Deaths test Syrian ceasefire; Pentagon edges toward coordination with Russia; He’s in charge of preventing the next Snowden; Using a flip phone won’t save you; and just a bit more...
The latest Syrian ceasefire’s biggest test yet just occurred over the past 12 hours, particularly around the eastern edge of Damascus where “both Islamist faction Faylaq al-Sham and the Fateh al-Sham Front—formerly Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate” are present, AFP reports this morning from the capital. AP reports that Syrian state media SANA said the shelling violates the cease-fire, and a monitoring group said Thursday’s shelling has led to the first three deaths since the ceasefire began on Monday.
“Rebels said government forces had pushed into Jobar, which is the neighborhood closest to central Damascus in the sprawling, opposition-held area of East Ghouta,” CBS News reports. “A Syrian military official, however, told French news agency AFP that rebels drew the army response by attempting to push westward into Damascus from Jobar.”
And in a further illustration of how difficult it will be to follow the ceasefire’s reported aims of separating “moderate” from extremist rebels, “the Saudi-backed Jaysh al-Islam faction, one of the biggest rebel groups in Syria, which is based in East Ghouta,” is also in Jobar, CBS adds. “The group falls under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, which has received U.S. support. Its commander, Mohammad Alloush, is the opposition’s chief negotiator in the talks in Geneva that yielded the cease-fire.”
But the first airstrikes, which occurred late last night, reportedly came from the Assad regime in the northern portion of Hama governorate, where rebels are planning a large offensive.
Reuters tallies up the alleged violations, which include “a Syrian military source saying the rebels were responsible for dozens of breaches including gun, rocket and mortar fire in Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Latakia. The rebels said Syrian army jets had struck in Hama and Idlib, and used artillery near Damascus.”
In Aleppo, Russian troops are guarding a key route into the city—Castello Road, which has yet to see aid trucks rolling in—though there have been numerous conflicting reports this morning as to whether or not Assad’s troops remain guarding the road as well. Allowing aid to Aleppo is one of the key elements of the ceasefire struck by Washington and Moscow.
And up north of Aleppo, in the town of Al-Ra’i, moderate rebels from the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army this morning reportedly “threatened to kill the U.S. Army soldiers operating inside the northern Aleppo town... if they do not leave immediately.” A bit more on that, here. And perhaps the best take on the story comes from the Middle East Institute's Charles Lister this morning, here.
How the Pentagon is planning for what’s next in Syria, should the ceasefire satisfactorily hold through the weekend: It will need more troops—or, at least the U.S. military will need to divert troops from elsewhere across the world “because U.S. military leaders don’t want to erode” their current counter-ISIS capabilities, AP’s Lita Baldor reported Thursday night.
But before that even begins to occur, Defense Secretary Ash Carter will have to deliver a waiver to Congress requesting the Pentagon begin coordinating with the Russian military. Strict limitations against that were created after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Carter has until Monday to deliver that letter, Baldor writes. “U.S. officials said Carter hasn’t done that yet, and he likely won’t until the required cease-fire and humanitarian aid conditions are met for the seven days. Until then, officials said the U.S. military team setting up the JIC will not be able to meet with their Russian counterparts.”
Another due-out: where to get the U.S. surveillance assets to send to the proposed Joint Implementation Center.
The bottom line, should we even satisfactorily make it to Monday: “Once the center is set up, airstrikes won’t start happening immediately. [U.S. military officials] said it will take time to share and analyze the recommended target data and make certain that innocent civilians or allies aren’t hit.” And that’s not including the time it will take to work out additional matters like “how much control either country may have over strikes taken by the other, how will the review process unfold, do either have a veto over any target, and who would be the final arbiter in any disagreements.” More from AP, here.
But, hey, here’s a silver lining that’s popped up from a study of past ceasefires: “Failed ceasefires, according to several studies, create a virtuous cycle. Slowly, it ends even the worst war,” Max Fisher of The New York Times writes. “One of the best predictors of a peace agreement’s success is simply whether the parties had prior agreements, even if those earlier cease-fires failed...Over time, participants see cease-fires as less risky. If all sides come out feeling that they at least broke even, they grow more willing to make another deal. In Syria, with the status quo so terrible, breaking even doesn’t require much.” Read Fisher’s take in full, here.
Russia’s only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, is making its first combat deployment off the coast of Syria—in part, according to Russia, to showcase precision-guided munitions. So how does it stack up against U.S. flattops? Business Insider writes: “The Kuznetsov, which has suffered from a litany of mechanical failures and often requires tow boats, will stay tight to Syria's shores due to the limited range of the carrier’s air wing. The air wing, comprised of only 15 or so Su-33s and MiG-29s and a handful of helicopters, does not even have half of the US Nimitz class carrier’s 60-plus planes. Furthermore, the carrier lacks plane-launching catapults. Instead, the carrier relies on a ski-jump platform that limits how much fuel and ordnance the Russian jets can carry.”
And about those PGMs: “Russian media quotes a military source as saying that with the new X-38 guided bombs, ‘we reinforce our aviation group and bring in completely new means of destruction to the region.’ The same report states the bombs are accurate to within a few meters, which isn't ideal, but an improvement.” More here.
In Iraq, Baghdad’s planes dropped what’s “believed to be the largest number of leaflets dropped since World War II,” this time over and around Mosul, Kurdistan24 reported Thursday, with an accompanying photo spread.
From Defense One
The Man in Charge of Stopping the Next Snowden // Tech Editor Patrick Tucker: Moving past the summer of 2013 has proven difficult for the intelligence community.
A Peek into French Signals Intelligence // Council on Foreign Relations’s Alex Grigsby: France’s former top SIGINT spy confirms an advanced persistent threat and muses about a merger with German intelligence.
ICYMI: Global Business Brief by Marcus Weisgerber // Bezos’ big rocket; industry group warms to Trump?; building planes ‘without tools’, $38 billion Israel deal, and more.
Welcome to Friday’s edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. On this day in 2013, the U.S. and Russia agreed to a deal to eliminate the Assad regime’s chemical weapons in Syria. Three years later, the UN believes the Assad regime (and ISIS) are still using CWs in Syria. (Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.)
It was Groundhog Day on sequestration with Congress’ “wake-up calls” from military leadership, Thursday on Capitol Hill. But, as Military Times’ Leo Shane III wrote, there’s “still no real plan for repeal” of the budget caps under which each service chief testified they “cannot defend the country.”
And that was just the set-up for what was possibly the most uncomfortable exchange: “Are Congress and the president the biggest threats to the military today?” asked Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina. But Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain quickly interrupted the chiefs from answering Graham’s question, announcing this line: “We lied to the American people. The Budget Control Act and sequestration have done nothing to fix our national debt.”
So where to go from here? “The fiscal 2016 budget—which included temporary relief from the budget caps—runs out at the end of the month,” Shane reports. “Lawmakers aren’t close to finalizing the fiscal 2017 defense budget, and are expected to pass a continuing resolution to keep government operations active through the November elections. The four service chiefs said that’s better than a federal shut down, but means another fiscal year of uncertainty and delayed budget planning. And they said that if a full budget isn’t passed until the next session of Congress in 2017—as has been discussed by a number of lawmakers—they’ll have even more planning problems than ever.” Read the rest, here.
“Here's a crazy idea: Budgets should be considered on their own merits, not linked like defense and non-defense is now,” says the Heritage Foundation’s Justin Johnson with his budget take, here.
What happens when data thieves start releasing altered emails?: The accelerating parade of stolen emails has security guru Bruce Schneier thinking ahead. He writes, “It’s one thing for someone to air your dirty laundry. It's another thing entirely to throw in a few choice items that aren’t real.” Read, here, for some chilling possibilities.
Meanwhile, certain members of Congress have been trumpeting their purported abstention from the modern era. “I’ve never worried about an email being hacked because I haven’t sent one,” said erstwhile presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. This provoked the ACLU’s Christopher Soghoian, who responded with an on-point series of tweets: “Congress learning wrong lessons from Russian doxing. Unencrypted voice calls with flip-phones are not the solution...Remember the many IMSI catchers placed around DC by foreign govs? Wait till Russia starts leaking Senators’ calls.” Wait, “IMSI catchers”? These are the eavesdropping machines sold under the name of Stingray and others, beloved of American police forces and whomever has deployed them around Washington.
Oh, and FBI Director James Comey says you should cover up your laptop’s webcam. “Heck, yeah,” Comey responded, when a CSIS interviewer asked him whether he did so. Reported The Independent, here,“There’s some sensible things you should be doing, and that’s one of them.” (Comey still wants a backdoor into your encrypted files, though.)
Fifteen Long Island residents have filed a $500 million class-action lawsuit alleging a Northrop Grumman factory in Bethpage, N.Y., that built the Apollo Lunar Module and Hellcat fighter, exposed them toxic chemicals. “The residents allege that Northrop Grumman did not properly warn the community about contamination generated on a parcel of more than 600 acres in Bethpage, where the company created, manufactured and tested airplanes and craft used in space exploration between the late 1930s and 1996,” Newsday reports. The lawsuit alleges residents were exposed to “arsenic, cadmium, chromium, polychlorinated biphenyls and volatile organic chemicals that can cause cancer.”
Bella Kholodny, one of the plaintiffs, told the paper: “I have cancer from this. My husband has cancer. Everybody has cancer.” A Northrop spokesman said “the allegations [in the lawsuit] appear to be entirely without merit.” More here.
Apropos of nothing: The U.S. and Indian armies are participating in a joint infantry exercise in northern India called “Yudh Abhyas,” but the Americans have taken to calling it “Exercise You Da Boss.” More on that, here.
The Japanese navy is ready to start training patrols with their American counterparts to help back them up in the region around the South China Sea, Reuters reports. Why? To uphold the rule of law, for one thing. Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada told a crowd Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that if the world condoned attempts to change the rule of law—as in the case of territorial grabs like Beijing's in the SCS—and allowed “rule bending” to succeed, the "consequences could become global."
His remarks formed an interesting contrast with a statement earlier this week from the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte when he said “Only China will help us" before adding, "America just gave you principles of law and nothing else."
But Japan has been busy helping its allies, Reuters writes: “Japan said this month it was ready to provide Vietnam with new patrol ships, in its latest step to boost the maritime law-enforcement capabilities of countries locked in territorial rows with China. It also agreed to provide two large patrol ships and lend up to five used surveillance aircraft to the Philippines, another country at odds with China over sovereignty issues in the South China Sea.” More here.
Meantime, the Pentagon is moving forward on its Asia-Pacific mission with the mindset that the President of the Philippines is not a wildly unpredictable ally. Military Times has that angle, here.
ICYMI: China’s influence-peddling in Australia has Washington concerned, The Wall Street Journal editorial board warned this week in a kind of U.S. take on a story posted three days ago in The (thoroughly-paywalled) Australian. Writes friend of The D Brief from Down Under: “The catalyst was the resignation from ministerial duties last week of rising star Sam Dastyari (Senator for the state of New South Wales), following revelations that he had accepted Chinese money and verbally undermined Australia's stance on the South China Sea.” Catch the Journal’s take here, or The Australian’s over here.
And have a great weekend, everyone!