A group of former military officials and ambassadors have signed onto a statement warning the U.S. is “at risk of being eclipsed by other Arctic states for access and influence.”
The defense experts chastised North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members for not mentioning escalating Russian Arctic ambitions at a recent meeting in Warsaw, Poland on Russian aggression.
“While the U.S. has used its position (as Chair of the Arctic Council) to elevate Arctic issues, it has not built the presence required to maintain regional security and stability, an effort that will need years of consistent effort,” reads a statement signed by 15 former officials who are led by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones that was obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Jones and his colleagues are worried that the U.S. is falling behind Russia in terms of its Arctic presence. Recently, the Kremlin unleashed its newest nuclear-powered icebreaker. Russia now has six such icebreakers trolling the North Pole, while the U.S. has none, down from two previously. In 2013, the Department of Homeland Security said the U.S. needed six or more icebreakers to meet its Arctic needs.
Jones’ statement comes after the Obama administration further restricted drilling in Alaska’s Arctic waters. Meanwhile, Russia has been refurbishing old Soviet-era military bases in the region and drilling for oil and natural gas, despite low energy prices.
“Due to a convergence of foreign interests and the Arctic’s changing physical geography, the U.S. is at risk of being eclipsed by other Arctic states for access and influence,” wrote Jones and the others.
The warning comes as nothing new. Experts have been warning President Barack Obama about loss of influence in the Arctic for several years. In 2015, Department of Energy (DOE) advisers urged Obama to support developing Alaska’s offshore oil and gas reserves, or face losing out to the Kremlin and China.
“Internationally, other countries such as Russia are moving forward with increased Arctic economic development during this time of change,” the DOE’s National Petroleum Council reported in 2015.
“Russia is drilling new exploration wells in the Kara and Pechora Seas and is expanding its naval and transportation fleet,” council advisers wrote. “While China does not have Arctic territory, it is investing millions of dollars in Arctic research, infrastructure, and natural resource development.”
“To remain globally competitive and to be positioned to provide global leadership and influence in the Arctic, the United States should facilitate exploration in the offshore Alaskan Arctic now,” the council reported.
The Arctic is estimated to hold 15 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 30 percent of its gas reserves.
Now, with Russian ambitions once again on NATO’s radar, Jones and other experts are urging the alliance to take Arctic policy more seriously.
“Recent events in Europe reinforces the need for the U.S. and our allies to remain committed to a robust and cooperative framework in the Arctic, as resurgent powers will seek to take advantage of trans-Atlantic divisions to further their interests,” Jones and the others wrote. (For more from the author of “Former Military Officials to Obama: We Could Lose the Arctic to Russia” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/MxlLIE7k1s3BcLmM2tieQhia0nZnv7bY.jpg580940Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-07-12 01:23:142016-07-12 01:23:14Former Military Officials to Obama: We Could Lose the Arctic to Russia
Russian aggression, radical Islamist terrorism, the refugee crisis, Brexit, Afghanistan. The list of challenges NATO leaders faced at the biennial summit here over the weekend was diverse, highlighting what some consider to be a post-Cold War moment of truth for the alliance to prove it still matters.
Speaking to reporters Saturday, President Barack Obama addressed what he called a “pivotal moment” for NATO.
“In the 70 years of NATO, we have perhaps never faced so many challenges at once,” Obama said. “We’re moving forward with the most significant reinforcement of our common defense at any time since the Cold War.”
NATO’s modern charge is tricky.
The alliance must reassure eastern members who are wary of Russian aggression while not antagonizing Russia into a back and forth of military one-upmanship. Meanwhile, many NATO states, particularly those in Western Europe, are feeling the domestic political pinch of the combined threat of radical Islamist terrorism and a wave of refugees from war-torn Middle Eastern states.
This all comes as Europe deals with post-Brexit fallout and the rise of nationalist sentiment across the Continent, which collectively eats away at popular support for multinational institutions such as NATO, founded as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“The Warsaw Summit comes at a defining moment in the history of our alliance,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday. “With unpredictable threats and complex challenges from many directions, NATO has responded. We have launched a wholesale reinforcement of our collective defense and deterrence. The biggest since the end of the Cold War.”
Pomp and Circumstance
The two-day NATO summit was held at Warsaw’s national stadium. Delegates and journalists from around the world filled the hallways, rubbing shoulders with world leaders and military officials. Journalists jockeyed for position at press conferences, afterwards scrambling to the sprawling media center to file dispatches.
The stadium was under security lockdown, and one could constantly hear the sounds of police sirens as the motorcades of world leaders arrived and departed.
The city was also on high alert. Warsaw’s streets were unusually quiet, long stretches sealed off for security reasons. Soldiers patrolled with weapons drawn. Friday, the sky roared with the sound of jet noise as NATO warplanes performed fly-bys for visiting leaders.
Obama’s Saturday evening press conference drew by far the biggest audience. The summit’s largest press briefing venue was filled to capacity, with journalists standing huddled along the walls, craning their necks for a better view of the U.S. president while under the watchful eyes of the Secret Service.
Like a conductor before an orchestra, a cacophony of clicking camera shutters matched Obama’s every hand gesture as photojournalists hunted for the perfect shot.
Obama commented on the Dallas shootings before he segued into the importance of NATO and the legacy of America’s commitment to defend Europe.
“Generations of Americans have served here for our common security,” Obama said. “In good times and in bad, Europe can count on the United States.”
‘Legacy of Leadership’
Obama also addressed worldwide tides of anti-globalization sentiment, which many political watchers say was partly responsible for British voters choosing to leave the European Union.
“I believe the process of globalization is here to stay. It’s happening. It’s here,” Obama said.
He added:
NATO is an example of a really enduring multilateral organization that helped us get through some really challenging times. There are fewer wars between states than ever before, and almost no wars between great powers. And that’s a great legacy of leadership in the U.S. and Europe and Asia after the end of World War II that built this international architecture that worked.
Since 2014, the Islamic State terrorist group has attacked six NATO countries—the United States, Canada, Denmark, France, Belgium, and Turkey. And terrorist plots have been thwarted in other NATO countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom.
Yet, despite the mounting threat, summit talks in Warsaw largely focused on responding to Russian aggression in Ukraine and the Russian threat to NATO’s eastern members.
“For sure Russia is a bigger threat,” Luke Coffey, director of The Heritage Foundation’s foreign policy center, told The Daily Signal:
ISIS is a terror threat and does not pose an existential threat to any NATO member. Whereas Russia invading Estonia could mean the end of the country—literally.
The French Demur
There has been, however, some breaking of ranks within NATO over Russia.
On Friday, French President Francois Hollande said: “NATO has no role at all to be saying what Europe’s relations with Russia should be. For France, Russia is not an adversary, not a threat.”
Hollande added:
Russia is a partner which, it is true, may sometimes, and we have seen that in Ukraine, use force, which we have condemned when it annexed Crimea.
Hollande’s statement contrasted with the language other NATO leaders used regarding Russia, including British Prime Minister David Cameron.
“The multinational spearhead force that we agreed to at the Wales summit [in September 2014] is now operational,” Cameron told reporters Saturday. “It’s capable of deploying anywhere on alliance territory in just a few days. So it sends a strong, clear message to Russia that NATO stands ready to respond quickly to threats.”
Also calling out Russia, Obama said “there will be no business with Russia as usual” until the Kremlin fulfills its part of the Minsk II cease-fire accords in Ukraine.
The EU, NATO, and the United Nations all have condemned Russia’s 2014 takeover of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula as illegal.
NATO also continues to condemn the ongoing flow of Russian troops and military hardware into eastern Ukraine to support separatist forces. This movement is a violation of the Minsk II cease-fire agreement, for which the EU maintains punitive economic sanctions against Moscow.
Eastern Promises
Russia’s actions in Ukraine, along with a pattern of aggressive fly-bys by Russian warplanes in the Baltic Sea region, have left NATO’s eastern flank rattled.
One of the summit’s key news items was the announcement that NATO will deploy four combat battalions to Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania on a rotational basis beginning next year. The battalions will be fielded by Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
This supplements a previously announced U.S. plan to deploy about 3,500 additional troops to Eastern Europe on a rotational basis.
Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, said the alliance’s troop deployments will send a message that “an attack against one ally will be met by forces from across the alliance.”
“NATO is as strong, as nimble, and as ready as ever,” Obama said Saturday. “NATO is sending a clear message that we will defend every ally.”
The Kremlin pushed back against NATO’s planned troop deployment, calling the perceived threat from Russia “absurd.”
“It is absurd to talk about any threat coming from Russia at a time when dozens of people are dying in the center of Europe and when hundreds of people are dying in the Middle East daily,” Dmitry Peskov, press secretary to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told reporters Friday, according to Reuters.
Responding to Peskov’s comments, Poland’s top diplomat, Witold Waszczykowski, told reporters in Warsaw on Friday:
An absurd situation would be if we forgot about the military actions against Georgia, and Ukraine in Crimea and Donbas, about Russia’s military engagement in Syria, and about the incidents and provocations by Russian aircraft over the Baltic Sea.
Russia’s ‘Indefensible’ Actions
The main driver of NATO’s eastward pivot, and some say the alliance’s renewed post-Cold War purpose, has been Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.
NATO’s 2014 summit in Wales came on the heels of Ukraine’s Maidan revolution and Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula. Two years later, Crimea is still in Russian hands and Russia still supports separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine in which people die on an almost daily basis.
“Two years on from Russia’s illegal actions in Ukraine, our message to Russia has not changed,” Cameron said Saturday. “Such action is indefensible and wrong. And we will always stand up for the sovereign right of countries to make their own decisions.”
Russia’s actions have eroded the longtime assumption among European powers that the kind of state-on-state conflicts that ravaged Europe in the first half of the 20th century could never happen again.
Reflecting this new reality is a push by some NATO leaders to increase military spending across the alliance.
Out of 28 member countries, only five—the United States, the United Kingdom, Estonia, Greece, and Poland—currently spend 2 percent or more of their gross domestic product on defense, an obligation agreed to during the summit in Wales.
On Saturday, Obama pushed alliance members that are not hitting the 2 percent mark to beef up their defense budgets, saying:
After many years NATO has stopped the collective decline in defense spending. Over the past two years, most NATO members have halted cuts and begun investing more in defense. And this means defense spending across the alliance is now scheduled to increase.
‘De Facto Alliance’
Ukraine is not a NATO member state, but a partner country to the alliance. NATO members therefore are not obligated to defend Ukraine militarily.
Yet, NATO has taken other steps to support Ukraine.
In Warsaw, NATO leaders met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to outline a comprehensive assistance package to help Ukraine make key political reforms and modernize its military to meet NATO interoperability standards.
The package also tags funds to help Ukraine counter the threat of improvised explosive devices on the battlefield, bolster its cyber security, and rehabilitate wounded soldiers.
During a joint press conference Saturday with Stoltenberg, Poroshenko called NATO’s support for Ukraine a “de facto alliance.”
The Ukrainian president pointed to the historical significance of NATO’s holding its biennial summit in Warsaw 61 years after creation of the Warsaw Pact, the collective defense treaty the USSR and Soviet satellite states signed in the Polish capital in 1955.
“It is our common responsibility to change Russia’s aggressive behavior,” Poroshenko said. “We are grateful that NATO stands by Ukraine.”
Stoltenberg said Russia must stop its “political, military, and financial support for separatists” in east Ukraine.
Stoltenberg made clear, however, that the question of Ukraine joining NATO as a full member was “not currently on the table,” and the alliance would address the issue of membership at a later stage.
Stoltenberg added a thinly veiled warning against any Russian efforts to derail Ukraine’s budding NATO ties.
“Every nation has the right to decide its own path,” the NATO leader said. “No one else has the right to intervene.” (For more from the author of “Russian Threat Takes Center Stage at NATO’s Warsaw Summit” please click HERE)
South Korea said that North Korea on Saturday test-fired what appeared to be a submarine-launched ballistic missile off its eastern coast.
The missile was fired from a location near the North Korean coastal town of Sinpo, where analysts have previously detected efforts by the North to develop submarine-launched ballistic missile systems, said an official from Seoul’s Defense Ministry, who didn’t want to be named, citing office rules. He couldn’t immediately confirm how far the missile traveled and where it landed.
North Korea’s acquiring the ability to launch missiles from submarines would be an alarming development for rivals and neighbors because missiles from submerged vessels are harder to detect in advance. While security experts say it’s unlikely that North Korea possesses an operational submarine capable of firing missiles, they acknowledge that the North is making progress on such technology. (Read more from “Seoul Says N. Korea Test-Fires Submarine-Launched Missile” HERE)
Russian television broadcast footage of a policeman tackling a man the report said was an undercover CIA agent trying to enter the U.S. embassy in Moscow without identifying himself.
In the grainy, approximately 15-second clip, the man exits a taxi and is almost immediately tackled by a policeman who emerges from a guard box and wrestles him to the ground. In the ensuing struggle, the man manages to push himself through a door into the embassy compound, while the officer attempts to pin him down.
The incident, which took place at night on June 6, was caught on a security camera, according to the report shown Thursday on Russia’s NTV channel. The channel didn’t describe how it obtained the footage.
Russian-U.S. relations have deteriorated to a level not seen since the Cold War as the two powers find themselves on opposite sides of conflicts from Ukraine to Syria. In a sign of worsening ties, Moscow and Washington are boosting troop levels that face off against each other on Russia’s borders with the Baltic states, which are all members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. (Read more from “Russian TV Shows U.S. Diplomat Decked by Embassy Policeman” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/OMON_soldiers_in_Red_Square_Moscow.jpg21423270Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-07-07 21:29:332016-07-08 02:32:57Russian TV Shows U.S. Diplomat Decked by Embassy Policeman
The Obama administration imposed sanctions for the first time Wednesday on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for his alleged role in perpetuating widespread human rights abuses.
The U.S. also blacklisted 10 other regime officials for allegedly helping Kim run prison camps, torture citizens, hunt down defectors, and maintain a nationwide system of propaganda and censorship.
The new Treasury Department sanctions freeze any of the individuals’ assets in the U.S. and prevent Americans from doing business with the blacklisted officials.
“Human rights abuses in the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] are among the worst in the world,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement announcing the sanctions Wednesday.
“The government continues to commit extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrest and detention, forced labor, and torture. Many of these abuses are committed in the political prison camps, where an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 individuals are detained, including children and family members of the accused,” he added. (Read more from “U.S. Imposes First Sanctions on North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for Human Rights Abuses” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Un_bouffeur_de_nems.jpg744992Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-07-07 00:52:302016-07-07 00:52:30U.S. Imposes First Sanctions on North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for Human Rights Abuses
China’s government sought to downplay fears of conflict in the South China Sea after an influential state-run newspaper said on Tuesday that Beijing should prepare for military confrontation.
Editorials in the Global Times newspaper ahead of a July 12 international court ruling on competing claims in the South China Sea by China and the Philippines said the dispute had already been complicated by U.S. intervention.
It faced further escalation due to the threat posed by The Hague-based tribunal to China’s sovereignty, the paper said.
“Washington has deployed two carrier battle groups around the South China Sea, and it wants to send a signal by flexing its muscles: As the biggest powerhouse in the region, it awaits China’s obedience,” the Global Times said.
The paper said China should speed up development of its military deterrence. While it could not keep up with the United States in the short-term, “it should be able to let the U.S. pay a cost it cannot stand if it intervenes in the South China Sea dispute by force,” the paper said. (Read more from “China Says Wants Peace After Paper Warns on South China Sea Clash” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Defense.gov_News_Photo_110210-N-5989K-066_-_Amphibious_assault_vehicles_from_the_amphibious_transport_dock_ship_USS_Denver_LPD_9.jpg15002100Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-07-06 00:16:502016-07-06 00:16:50China Says Wants Peace After Paper Warns on South China Sea Clash
As the death toll from the weekend truck bombing in Baghdad climbed to 157, Iraq’s embattled prime minister ordered new security measures, including abandoning the use of bomb-detection wands that U.S. experts pronounced worthless years ago.
But security forces were still using the devices Monday evening, as a string of smaller bombings in the capital killed 16 people and wounded dozens more.
Sunday’s suicide attack by the Islamic State group was the single deadliest bombing to hit Baghdad in more than a decade of war and insurgency.
Also Monday, five convicted terrorists were executed in Baghdad, the Ministry of Justice said in an announcement that appeared aimed at restoring faith in Iraq’s security forces in the wake of the devastating attack.
Firefighters and medical teams were still uncovering bodies from the city’s Karada neighborhood Monday morning. Officials said a dozen people were missing and at least 60 of the dead were women and children. At least 190 people were wounded. (Read more from “Security Ordered Tightened as Death Toll in Baghdad Hits 157” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/1280px-Car_bomb_in_Iraq.jpg8481280Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-07-05 02:25:252016-07-05 02:25:25Security Ordered Tightened as Death Toll in Baghdad Hits 157
It is now clear to even the most obtuse observers that Barack Obama misled the American people, treated the feckless Republican Congressional leaders like the fools they are, and basically behaved like a Bond villain in ensuring that the Iranian terror state could secure nuclear weapons.
Iran’s leaders continue to celebrate the deal, most recently issuing public statements during an iftar meal to break the Ramadan fast. Each of Iran’s leaders took turns calling for the destruction of the United States, Israel, and the West.
President Hassan Rouhani said the last year’s nuclear deal “was the cheapest way to achieve Iran’s goals and interests…”
…The country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday called for student associations to establish a “unified anti-US and anti-Zionist front” among the Muslim world’s students, Tasnim News Agency reported…
…On a similar note, the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Brig.-Gen. Hossein Salami, said on Friday “more than 100,000 missiles are ready to fly from Lebanon,” according to Tasnim…
…“Today, the grounds for the annihilation and collapse of the Zionist regime are [present] more than ever,” he declared, saying there are “tens of thousands of destructive long-range missiles” from Islamic territories aiming at all of “occupied” Israel… “[and] the opportunity to destroy Israel is now better than ever.”
When war breaks out between Iran and its neighbors — and it will — you can thank Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Their legacy will be apocalypse and their names will be synonymous with death and calamity. (For more from the author of “OBAMA’S PARTNERS IN PEACE: We Have 100,000 Missiles in Lebanon; “Opportunity to Destroy Israel Is Now Better Than Ever” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/8376186495_6413175b6d_b-2.jpg7311024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-07-04 23:55:402016-07-04 23:55:40OBAMA’S PARTNERS IN PEACE: We Have 100,000 Missiles in Lebanon; “Opportunity to Destroy Israel Is Now Better Than Ever”
Hilarious (and presumably true) tale spotted at Reddit and authored by 1nf1del (caution: strong language):
In the U.S. Marines, doing a mock war in the Norwegian city of Trondheim with the Dutch, Germans and other allies, training in urban combat. My infantry unit was positioned in a large soccer field next to an elementary school. Keep in mind there was no actual combat, even simulated; it was mostly just practicing maneuvers and tactics. But we still looked out of place with weapons and gear, etc. It’s f***ing February. In Norway. Cold as balls. Snow up to our knees. Norway obviously has no snow days, so the kids were all in school.
Anyway, so Norway has this most delicious and amazing delicacy, I have no idea what it’s called, but it’s basically a bacon-wrapped hot dog; we just assumed it was called Candy of the Lord. As Americans we were naturally and instantly addicted. You find them at gas stations, and there just happened to be one on the other side of the school where we were camped. A few of my fellow Marines and I requested permission to go to the gas station and we set out on our way.
We made it to right about where the main entrance of the school was, and the doors opened; school was out. There were only a few kids, probably 6 or 7 years old. Lots of talking and laughing. Gawking at us as we walked by, with our guns and huge ridiculous snow suits. One precocious little bugger made shooting noises at us. We made shooting noises back.
And then someone in my group. I don’t know who. God help me I don’t know who…
Someone threw a snowball and hit a little girl in the leg.
And those little Norwegian children unleashed hell.
There was a shrill cry in unintelligible Norseman and the doors to the school burst open. School children flooded out like a never-ending flood of something that never ends. Screeching, smiling, sprinting – how the f*** were they sprinting?? – little bastards were slinging snowballs faster than the laws of physics should allow. It was like that movie Elf. If you can imagine riding in a fast car in a snowstorm and sticking your head out the window. Now imagine the snowflakes that are hitting your face are the size of snowballs. We couldn’t f***ing see. We couldn’t run. We could barely breathe. Holy f***….
We tried to return fire and threw one, maybe two half-packed, shitty snowballs that fell apart in the air, arms flailing like drunk octopi. I am from Texas. We were a unit stationed in North Carolina. We were so outmatched and out of our element, it only made them laugh harder. We were cutoff from our main forces. We tried to perform a flanking maneuver but f*** me they were fast. I think some of them were throwing rocks!
My comrades. I could see them speed waddling in their huge suits back to camp like a f***ed up pair of white Teletubbies, under withering fire. f*** tactics, f*** me, f*** the Candy of the Lord, this was survival! I was the slow one in the group. My snowboots were too big but they were the smallest size they had at Issue g**dammit!! My Marines left me behind.
I tried pulling my hood over my head and keeping my head down. No longer content to pelt my defenseless body with ballistic snow, the enemy swarmed me and dragged me down, cackling like a pack of hyenas descending on a wildebeest. I tried to sling them off by spinning. I came out of one of my boots and fell. I began to scream and plead for them to stop but they neither understood nor gave a single Nordic f***. They literally pinned me down with about five kids on each limb. It was then that I actually thought – oh shit. I’m really in trouble. My snow-mittens were ripped off and flung into trees. They started shoving snow down my suit. Have you ever had anyone drop an ice cube down your shirt?
Well now imagine someone shoveling handfuls of ice cubes down your shirt. It literally shocked the breath out of my body.
They left me laying like a Family Guy accident victim. Moaning and screaming in the cold. Rifle packed with snow and dirt. Boot buried some-f***ing-where. They ran away laughing, jabbering in their crazy language. I lay there trying to figure out just what in the great American f*** had happened.
TL;DR – Norwegians discover way to defeat American Marines using bacon and small children.
LPT -don’t ever, ever get in a snowball fight with Norwegian school kids.
TIL – there are more names for shoving snow down peoples’ clothes than should be reasonably expected.
EDIT – Wow. Thanks for the GOLD and thanks for all the kind words! You guys rock. Glad I could make you laugh with my inadequacies. hahahaha. Worst snowfighters ever.
EDIT EDIT Candy of the Lord= baconpølse, and yes – it was filled with cheese! Very important detail that I left out. Sorry.
(For more from the author of “Norwegians Discover Way to Defeat American Marines Using Bacon and Small Children” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/RawBacon-1.jpg21463003Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-07-04 01:12:432016-07-04 15:18:37Norwegians Discover Way to Defeat American Marines Using Bacon and Small Children
As Bangladesh comes to grip with the horrific terrorist attack July 1 at a café in an upscale neighborhood in Dhaka, the Sheikh Hasina government must focus on shutting down local Islamist militant groups and cooperating closely with U.S. authorities to determine whether the terrorists had operational links to global groups.
The attack, which involved a 12-hour hostage siege, left at least 20 hostages and two Bangladeshi security personnel dead. The victims included nine Italian, seven Japanese, one Indian, two Bangladeshi, and one U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin. Three of the victims were students at U.S. colleges.
According to media reports, the six attackers were all Bangladeshi, and five of them were individuals the local police had tried to arrest previously. The attackers had asked the hostages to recite verses from the Koran, and those who could not were brutally tortured and killed, according to survivors of the ordeal.
In the last three years, religious extremists in Bangladesh have stepped up their attacks, systematically murdering liberal bloggers, writers, professors, and activists, as well as members of the minority Hindu community.
The attacks appear aimed at silencing free speech and Islamizing Bangladeshi society.
There also appears to be competition between terrorists claiming allegiance to al-Qaeda and those associating with the Islamic State (ISIS). The Bangladeshi authorities arrested several members of a local terrorist group, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, in 2015 for making or attempting to make contact with ISIS.
In another sign of its growing interest in Bangladesh, ISIS recently published a five-page article titled, “The Revival of Jihad in Bengal,” in its flagship magazine “Dabiq,” which warned of further attacks against Westerners in Bangladesh.
Al-Qaeda has also turned more of its attention to Bangladesh in recent years. In September 2014, when al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri launched its South Asia wing (al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent), Zawahiri released a video that assured Muslims in India, Bangladesh, and Burma that the organization would help “rescue” them from injustice and persecution.
In January 2014, Zawahiri released an audio message calling on Bangladeshis to rise up against the state.
The Hasina government has blamed previous extremist attacks on the political opposition. But given the demonstrated ISIS and al-Qaeda interest in Bangladesh, it does not make sense for the Bangladeshi government to dismiss out of hand any connections of the attacks to global terrorist movements.
The July 1 attack was a planned and coordinated event that was at least inspired by ISIS ideology, although ISIS operatives may or may not have directed the attack. Either way, it is clear that Bangladesh has a serious Islamist extremist problem on its hands, and simply blaming the political opposition is not an acceptable response.
Moving forward, the U.S. must insist on fully transparent and joint investigations of this and previous attacks to determine any potential global linkages and how the terrorist networks can be crushed.
Hasina deserves credit for emphasizing the secular principles of the country’s founding. However, her government must now focus on putting into place the security measures necessary to protect those who want to uphold these principles. (For more from the author of “Bangladesh Attack Shows Depth of Country’s Extremist Problems” please click HERE)
