Category Archives: National Security

Government, Middle East, National Security, Pakistan, Society, United States

Drone strike against the Taliban chief in Pakistan is a questionable victory…

U.S. DRONE STRIKE

Following last Friday’s US drone missile attack that killed the leader of the Pakistan Taliban, many ordinary people in Pakistan remain incredulous over US aims and objectives.

The assassination which came a day before a government delegation from Pakistan was due to meet him, leaves the government of Nawaz Sharif looking unreasonably irrational in the eyes of its own population. Worse still, the temper of anti-Americanism in Pakistan is likely to be exacerbated given the probable complicity in US violations of its sovereignty.

Hakimullah Mehsud was a repellent individual. Under his auspices, the Pakistan Taliban (the TPP), have killed thousands of people in sectarian driven attacks.

Western policy makers, however, should pause before rejoicing in the death of a reprehensible Islamist. The question is not whether Mehsud had a redeeming side, but crucially whether America’s drone missiles and the tactics being deployed are making a dangerous situation on the Pakistan-Afghan border even worse.

The evidence clearly suggests the situation has become worse. One only needed to have noted the furious reactions to Friday’s strike from prominent politicians in Pakistan such as Imran Khan and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Pakistan’s Interior Minister. Both indict the Americans with sabotaging the chances of peace talks between the Taliban and the government. Whether the CIA set out to deliberately derail the talks, or refused to be side-lined over its strike plans, the decapitation strike and timing of Mehsud’s killing was terribly misplaced to say the least. The very prospect of a negotiated end to the Taliban’s reign of terror was not mere idle fantasy on the part of the Islamabad government. Only two weeks ago, Mehsud told British journalists that he felt open to the idea of a peace pact.

Negotiations are now off the table. As normal with high-profile capitulations, the CIA will congratulate itself on having knocked out a long-standing target. Mehsud was on the agency’s most wanted terrorist list for a 2009 bombing in Afghanistan that claimed the lives of seven CIA operatives. Yet, after a successor emerges, Mehsud will quickly be forgotten. Meantime, the 30 or so Islamic militant groups loosely affiliated to the TPP will be off the leash, competing for the honour of how best to exact revenge on the U.S. or their perceived stooges.

It will be a surprise to no one that people in Pakistan have become weary of the war that America is conducting on their soil against militant Islamists. The recent visit to Washington by President Sharif in urging Barack Obama to stop the drone strikes came to nothing. This has only reinforced the feeling that, in the context of the alliance, Pakistan’s own wishes count for little.

The United States should listen to the concerns being expressed by their ally on drone strikes, but in all likelihood seems unlikely to. Instead, as we witness, Mr Obama has increased using them. A war without borders looks set to splutter on, while Pakistan continues picking up the pieces.

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Britain, Government, Intelligence, National Security, United States

What amount of time does GCHQ and the intelligence services have for snooping?

CONFRONTING THREATS

In recent days and weeks, GCHQ – the British Government’s eavesdropping and listening centre – has been the subject of a number of startling revelations, most recently that it received funding over the last three years from America’s National Security Agency (NSA) in return for access and influence to its work.

For many people, a distinct impression has been given – the emergence of an all-powerful Orwellian state, in which government vetted employees in Cheltenham and Fort Meade can access and read the personal emails of everyone without anything but the most cursory regard for law or conscience.

However, the very same leaked documents from the former NSA employee, Edward Snowden, who has now been granted 12-months asylum status in Russia, also remind us of something else. Intelligence officials at GCHQ point out that Britain and its computer systems are under severe and sustained attack from foreign powers, especially from Russia and China, to a far greater extent than Whitehall have yet admitted. Implicit, then, should be an understanding that our cyber-spies and counter-electronic espionage staff are on a war footing, against a ruthless and determined enemy.

With the need to confront such inventive and external threats, as well as British intelligence services monitoring suspected terrorists and other internal and external dangers, suggests they will have very little time to snoop and trail through people’s private lives to the extent which has been reported.

GCHQ and the intelligence agencies are accountable to Parliament with ministerial oversight over their activities and methods of working. Given this oversight, it is assumed that they are acting within the law, and are monitored scrupulously. With threats that are evolving and intensifying by the day, public discourse risks restricting their ability to respond to threats in a timely manner.

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Britain, Intelligence, National Security, United States

US bankrolling of GCHQ in return for influence…

INTELLIGENCE GATHERING

It has been claimed that Washington gave Britain’s spying and intelligence gathering centre at GCHQ more than £100 million over the last three years, raising questions over how much the U.S. has been influencing the work of British intelligence.

According to documents released into the public domain by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the British eavesdropping agency was expected to ‘pull its weight’.

One document states that weaker regulation for British spies than American agents is one of the intelligence services’ ‘selling points’ for the U.S.

Such leaks will raise yet more questions for GCHQ and government ministers who oversee it operationally, particularly in relation to the extent to which the United States makes pressing demands of Britain in its intelligence-gathering activities.

In a document from 2010, GCHQ said the US National Security Agency had ‘raised a number of issues with regards to meeting (its) minimum expectations’, and GCHQ ‘remains short of the full NSA ask’.

A classified cache leaked to The Guardian reveals the UK’s biggest fear is that… ‘US perceptions of the […] partnership diminish, leading to loss of access, and/or reduction in investment to the UK’.

A copy of a temporary document to allow US fugitive and whistleblower Edward Snowden to cross the border into Russia.

A copy of a temporary document to allow US fugitive and whistleblower Edward Snowden to cross the border into Russia.

These latest revelations leaked by Mr Snowden, a former NSA contractor, and who has been charged with espionage in the U.S., left Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport yesterday were he has been since June after exposing PRISM, a U.S. intelligence gathering project that snoops on private individuals accounts, emails and telephone calls. Snowden has now been granted refugee status in Russia amid Western concerns he is now in the embrace of Moscow’s secret services. The granting of refugee status pending his application for temporary political asylum is certain to spark fury in Washington which had urged President Putin to deport him to the US to face espionage charges.

Previously, GCHQ was criticised after Mr Snowden claimed British intelligence agents used the PRISM system to bypass UK laws.

Last week Parliament’s spy watchdog called for an investigation into the laws on intelligence eavesdropping, saying they ‘may not be fit for purpose’.

The latest documents reveal the NSA gave GCHQ £22.9million in 2009, £39.9million in 2010, and at least another £34.7m in 2011-12.

The 2010 payment included £4million to support GCHQ’s work for NATO forces in Afghanistan, and £17.2million to fund the agency’s Mastering the Internet project, which gathers and stores vast amounts of ‘raw’ information ready for analysis.

Also funded by the NSA was redevelopment of GCHQ’s sister site in Bude, Cornwall, to the tune of £15.5million. The site intercepts transatlantic cables that carry internet traffic.

In return, the documents suggest GCHQ has to take the American view into account when deciding what to prioritise.

The money has been an important source of income for the British agency as it has been forced to cut costs and has shed more than 300 of its 6,000 staff.

Documents show GCHQ is heavily investing in harvesting personal information from mobile phones and apps, and wants to be able to ‘exploit any phone, anywhere, anytime’.

Some GCHQ staff have expressed concern about ‘the morality and ethics of their operational work, particularly given the level of deception involved’.

Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander MP said…

… The vital work of the intelligence agencies requires effective and thorough oversight by the Intelligence and Security Committee on behalf of Parliament, and by ministers, and in the case of GCHQ, by the Foreign Secretary.

… The latest reports in the Guardian only underline the importance of the Foreign Secretary and the Intelligence and Security Committee being able to assure the public that the legal framework within which our intelligence agencies operate is both being adhered to and is fit for purpose.

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