Notorious FARC leader captured in central Colombia

Colombian soldiers engaged in combat with FARC rebel forces in Cundinamarca, one of the central Colombian provinces. The operation resulted in 10 FARC members killed, and 8 captured.One soldier was killed and a kidnap victim was rescued.

Among the captured was one of the most notorious leaders and kidnappers of the group known as “El Negro Antonio”, sought after by authorities for over a decade with 33 arrest warrants outstanding.

BBC News reports:

It is a severe setback for the Farc, not just because of the number of rebels killed and captured, but because it hinders its plans to reopen a movement corridor into the capital, Bogota.

It was along this corridor that El Negro Antonio used to move kidnap victims out of Bogota and into the rebel-controlled lowland jungles.

Under their new leader Alfonso Cano, the Farc rebels have been seeking to retake the initiative snatched from them over the last five years by the US-backed military.

The rebels are seeking to bring their four-decade-old war back into the cities, particularly Bogota, where their attacks have far greater impact than in the countryside.

DEA busts 750 suspects in Sinaloa cartel crackdown, seizes over 23 tons of drugs

CBS News reports that the DEA has coordinated and executed night raids on and arrested 50+ in an operation designed to crack down on the Sinaloa drug cartel operating inside the U.S. Previously, more than 700 had been arrested over a 21 month period.

The interstate raids were conducted in California, Minnesota, and in surrounding suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Evidence seized includes “more than 23 tons of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines; plus dozens of planes, boats and cars; more than $63 million in cash; and scores of weapons in the operation.”

more about “drug crackdown“, posted with vodpod

Drug cartel violence reaching “saturation point”?

CBS News reports:  Mexico’s federal AG seems to think so, although more than 1,000 people have been killed in the first eight weeks of this year.

In an interview with the AP, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said “the world’s most powerful drug cartels are ‘melting down’ as they engage in turf wars and fight off a nationwide government crackdown.”

Wishful thinking?

Cross posted at rhetorican.com.

U.S.: “No question” that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons capability; Iran “test runs” nuclear reactor

The L.A. Times reports that in a news conference earlier this month, President Obama described Iran’s”pursuit” of weapons capability, echoing CIA Director Leon Panetta’s definitive comments made while testifying on Capitol Hill: “From all the information I’ve seen… I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability.”

Way different from the November 2007  National Intelligence Estimate, little over a year ago.

And they’re doing it with parts unknowingly supplied by the U.S.!!!!

Back in November 2008, Iran’s nuclear chief announced that the country is running 5,000 uranium centrifuges at its central plant. These operations are in direct defiance to U.N. demands that Iran cease its nuclear program. The report of 5,000 centrifuges is up 1,000 from the 4,000 reported in August.

Ruh roh. BTW, has any one seen Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan lately? Pakistan just released him from house arrest the other day.  You know, the rogue nuclear scientist, dubbed the “largest nuclear proliferator in history”, who has admitted to selling nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya? Anyone?

Click here for more on Iran and its pursuit of weapons capability.

UPDATE: (Guardian UK):  Iran makes its first test run of nuclear reactor in Bushehr: “Substitute fuel used in trial of facility that Tehran says is for energy, but west fears programme is front for building atomic weapon.”

Thirteenth body found in Albuquerque’s West Mesa; more questions arise…

The ‘burque’s local KOAT news reports:

The eleventh thirteenth body has been found on Albuquerque’s West Mesa in March 2009. The police reportedly have identified two of the victims so far: Michelle Valdez, who was 4 months pregnant at the time, and Victoria Chavez. Those two women are both on a list of “16 women who went missing in the 505 between 2001 and 2006. The women all struggled with drug addiction, had a history of prostitution and led transient lives.” No word yet on the identities of the other bodies, how long they’ve been there, how long they’ve been dead, and whether they are all women.

The latest discovery, coupled with the revealed identies and similar backgrounds of the two ID’d women, gives rise to further speculation that a single serial killer is responsible for all of the deaths.  Alternatively, experts have posited the theory that all of the bodies at that site “might be the end product of a ‘commercial enterprise’” where the killer or killers targeted victims of opportunity and were motivated by money, rather than other desires.

Update: 2 more bodies found, count rises to thirteen.

Chicago street cameras link to 911 call network

The NYT reports:

The City of Chicago has linked its street cameras via a CAD system to its 911 network. Well, yeah, so?

This means that, as soon as someone dials 911 to report a crime, as long as “the 911 caller is in a location within 150 feet of one of [the] surveillance cameras”, the live feed of the 911 call locale is captured from the street cameras and broadcast to the dispatch center. The dispatcher can look at the live feed, then pinpoint the suspect or location based on the initial call info and direct the officer who shows up at the scene where to go and who to catch.

Now, Durham, NC has recently tested out a program where six cameras (originally 13) were linked to its 911 system. While there were some good results, the overall ratings were reportedly less than satisfactory because of outdoor wireless system and bandwidth issues.

However, this technology “was paid for with a $6 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security.” and “has been in use since a trial run in December.”  Let’s see how this plays out.

What’s especially interesting (pay attention, those of you who have issues with your Big Brother):

In addition to the city’s camera network…the new system can also connect to cameras at private sites like tourist attractions, office buildings and university campuses.

Twenty private companies have agreed to take part in the program…and 17 more are expected to be added soon. Citing security concerns, the city would not say how many cameras were in the system.

(H/T, The Considered Opinion)

Beheadings by Islamic terrorists: the practice goes viral

In the wake of recent beheadings by Islamic terrorists (including victim Piotr Stanczak, a Polish national  executed by the Taliban in Pakistan) I’ve found it useful to investigate more about this particularly brutal trend: its history, the psychology behind it, the cultural and religious significance, and the ways in which the trend may be developing.

Click here for Middle East Forum article, Beheading in the Name of Islam.

Click here for American Chronicle article exploring the possibility that Mexican cartels are adopting the Islamic terrorist practice of beheading their targets.

Update: (via  Rhetorican and Instapundit):  Has this cultural meme gone viral?  The Boston Herald reports that Muzzammil Hassan, a Buffalo, N.Y. area man who runs an American-Islamic television station, is accused of beheading his wife. “Hassan is the founder and chief executive of Bridges TV, which he launched in 2004 in hopes of portraying Muslims in a better light.”

So is this to be a new, savage hallmark of “honor killings”? Shades of Henry VIII and Charles Perrault’s Bluebeard.

On a related note: click here for Middle East Quarterly article, Are honor killings simply domestic violence?

U.S. task force trains Pakistani military to combat insurgents

The New York Times reports:

A task force of U.S. military and technical specialists is currently working with local Army and Paramilitary troops in Pakistan to “help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s lawless tribal areas, American military officials said.”

They make up a secret task force, overseen by the United States Central Command and Special Operations Command.

Despite the political hazards for Islamabad, the American effort is beginning to pay dividends.

Click here for story.

Amid cartel violence, Juarez police chief steps down. Again.

BBC News reports:

Roberto Orduna, police chief of Ciudad Juarez, one of Mexico’s most violent border cities, has stepped down after two law enforcement officials were killed. Cartel gangs seem to have made good on their threats to kill 2 policemen every two days until Orduna stepped down. Orduna’s predecessor had vacated his position amid death threats and fled across the border.

While Juarez’s mayor, Jose Reyes, had previously insisted that the city would not back down to criminal gangs,after the two law enforcement officials were killed he stated that Orduna’s departure was the only way the authorities could protect policemen.

Ciudad Juarez is on the U.S. -Mexico border and is a key hub in the drug trafficking network.

The resignation was the latest evidence that drug gangs exercise formidable control over parts of northern Mexico, says the BBC’s Stephen Gibbs in Mexico City.

Recent widespread anti-army protests in the region appear to have been largely orchestrated by the cartels

Feds arrest alleged al Qaeda associate in southern California

ABC News reports:

The California DOJ released a statement that they arrested Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, an Afghan national, thirty five miles outside of L.A. in his house in Tustin on February 20, 2009 and charged him with “lying about his identity and immigration status, and failing to disclose that he has been associating with senior al Qaeda leaders.”

Apparently he didn’t disclose to immigration officals that his brother in law is “Dr. Amin al-Haq, who the indictment says is the security coordinator for Osama bin Laden.” He also didn’t let on that he is associated with “Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, another Islamic radical suspected of supporting ‘terrorists acts carried out by al Qaeda and the Taliban.’”

According to the FBI affidavit, Niazi also used hawalas, an unofficial, unlicensed system of transferring money via a large network of money brokers, to transfer money to Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as to family members in those two countries.

The government also claims Niazi failed to disclose to immigration officials a trip to Pakistan in May 2004. The government claims the deception was part of an effort to illegally obtain U.S. citizenship.

The FBI is also looking into Niazi’s associations within the United States, and trying to determine if he was sent here as an operative for al Qaeda.

House of Lords gives green light to boot al Qaeda brass back to Jordan

The Times Online reports:

"This is what a feminist looks like." No, I kid.

In response to an appeal from the Home Secretary, England’s House of Lords has ruled that Muslim cleric Abu Qatada, dubbed “Osama Bin Laden’s right hand man in Europe”, can be sent back to Jordan, where he faces terror charges. The judges ruled thus even though “they acknowledged he could face torture”.

Click here for a handy time line of events leading up to his deportation.

Recall that Britain has historically been notoriously slow in extraditing terror suspects, namely al Qaeda, to the U.S. for trial in the past. Such suspects have often “exploited a cumbersome legal process and a slow-moving bureaucracy to stave off deportation.”

Interesting. I see nothing “cumbersome” or “slow-moving” about Qatada’s case.

So, basically, Britain criticizes us for Guantanamo and other “remarked-upon” tactics we’ve used to combat al Qaeda. But when we make efforts to prosecute the accused in court, they subtly thwart our efforts.

However, they seem to have have no problem swiftly prosecuting individuals who pose threats to their safety and security and extraditing them back to probable torture…a “remarkable” tactic if I ever saw one!

Valentine’s message from Jammu and Kashmir: peace, love, and end terrorism

NDTV, one of the major broadcasting companies in India, reports:

At a time when India and Pakistan are dealing with the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks, there is a token of love from Jammu and Kashmir.

People gathered on the banks on the Chenab river close to the border with Pakistan to celebrate the Valentine’s Day by sending flowers and messages of peace across the border.

End terrorism was the message conveyed through balloons, pigeons, diyas and flowers.

After the Mumbai attack, relations between India and Pakistan have seen a new low. But here’s a wish for peace from the state that has suffered the brunt of terrorism.

Feinstein’s comment on drone aircraft embarassing to Pakistan?

Hmmm. The L.A. Times reports:

Senator Feinstein says that  “the Predator planes that launch missile strikes against militants are based in Pakistan,” Which in turn suggests “a much deeper relationship with the U.S. than Islamabad would like to admit”.   I thought Hillary was Secretary of State.

It’s useful to remember that Pakistan and U.S. officials have both already acknowledged that a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy exists between the two countries on unmanned U.S. drone aircraft. Granted, that’s not the same as Pakistan hosting the launch sites for the U.S., but it does denote a sort of facultative symbiosis.

Here’s what I posted back in November:

The Washington Post reported that both Pakistani and U.S. officials acknowledged a “don’t ask, don’t-tell” policy between the countries, which allegedly allows for unmanned drone aircraft to attack suspected targets in the less monitored, tribal, western area of Pakistan with public deniability, in exchange for repeated publicized protest and complaints by Pakistan concerning the air strikes.

View story here.

UPDATE: Times Online takes Feinstein’s slip and runs with it, ironically titling expose piece, “Secrecy and Denial”. I choose to blame the Times Online at this point, more people listen to it anyway.

Insurgencies that refuse to die

Via ForeignPolicy.com:

Five rebellions that somehow keep going years after the governments they antagonize declared victory.

Take a guess at which ones they are, before you click…

Booklist: A Quick and Dirty Guide to War, and other bedtime stories…

Some books I’ve been meaning to post on – Instapundit just reminded me of one of them (H/T):

Austin Bay’s and Jim Dunnigan’s A QUICK AND DIRTY GUIDE TO WAR, 4th Edition – The Tools for Understanding the Global War on Terror, Cyber War, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, China, Afghanistan, the Balkans, East Africa, Colombia, Mexico, and Other Hot Spots (piping hot, newly updated)

Also:

Bernard Rougier, Everyday Jihad

Chris Blatchford, The Black Hand: The Bloody Rise and Redemption of “Boxer” Enriquez, a Mexican Mob Killer

William Queen, Under and Alone: The True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America’s Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang

M.F.K. Fischer, How to Cook a Wolf

I just threw this last one on, for good measure. But hey, to quote John Updike, she was a “poet of the appetites,” writing about her love for food and cuisine during WWII in Europe when times were tough and food was rationed. A useful perspective during our own (less) challenging times.

Mangia!

U.S. military failed to track 200K weapons to Afghanistan

NYT reports:

The American military has not properly tracked tens of thousands of weapons the Pentagon bought and shipped to Afghan security forces, leaving the arms at risk of being stolen or sold to militants, according to a federal report that is to be presented at a House panel hearing on Thursday.

American military officials failed to keep complete records on about 87,000 rifles, pistols, mortars and other weapons — about one-third of all light arms the United States sent to Afghan soldiers and police officers from December 2004 to June 2008, auditors from the Government Accountability Office found. Further, American military trainers kept no reliable records on 135,000 more weapons donated by 21 countries, including Hungary, Egypt, Slovenia and Romania.

Click here for PDF of this report.

Who really won in Israel’s election? Avigdor Lieberman?

Daniel Pipes, distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution and founder of the Middle East Forum (H/T), argues at The Corner, on NRO that he did (click link, scroll down).

While we wait to see whether Livni or Netanyahu gets to form the government (is there a unity government in the cards?), Lieberman may have grabbed the public’s focus by introducing a new issue into Israeli politics: the place of Israel’s Arab citizens.

Lieberman, who served as director-general of Netanyahu’s prime ministerial office and is the founder of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, has  argued that they “should lose their citizenship and their right to live in Israel unless they declare their loyalty to the Jewish state.”

Pipes goes on:

This topic has clearly struck a nerve among the Israeli Jewish electorate and prompted responsible Arab voices to acknowledge that Israeli Arabs have “managed to make the Jewish public hate us.” As I wrote in 2006, Israel’s “final enemy” may finally be joining the battle. The consequences of this for the Arab-Israeli conflict as a whole could well be profound.

Also interesting to note: Tzipi Livni made some comments along the campaign trail, such as the one to high school students in Tel Aviv, that suggest that some of the stances of this Kadima party centrist may not be as far from Lieberman’s as we thought:

My solution for maintaining a Jewish and democratic State of Israel is to have two nation-states with certain concessions and with clear red lines…and among other things, I will also be able to approach the Palestinian residents of Israel, those whom we call Israeli Arabs, and tell them, ‘your national solution lies elsewhere’.

Saudi Arabia raises terror alert for 85 suspects tied to al Qaeda

Today, INTERPOL issued a record-level list of 85 terror suspects “sought by Saudi Arabia for allegedly plotting attacks against the country and for suspected links to al Qaeda….The alert today was sent by the INTERPOL Secretary General at the request of the agency’s National Central Bureau in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The suspected terrorists are 83 Saudis and two Yemenis, according to INTERPOL”.

According to INTERPOL and other sources, al Qaeda is expected to attempt another strike in the near future, in large part because later this month is the 13th anniversary of the first WTC bombing.

This seemed a bit thin to me. Really, what’s so significant about the 13th anniversary that merits extra special care and a record alert by the Saudis? I mean, are jihadis as superstitious about the number and do they white knuckle their theater seats watching Jason Voorhees like Westerners?

Apparently former FBI agent and media consultant Brad Garrett thinks there’s some thing else at work as well:

He speculated that the record alert – which was requested by Saudi Arabia – is a possible effort by the country to look like a team player on the terrorist-fighting front, after long being criticized for its lax security and funding of extremist groups.

“It certainly shows, on some level, the Saudis’ intentions of being serious about terrorism and pursuing people who have committed terrorist attacks,” said Garrett.

Garrett added: “There’s a lot of internal unrest in Saudi Arabia, and I think the powers that be there obviously have some concerns about their own security internally. To reach out to the rest of the world to say we’re with you, these are bad guys and we want you to help us catch them, I think for Saudi Arabia, that’s a fairly big statement.”

Read full ABC News article here.