Defeating Terrorist Support Structures After Mumbai - Part III

by John Solomon

This is the third report of a three-part series addressing the terrorist structures involved in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.The first report provided an initial summary of the attacks with an emphasis on operational support.

The second report examined the structure of Jamaat-ud Dawa (JuD), the non-profit arm of Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT), the terrorist group believed to be responsible.

This report addresses the vulnerabilities that LeT/JuD exploited in the private and public sectors. In addition, the article assesses whether JuD will survive the ban the UN imposed on it on 10 December 2008....

California Lawmakers Face Lockdown as Budget Falters in Senate

By Michael B. Marois and William Selway

Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -- California lawmakers failed to reach agreement on how to eliminate a $42 billion budget shortfall as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger prepares to shut down hundreds of public works projects and fire thousands of state workers.

Senate President Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat, plans to lock lawmakers in the capitol unless they pass a $40 billion package of tax increases, spending cuts and bond sales today. The bills, backed by the Republican governor and by Democrats, remain one Republican vote short. ....

Re-evaluation of National Security Ordered

By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — The homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, is re-evaluating the largest federal program for testing the country’s ability to respond to terrorist attacks, one of several Bush administration initiatives she has ordered to come under review.

As governor of Arizona, Ms. Napolitano sent a searing two-page letter to her predecessor as secretary, Michael Chertoff, complaining that a $25 million national exercise in October 2007, which she and 23,000 other federal, state and local emergency workers participated in, was too expensive, too long in planning and “too removed from a real-world scenario.”

Now, in her first weeks as head of the Homeland Security Department, Ms. Napolitano has ordered a review of that program and several others, including cybersecurity, a strategy for protecting the border with Canada, and the vulnerability of power plants and other critical infrastructure.

The directives implicitly raise questions about how well the Bush administration prepared the nation’s defenses against a terrorist attack. But they also reflect what homeland security analysts say is Ms. Napolitano’s desire to apply her practical experiences as a border-state governor to several important homeland security policies.

Her pointed comments on the emergency preparedness exercise, which she repeated last month at her Senate confirmation hearing, offer a glimpse into how Ms. Napolitano may retool one the centerpieces of the Bush administration’s domestic security architecture.

“If we’re going to be doing these kinds of things, and they are valuable, the underlying philosophy is a good one, but they need to be in my view streamlined,” Ms. Napolitano told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs last month.

Ms. Napolitano’s frustration with the system in place for rehearsing responses to natural disasters and terrorist attacks has struck a chord among state and local emergency managers, many of whom have long complained that the Homeland Security Department and its crisis-response component, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have failed to consult fully with local communities in disaster planning.

“If we’re going to do these exercises, D.H.S. needs to collaborate to a greater extent with local governments so we’re not wasting resources, we’re not spinning our wheels and we’re making the country safe,” said Russell Decker, emergency manager for Allen County, Ohio, who is also president of the International Association of Emergency Managers, which comprises 4,300 state and local agencies.

Congress is also eager to ensure that lessons learned from each exercise are broadly disseminated.

“If you participate in an exercise, you want to know its strengths and weaknesses,” said Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, who heads the House homeland security subcommittee that oversees emergency preparedness.

It will not take long to put Ms. Napolitano’s new thinking to the test. FEMA is completing plans for the next major exercise, scheduled for late July. Agency officials were reluctant to reveal too many details, but emergency planners in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas will be tested on how well and how quickly they detect a terrorist plot that begins with a mock attack in Europe and continues with a simulated strike against the United States from plotters infiltrating the border from Mexico.

The exercise this year, for the first time, focuses on preventing a potential attack, not just responding to a crisis, federal officials say.

Emergency planners say they have already taken Ms. Napolitano’s criticisms to heart, improving federal coordination with state and local partners in planning the disaster drill this summer, increasing the frequency of national exercises to every year from every two, cutting costs to encourage wider participation and providing feedback within 90 days to participants on what went well and what did not.

“Most of them were already on the radar scope in one way, shape or form,” said Steve Saunders, a retired Army National Guard major general who is an assistant FEMA administrator overseeing the national exercise division, “but her letter helped crystallize, I think, some of the things we needed to do.”

Mr. Saunders said he expected some changes as a result of the review ordered by Ms. Napolitano, but he cautioned in an interview, “don’t mess around” significantly with this year’s exercise or drills on the drawing board for 2010 and 2011 that will simulate an improvised nuclear bomb attack and a catastrophic earthquake.

Mr. Saunders said states and localities had already started budgeting for those exercises. “If we start shifting near-term activities,” he said, “it becomes fairly problematic.”

Sean Smith, the Homeland Security Department spokesman, said it was too soon to predict what Ms. Napolitano would decide, but added, “Her experiences with this were less than ideal, and it is something she will be reviewing.”

In addition, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is conducting a review of FEMA’s emergency preparedness programs, including the national-level exercises, that will be completed by the end of April.

States and cities routinely conduct emergency preparedness drills. Specialists in domestic security agree that it is also essential to hold large-scale national emergency exercises to test how federal, state and local officials and emergency personnel work together to prevent or deal with terrorist attacks.

Congress directed the government in 1998 to carry out a national exercise program, formerly called Topoff for the “top officials” who participate. There have been four major exercises since then, simulating chemical, biological and nuclear attacks. The exercises now also include foreign partners, like Britain and Canada.

Specialists in domestic security say Ms. Napolitano offers a new perspective to the program.

“She brings to the table real-world experience as a governor, as a person responsible for implementing these programs where the rubber hits the road,” said David Heyman, director of the domestic security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Ms. Napolitano’s unhappiness with the program stems from her participation in the five-day October 2007 exercise, which simulated a dirty-bomb attack against Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; and Guam. It was planned to test how well federal, state and local officials responded to such a cataclysm.

Within days after the exercise wrapped up, Ms. Napolitano complained to Mr. Chertoff that federal officials never contacted top Arizona emergency officials during the drill, did not involve her as much as she said she would have been during a real disaster, and gave participants too much advance information about the drill.

“When you have months to prepare for an exercise and you know the exact scenario being contemplated,” Ms. Napolitano said, “a large part of the exercise’s value is lost.

Obama Plans Dramatic Changes to Reduce Nuclear Arsenal

By: Dave Eberhart

If he has his way, President Barack Obama will dramatically change the nuclear weapons policy of the U.S. – leaving behind Cold War doctrine and looking to a model of a minimal nuclear arsenal -- just ominous enough to do the job of deterrence.

Obama may be mired in the economic stimulus debate, but the clock is also relentlessly ticking on some volatile policy decisions regarding the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal – the stuff of that deterrence. Foreign nations, friend and foe, are poised to discover Obama’s nuclear agenda, while some critics within the U.S. are fearful that the new president will go too far, too fast....

U.S. intelligence report projects possible collapse of Palestinian Authority

from World Tribune.com

WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community has raised the prospect of the collapse of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority.

The report, titled "Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community," said Hamas, in the aftermath of its war with Israel in early 2009, has intensified the threat to the PA.

The report warned that both Fatah and the PA were split over such issues as a successor to chairman Mahmoud Abbas

as well as government reforms. The report said Hamas planned to exploit the divisions within Fatah and could challenge the PA over the next year.

"Disagreement between Fatah and Hamas about a range of issues such as the timing of national elections

and formation of a unity government could lead Hamas to challenge the legitimacy of Abbas's government and will remain obstacles to Fatah-Hamas reconciliation," the report said.

The PA has also been threatened by the increasing divisions within the ruling Fatah movement in the West Bank. The report said the battle between Fatah's old guard and younger members has blocked plans to convene the movement. Abbas's term had been scheduled to expire in January 2009.

"These internal conflicts threaten to fracture the party and damage its prospects in the run-up to PA presidential and legislative elections in 2009 or early 2010," the report said. "There is no consensus among Fatah officials regarding a replacement for President Abbas, who has not groomed a successor, and no potential leader has gained Fatah's full support."

The Hamas threat has been enhanced by Iranian financing, training and weapons since 2006.

"Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are engaged in an intense competition, with both sides seeking to emerge from the conflict in a stronger political position, but relations between the two organizations have been further embittered by the crisis," the report said.

Obama promises Palestinians he'll protect 'biblical heartland'

By Aaron Klein

President pledges to protest Jewish housing developments ....Obama is said to favor Israel withdrawing from nearly the entire West Bank.

Israel recaptured the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day War. The territory, in which about 200,000 Jews live, is tied to Judaism throughout the Torah and is often referred to as the biblical heartland of Israel.

The book of Genesis says Abraham entered Israel at the West Bank city of Shechem (Nablus) and received God's promise of land for his offspring

He was later buried with the rest of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs, except for Rachel, in Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs. The West Bank's Hebron was site of the first Jewish capital.

The nearby West Bank town of Beit El – anciently called Bethel, meaning "house of God" – is where Scripture says the patriarch Jacob slept on a stone pillow and dreamed of angels ascending and descending a stairway to heaven. In the dream, God spoke directly to Jacob and reaffirmed the promise of territory. Earlier, God had promised the land of Israel to Abraham at Beit El. In Exodus, the holy tabernacle rested just north of Beit El in Shiloh, believed to be the first area the ancient Israelites settled after fleeing Egypt.

British Muslim student killed 20 in suicide bomb attack in Somalia

By Daily Mail Reporter

A university student who became a suicide bomber in Somalia is believed to be the first of a new wave of British-based Islamic terrorism.

The 21-year-old reportedly blew himself up at a military checkpoint killing up to 20 soldiers in the southern Somali town of Baidoa.

Raised in Britain, the unnamed bomber dropped out of a business studies course at Oxford Brookes University to travel to his country of origin in October 2007.

A member of al-Shabaab, a youth militia fighting to impose Islamic Sharia law, the man, from Ealing, recorded a martyrdom video before his trip imploring fellow British Somalis to follow his example.

In the video he says: 'Oh my people, know that I am doing this martyrdom operation for the sake of Allah.

'I advise you to migrate to Somalia and wage war against your enemies. Death in honour is better than life in humiliation.'

The bomber, whose family still lives in London, is the first reported case of a Somali based in Britain carrying out terrorist acts in the east African country.

However it is unclear whether British security services are aware of the case, which happened when the Somali prime minister was staying at a hotel near the checkpoint.

Jihadist websites claimed more than 20 Ethiopian soldiers were killed. The same group was reported to have killed six aid workers in December.

The killings come amid warnings that dozens of Islamic extremists have returned to Britain from terror training camps in Somalia.

MI5 director-general Jonathan Evans has raised concerns that Somali-trained militants could be plotting to carry out attacks in Britain or attempting to attract new recruits.

Yassin Omar and Ramzi Mohammed, two of the four men convicted of the failed July 21 2005 London Underground bombings, came to Britain as asylum seekers.

The Somali community in Britain numbers around 250,000, the largest in Europe, with the bulk of those coming to the country as refugees within the last 20 years.

Peter Neumann, a terrorism expert at the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London, said: 'The numbers I hear (going from Britain to Somalia) are 50, 60 or 70 but in reality we don't know.

'You don't need big numbers for terrorism. Somalia will never become another Pakistan, but that does not mean it is not a threat.'

Ethiopian forces occupied parts of Somalia in 2007 after ousting the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) from the capital, Mogadishu.

The Ethiopians withdrew last month as part of a peace deal agreed between the government and moderate Islamists, leaving African Union peacekeepers and Somali soldiers - although many believe that they will not be able to keep advancing extremists at bay.

More than 16,000 people have been reported killed in the past two years.