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Monday, January 18, 2010

Elite US troops ready to combat Pakistani nuclear hijacks



The US army is training a crack unit to seal off and snatch back Pakistani nuclear weapons in the event that militants, possibly from inside the country’s security apparatus, get their hands on a nuclear device or materials that could make one. The specialised unit would be charged with recovering the nuclear materials and securing them. The move follows growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan’s military, a series of attacks on sensitive installations over the past two years, several of which housed nuclear facilities, and rising tension that has seen a series of official complaints by US authorities to Islamabad in the past fortnight. “What you have in Pakistan is nuclear weapons mixed with the highest density of extremists in the world, so we have a right to be concerned,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer who used to run the US energy department’s intelligence unit. “There have been attacks on army bases which stored nuclear weapons and there have been breaches and infiltrations by terrorists into military facilities.” Professor Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan security research unit at Bradford University, has tracked a number of attempted security breaches since 2007. “The terrorists are at the gates,” he warned. In a counterterrorism journal, published by America’s West Point military academy, he documented three incidents. The first was an attack in November 2007 at Sargodha in Punjab, where nuclearcapable F-16 jet aircraft are thought to be stationed. The following month a suicide bomber struck at Pakistan’s nuclear airbase at Kamra in Attock district. In August 2008 a group of suicide bombers blew up the gates to a weapons complex at the Wah cantonment in Punjab, believed to be one of Pakistan’s nuclear warhead assembly plants. The attack left 63 people dead. A further attack followed at Kamra last October. Pakistan denies that the base still has a nuclear role, but Gregory believes it does. A six-man suicide team was arrested in Sargodha last August. Fears that militants could penetrate a nuclear facility intensified after a brazen attack on army headquarters in Rawalpindi in October when 10 gunmen wearing army uniforms got inside and laid siege for 22 hours. Last month there was an attack on the naval command centre in Islamabad. Pakistani police said five Americans from Washington who were arrested in Pakistan last month after trying to join the Taliban were carrying a map of Chashma Barrage, a complex in Punjab that includes a nuclear power facility. The Al-Qaeda leadership has made no secret of its desire to get its hands on weapons for a “nuclear 9/11”. “I have no doubt they are hell-bent on acquiring this,” said Mowatt-Larssen. “These guys are thinking of nuclear at the highest level and are approaching it in increasingly professional ways.” Nuclear experts and US officials say the biggest fear is of an inside job amid growing anti-American feeling in Pakistan. Last year 3,021 Pakistanis were killed in terrorist attacks, more than in Afghanistan, yet polls suggest Pakistanis consider the United States to be a greater threat than the Taliban. “You have 8,000-12,000 [people] in Pakistan with some type of role in nuclear missiles — whether as part of an assembly team or security,” said Gregory. “It’s a very large number and there is a real possibility that among those people are sympathisers of terrorist or jihadist groups who may facilitate some kind of attack.” Pakistan is thought to possess about 80 nuclear warheads. Although the weapons are well guarded, the fear is that materials or processes to enrich uranium could fall into the wrong hands. “All it needs is someone in Pakistan within the nuclear establishment and in a position of key access to become radicalised,” said MowattLarssen. “This is not just theoretical. It did happen — Pakistan has had inside problems before.” Bashir Mahmood, the former head of Pakistan’s plutonium reactor, formed the Islamic charity Ummah Tameer-e-Nau in March 2000 after resigning from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. He was arrested in Islamabad on October 23, 2001, with his associate Abdul Majeed for alleged links to Osama Bin Laden. Pakistan’s military leadership, which controls the nuclear programme, has always bristled at the suggestion that its nuclear facilities are at risk. The generals insist that storing components in different sites keeps them secure.

Germans should stop using Microsoft Internet Explorer



Germany has advised its internet users to avoid using Microsoft Internet Explorer and opt for other browsing software due to security risks to Internet Explorer. The advice was issued by Federal Office of Information Security at a time when Microsoft has admitted that one of the reasons for the recent attacks on Google system was due to the flaws in security of Internet Explorer. Microsoft’s German representative has rejected the advice saying that the people who attacked Google’s system had a specific agenda. Microsoft has said that steps have been taken to enhance the browser’s security. German officials still believe that Internet Explorer is not completely safe.

Barak in Turkey to repair ties



Israel's defence minister has held talks with senior Turkish officials in Ankara as part of efforts to mend strained ties between the two nations. Ehud Barak met Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey's foreign minister, for closed-door talks in the capital on Sunday, after a visit to the tomb of Turkey's secularist founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Israeli officials said the visit was aimed at "warming" bilateral relations. "The Israeli-Turkey alliance is of mutual strategic importance," the Reuters news agency quoted an aide to Barak as saying. Barak later met Vecdi Gonuk, his Turkish counterpart, for talks on a nearly $180m arms deal. Turkish officials are currently in Israel to test unmanned drone aircraft that Israeli companies have manufactured for Turkey's army. The project has been long delayed over technical problems and political tensions.

First Wave of U.S. Forces Leave Iraq



The base loudspeaker no longer wakes them up with calls for blood donors; armored trucks sit idle in neat rows. The U.S. Marines who stood at some of the bloodiest turning points of the Iraq war are packing up and leaving. Among the first troops to invade in March 2003, and the first to help turn enemy insurgents into allies, the Marines will be the first major wave of American forces to go as the U.S. military begins a withdrawal to be completed by the end of next year. For them, as for the rest of the U.S. military, this has been the longest war since Vietnam. At their peak in October 2008, an estimated 25,000 Marines were in Iraq, mostly in the country's western Anbar province. Now only about 4,000 remain. They, too, will be gone shortly after the Marines officially hand over responsibility to the Army on Saturday. "The security and stability that exists here is well within the means of the Iraqi security forces to maintain," Maj. Gen. Rick Tryon, the Marine commander in Iraq, said in a recent interview. "You don't need United States Marines to do this at this point. So it's time, and it's timely." Besides, he added: "Afghanistan is calling. "The Pentagon already has deployed a Marine battalion to Afghanistan in a 30,000-troop buildup set to peak this summer.More than 40 percent of all deaths of coalition forces in Iraq between 2004 and 2006 were inflicted in Anbar, a vast mostly desert province stretching from the western outskirts of Baghdad to the borders of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Of the nearly 3,500 U.S. troops killed so far in hostile action in Iraq, at least 851 were Marines. At the sprawling Marine base outside Al-Asad, 100 miles west of Baghdad, Master Sgt. Matthew Sewell recalls being awakened by the appeals for blood. As a severely wounded Marine was flown in by helicopter, "We'd go down there and stand in line, waiting to give blood," said Sewell, 26, of N. Ft. Myers, Florida. "You'd see 200 people standing in line. We'd all stand there until the guy was stabilized or we gave blood."

Kurdish community welcomes death sentence of "Chemical Ali"



An Iraqi court sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majeed, the Saddam Hussein henchman widely known as "Chemical Ali", on Sunday to death by hanging for a 1988 gas attack that killed about 5,000 Kurds, a court official said. Many women and children were killed in gas attack. Kurdish people in Arbil city for their part expressed their satisfaction with this verdict.

Drone strike kills over a dozen suspected militants near Afghan border



A US drone attack Sunday killed 20 militants in an area of Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt where local Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud reportedly escaped death days ago, officials said. The attack took place in the area of Shaktoi, where US missiles pounded an extremist hideout on Thursday, 40 kilometres (25 miles) southeast of the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region, Miranshah. That raid triggered rumours that Mehsud had been killed or injured, but the chief of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) released an audio message late Saturday denying reports of his demise and vowing revenge for the US strikes. Security officials said US drones appeared to be tracking Mehsud, in a surge in strikes by unmanned spy planes. Sunday's deadly bombing was the 10th US drone strike to hit Pakistan's tribal belt this month. "The target was a militant compound," said a security official in the area. "Twenty militant deaths have been confirmed." An intelligence official said that drone aircraft fired at least three missiles and that militants had ringed the demolished compound in the remote and mountainous area and were digging out the bodies. "The drones are apparently tracking and targeting Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, whose presence is frequently reported in the area," he said. Another security official, who also asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the US strikes, said it was too early to tell if any high-value militant targets were among the 20 killed. Mehsud released a new audio recording on Saturday to dispel rumours of his death, which the military had said they were investigating. The TTP said Mehsud left the site of the attack less than an hour beforehand.