radiated out. Anyone who has looked at his brokerage accounts or her retirement portfolio lately already “gets it” at the macro level. But what exactly happened on the cellular level to get us to where we ended up? And what can we, as intelligence professionals, learn from those events?

Twenty years ago, economists—quite important ones—did see a game-changing financial crisis looming, although without any specificity as to its timing. In a conference organized in 1989 by the National Bureau of Economic Research to consider the risk of economic crisis, Lawrence Summers—then a professor of economics at Harvard University—presented a paper that tracked, in impressively close formation, with the timeline of today’s crisis. With uncanny prescience, Summers wrote:

It is probably now easier to lever assets than ever before, and the combination of reduced transactions costs and new markets in derivative securities make it easier than it has been in the past for the illusion of universal liquidity to take hold. Asset price bubbles are now as likely as they have ever been. Bubbles eventually burst. The increased speed with which information diffuses and the increased use of quantitative-rule-based trading strategies make it likely that they will burst more quickly today than they have in the past.

As far back as 20 years ago Summers was writing about the increased speed at which information can disseminate and contagion can occur. Yet, when CNN International’s Richard Quest interviewed world economic leaders in January 2008 at the Davos Summit, only half of those asked said they thought the then new, disturbing reports about the housing crisis and equity problems would extend beyond the banking industry.

The fact is that most economists and business experts did not anticipate this economic regression, or its particular timing, with any great degree of specificity, despite the astute analysis of Larry Summers and a few other highly regarded theorists. Economist James Galbraith estimated that, out of thousands of economists, perhaps only eight or 10 individuals really saw the crisis coming.3 Harsh as it may seem, his estimate is more generally true than not. But in the wake of calamity, the profession has vigorously begun its own “after action review”—with all kinds of lessons emerging in its own ranks, in the press, and in classrooms across the country. The difficulty is choosing just a few to single out as particularly relevant to the intelligence profession.

Six lessons from the economists’ experience seem to have unique applicability to what we, as intelligence professionals, do.

Leaving behind the issues of bias on the part of economists (which has already been discussed among intelligence officers, along many dimensions) and “group-think” because, again, we are deeply familiar with these pitfalls, six lessons from the economists’ experience seem to have unique applicability to what we, as intelligence professionals, do.

Lesson 1: There are no easy, obvious, straightforward policy responses to the economic crisis.

Once a financial crisis begins, there are no simple or clear policy responses; in reality, every policy response will inevitably feed back onto the economic crisis, for better or worse (in the tradition of the adage “When Alan Greenspan sneezes, the world catches a cold.”). For example, Summers described the range of possible policy responses to economic crises to include:

• The laissez-faire position, which holds there is no reason for public intervention in financial markets.
• The monetarist position: that the only appropriate government role is to insulate the money stock from developments, i.e., declines, in asset markets.
• The classical position, which argues that the government, as lender of last resort, should only lend to solvent banks, at a penalty rate, for short periods of time.
• The pragmatic position, which says the government must always do whatever is necessary to preserve the integrity of the financial system.

All of these, even the option of doing nothing, have impacts on the crisis itself: an expansive monetary policy can lead to a currency crisis, which could in turn lead foreigners to sell, putting further downward pressure on assets and placing more strain on the financial system, which is where we started in the first place.

Admittedly, the issue of policy response is not part of the answer to the question of why economists missed important warning signs. But it is an object lesson in why responding to crises is so perilous: decisions can be dangerous, even those made with the best intentions. In this respect, the issue of policy response suggests a certain truth that intelligence professionals are wise to ponder: We often assume decisions are the start of long term, committed relationships—but sometimes decision making is just a one night stand. In the endless courting that occurs between intelligence professionals and policymakers, we, the intelligence professionals, often behave as if our version of the truth—our “decisions”—take on Talmudic proportions (only this, one might argue, could justify the time it often takes us to deliver our considered judgments). We treat the decision space as though it is preparation for a committed relationship, but quite often the decision—frequently a not-very-clear choice among several other equally reasonable options—will be amended rather quickly, or overtaken by events even sooner.

Furthermore, decisions are rarely made in the full possession of perfect information, another reason they lack staying power. Our understanding of causality and sequence leaves much to be desired, and every day that passes offers more opportunities for new decisions that will affect the context of any given problem.

Lesson 2: We are overly sanguine about how close our information and intelligence sources approximate reality.

Our understanding of causality and sequence leaves much to be desired.

The second lesson from the global financial crisis is that economists thought their limited data accurately reflected reality. Famously, many of the financial houses in New York quantified their risk positions using algorithms that “assumed away” the very conditions that led to the crisis. In addition, as blogger and CNBC commentator Barry Ritholtz has noted, many of the actions that precipitated the crisis were hidden even to the most careful observers; what was in essence a “run” on the world’s largest financial institutions didn’t occur in the physical world—it happened as people pulled the virtual plug on their investments in the privacy of their own homes.

We intelligence professionals can be horribly guilty of this same error, treating the information that arrives in our inboxes as the population (to borrow a term from the pollsters), when in fact the information (secret or open source) can only ever be a sample. This is, of course, as the American, British, Australian, and other commissions and reports pointed out, one of the major plot lines in the Iraq WMD misstep. As Ritholtz also pointed out, the tendency of economists to uncritically accept data from certain limited sources led to only a passing familiarity with reality. The same can be said at times of intelligence professionals.

Lesson 3: Traditional economic analysis has trouble dealing with human irrationality.

We all tend to underestimate the importance of emotions when we attempt to understand the actions of world leaders or the sentiments of a population.

Our third learning from economics is that economists have a difficult time confronting the problem of irrationality. Perhaps the best example of this is Alan Greenspan’s testimony before Congress that it never occurred to him that bankers and other capitalists would make decisions counter to their own best and long-term interests (what he actually said was, “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity [myself especially] are in a state of shocked disbelief.”); after all, classical economics is built on principles such as the invisible hand and the rational decision maker.

For intelligence professionals, the lesson here is straightforward: we, too, have an irrational attachment to rationality. We all tend to underestimate the importance of emotions when we attempt to understand the actions of world leaders or the sentiments of a population.

Lesson 4: Timing is very different from analysis.

Barry Ritholtz made this insightful observation in his blog; we would do well to apply it to intelligence. Understanding timing is different from analysis and requires an additional, probably still-to-be-defined set of skills; it is impossible to improve our ability to provide specific warning of threats or opportunities just by “doing analysis better.” Advances here will require that we explore much broader sources of information. Advances in this area will also require as yet undiscovered (or, if already available, underutilized) cutting-edge intellectual and cognitive techniques and tools.

The importance of timing becomes evident in economists’ struggles to identify the precipitating events in the countdown to crisis. Two camps seem to form in the debate: those who attribute the crisis to failings by individuals (e.g., bankers who irrationally failed to protect their own interests, whiz kids who created flawed algorithms) and those who recognize much more dynamic and amorphous forces at work (e.g., the emergence of new financial instruments which were deployed before anyone fully understood all their possible consequences; the use of new technologies that would affect the volume and velocity of trades in unprecedented ways, the growing interdependencies among financial centers, which increased the potential for and ease of contagion, and so forth). As a segue to lesson 5, it does appear that those who argue for more regulation in response to the crisis land in the first camp—explicitly or implicitly, they believe that regulating the actions of individuals can impose order on chaos—that is, they assume that the “individual actor” model will carry the day.

Lesson 5: How we think about causality in the world has great bearing on the priorities we set as an intelligence service and as a nation.

What caused the economic crisis? Was it the result of trends and dynamics that no individual, brokerage house, central bank could see coming, much less control—an “act of God”? Or was it caused primarily by the actions of a few, like the whiz kids who devised the clever algorithms that left out as “unlikely” the disastrous chain of events that actually happened? Perhaps it was the brokerage house that figured out how to bundle mortgages into some kind of new investment instrument. Maybe it was someone else entirely—the product of a “Great Man”? That the policy response to the economic crisis has thus far been to regulate and reregulate implies the “Great Man” theory wins out—as it often appears to dominate intelligence analysis and collection.

The wiser course is to consider all possible causalities; we may not be able to say exactly how or why, but few can deny that the world we now inhabit is vastly different from the one in which great men and the discovery of their secrets was the stock-in-trade of intelligence work. This points to an even larger question: the great debate between the value of secrets (and secrecy, writ large) and open-source information. As we consider the way we as a profession have regarded either and both of these, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that far too little attention has been paid to the importance of open sources.

In fact, it may already be too late for us—in automatically assuming that secrets are more valuable than anything entire populations could possibly tell us, we may have missed valuable opportunities to integrate not only our thinking about but our ability to integrate open sources into work processes, technologies, and products. In many respects it seems the open-source world has passed us by.

Lesson 6: The complexity of the modern world is overwhelming our existing intellectual and informational models.

The modern economy with its complex financial instruments—derivatives, credit default swaps, and other exotic investments—became too unwieldy, too complex for anyone, even the “experts,” to understand. No amount of number crunching by economists using current analytical and information techniques would have allowed them to anticipate fully what was happening. They did not fail to execute; they failed to understand.

We too are in danger of failing to understand. Our rule-based and single-method approaches are adequate for tackling orderly problems but fall short in terms of helping us to master the chaotic ones—yet if we continue to ignore that chaotic problems do exist and profoundly affect our world, it will be at our peril. Increasingly, we see that individual (“Great Man”) beliefs and the beliefs of small groups (“experts”) comprise a very small part of what we mean when we use the term “intelligence.”

What seems warranted now is active movement away from intelligence analysis as rule-based, universally and eternally true. Physicist Mark Buchanan wrote:

The peculiar and exceptionally unstable organization of the critical state does indeed seem to be ubiquitous in our world. Researchers in the past few years have found its mathematical fingerprints in the workings of all the upheavals mentioned so far (earthquakes, eco-disasters, market crashes), as well as in the spreading of epidemics, the flaring of traffic jams, the patterns by which instructions trickle down from managers to workers in the office, and in many other things.

What seems warranted now is active movement away from intelligence analysis as rule-based, universally and eternally true.

This requires acknowledging that systems often viewed in the past as stable entities that need significant shocks to disintegrate are just as often veined with many minute and therefore largely unseen fault lines that can be activated by very small disturbances. The fact that these small disturbances (physicists call them “critical states”) exist and can powerfully impact world events has innumerable implications for intelligence work, but at the very least it requires that we have the patience to let intelligence officers pursue very small leads and gather data on seemingly unimportant, tiny fault lines.

Many individuals, thinking about how to adjust our intellectual approaches to this much more complex environment, are beginning to introduce a new term to describe the cognitive adjustment we need to make—sense-making. It would require another extensive article to do this topic justice, but at its core is a realization that sense-making can never be contained in a finished product created by a lone expert; sense-making can only occur at the confluence of many different points of view.

Complexity is clearly the key theme that runs through the economists’ post-mortems…. Let us take heed.

There is no easy, obvious response to difficult intelligence questions because the complexity of the modern world has outpaced the capabilities of our current intellectual and informational models. These do not always accurately approximate reality, they make little accounting for human irrationality, and they fail to help us distinguish between timing and analysis. Taken together, these shortcomings force us to reconsider how we think about causality. In terms of the global financial crisis, complexity is clearly the key theme that runs through the economists’ post-mortems and it serves as an important analogue for the intelligence profession. Let us take heed.

Decisions are clear…because the world is:

Decisions are fluid…because the world is:

• evident
• Obscure
• rational
• Irrational
• predictable
• not predictable
• human actuated
• outside the control of men
• straightforward enough to understand
• too complex for rules
• In this world we need intelligence
• In this world we need sense-making

Pakistan – India: LeT Spreading Menace

The Pakistani American Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operative David Coleman Headley reportedly disclosed to his National Investigation Agency (NIA) interrogators that the LeT continued to actively execute surveys of major targets in India. These surveys were principally carried out by visiting agents and not by activating sleeper cells. According to Headley, at least 100 targets in India had been identified, listed, surveyed and photographed by different LeT agents. Headley, who was one of such agents, said he was not aware of the identities and nationalities of the others, as his Pakistani ‘handlers’ were careful not to reveal details. He further indicated that he had videographed and photographed some 30 targets in several Indian cities. These included the targets of the November 26, 2008, (also known as 26/11) terrorist attacks in Mumbai (Maharashtra), for which he had conducted detailed surveys during his nine visits to India between 2006 and 2008.

The NIA team had interrogated Headley over seven days [June 3-10] in what the US described as unrestricted “direct access”, as part of the cooperation and partnership between the US and India in the fight against international terrorism. Headley, who had changed his given name of Daood Gilani in 2006 to scout targets in Mumbai, had pleaded guilty on March 18, 2010, in a Chicago Court, to 12 Federal terrorism charges. He admitted that he participated in planning the 26/11 terrorist attacks, as well as later planning to attack a Danish newspaper.

Headley’s disclosures corroborate the constant warnings by both the Indian as well as foreign intelligence agencies of impending LeT attacks in India. Intelligence reports in the recent past have indicated that the LeT was planning to abduct key political leaders, target helicopters carrying VIPs, strike public functions with explosives-laden trucks, hire or hijack aircraft or helicopters to carry out 9/11-type attacks, target scientists working in sensitive areas such as defence and space, among several other plots. The LeT’s high profile targets include the National Defence Academy in Khadagwasla (Maharashtra), the National Defence College, Delhi, defence establishments in Pune (Maharashtra), and multinational corporation Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu’s HITEC City offices in Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh). On June 28, 2010, Indian intelligence officials have intercepted phone conversations between LeT ‘commanders’, which established that the group was planning fresh attacks at landmarks in different cities, including Srinagar, Jammu, Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. The conversations also discussed a strike against top politicians. Further, on June 30, intelligence agencies warned that Indian missions in Bangladesh and Nepal were under threat of a possible joint attack by the LeT and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI). Earlier, on April 7, the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College warned that India’s transportation, economic infrastructure and political establishment were on the LeT’s radar.

These threats have already materialized in the first major Islamist terrorist attack, outside Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), after the 26/11 carnage, in the German Bakery bomb blast in Pune’s Koregaon Park, near the Osho Ashram, on February 13, 2010, in which nine persons, including four foreigners, were killed and over 40 were injured. The attack came just days after an open threat by the LeT. Addressing a rally in Islamabad (Pakistan) on February 5, Abdur Rehman Makki, ‘deputy’ to Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, declared that, while the jihadis were earlier interested only in the liberation of Kashmir, the water issue had now ensured that “Delhi, Pune and Kanpur” were all fair targets.

Top LeT leaders Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Yousuf Muzammil, Ahmad Bhai and Zarar Shah are currently in custody on charges of involvement in the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, and have been replaced by new ‘commanders’ to step up terrorist operations in J&K and other parts of India. According to intelligence sources, these new ‘commanders’ include Raza Ahmed aka Shahji aka Abu Anas of Bahawalpur in the Punjab province of Pakistan, who had earlier operated as the ‘divisional commander’ for North Kashmir for almost a decade, before he was called back to Pakistan; Hyder Bhai aka Bilal aka Salahuddin, known for several fidayeen (suicide squad) attacks in J&K; Abdul Gaffar aka Huzefa aka Khalid, who was earlier active in Gandarbal in Central Kashmir; and Walid, who had been active in Lolab in North Kashmir. According to sources, the initial focus of the four new ‘commanders’, all of whom are Pakistani nationals, was the Kashmir Valley and the Doda-Rajouri-Poonch belt in Jammu, besides metropolitan and other major cities of India.

The LeT’s current objectives, described in a poster at a March 23, 2010, rally, in slogans superimposed over an image of the burning Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, are to “free Kashmir, Pakistan’s lifeline, from the enemy”; work for the “freedom of the Muslims of Gujarat, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and the rest of India” ; and to “save Pakistan’s parched rivers.” Maps posted on the JuD’s Facebook page provide a graphic illustration of its ambitions. One map of India is emblazoned with Pakistan’s crescent moon and star symbol and JuD flag flying on the Red Fort in New Delhi. In another, much of northern, north-eastern and central India are referred to as Pakistan. Nepal, Bangladesh and south India are marked “disputed territories.” The page also carries a facsimile of a Hadith — sayings attributed to Prophet Muhammad — which purports to provide scriptural legitimacy to the JuD’s jihad. “A King of the House of the Pious,” it prophesies, “will send a Lashkar [army] towards India. The mujahideen (holy warriors) will plunder the land of India, take over its treasures, and the King will use these treasures to honour the House of the Pious… The mujahideen of this Lashkar will conquer all territory between the east and west and will establish the Kingdom of the Pious.”

The Facebook page also confirms LeT’s close links with al-Qaeda, and contains several images of al-Qaeda chief Osama-bin-Laden. There is a low-resolution image of an individual, apparently Saeed, seated next to bin Laden. Such linkages are confirmed by US Defence Department report that states that the LeT has a “close relationship” with al Qaeda. Indian intelligence sources also indicate that a tie-up between the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and LeT, for attacks aimed at India, has been established. India’s Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, disclosed, further, that LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen (JuM) and the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) were earlier operating separately, but had now come together. The LeT has also linked up with the Indian Mujahedeen [IM], which is regarded as a potential resource base that the LeT hopes to use for identification and reconnaissance of targets and arranging logistics for terror attacks.

Despite purported ‘restrictions’ placed on it in Pakistan, the LeT remains flush with funds, collecting generous donations from the overseas Pakistani community in the Persian Gulf and the United Kingdom, Islamic non-Governmental organisations, Pakistani/Kashmiri business people and through its parent organisation JuD. The terrorist group also counts on donations from sympathetic Saudis, Kuwaitis, and Islamist-leaning Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) officers. The US Defence Department report indicated, further, that, “In addition, LeT maintains relations with extremist and/ or terrorist groups across the globe ranging from the Philippines to the Middle East and Chechnya by means of the JuD network.”

While much of state support to the LeT is covert, it is significant that the Government of Pakistan’s Punjab Province, gave about USD one million to institutions linked with the JuD, in 2009. “At least 80 million rupees [$940,000] have been allocated for the institutions [linked to Jamaat-ud-Dawa] during the current fiscal year,” Rana Sanaullah, a senior Punjab Minister told the BBC. However, he maintained that the institutions – which include two schools and a hospital – were no longer attached to JuD. When asked why the Punjab Government had allotted money in the budget for institutions it managed, a spokesman for JuD, Hafiz Abdur Rehman, responded: “The truth is that we are ourselves astonished at this.”

Meanwhile, despite it losing a total of 142 of its cadres, including top ‘commanders’, who have been killed by the Security Forces since 26/11, the LeT appears to have more of a say in the Kashmir Valley, including in the wave of what is being described as “agitational terrorism”. India has blamed separatist elements linked to the LeT for stoking unrest in the Kashmir Valley. Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram thus remarked, on June 30, “Anti-national elements are clearly linked to the LeT. We know that the Lashkar has been active in Sopore.” Since the latter half of June 2010, major parts of Kashmir have repeatedly erupted in violent demonstrations, and a total of 11 ‘protesters’ have already died in Police firing.

The Lashkar has created a significant base in South India as well. Reports indicate that LeT has two support groups in Kerala, and four Malayali (Keralite) LeT militants were killed in J&K on October 6, 2008. On Jun 21, 2010, Kerala Police sources claimed that many boys from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, between the ages of 16 and 25, were being trained in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) under the supervision of LeT ‘commanders’.

The LeT is also using its operatives in Bangladesh and Nepal to try set up a ‘buffer zone’ in interior areas of Bihar to carry out terror attacks both within the State and elsewhere in the country, top intelligence sources said. Mohammad Omar Madni, a close aide of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and the LeT’s point man in Nepal told interrogators he had already recruited men in Katihar, Madhubani, Siwan, Bhagalpur, Gopalganj, Motihari, Betia and Muzzaffarpur Districts of Bihar for LeT’s hawala operations, fake currency syndicates and drug-running. Madni, was arrested by the Special Cell of Delhi Police near Qutb Minar in South Delhi on June 4, 2009. He reportedly disclosed that he had infiltrated into India on a ‘talent hunt’. Madni was one among at least 18 LeT cadres arrested in India, outside J&K, since 26/11 (another 63 were arrested in J&K), blunting the outfits operations in the country. One such arrest included the ‘south India commander’ of the LeT, identified as Shaik Abdul Khaja alias Amjad from Afzalgunj area of Hyderabad, on January 18, 2010. 24 ISI agents, with close ties to the LeT, have also been arrested in India since 26/11.

While the IM suffered a major reverse with the arrest of its senior cadres and elimination of others, including Atif Amin who was killed in the Batla House shootout on September 19, 2008, agencies feel that major leaders still at large – estimated to be over 20 – remain a threat and are crucial to the execution of the ‘Karachi Project’. The ‘Karachi Project’ is a ‘joint venture’ of the ISI and LeT, and involves serving and retired officers of the Pakistan Army and fugitive terrorists from India. The ‘project’, first revealed by Headley to his FBI interrogators, was designed to use Indians for setting off terror attacks in India. Headley indicated that five or six serving Pakistani officers were involved in the ‘Karachi Project’.  Meanwhile, on June 5, 2010, the Union Government declared the IM a terrorist outfit.

The LeT has now attacked Indian targets in Afghanistan as well. Though LeT’s global presence is now widely acknowledged, the ISI had not previously used the group to target Indian establishments beyond Indian soil. The LeT’s expansion into Afghanistan is believed to be directed against both international and Indian targets. A senior NATO intelligence official was quoted by The Times as saying , “The LeT is now active in six to eight provinces in Afghanistan, a big leap from hardly any presence five years ago.” Shaida Abdali, Afghanistan’s deputy national security adviser referred to this more obliquely, stating, “Our concern is that there are still players involved that are trying to use Afghanistan’s ground as a place for a proxy war. It is being carried out by certain state actors to fight their opponents.” Several satellite phone conversations intercepted by Indian agencies in the past few months indicate that LeT is now deeply entrenched in Pakistani efforts to force India out of Afghanistan. The location of the satellite phone in most of these conversations was established in areas adjoining the Kunar province along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Kunar is where LeT was first formed in the early 1990s. One such conversation, intercepted in the first week of February 2010 by the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), had terrorists talking about the need to hurt India in Kabul. Meanwhile, LeT’s expansion in Afghanistan has prompted suspicions in Washington that it is part of Pakistan’s game plan to have proxy forces at hand when US troops begin their withdrawal in July 2011.

Significantly, India’s Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Maken told Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) on April 27, 2010, that the LeT was also making concerted efforts to develop links in the Maldives and other neighbouring countries. Similarly, Admiral Robert Willard, Commander of the US Pacific Command in his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 27, 2010, stated that the LeT, predominately a threat to India, was fast expanding operations to other South Asian countries, including Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. On similar lines, US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, P. J. Crowley, asserted on April 23, 2010, “It (LeT) is a threat to our citizens. It’s a threat to Indian citizens. Next door, it’s a threat to Pakistani citizens. And next door, it’s a threat to Afghan citizens.” A March 15, 2010, report had claimed that the LeT had identified as many as 320 targets across the globe, just 20 of which were in India. At a Congressional hearing, US Congressman Gary Ackerman testified: “In the wake of the (26/11) Mumbai attack, investigators uncovered in controller records and e-mail accounts a list of 320 locations worldwide deemed by the LeT as possible targets for attack. Only 20 of the targets were located within India.”

It is significant that the LeT has been banned in the UK since March 1, 2001. The US Department of State named the LeT as a foreign terrorist organisation on December 26, 2001. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) listed it as a terrorist organisation on May 2, 2005. The US Department of Treasury named four of its leaders — Amir Hafiz Mohammed Saeed; Operations Commander Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi; Chief of Finance Haji Mohammad Ashraf; and fund collector Mahmoud Mohammad Ahmed Bahaziq — under Executive Order 13224 which targets terrorists and those providing financial, technological or material support to terrorists or acts of terrorism. Finally, in the aftermath of 26/11, the UNSC proscribed the JuD on December 10, 2008, listing it as an alias of the LeT, and designated Saeed, Lakhvi, Ashraf and Bahaziq as foreign terrorists.

None of these measures has had any impact on the Pakistani Government’s attitude towards LeT. Despite volumes of evidence provided by India, progressive verification from a multiplicity of international sources, and Pakistan’s own admission of LeT’s involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, Islamabad continues to support and protect its terrorist proxy, giving it full freedom of movement across Pakistan. On February 4, 2010, the JuD and the Hizb-ul-Mujahiddeen (HM), held a Yakjaiti-e-Kashmir (Kashmir Solidarity) conference in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) capital Muzaffarabad, led by Syed Salahuddin, the chief of HM and chairman of the 16-party United Jihad Council (UJC). Another JuD rally, led by Hafiz Saeed, was organised at Lahore on February 5, 2010. Each of these was a well attended mass rally, widely covered by the national and international media. State agencies made no effort to curtail the activities of these groups, despite the fact that several members of the UJC are designated international terrorist organisations.

Unsurprisingly, an April 16, 2010, UN report confirmed that the ISI continued to have close links with LeT and had used the terror group’s services to foment anti-India passion in Kashmir and elsewhere. “The Pakistani military organised and supported the Taliban to take control of Afghanistan in 1996. Similar tactics were used in Kashmir against India after 1989,” the report noted.

It is evident that LeT remains Pakistan’s principal instrumentality in India. More significantly, its imprint is being steadily and systematically extended to wider theatres across the South Asian neighbourhood, to serve Pakistan’s augmenting ambitions in anticipation of a Western withdrawal from Afghanistan. US dependence on Pakistani ‘cooperation’ in the ‘war on terror’ has conferred near-complete impunity on Pakistani mischief in this region, and it is within the ambit of this latitude that Islamist extremist terrorism continues to thrive in Pakistan, to be exported into the neighbourhood and beyond.

Ajit Kumar Singh is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Conflict Management, which publishes the South Asia Intelligence Review (SATP)

Secretary Clinton Delivers U.S. Independence Day Message

Secretary Clinton Delivers U.S. Independence Day Message

Posted by DipNote Bloggers / July 04, 2010

In a video message, Secretary Clinton delivered remarks celebrating America’s Independence Day. The Secretary said:

“Every year, Americans gather with friends and family on the Fourth of July to celebrate the values that inspired the founders of our nation more than two centuries ago, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now these freedoms are not unique to Americans. They are embodied in constitutions of many nations, and observed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we all recognize.”

She continued, “[L]et’s use this celebration as a chance to form new connections, exchange ideas, and find fresh solutions to our shared challenges. And reaffirm our commitment to advancing universal human rights.”

Find out how American diplomats commemorate U.S. Independence Day in Afghanistan, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, China, Colombia, France, Guatemala, India, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Tanzania, and Zambia.

http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/site/entry/clinton_independence_day

The Dismantling of a Suspected Russian Intelligence Operation

By Fred Burton and Ben West

The U.S. Department of Justice announced June 28 that an FBI counterintelligence investigation had resulted in the arrest on June 27 of 10 individuals suspected of acting as undeclared agents of a foreign country, in this case, Russia. Eight of the individuals were also accused of money laundering. On June 28, five of the defendants appeared before a federal magistrate in U.S. District Court in Manhattan while three others went before a federal magistrate in Alexandria, Va., and two more went before a U.S. magistrate in Boston. An 11th person named in the criminal complaint was arrested in Cyprus on June 29, posted bail and is currently at large.

The number of arrested suspects in this case makes this counterintelligence investigation one of the biggest in U.S. history. According to the criminal complaint, the FBI had been investigating some of these people for as long as 10 years, recording conversations in their homes, intercepting radio and electronic messages and conducting surveillance on them in and out of the United States. The case suggests that the classic tactics of intelligence gathering and counterintelligence are still being used by Russia and the United States.

Cast of Characters

(click here to enlarge image)

The following are the 11 individuals detained in the investigation, along with summaries of their alleged activities listed in the criminal complaint:

Christopher Metsos

• Claimed to originally be from Canada.
• Acted as an intermediary between the Russian mission to the United Nations in New York and suspects Richard Murphy, Cynthia Murphy, Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills.
• Traveled to and from Canada.
• Met with Richard Murphy at least four times between February 2001 and April 2005 at a restaurant in New York.
• Was first surveilled in 2001 in meetings with other suspects.
• Left the United States on June 17 and was detained in Cyprus on June 29, but appears to have skipped bail.

Richard and Cynthia Murphy

• Claimed to be married and to be U.S. citizens.
• First surveilled by the FBI in 2001 during meetings with Mestos.
• Also met with the third secretary in the Russian mission to the United Nations.
• Richard Murphy’s safe-deposit box was searched in 2006 and agents found a birth certificate claiming he was born in Philadelphia; city officials claim there is no such birth certificate on record.
• Engaged in electronic communications with Moscow.
• Traveled to Moscow via Italy in February 2010.

Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley

• Claimed to be married and to be natives of Canada who are naturalized U.S. citizens.
• FBI searched a safe-deposit box listed under their names in January 2001.
• FBI discovered that Donald Heathfield’s identity had been taken from a deceased child by the same name in Canada and found old photos of Foley taken with Soviet film.
• Engaged in electronic communications with Moscow.
• Tracey Foley traveled to Moscow via Paris in March 2010.

Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills

• Claimed to be married and to be a U.S. citizen (Zottoli) and a Canadian citizen (Mills).
• First surveilled in June 2004 during a meeting with Richard Murphy.
• Engaged in electronic communications with Moscow.

Juan Lazaro and Vicky Pelaez

• Claimed to be married and to be a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Peru (Pelaez) and a Peruvian citizen born in Uruguay (Lazaro).
• First surveilled at a meeting in a public park in an unidentified South American country in January 2000.
• Evidence against Vicky Pelaez was the first gathered on the 11 suspected operatives.
• Lazaro appeared to communicate with a diplomat at the Russian Embassy in an unidentified South American country.
• Engaged in electronic communications with Moscow.

Anna Chapman

• First surveillance mentioned was in Manhattan in January 2010.
• Communicated with a declared diplomat in the Russian mission to the United Nations on Wednesdays.
• Knowingly accepted a fraudulent passport from an undercover FBI agent whom she believed to be a Russian diplomatic officer June 26, but turned it in to the police the next day shortly before her arrest.

Mikhail Semenko

• First surveillance mentioned in the criminal complaint was in June 2010 in Washington.
• Revealed to an undercover officer that he had received training and instruction from “the center” (a common term for the Moscow headquarters of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR).
• Accepted a payment of $5,000 and followed orders given by an undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian diplomatic officer to deliver the money to a drop site in Washington.

Their Mission

According to the FBI, some of the alleged “undeclared agents” moved to the United States in the 1990s, while others (such as Anna Chapman) did not arrive until 2009. The FBI says nine of the suspects were provided with fake identities and even fake childhood photos and cover stories (part of what would be called a “legend”) in order to establish themselves in the United State under “deep cover.” Chapman and Semenko used their own Russian identities (Chapman is divorced and may have taken her surname from her former husband). The true nationalities of the other suspects are unknown, but several passages in the criminal complaint indicate that most of them were originally from Russia. The Russian SVR allegedly provided the suspects with bank accounts, homes, cars and regular payments in order to facilitate “long-term service” inside the United States, where, according to the criminal complaint, the individuals were supposed to “search [for] and develop ties in policymaking circles” in the United States.

The FBI criminal complaint provides evidence that two of the deep-cover couples (Heathfield/Foley and Lazaro/Palaez) and the two short-term cover agents (Semenko and Chapman) were operating without knowledge of each other or in connection with the other two couples and Metsos, who did interact. This suggests that they would not have formed one network, as is being reported, but perhaps discrete networks. The criminal complaint provides evidence indicating that most of the operatives were being run out of the SVR residence at the U.N. mission.

It is unclear exactly how successful the 11 accused individuals were in finding and developing those ties in policymaking circles. The criminal complaint accuses the individuals of sending everything from information on the gold market from a financier in New York (a contact that Moscow apparently found helpful, since it reportedly encouraged further contact with the source) to seeking out potential college graduates headed for jobs at the CIA. The criminal complaint outlines one recorded conversation in which Lazaro told Pelaez that his handlers were not pleased with his reports because he wasn’t attributing them properly. Pelaez then advised Lazaro to “put down any politician” (to whom the information could be attributed) in order to appease the handlers, indicating that the alleged operatives did not always practice scrupulous tradecraft in their work. Improperly identifying sources in the field ultimately diminishes the value of the information, since it cannot be adequately assessed without knowing where it came from. If these kinds of shortcuts were normally taken by Pelaez, Lazaro and others, then it would reduce their value to the SVR and the harm that they may have done to the United States. The suspects were allegedly instructed by their handlers in the United States and Russia to not pursue high-level government jobs, since their legends were not strong enough to withstand a significant background investigation. But they allegedly were encouraged to make contact with high-level government officials, in order to have a finger on the pulse of policymaking in Washington.

Tradecraft

The criminal complaint alleges that the suspects used traditional tradecraft of the clandestine services to communicate with each other and send reports to their handlers. The suspects allegedly transmitted messages to Moscow containing their reports encrypted in “radiograms” (short-burst radio transmissions that appear as Morse code) or written in invisible ink, and met in third countries for payments and briefings. They are also said to have used “brush passes” (the quick and discreet exchange of materials between one person and another) and “flash meets” (seemingly innocuous, brief encounters) to transfer information, equipment and money. The criminal complaint also gives examples of operatives using coded phrases with each other and with their operators to confirm each other’s identities.

In addition to the traditional tradecraft described in the criminal complaint, there are also new operational twists. The suspects allegedly used e-mail to set up electronic dead drops to transmit encrypted intelligence reports to Moscow, and several operatives were said to have used steganography (embedding information in seemingly innocuous images) to encrypt messages. Chapman and Semenko allegedly employed private wireless networks hosted by a laptop programmed to communicate only with a specific laptop. The FBI claims to have identified networks (and may have intercepted the messages transmitted) that had been temporarily set up when a suspect was in proximity to a known Russian diplomat. These electronic meetings occurred frequently, according to the FBI, and allowed operatives and their operators to communicate covertly without actually being seen together.

Operations are said to have been run largely out of Russia’s U.N. mission in New York, meaning that when face-to-face meetings were required, declared diplomats from the U.N. mission could do the job. According to the criminal complaint, Russian diplomats handed off cash to Christopher Metsos on at least two occasions, and he allegedly distributed it to various other operatives (which provided the grounds for the charge of money laundering). The actual information gathered from the field appears to have gone directly to Russia, according to the complaint.

It is important to note that the accused individuals were not charged with espionage; the charge of acting as an undeclared agent of a foreign state is less serious. The criminal complaint never alleges that any of the 11 individuals received or transmitted classified information. This doesn’t mean that the suspects weren’t committing espionage. (Investigators will certainly learn more about their activities during interrogation and trial preparation.) According to the criminal complaint, their original guidance from Moscow was to establish deep cover. This means that they would have been tasked with positioning themselves over time in order gain access to valuable information (it is important to point out that “valuable” is not synonymous with “classified”) through their established occupations or social lives. This allows agents to gain access to what they want without running unnecessary security risks.

Any intelligence operation must balance operational security with the need to gather intelligence. Too much security and the operative is unable to do anything; but if intelligence gathering is too aggressive, the handlers risk losing an intelligence asset. If these people were operating in deep cover, the SVR probably invested quite a bit of time and money training and cultivating them, likely well before they arrived in the United States. According to information in the criminal complaint, the suspects were actively meeting with potential sources, sending reports back to Moscow and interacting with declared Russian diplomats in the United States, all the while running the risk of being caught. But they also took security measures, according to the complaint. There is no evidence that they attempted to reach out to people who would have fallen outside their natural professional and social circles, which could have raised suspicions. In many ways, these individuals appear to have acted more like recruiters, seeking out people with access to valuable information, rather than agents trying to gain access to that information themselves. However, all we know now is based on what was released in the criminal complaint. An investigation that lasted this long surely has an abundance of evidence (much of it likely classified) that wasn’t included in the complaint.

Counterintelligence

According to authorities, the suspected operatives were under heavy surveillance by U.S. counterintelligence agents for 10 years. Working out of Boston, New York and Washington, the FBI employed its Special Surveillance Group to track suspects in person; place video and audio recorders in their homes and at meeting places to record communications; search their homes and safe-deposit boxes; intercept e-mail and electronic communications; and deploy undercover agents to entrap the suspects.

Counterintelligence operations don’t just materialize out of thin air. There has to be a tip or a clue that puts investigators on the trail of a suspected undeclared foreign agent. As suggested by interviews with the suspects’ neighbors, none of them displayed unusual behavior that would have tipped the neighbors off. All apparently had deep (but not airtight) legends going back decades that allayed suspicion. The criminal complaint did not suggest how the U.S. government came to suspect these people of reporting back to the SVR in Russia, although we did notice that the beginning of the investigation coincides with the time that a high-level SVR agent stationed at Russia’s U.N. mission in New York began passing information to the FBI. Sergei Tretyakov (who told his story in the book by Pete Earley called “Comrade J,” an abbreviation of his SVR codename, “Comrade Jean”), passed information to the FBI from the U.N. mission from 1997 to 2000, just before he defected to the United States in October 2000. According to the criminal complaint, seven of the 11 suspects were connected to Russia’s U.N. mission, though evidence of those links did not begin to emerge until 2004 (and some as late as 2010). The timing of Tretyakov’s cooperation with the U.S. government and the timing of the beginning of this investigation resulting in the arrest of the 11 suspects this week suggests that Tretyakov may have been the original source who tipped off the U.S. government. So far, the evidence is circumstantial — the timing and the location match up — but Tretyakov, as the SVR operative at Russia’s U.N. mission, certainly would have been in a position to know about operations involving most of the people arrested June 27.

Why Now?

Nothing in the complaint indicates why, after more than 10 years of investigation, the FBI decided to arrest the 11 suspects June 27. It is not unusual for investigations to be drawn out for years, since much information on tradecraft and intent can be obtained by watching foreign intelligence agencies operate without knowing they are being watched. Extended surveillance can also reveal additional contacts and build a stronger case. As long as the suspects aren’t posing an immediate risk to national security (and judging by the criminal complaint, these 11 suspects were not), there is little reason for the authorities to show their hand and conclude a fruitful counterintelligence operation.

It has been suggested that some of the suspects were a flight risk, so agents arrested all of them in order to prevent them from escaping the United States. Metsos left the United States on June 17 and was arrested in Cyprus on June 29, however, his whereabouts are currently unknown, as he has not reported back to Cypriot authorities after posting bail. A number of the suspects left and came back to the United States numerous times, and investigators appear not to have been concerned about these past comings and goings. It isn’t clear why they would have been concerned about someone leaving at this point.

The timing of the arrests so soon after U.S. President Barack Obama’s June 25 meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev also raises questions about political motivations. Medvedev was in Washington to talk with Obama in an attempt to improve relations between the two countries on the day the FBI officially filed the criminal complaint. The revelation of a network of undeclared foreign agents operating in the United States would ordinarily have a negative effect on relations between the United States and the foreign country in question. In this case, though, officials from both countries made public statements saying they hoped the arrests would not damage ties, and neither side appears to be trying to leverage the incident. Indeed, if there were political motivations behind the timing of the arrests, they remain a mystery.

Whatever the motivations, now that the FBI has these suspects in custody it will be able to interrogate them and probably gather even more information on the operation. The charges for now don’t include espionage, but the FBI could very well be withholding this charge in order to provide an incentive for the suspects to plea bargain. We expect considerably more information on this unprecedented case to come out in the following weeks and months, revealing much about Russian clandestine operations and their targets in the United States.

Reprinting or republication of this report on websites is authorized by prominently displaying the following sentence at the beginning or end of the report, including the hyperlink to STRATFOR:

“This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR“

Economic Covert Action

The scrutiny of Huang’s position at Commerce has opened a rare window on the department’s growing role as a link between the intelligence agencies and the business world. (1996)

Commerce officials say Huang had a top-secret security clearance and received weekly intelligence briefings from the CIA and distributed it to officials with the proper clearances.

“Mixing business with spying Secret information is passed routinely to U.S. companies”

The Anderson, Industries, based Magnequench Inc. was bought by the San Huan New Materials and Hi-Tech Company  of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which was started and still is partially owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

The company is little more than a front for the PRC,” a senior government analyst tells Insight.

The U.S. national labs have been identified by U.S. counterintelligence as targets of PRC espionage attempts — especially the Los Alamos National Laboratory where the government says the theft of the nuclear W-88 warhead design occurred through a series of espionage efforts by the PRC.

“Using Economic Intelligence as front for achieving strategic intent of the nation”

Modern African history demonstrates many examples of development failure, ethnic strife, and conflict. (Sala-i-Martin, 2003.)

An increasing chorus of commentators emphasizes how failures in generating economic growth, in concert often with long-lingering political and historical issues, leads to civil war.  (Collier, 1999)

Kishor Sharma argues that ‘‘development failure’’ largely explains Nepal’s current civil war. In a multiethnic environment, increasing inequalities among groups fosters tensions leading ultimately to conflict. (Sharma, 2006)

“Economic intelligence can fulfill a preventive role and mitigate risk by planning for events such as economic collapse.”

Economic intelligence is information about how those outside the collecting organization’s country develop material goods that is interpreted and presented to inform policymakers. (Nasheri, 2005)

Economic Intelligence plays an important role of integrating the economic planning with the security aspects for having strategic advantage for regional security.

Economic Intelligence purview is set forth as an intermediary mechanism of keeping check on economic espionage and monitoring the deals. However an Economic intelligence can be overt via sanction or covert via manipulation of national currency.

Such as Salvador Allende government in Chile in the early 1970s involved economic issues, including the incitement of labor strikes and depressing the world copper price.

In the new Era of threat, Terrorism , Economic intelligence helps in support for penetration of terrorist cells and infrastructure.

A major need of economic intelligence was found to be in post war scenario in Iraq. The economic philosophy was depended on the free societies which was a misalignment in context to the Iraq ground scenario which had mass unemployment. A factor commonly regarded as a cause of political violence.

The relationship between the economic intelligence and policymakers is crucial in understanding the economic security of the nation in context to the free international trade. So economic intelligence can bring forth a structured mechanism of industrial policy in actualizing overall policy environment.

Role of Economic Intelligence in relationship to the Policymakers.

A need to identify the key players in the host nation’s business community, their reputation, their capabilities and the status of their assets and enterprises.

Since these business groups represent the commanding heights  of the economy, they will serve as an important source of information about the domestic country’s economic needs.

So the policy makers with help of economic intelligence can frame their strategy in tandem with economics of the nation but also politically and tactical in achieving the strategic intent.

Economic intelligence can also be used by the policymakers in developing the strategy for rural development and agricultural reforms for mitigating the risk of any political conflict raised through difference of stakeholders.

In post – conflict environment like Afghanistan, economic intelligence can help in designing and monitoring institution that promotes a dynamic investment policy.

With economic intelligence, intelligence community can reap a continuing benefits arising from economic angle into the overall strategy for post conflict countries. So the policy makers can bring forth their strategy in collation with intelligence community via office of planning coordination, to monitor and evaluate the implementation of projects.

Policymakers in alignment with economic intelligence will help in achieving reconstructed markets via country reconstruction, planners and actors in the process.

Economic Intelligence as an external, nondomestic function will help in meeting the security objective of the nation. Iraq and Africa demonstrates a need of economic analysis in the overall intelligence community.

So Philip Zelikow’s four points outlining the effective use of economic intelligence :

1. It should  leverage unique capabilities,
2. operate in areas where there is no open information,
3. Fit information for special requirements, or
4. Operate where the private sector cannot.

So to achieve a collusion of economic intelligence with intelligence community above objective should be addressed.

This commensurate with the sense that the private sector features as the primary progenitor of economic information and the information technology base, as advocated by Bruce Berkowitz and Allan Goodman, which places government’s activity only in areas where the private sector fails to display competency.

Economic intelligence allows policymakers to better understand some of the economic underpinnings of politics and society in different regions by keeping in view the following aspects;

1. A state’s perceived vulnerability.
2. The subjective security demands of the statesmen.
3. A state’s definition of security.
4. The statesmen’s level of understanding of the security dilemma.

Reference:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1119973/posts, CHINA MAKES SPYING A COMPANY POLICY 2002

See Elsa V. Artadi and Xavier Sala-i-Martin, ‘‘The Economic Growth Tragedy the XXth Century: Growth in Africa,’’ NBER Working Paper 9865, 2003.

See Paul Collier, ‘‘On the Economic Consequences of Civil War,’’ Oxford Economic Papers, Vol. 51, 1999, pp. 168–183, and P. Bardhan, ‘‘Method in Madness? A Political Economy Analysis of the Ethnic Conflicts in Less Developed Countries,’’ World Development, Vol. 25, No. 9, 1997, pp. 1381–1998.

Kishor Sharma, ‘‘The Political Economy of Civil War in Nepal,’’ World Development, Vol. 34, No. 7, 2006, pp. 1237–1253.

The Security Dilemma and Covert Action: The Truman Years, by ELIZABETH E. ANDERSON

Red Corridor : Role of Intelligence

According to Indian Home Secretary G. K. Pillai , the Maoist insurgents extort 14 billon Indian rupees (more than $300 million) each year. By brandishing the threat of violence, the Naxalites make advantageous use of the power vacuum in rural Indian territories.

Extortion fees are collected from rural business owners, landowners, and local politicians. Funding is partially redistributed among the military cadres and goes directly toward the purchase of arms and the financing of operations against the state.

A new Maoist threat in India has created a need for intelligence agencies to evaluate the  resources which has gone into building intelligence and information sharing capability at the national and state levels;  with incident like  Chhattisgarh there is a need of educating executive level leaders to direct and leverage the aforesaid capability .

India’s vision of National Counter Terrorism Center need to keep a tab of activities of the intelligence resources and evaluate the report on insurgent group in the North East or the CPI (Maoist) or terrorists outside India based on analytical reporting for better synthesis of intelligence, investigation and operations. There is a need of determining the centers of gravity of such groups from the perspective of economic, social and political system.

Is it the act of the enemy to destabilize the economy , corrupt the political system and create instability in the social architecture of the nation to push forward their vested interest or Is the ideology exploited by few to gain supremacy of power by creating breeding center under the veil of divergent  rural development and agricultural reforms.

Who are the first responders to Maoist acts of violence? The Indian State Police or Paramilitary forces.

Is it inefficient police which ensure that the Maoists keep receiving fresh recruits.

But the mission statement of National Police Academy is “to prepare leaders for the Indian Police, who will lead/command the force with courage, uprightness, dedication and a strong sense of service to the people.”

However the Chhattisgarh Police and experts on Maoist warfare are blaming the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) for repeatedly falling victim to Maoist guerrillas.

Police sources say that the CRPF personnel are not only poorly trained to operate in jungle terrain but are also reluctant to take on the well-entrenched Maoists.

On top of it, the sources say, the CRPF personnel refuse to follow intelligence inputs while launching operations deep in the impregnable forests of Bastar region.

Is it the lack of actionable intelligence or lack of faith in the intelligence architecture?

Police leaders should have the ability to prompt the various intelligence assets available with them  in order to pull information from the environment, analyze that information to gain understanding, and use that understanding to reduce threats.

To mitigate these threats;

1. The basis of intelligence collection should be able to identify the nerve centers for radical segments in Maoism.

2. The focus should be to mitigate and control the role of economic , political and social architecture towards support of Maoist groups .

3. Use of high end technology in surveillance for  creating an actionable intelligence products.

4. Relook towards Community intelligence in the affected regions via Political Covert Action , Economic Covert Action and Covert Propaganda.

5. The state police should consider establishing regional intelligence networks across contiguous states to enhance information-sharing processes.

6. Finally the operational intelligence analyst should continually do community impact assessment for demographic and social analysis of the affected  regions.

“…intelligence is the combination of credible information with quality analysis–information that has been evaluated and from which conclusions have been drawn.” Global Intelligence Working Group. (2003).

Whatever be the intentions of the radical Maoist groups; the intent is to use intelligence as a potent instrument for inflicting Damage to the nerve centers and logical support of radical Maoist group   and simultaneously creating  channel for diplomacy with non radical Maoist groups through good  governance and effective policing .