SIT-REP 8-18; Wednesday, August 18, 1999

In This Report: World Crisis Roundup- Part I; Kosovo

Roundup:

Our foreign policy remains in disarray, in my view --it is not making sense, much less any progress. This is true of both the defense initiative to prevent countries' building weapons of mass destruction (WMD's) and in terms of economic progress in reforming the "corporate cronyism" of conglomeratist economies such as Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Russia, etc. I think it best to encapsulate what I think is going on, then follow up by writing more detailed situation reports on each of these major strategic issues.

Research, research! This has been a very challenging few weeks for me, catching up on other geopolitical crises, while watching the KFOR-NATO-EU adventures in nation-building down Kosovo way. I have been looking carefully into China's adventures in Cuba & Panama, into the FARC-ELN insurrections in Colombia, into China v. Taiwan, India v. Pakistan, Beijing v. Falun Gong, the Chechen invasion of Dagestan and the continued game North Korea has been playing over missiles and foreign aid. Then there is this apparent buildup to a crescendo in the air war over Iraq's "No Fly" zones.

Indonesia and Timor: Then there is the East Timor question raised in the last issue --no commitment has been made despite the detailed assertions of the Melbourne paper, The Age. As violence has not exploded in the territory as it begins its UN-sponsored plebiscite, the UN has, so far, made do with a few hundred police and military observers, along with election monitors. Kofi Annan has asked the UN Security Council to expand the military mission from 50 to 300 and Jimmy Carter is among those watching the election, which will end on August 30. If violence does explode, we might see an emergency force zooming in at the last minute, starting with the Marines, but probably involving the light infantry stationed in Hawaii. It seems that the US has some leverage over the Indonesian Army and the government of President BJ Habibie, leverage in terms of funding to revive its shaken economy, more important than a remote-half island.

There are other Indonesian matters I have not written about before, the Muslim majority of Indonesia has not only taken its rage out on Chinese merchants during last summer's disorder, there is an Islamic secessionist movement in the oli-rich province of Aceh in northern Sumatra, which the Indonesian army is trying to crush. Some 140,000 refugees are on the hoof just now and the army is not setting new standards in human rights sensitivity. The rebels are reported to be smuggling arms in from Thailand; though that is not a Muslim nation. One suspects covert support from Malaysia and we won't be surprised to hear that Osama bin Ladin's crowd pitching in.

There is also Muslim v. Christian violence in another province, complicated by the fact that the Christians are the natives, the Muslims, recent immigrants; mobs have been fighting pitched street battles in Indonesia's eastern Maluku region, once known as the Spice Islands. I suspect the Portuguese-Catholicized Timorese will vote their independence and that Indonesia will try to cooperate in shutting down operations of nationalist militias which have been trying to terrorize the Timorese into submission.

Indonesia's June Presidential-parliamentary elections have not been resolved and its economy remains in shambles, which further fuels the dissension in the 17,000-island archipelago. Local experts speak of "social disintegration." Interesting and a problem common to many nation-states. ``What we see now is social disintegration,'' Tommy Legowo, an analyst at the Center for Strategic International Studies, a Jakarta think tank, told Geoff Spencer of the AP last Wednesday. ``But social disintegration is only the start of territorial disintegration.'' President Habibie is maneuvering to gain parliamentary support from its many smaller parties, and army support to beat Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of the former dictator, Sukarno, in a November vote. Megawati won about 33% of the vote, coming in first, but does not have sufficient parliamentary or bureaucratic support to win that November vote easily.

Iraq - Turning up the heat: It is clear that Iraq is contriving an end-game for US-British air patrols over the two "No Fly" zones, now that it has effectively ended the UN's regime of inspections to eliminate Baghdad's WMD programs. The US tried to maintain a static policy for too long against an active and clever opponent. If Iraq wins, North Korea, Libya, Cuba and others win, as well.

Since last December's four-day air raid, Operation Desert Fox, US and British aircraft have attacked Iraqi air defenses more than a hundred times over the eight months since the first provocation on December 26^th. Steven Lee Myers wrote an interesting report on this in last Friday's New York Times, "With Little Notice, US Jets Have Been Hitting Iraq All Year," and noted that allied aircraft had hit 359 sites with over 1100 missiles and bombs. The aviators have "flown about two-thirds as many missions as NATO pilots flew over Yugoslavia in 78 days of around-the-clock war there," Myers noted.. These air attacks have been no more successful than those in the 78 days and nights of NATO's "Allied Force" war against Yugoslavia. Taken together, the two operations serve to discredit belief in strategic conventional air power as a credible instrument of coercion., of and by itself, or in conjunction with sanctions and embargo regimes.

To the point; after 7 months of using only anti-air artillery guns (AAA or triple-A), Iraq began firing missiles this week, even as the allies sought to step up the intensity of their retaliatory strikes against ground targets. Saddam's propaganda mill asserts more civilians are getting killed --more collateral damage. Western sympathizers are speaking up, getting on Public Television's Lehrer News Hour Tuesday night. Saddam has a three-legged strategy, turn on the missiles to provoke larger strikes, get his trading partners to lobby for an end to the 8-month air war, and get sympathetic western leftists to empathize with his civilian population in the media.

I suspect that these air strikes will go on a little longer, but since Saddam will not cave in, the US will have to stage another set of punitive strategic strikes --another "Desert Fox"-- then declare a victory --a hollow one. The US Central Command (CENTCOM) will have to watch Baghdad for a long time to come and the sanctions will fall away unless a resolute government takes office in Washington, then secures a new level of support from Iraq's neighbors.

Dagestan: I have always thought that the Caucasus region's ethnic disputes make the Balkans look like a relative playground scuffle and hold to that view despite the melodramatic propaganda exaggerating over the wars of the former-Yugoslavia. Though I could get deep into the subject of Moscow's continued manipulation of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, etc., for today I will confine myself to the immediate crisis. Its timing intrigues me, as it represents another Islamic-ethnic invasion of neighboring territory, not unlike the KLA adventure in Kosovo. Further, it involves oil pipeline route alternatives, and we find a large Balkan pipeline is about to be built across Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania, to bypass Turkey and the Bosporous channel. Third, Osama bin Ladin's boys are starting to show up in Chechnya, just as they showed up in Albania last year. To make a play on one of my fellow e-correspondent's favorite "hobby-horses," is this perpetual jihad for perpetual oil-commerce?

From December 1994 into 1996, Yeltsin's government and army attempted to suppress the secessionist-minded Chechens and lapsed into a disastrous mini-Stalingrad urban battle in the capital city of Grozny, also a hub of the old oil pipelines from the Caspian region to the southeast. This farce was superintended by the just departed Prime Minister, Sergei Stepashin (fired on Aug. 12^th, and replaced by another ex-KGB type, Vladimir Putin). Since the end of that war a local general, Aslan Maskhadov, has remained president and plays a cute game of "moderate" leadership, between ethno-religious nationalism and controlled kleptocracy, Moscow-style. But that war also spawned a rabid Islamic jihad army, headed by Shamul Basayev, who Grozny regards as a terrorist. Basayev led an invasion into Dagestan last week, with a fundamentalist army estimated at about 1200.

Though there are some Chechens in Dagestan, it is home to 34 ethnic groups and the natives have not embraced Basayev's xenophobic zealots. The Russian armed forces are weak and 3600 of their few truly combat-ready troops had just been dispatched to Kosovo. But they appear to be using air and ground forces to some effect in containing Basayev's assault, claiming that they have killed about 25% of his men already. But Basayev will have enough Afghan mountain fighters with him, and will seek to keep a battle going in the high ridges. Over time we will see what "lessons learned" the Russian Army has absorbed from Afghanistan and Chechnya --not to mention the lessons the US should have learned in Vietnam but have never acknowledged with an official report. (Note: Serbs should consider these lessons and the lessons of the war against the KLA carefully since their Interior Police and leaders made every mistake imaginable.)

The odds are in Russia's favor this time, but it will take some time to chase Basayev out of Dagestan.

Cuba, Panama and China: Oh, for the days of the Monroe Doctrine. I am beginning to wonder if China has not just outflanked Washington's incipient containment strategy, but has launched a Central American-Caribbean strategy to contain the US and to wear away at Taiwan's international supporters --several Latin American governments, Panama among them, are among the 30 states which still recognize Taipei and not Beijing,

In 1997, the Hong Kong port management corporation, Hutchison Whampoa, secured a 25 plus 25-year contract to manage the ports at both ends of the Panama canal (Balboa-Pacific coast and Cristobal-Caribbean), including scheduling of ship transits through the seaway. Hutchison Whampoa is controlled by Mr. Li Ka-shing. This contract is to operate "The Panama Ports Company."

A second Chinese operation has struck a 60-year lease with Panama to operate a free-trade export zone as "Great Wall Panama." Illegal Chinese immigration into Panama has surged, and more migration appears to be staging through Panama to other destinations.

Admiral Thomas Moorer is the leading critic of all this, and Trent Lott has taken up the criticism of the Clinton Administration's neglectfulness in earnest. "My specific concern is that this company is controlled by the Communist Chinese," Moorer recently told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in no uncertain terms. "They have virtually accomplished, without a single shot being fired, a stronghold on the Panama Canal." China thus controls about a third of the world's shipping by controlling the canal.

Now here's the interesting twist; the government of Panama changes on September 1^st and the US loses its remaining control in Panama on December 31^st. The outgoing government of Ernesto Perez Balladares signed these gamey deals, but China is also romancing the incoming government of Sra. Mireya Moscoso; Vice President-elect Alberto Vallarino visited Beijing last week. The US must depend on Mme Moscoso's government to get the Canal's operations back in hand and it does not appear that the Clinton Administration will lift a finger unless pushed hard by Congress.

Problems proliferate: Panama has been a base for air patrols monitoring Colombia drug smuggling air and sea traffic, but under Balladares' government the Colombian drug lords have moved into Panama itself. Beijing also has an interest in the drug trade. Then there is the ongoing guerrilla war in neighboring Colombia, which has lapped into southern Panama's Darien province, and into eastern Venezuela. Retired General Barry McCaffrey, Clinton's drug czar, has asked for $1Bilion to continue anti-drug operations, but with the White House not exercising itself to maintain Panama basing rights, the drug war is being sabotaged by its own masters.

As to China and Cuba, in the July 30th Wall Street Journal, "Those Men in Havana Are Now Chinese," by Jaime Suchlicki, reported that Beijing has been building up its intelligence capabilities in Castro's island despotism, even apparently taking an equity position in Russia's electronic signals intelligence facility at Lourdes --Clinton never got the Russians to shut that major NSA-like operation down.

Suchicki, director of the Institute of Cuba and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, wrote: "Evidence is mounting that China's main interest in Cuba is not dissimilar to a use that attracted the Soviets . . . It is an ideal spot for electronic eavesdropping on communications on the American mainland. In other words -- it is a good base for spying. It is also a useful relay point for routing intelligence back home."

During the past two years, he observed, Cuba and China have exchanged high level military delegations, including visits by Defense Minister Raul Castro and Cuba's top generals to China, and a trip to Cuba by General Dong Liang Su, head of the Chinese Military Commission. In February, a top-level Chinese military delegation, led by Defense Minister Chi Haotian, visited Cuba. It was the first time a Chinese Defense Minister had visited Cuba. "It should be no surprise," Suchlicki added, that China would want "an electronic espionage base close to American shores."

Cuba does not have much to offer Beijing, except for proximity as a listening post. Let us see what further develops between Havana and Beijing. Need I mention that there was an old Chinese community in Cuba and that we have a few Chinese-Cuban restaurants here in New York City?

Other Situations: I'll get into these next time, but it seems clear that China will not launch a major attack on Taiwan at this time --expect them to follow Sun Tzu's indirect strategies and do something surprising and unusual that will not upset President Jiang's meeting with Mr. Clinton, the 50^th Anniversary of Mao's victory over Chiang Kai-shek on Oct. 1^st, or renewed negotiations for China to enter the World Trade Organization. I do not believe China will invade Matsu, which has a garrison of 6,000 and hosts a healthy smuggling operation just three miles of the coast of Fujian Province.

In fact, China's ambitious President Jiang has four parallel initiatives going: a Communist Party personal reform program, "the three stresses," designed to improve party discipline and stifle corruption; the crackdown on Falun Gong and a second exercise cult, Xiang Gong; the initiative against Taiwan Presidnet Lee Tung-hui's new "two-states" theory of parity; and a new initiative for economic reform and growth announced by Jiang coming out of last week's annual leadership conclave at Beidaihe, a seaside resort. Getting Panama (or any of the 29 others) to change its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing would be a victory without a shot fired, just what Sun Tzu recommended 2400 years ago:

India-Pakistan: Pakistani troops fired directly at Indian Army troops along the border this week, so this border scuffle is getting worse, even as India undergoes new national elections in the next month. This will likely help Prime Minister Vajpayee's Hindu-fundamentalist BJP party, rather than hurt it. The Pakistani military and their Islamic fundamentalists appear to be pushing their luck to the limit, as India could squash Pakistan in a serious fight.

North Korea: I expect Pyongyang will go ahead with the test firing of its new missile. Proliferation of WMDs will continue as North Korea markets its products abroad while continuing attempts at getting blackmail aid from the US, Seoul and Japan. Recent floods damaged large areas of agricultural land, with large crops destroyed. So the starvation continues there; hence the urgent need for food.

Colombia: A bad situation, not getting better, as to both drugs and the FARC and ELN guerrilla wars.

KOSOVO - Adventures in Nation-Building:

Sometimes it is best to keep fairly quiet and let others proceed with their follies. In the case of Kosovo, the KLA has demonstrated clearly to NATO's KFOR, to UN administrators and police cadres, and to the relief community that they are ruthless, vicious xenophobes and murderers. At the top level, diplomats continue to maintain the illusion that KLA leader Hashim Thaci is trying to curb the wanton violence, but many of us understand that he is only paying lip service to his agreements --just as he officially signed the Rambouillet Agreement last March, then let KLA field commanders and others call on the killers to ignore that deal, so that NATO could have its bombing opportunity. Thaci plays plausible deniability very well; it may be, indeed true, as some suggest, that the official KLA will only suppress the murder and mayhem once they have been acknowledged by the UN and KFOR as the province's "official" police.

I cannot ignore the timing of the Chechen invasion of Dagestan with the occupation of Kosovo. Then, the London paper, The Independent reported Monday, that instead of turning its weapons and munitions over to NATO, as agreed, the KLA was selling 140 tons of munitions to British arms dealers --where they can be sold to other guerrilla groups. Atop that, another 140 tons of TNT is offered for sale by the KLA. In Kosovo, weapons turned into NATO are mostly old and rusty; the good Kalashnikovs are being hidden (The article is appended to the website edition of this report).

Murder, rape, arson, grand-theft and other crimes continue; elderly widows are a primary target for murder. Dozens of Serb and Gypsy men have been found executed, hands tied behind their backs and shot through the back of the head. The catalog of horrors continues to burgeon. NATO's commander, LT. Gen. Mike Jackson realizes that NATO has to get more robust in its disarmament operations, so some caches have been seized and some KLA people arrested when caught in the act. The UN and NATO have also decreed that they will forcibly deport troublemakers, if need be. This may apply to Kosovo citizens as well as mafiosi slipping in from metropolitan Albania.

General Jackson would like to believe things are calming down, but on Monday, even as some 200 Serb railway workers returned to the province to get the trains running again, unknown Albanians actually fired 9 mortar shells into the Serb village of Klokot, killing a 14-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy. Five wounded were taken to a US Army hospital since the village is in the American sector.

But the West is determined to make something out of Albania and Kosovo --they learned nothing from their adventures in nation-building in Somalia, Haiti and elsewhere. A Western official who asked not to be identified but has deep knowledge of Kosovo culture went further. Mark Heinrich of Reuters filed an interesting dispatch, "Culture of controlled chaos in Kosovo" on August 17^th. He cited two official views, one naively optimistic that Kosovo's Albanians ever had any civic cohesion to be "re-established", the other ingenuously confident that though such cohesion never existed, it can be instilled:

Good luck to these social engineers. Albanians are already referring to the foreigners as "colonialists" imposing foreign values and standards, and Pristina seems less like Beirut than Mogadishu --but a good bit of both. As if the West has the infinite resources it will take, and the time --start with 50 to 75 years-- to build a civic culture out of a tribal people accustomed to rule by the law of the gun. Not likely. And to put a major pipeline and communications corridor through Albania? This is stupid.

© Copyright 1999 by Benjamin C. Works -- SIRIUS www.siri-us.com

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The Independent

8/16/99

KLA WEAPONS ON SALE IN BRITAIN

WEAPONS FROM the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) that were supposed to have been surrendered to Nato troops are on sale in Britain.

The Independent has learnt that arms dealers in the United Kingdom have been offered up to 140 tons of high explosive as well as rocket-propelled grenades, automatic weapons and illegal anti-personnel mines.

Inquiries in London and Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, have confirmed that the trade in arms is thriving, in spite of a commitment made by KLA leaders at the end of the Nato campaign to hand in their forces' weapons.

Last night, Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, was urged to take immediate action to stem the flow of weapons. Alan Simpson, Labour MP for Nottingham South, said: "I think the people of Britain will be horrified to find that the Kosovars we helped are now sending their armshere. It is up to the Foreign Secretary to remind the KLA that it signed an agreement at the end of the war to surrender its arms, not sell them for profit."

It is understood a number of dealers are acting as agen/ts for the KLA. Last week, an Englishman based in the Channel Islands was offering to sell AKM and AK-74 assault rifles, Russian-made anti-tank RPG-7 rocket- propelled grenades, and M2HB Browning heavy machine-guns. In addition, he said Claymore anti-personnel mines were available at $60 (pounds 38) each, instead of the more usual price of $200. These above-ground devices, which unleash a wave of more than 4,000 ball-bearings when detonated, are illegal

in Britain.

A British businessman with a legitimate history in ordnance was offered the weapons but turned them down. He told The Independent that more than 140 tons of TNT explosive was also on sale, at $20 a kilo. That, he said, was twice the usual market rate but he was told no licence or paperwork would be required. "The first thing I was told was that the equipment was from the KLA," he said. "I was surprised at the quality, amount and variety available - given that Nato said the KLA is supposed to be handing in most

of its weapons.

"I had not expected Claymores and I certainly did not expect the more modern Russian assault rifles. I turned them down but they are being offered to other dealers. Without a shadow of a doubt, some of this stuff will find its way to the criminal fraternity." He said the middleman, reputed to be an established, "respected" dealer, promised delivery anywhere.

In Pristina, an agent involved in the trade confirmed that weapons were flooding out of the Serbian province and into the West. "There are plenty of supplies and no difficulties getting it out," he said.

Lieutenant-Colonel Robin Hodges, a British Army spokesman in Pristina, confirmed that all the weapon types on offer in the UK had also been confiscated from KLA fighters in Kosovo. He added: "We are not surprised to hear reports of KLA arms turning up in Germany and Britain. Although the border with Serbia is policed by Nato, other borders are open, and there is no shortage of guns in Kosovo at the moment."

Under its agreement with Nato, the KLA is supposed to hand over all its arms, with some minor and specific exceptions, by 20 September.

Rachel Harford, a spokeswoman for the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, said: "This demonstrates the need for tighter international control of these weapons and shows the ease with which shady networks and brokers can peddle their wares to gangsters, dictators and oppressive regimes."

The Foreign Office and Customs and Excise said that they were not aware of KLA arms reaching Britain.