Category Archives: Military

The next coalition of the willing

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The term “Coalition of the Willing,” when used to describe the troops in Iraq has been a bit of a joke over the last few years.  Everyone knows it’s 99% U.S. and British soldiers on the ground.  Right in plain sight however, the U.S. government is constructing its next coalition of the willing.  Guess who it probably hopes is willing participant #1?  First a bit of background though.  The CIA has been grumbling of late at the emergence of China as the U.S.’s main strategic threat (although I think it is global warming) in the next twenty years.

Beijing’s military modernization and military buildup is tilting the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait. Improved Chinese capabilities threaten US forces in the region.

In 2004, China increased its ballistic missile forces deployed across from Taiwan and rolled out several new submarines.

China continues to develop more robust, survivable nuclear-armed missiles as well as conventional capabilities for use in a regional conflict.

Taiwan continues to promote constitutional reform and other attempts to strengthen local identity. Beijing judges these moves to be a “timeline for independence”. If Beijing decides that Taiwan is taking steps toward permanent separation that exceed Beijing’s tolerance, we believe China is prepared to respond with various levels of force. [Link]

Also this:

The United States is closely watching China’s military improvements and hoping the country will evolve into “a constructive force” in the Asia-Pacific region, says Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

At a February 17 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rumsfeld addressed questions about China’s military modernization — most especially of its navy… [Link]

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Shopaholic India

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So now we know why I can shopping spree like a champion– it’s in my genes. (Thanks, 43 Seconds.)

According to the annual Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations report (pdf)–widely considered the most comprehensive source on global weapons sales–India’s got so many shopping bags full of “tanks, submarines, combat aircraft, missiles and ammunition”, her arms are sore. 😉

India was the leading buyer of conventional arms among developing nations in 2004, a report for the US Congress says. The Congressional Research Service said Delhi agreed the transfer of $5.7bn in weapons, ahead of China. [Beeb]
India was also the leading developing world purchaser over the 1997-2004 period covered in the report, sealing 10% of all such arms agreements.[Beeb]

Yes, yes, the US is the biggest “weapons mall” of them all, with around a third of all contracts. It’s the mall of America, if you will. Oh wait, we already have one of those.

Keeping up with the Wongs’?

India negotiated $15.7bn in agreed transfers of conventional weapons between 1997 and 2004 to top the list.[Beeb]
China overtook India for the period 2001-2004 on the back of a big increase in defence budget, but India was back on top for 2004 alone.[Beeb]

Enlighten me, do you think this is a good thing to be “on top” of? Continue reading →

The Rock of the Marne

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A moment of silence:

The Department of Defense announced today [Sat] the death of a soldier, who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Spc. Hatim S. Kathiria, 23, of Fort Worth, Texas, died on Aug. 22, 2005, in Baghdad, Iraq, where an enemy rocket impacted near his position. Kathiria was assigned to the 703rd Forward Support Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga. [Link]

MSNBC has more:

A soldier who called Fort Worth home died in Iraq this week. Hatim Kathiria joined the U.S. Army just months after emigrating to the United States from India.

The 23-year-old had studied to be a software engineer, but work in that field was hard to come by. So, he joined the Army to earn citizenship more quickly and to make money to send to his family.

Kathiria was sent to Iraq in January, the same month he got married and received his U.S. citizenship. He was full of promise, and hoped to advance in the military while saving money for graduate school and preparing to help bring his family to the U.S

…Shortly before he died, Kathiria told his wife that he wanted his body sent back to India to be buried in his hometown. That will happen after a military service in Washington, D.C.

Here are this month’s fallen.

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Pornographic terrorism

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Q: So how does a terrorist make money these days to fund his activities? 

A: Porn.  BBC News reports (thanks for the tip Srinath):

Rebels in India’s north-eastern state of Tripura are making pornographic films to raise money for their separatist campaign, officials say.

The information has come from surrendered guerrillas of the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), according to police.

They say the rebels are forcing captured tribal women, and some men, to take part in the films.

The films are then dubbed to be sold in India and neighbouring countries.

Come on.  It’s one thing if porn is between “willing” participants, but to force helpless tribal people into it, and then dubbing over their voices is just sick!

“We get a lot more money , much above our normal rates, to process these films and deliver a sleek final product.

“We know the insurgents are behind these films. When we process their raw stock, we can see boys standing around with automatic rifles and revolvers pulling in girls but we are supposed to cut all that out and just concentrate on the sex,” the owner said.

“It is very good money and we don’t think it is right to question the insurgents anyway,” he said.

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The Markhor stands proud

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There is at least one group (above all others) that values the comparative “calm” that has recently settled over the LOC in Kashmir, as India/Pakistan relations have thawed.  The mighty Markhor.  The Independent reports:

The ceasefire between India and Pakistan in Kashmir has produced an unexpected beneficiary – the world’s largest goat.

The markhor, a mountain goat that stands almost 6ft tall at the shoulder and can weigh 17 stone, was thought to be extinct in Indian-held Kashmir. But a recent joint survey by Indian wildlife organisations and the Indian army found 35 small herds – 155 goats – thriving near the Line of Control.

As recently as 1970 there were 25,000 on the Indian side, but by 1997 they had been driven to near extinction. The main cause was the conflict.

The Indian Express goes into more detail:

”It is really encouraging that we still have a sizeable Markhor population here. The present peace situation is conducive for wildlife. Regular cross-border firing and shelling was a serious threat. But the habitation was improving even before the ceasefire was announced in late 2003. We declared protected areas and were hopeful that the Markhor population would improve,” J&K Chief Wildlife Warden CM Seth told The Indian Express.

J&K Principal Chief Conservator of Forests SD Swatantra also lauded the Army for its role.

”Army personnel have been sensitive to the environmental concerns. Border thaw during the last two years has helped the animals a lot. Earlier, constant presence of the troops minimised poaching and human interference. Now in the absence of conflict, the habitat is improving fast,” he said.

What a noble animal.  A part of me has always wished that humans too had horns.  A lot of petty arguments could be settled by simply locking horns for a few moments…or impalement.  Plus girls would immediately know that you were packing.

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Major Butani

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Yahoo India has the story of returning Army doctor Major Raj Butani:

They could see the buses rolling out across the airbase tarmac but were not sure their soldier son, Iraq returnee Major Raj Butani of the US 2nd Brigade, was in one of them.

But Chandru Butani’s account of his son’s experiences is immediate, raw, throbbing and is perhaps the first authentic, first-hand account by an Indian American of life with the US army in Iraq.

Sleeping on top of an ambulance… gazing at the night sky in a steamy, dark desert… seeing friends blown to pieces…

Butani and his wife had heard from their son sparingly, once in a while when he could send an email or talk over the phone, but army regulations did not allow him to give much detail.

Butani explained why they had been ‘on the racks’ all the while. Raj had been posted in Ramadi, which forms part of the Sunni Triangle, an area with the highest resistance to US presence.

The “first authentic, first hand account” part is wrong of course, but a doctor does provide a different perspective than a tank commander.  My own cousin was a Devil Doc in the group of Marines that sped toward Baghdad during the opening week of the war.  Having to care for friend and foe with equal vigor is a difficult situation from what he told me.

Said father Butani, ‘One of the worst incidents happened when his Physician Assistant and closest friend, who shared room with him at the Ramadi Base, was slain when an IED blew his vehicle to smithereens. I remember Raj being devastated for several weeks. Being his closest friend, he read out the eulogy, and he completely broke down.

You can read more about this Lehigh University Alum here.

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Torture on Diego Garcia? (updated)

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This tidbit about an Amnesty International report yesterday on extraordinary rendition caught my eye:

Others have suggested “high-value” detainees could be held secretly in Diego Garcia, a British-held island in the Indian Ocean that the United States rents as a strategic military base. [Link]

Torture is hardly a newcomer to the Indian Ocean. You only have to go a bit north of the atoll to see it in practice by both intelligence and garden-variety cops on the subcontinent. But has the CIA joined the party? The Toronto Star reported last month:

… intelligence analysts say Diego Garcia’s geographic isolation is now being exploited for other, darker purposes… These prisoners are known as “ghost detainees” or the “new disappeared,” and they’re being subjected to treatment that makes the abuses at the military-run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad and Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba look small-time, say intelligence analysts…

Analysts say there are at least a score of unacknowledged facilities around the world… one, they suspect, on Diego Garcia, where two navy prison ships ferry prisoners in and out… the United Nations said it will investigate a number of allegations from reliable sources that the U.S. is detaining terrorist suspects in undeclared holding facilities, including on board ships believed to be in the Indian Ocean. “Diego Garcia is an obvious place for a secret facility,” says American defence analyst John Pike. “They want somewhere that’s difficult to escape from, difficult to attack, not visible to prying eyes and where a lot of other activity is going on. Diego Garcia is ideal.”

The British government has flatly denied detainees are being held covertly on the island. When asked last year, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state Lawrence DiRita didn’t deny it outright, saying only, “I don’t know. I simply don’t know.” [Link]

Hambali (Riduan Isamuddin), the leader of the Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, responsible for the 2002 terrorist bombing in Bali, is currently being held on the island. [Link]

Diego Garcia is a 6Å“-by-13-mile coral atoll in the Indian Ocean south of Sri Lanka. It’s as long as Manhattan and three times as wide, but with much less usable land. With a huge central lagoon protected on three sides by land, it’s an equatorial paradise. The lagoon reaches depths of 60-100 feet with coral underneath.

· Ã‚· Ã‚· Ã‚· Ã‚·

In the early ’70s, the British government forcibly deported the 2,000 Iloi residents, mostly coconut farmers, to Mauritius to make way for a military base which it leased to the U.S.:

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Why does Pakistan support Jaish and Lakshar? [updated]

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I have a most un-mutinous confession to make – there are lots of things in the world I don’t understand, yet I still blog about them. One of these things is the Pakistani government’s continuing support of Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, two Pakistan based militant/terrorist groups that claim Kashmiri independence as their goal. As I mentioned earlier, the Pakistani government has a very soft policy towards these two organizations:

Some security analysts in Pakistan have been critical of the government’s seemingly soft stance in relation to Harkat and Jaish – wondering why they have not been dealt with as severely as some of the other groups. [BBC]

These two groups were implicated in the attack on the Indian Parliament that came just a few months after the 9/11 attacks in the USA:

The atrocity of 13 December [2001] when five terrorists attacked the Indian Parliament, killing eight officials and a gardener, has given New Delhi the high moral ground. New Delhi insists that the five were Pakistanis and belonged to two Pakistan-based terrorist groups – Jaish-e-Mohamed (Army of the Prophet Mohamed) and Lakshar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pious). Islamabad has denied the claim and refused to accept the bodies. [cite]

They’re also the only terrorist group linked with the first group of British bombers:

Not only is there no clear link between the two sets of suspects, there is no established link between either group and al-Qaeda or any other known terror network, say British officials. There are lots of tantalizing links back to Pakistan from the July 7 gang, three of whom had parents born there. When Shehzad Tanweer — who killed seven on a train near Aldgate station — and Mohammed Sidique Khan — who killed six at Edgware Road station — left Leeds to visit Pakistan in 2004, they were frequently seen with members and recruiters of the banned militant organizations Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, according to several people in Samundri, a town near the village where Tanweer stayed with his uncle. [cite]

Here’s the question – why does Musharraf continue to support these two groups, given the high costs involved?

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One step forward, two steps back

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Herr Musharraf, whom one commenter claims is our ‘best option,’ is reportedly training the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan:

Afghan officials allege that Taliban and allied fighters who fled to Pakistan after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 are learning new, more lethal tactics from the Pakistani military at numerous training bases. “Pakistan is lying,” said Lt. Sayed Anwar, acting head of Afghanistan’s counter-terrorism department. “We have very correct reports from their areas. We have our intelligence agents inside Pakistan’s border as well… They say they are friends of Americans, and yet they order these people to kill Americans…” [Link]

Clearly Anwar hasn’t had any PR training — he has the balls to call a spade a spade. In contrast, newspapers always hasten to add the Pakistani military’s denial, injecting artificial ‘balance’ by spreading that threadbare lie.

Zulfiqar Ali, a Pakistani journalist who freelances for the Los Angeles Times, recently reported that at least some training camps that were closed on Musharraf’s orders have been reopened. The government denies that there are training camps. But Ali, who also writes for the Pakistani magazine the Herald, visited one camp and found armed militants with fresh recruits as young as 13 undergoing 18-day “ideological orientation” and weapons training. Several sources said 13 militant camps had been reactivated in the Mansehra region alone in the first week of May…

“Our transport fleet is back, electricity has been restored and the communications system is in place,” a militant guide reportedly boasted to Ali. The reported reopening of militant training camps in Pakistan coincides with the discovery of the high-tech bombs in Afghanistan. [Link]

The triggers consisted of long-range cordless phones attached with black electrical tape to electronic boxes… “These phones are Pakistani-made phones,” he said… “They have Pepsis in the mountains while I can’t find them here in the city,” Nooristani said. “That means they are well supported.” [Link]

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