Stratfor and Agnes Ayers

This Stratfor article deals with the rather complex situation in Yemen and how al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is navigating that complexity to their advantage.

For the Hot Stratfor Babe to accompany the article I selected Agnes Ayers, who starred with Rudolph Valentino in the 1921 silent film The Sheik. 

The Sheik is actually set in Algeria rather than Yemen, so technically this makes my choice of Agnes Ayers even more dubious than my usual Hot Stratfor Babe selection, but one desert is pretty much the same as another in my book, so it's close enough for me.

Agnes plays a sort of proto-feminist, who rather stupidly heads off into the desert by herself because she's so head strong and free spirited. She gets captured by the Sheik which leads to the famous Tent Scene where he attempts to compromise her chastity. Much silent screen ham-bonery ensues, and amidst tribal raids, sand storms and the like she falls crazy mad in love with the Sheik. Feh, sounds like Stockholm syndrome to me.

At any rate, it all ends happily when, conveniently for the attitudes of the day, it turns out he's really an orphan of a British father and Spanish mother so there are no pesky racial issues in their romance. 

"Why have you brought me here?"
"Are you not woman enough to know?"

By the way, at the end of the Stratfor article I've embedded a video of the famous Tent Scene if you want to see what made women swoon, and men roll their eyes, back in 1921. 


AQAP AND THE VACUUM OF AUTHORITY IN YEMEN

By Scott Stewart, March 31, 2011

While the world's attention is focused on the combat transpiring in Libya and the events in Egypt and Bahrain, Yemen has also descended into crisis. The country is deeply split over its support for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and this profound divide has also extended to the most powerful institutions in the country -- the military and the tribes -- with some factions calling for Saleh to relinquish power and others supporting him. The tense standoff in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa has served to divert attention (and security forces) from other parts of the country.

On March 28, an explosion at a munitions factory in southern Yemen killed at least 110 people. The factory, which reportedly produced AK rifles and ammunition, was located in the town of Jaar in Abyan province. Armed militants looted the factory March 27, and the explosion reportedly occurred the next day as local townspeople were rummaging through the factory. It is not known what sparked the explosion, but it is suspected to have been an accident, perhaps caused by careless smoking.

The government has reported that the jihadist group Aden-Abyan Islamic Army worked with militant separatists from the south to conduct the raid on the factory. Other sources have indicated to STRATFOR that they believe the raid was conducted by tribesman from Loder. Given the history of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) activity in the Loder area, if the tribesmen were indeed from Loder, it is highly likely they were at least sympathetic to AQAP if not affiliated with the group.

While it is in Saleh's interest to play up the separatist and jihadist threats as a way of showing international and internal parties how important he is and why he should remain in power, these threats are indeed legitimate.  Even in the best of times, there are large portions of Yemen that are under tenuous government control, and the current crisis has enlarged this power vacuum. Because of this lack of government focus and the opportunity to gather weapons in places like Jaar, militant groups such as AQAP, the strongest of al Qaeda's regional franchise groups, have been provided with a golden opportunity. The question is: Will they be capable of fully exploiting it?

The Situation in Yemen

The raid on the arms factory in Jaar was facilitated by the fact that government security forces had been forced to focus elsewhere. Reports indicate that there was only a company of Yemeni troops in Jaar to guard the factory and that they were quickly overwhelmed by the militants. While the government moved a battalion into Jaar to restore order, those troops had to be taken from elsewhere. This confrontation between troops loyal to Saleh and those led by Brig. Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar in the capital city has also caused security forces from both sides to be drawn back to Sanaa in anticipation of a clash. It has also resulted in a vacuum of power in many parts of the country. Currently, government control over large parts of the country varies from town to town, especially in provinces such as Saada, al-Jouf, Shabwa and Abyan, which have long histories of separatist activity.

It is important to understand that Yemen was not a very cohesive entity going into this current crisis, and the writ of the central government has been continually challenged since the country's founding. Until 1990, Yemen was split into two countries, the conservative, Saudi-influenced Yemen Arab Republic in the north and the Marxist, secular People's Democratic Republic of Yemen in the south. In 1994, following a peaceful unification in 1990, a bloody civil war was fought between the north and the south. While the north won the war, tensions have remained high between the two sides, and there has long been a simmering anti-government sentiment in the south. This sentiment has periodically manifested itself in outbreaks of armed hostilities between the armed southern separatist movement and government forces. [continued after jump]

Strafor and Golshifteh Farahani

This Strafor article discusses the struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran in light of the United States' withdrawal from Iraq. For the Hot Strafor Babe I've selected the Iranian actress and musician Golshifteh Farahani.

Farahani was a star of Iranian cinema who eventually moved on to making movies outside of Iran. Her role in Body of Lies made her the first Iranian actress to have a significant part in a Hollywood movie. Her part in that movie also caused the Iranian authorities to seize her passport while they investigated her. Nearly a third of her movies are banned in Iran.

After several months she eventually made it out of Iran and is now living in Paris with her husband. She is too paranoid to return because there is still a court there is weighing whether she broke Islamic law by making the film without permission. In fact, when the film premiered she skipped its premier in Dubai for fear of the Iranians. The article Love interest in Leonardo DiCaprio's new film fears exile from Iran briefly discusses her situation.

What a world we live in. The Jetsons promised us hover cars and robot maids in the 21st Century, instead we get the barbarism of religious zealotry.


BAHRAIN AND THE BATTLE BETWEEN IRAN AND SAUDI ARABIA

By George Friedman, March 8, 2011

The world's attention is focused on Libya, which is now in a state of civil war with the winner far from clear. While crucial for the Libyan people and of some significance to the world's oil markets, in our view, Libya is not the most important event in the Arab world at the moment. The demonstrations in Bahrain are, in my view, far more significant in their implications for the region and potentially for the world. To understand this, we must place it in a strategic context.

As STRATFOR has been saying for quite a while, a decisive moment is approaching, with the United States currently slated to withdraw the last of its forces from Iraq by the end of the year. Indeed, we are already at a point where the composition of the 50,000 troops remaining in Iraq has shifted from combat troops to training and support personnel. As it stands now, even these will all be gone by Dec. 31, 2011, provided the United States does not negotiate an extended stay. Iraq still does not have a stable government. It also does not have a military and security apparatus able to enforce the will of the government (which is hardly of one mind on anything) on the country, much less defend the country from outside forces.

Filling the Vacuum in Iraq

The decision to withdraw creates a vacuum in Iraq, and the question of the wisdom of the original invasion is at this point moot. The Iranians previously have made clear that they intend to fill this vacuum with their own influence; doing so makes perfect sense from their point of view. Iran and Iraq fought a long and brutal war in the 1980s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Iran is now secure on all fronts save the western. Tehran's primary national security imperative now is to prevent a strong government from emerging in Baghdad, and more important, a significant military force from emerging there. Iran never wants to fight another war with Iraq, making keeping Iraq permanently weak and fragmented in Tehran's interest. The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq sets the stage for Iran to pursue this goal, profoundly changing the regional dynamic.

Iran has another, more challenging strategic interest, one it has had since Biblical times. That goal is to be the dominant power in the Persian Gulf.

For Tehran, this is both reasonable and attainable. Iran has the largest and most ideologically committed military of any state in the Persian Gulf region. Despite the apparent technological sophistication of the Gulf states' militaries, they are shells. Iran's is not. In addition to being the leading military force in the Persian Gulf, Iran has 75 million people, giving it a larger population than all other Persian Gulf states combined.

Outside powers have prevented Iran from dominating the region since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, first the United Kingdom and then the United States, which consistently have supported the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. It was in the outsiders' interests to maintain a divided region, and therefore in their interests to block the most powerful country in the region from dominating even when the outsiders were allied with Iran.

With the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, this strategy is being abandoned in the sense that the force needed to contain Iran is being withdrawn. The forces left in Kuwait and U.S air power might be able to limit a conventional Iranian attack. Still, the U.S. withdrawal leaves the Iranians with the most powerful military force in the region regardless of whether they acquire nuclear weapons. Indeed, in my view, the nuclear issue largely has been an Iranian diversion from the more fundamental issue, namely, the regional balance after the departure of the United States. By focusing on the nuclear issue, these other issues appeared subsidiary and have been largely ignored.

The U.S. withdrawal does not mean that the United States is powerless against Iran. It has been reconstituting a pre-positioned heavy brigade combat team set in Kuwait and has substantial air and naval assets in the region. It also can bring more forces back to the region if Iran is aggressive. But it takes at least several months for the United States to bring multidivisional forces into a theater and requires the kind of political will that will be severely lacking in the United States in the years ahead. It is not clear that the forces available on the ground could stop a determined Iranian thrust. In any case, Iraq will be free of American troops, allowing Iran to operate much more freely there.

And Iran does not need to change the balance of power in the region through the overt exercise of military force. Its covert capability, unchecked by American force, is significant. It can covertly support pro-Iranian forces in the region, destabilizing existing regimes. With the psychology of the Arab masses changing, as they are no longer afraid to challenge their rulers, Iran will enjoy an enhanced capacity to cause instability.

As important, the U.S. withdrawal will cause a profound shift in psychological perceptions of power in the region. Recognition of Iran's relative power based on ground realities will force a very different political perception of Iran, and a desire to accommodate Tehran. The Iranians, who understand the weakness of their military's logistics and air power, are pursuing a strategy of indirect approach. They are laying the foundation for power based on a perception of greater Iranian power and declining American and Saudi power. [continued after jump]

Stratfor and Barbara Feldon

 The latest Strafor article, with the Raymond Davis case as a starting point, discusses the tension between the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) as they both operate in that country.

Fishing about for a Hot Stratfor Babe to accompany I naturally settled on Agent 99 from Get Smart. This posed a bit of a problem since there are two Agent 99s, Barbara Feldon of the TV series, and Anne Hathaway from the more recent movie remake of the show.

Bearing in mind the purposes of the Hot Stratfor Babe, which is just to lure unsuspecting traffic to this blog, Anne Hathaway would probably be the better choice of the two. Still, and I think we can all agree on this, Barbara Feldon pretty much owns the role. So, for that reason, I've chosen her as the Hot Strafor Babe for this article.  

By the way, at the end of the article, after the jump, I've added a bonus -- the video clip "Max and 99 meet the Sacred Cows".

PAKISTANI INTELLIGENCE AND THE CIA: MUTUAL DISTRUST AND SUSPICION

By Scott Stewart, March 3, 2011

On March 1, U.S. diplomatic sources reportedly told Dawn News that a proposed exchange with the Pakistani government of U.S. citizen Raymond Davis for Pakistani citizen Aafia Siddiqui was not going to happen. Davis is a contract security officer working for the CIA who was arrested by Pakistani police on Jan. 27 following an incident in which he shot two men who reportedly pointed a pistol at him in an apparent robbery attempt. Siddiqui was arrested by the Afghan National Police in Afghanistan in 2008 on suspicion of being linked to al Qaeda.

During Siddiqui's interrogation at a police station, she reportedly grabbed a weapon from one of her interrogators and opened fire on the American team sent to debrief her. Siddiqui was wounded in the exchange of fire and taken to Bagram air base for treatment. After her recovery, she was transported to the United States and charged in U.S. District Court in New York with armed assault and the attempted murder of U.S. government employees. Siddique was convicted in February 2010 and sentenced in September 2010 to 86 years in prison.

Given the differences in circumstances between these two cases, it is not difficult to see why the U.S. government would not agree to such an exchange. Siddique had been arrested by the local authorities and was being questioned, while Davis was accosted on the street by armed men and thought he was being robbed. His case has served to exacerbate a growing rift between the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI).

Pakistan has proved to be a very dangerous country for both ISI and CIA officers. Because of this environment, it is necessary for intelligence officers to have security -- especially when they are conducting meetings with terrorist sources -- and for security officers to protect American officials. Due to the heavy security demands in high-threat countries like Pakistan, the U.S. government has been forced to rely on contract security officers like Davis. It is important to recognize, however, that the Davis case is not really the cause of the current tensions between the Americans and Pakistanis. There are far deeper issues causing the rift.

Stratfor and Bar Refaeli

This week's Stratfor article concerns the strategic quandary that would face Israel should the uprising in Egypt lead to the cancellation of the Camp David accords. 


The Hot Babe I decided to connect to this article is the Sports Illustrated cover girl and Israeli model Bar Refaeli. 

Not for the obvious reason of the dangers that the Muslim Brotherhood would pose towards swim suit models, although that is a most alarming thought, but rather because of a controversy in Bar Refaeli's past.


Apparently Bar Refaeli, who is an Israeli swimsuit model,  dodged the Israeli draft by marrying a relative to avoid being called up, and then quickly divorcing him when that possibility passed. This caused a bit of an uproar in Israel, with calls for boycotts and criticism from other models who were serving their time in the military. 

You can read about it, and gawk a picture of her in a rather fetching gray dress, in The Independent's article: Israeli supermodels in catwalk spat over draft-dodging.        

 
EGYPT, ISRAEL AND A STRATEGIC RECONSIDERATION

By George Friedman, February 8, 2011

The events in Egypt have sent shock waves through Israel. The 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel have been the bedrock of Israeli national security. In three of the four wars Israel fought before the accords, a catastrophic outcome for Israel was conceivable. In 1948, 1967 and 1973, credible scenarios existed in which the Israelis were defeated and the state of Israel ceased to exist. In 1973, it appeared for several days that one of those scenarios was unfolding.

The survival of Israel was no longer at stake after 1978. In the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the various Palestinian intifadas and the wars with Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas in Gaza in 2008, Israeli interests were involved, but not survival. There is a huge difference between the two. Israel had achieved a geopolitical ideal after 1978 in which it had divided and effectively made peace with two of the four Arab states that bordered it, and neutralized one of those states. The treaty with Egypt removed the threat to the Negev and the southern coastal approaches to Tel Aviv.

The agreement with Jordan in 1994, which formalized a long-standing relationship, secured the longest and most vulnerable border along the Jordan River. The situation in Lebanon was such that whatever threat emerged from there was limited. Only Syria remained hostile but, by itself, it could not threaten Israel. Damascus was far more focused on Lebanon anyway. As for the Palestinians, they posed a problem for Israel, but without the foreign military forces along the frontiers, the Palestinians could trouble but not destroy Israel. Israel's existence was not at stake, nor was it an issue for 33 years.

The Historic Egyptian Threat to Israel

The center of gravity of Israel's strategic challenge was always Egypt. The largest Arab country, with about 80 million people, Egypt could field the most substantial army. More to the point, Egypt could absorb casualties at a far higher rate than Israel. The danger that the Egyptian army posed was that it could close with the Israelis and engage in extended, high-intensity combat that would break the back of the Israel Defense Forces by imposing a rate of attrition that Israel could not sustain. If Israel were to be simultaneously engaged with Syria, dividing its forces and its logistical capabilities, it could run out of troops long before Egypt, even if Egypt were absorbing far more casualties.

The solution for the Israelis was to initiate combat at a time and place of their own choosing, preferably with surprise, as they did in 1956 and 1967. Failing that, as they did in 1973, the Israelis would be forced into a holding action they could not sustain and forced onto an offensive in which the risks of failure -- and the possibility -- would be substantial.

Stratfor and bomber nose art

This Stratfor article concerns the seemingly never ending Moslem outrage over the Mohamed cartoons. They were published 5 years ago and plots against the cartoonists still surface like clockwork.

This intimidation is an attempt to enforce their religious sensibilities over our notion of free speech. I'll take free speech, but unfortunately our betters in the media didn't have the sense to tell the lot of them to bugger off and plaster the cartoons all over the place.

At any rate the babe that came to mind when I read the article were the pinup girls of WWII bomber nose art. The article Military Aircraft Nose Art: An American Tradition has this to say about nose art on planes deployed for the First Gulf War:

During the Gulf War, sexually provocative art was removed before an aircraft was deployed to Saudi Arabia to avoid offending inhabitants of the area. Bikinis were painted over to became long black dresses. After the war, artists restored the images to their original state upon the request of the crews and pilots (Walker, More, p. 34).

After the Gulf War and after the wave of negative public opinion, the military ruled against portraying women on aircraft. Nose art was removed from all 319th Wing and 384th aircraft in 1992. On the "Queen of Hearts," the name remains without an image.

Bah Humbug.  I guess cartoons just can't catch a break in this day and age.

THE MOHAMMED CARTOON DUST HAS NOT SETTLED

By Scott Stewart, January 6, 2011

When one considers all of the people and places in the West targeted by transnational jihadists over the past few years, iconic targets such as New York's Times Square, the London Metro and the Eiffel Tower come to mind. There are also certain target sets such as airlines and subways that jihadists focus on more than others. Upon careful reflection, however, it is hard to find any target set that has been more of a magnet for transnational jihadist ire over the past year than the small group of cartoonists and newspapers involved in the Mohammed cartoon controversy.

Every year STRATFOR publishes a forecast of the jihadist movement for the coming year. As we were working on that project for this year, we were struck by the number of plots in 2010 that involved the cartoon controversy -- and by the number of those plots that had transnational dimensions, rather than plots that involved only local grassroots operatives. (The 2011 jihadist forecast will be available to STRATFOR members in the coming weeks.)

Groups such as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have gone to great lengths to keep the topic of the Mohammed cartoons burning in the consciousness of radical Islamists, whether they are lone wolves or part of an organized jihadist group, and those efforts are obviously bearing fruit. Because of this, we anticipate that plots against cartoon-related targets will continue into the foreseeable future.

Stratfor and Salma Hayek

Continuing my new found sleazy tactic of coupling Strafor articles with hot babe pictures -- I probably should be ashamed of myself for it but I'm not -- this week we have Salma Hayek.

The screen cap above his her first appearance in the movie Desperado. Her entry causes a number of guys to crash their cars as she sashays across the street. I once had a friend who had a minor fender-bender going to work. He jumped the gun at a stop light and rear-ended the car in front of him. When he got out the car to talk to the other diver, that fellow laughed and said, "you were looking at the blond too, eh?" He was, so I guess her entry scene isn't completely unbelievable. 

What is unbelievable is that she runs a combination cafe/bookstore and it is always empty. One would think, since she's the only one who works there, every single guy in the town would be in the place drinking coffee and feigning an interest in literature. 

Regardless, if you haven't seen it, aside from Ms Hayek it features completely over-the-top violence, with one gun fight actually featuring members of a mariachi band firing rockets out of their guitar cases. Quite the guilty pleasure to watch.

The Stratfor article is much more somber, since it deals with the alarming drug gang violence of Mexico. By the way, if you haven't noticed, I've added Borderland Beat, which covers the situation in Mexico extensively, to the sidebar. It's grim reading, but I think it's an important topic.


MEXICO AND THE CARTEL WARS IN 2010

Editor's Note: This week's Security Weekly is a heavily abridged version of STRATFOR's annual report on Mexico's drug cartels. The full report, which includes far more detail and diagrams depicting the leadership of each cartel along with our updated cartel map, will be available to our members on Dec. 20.

By Scott Stewart, December 16, 2010

In our 2010 annual report on Mexico's drug cartels, we assess the most significant developments of the past year and provide an updated description of the dynamics among the country's powerful drug-trafficking organizations, along with an account of the government's effort to combat the cartels and a forecast of the battle in 2011. The annual cartel report is a product of the coverage STRATFOR maintains on a weekly basis through our Mexico Security Memo as well as other analyses we produce throughout the year. In response to customer requests for more and deeper coverage of Mexico, STRATFOR will also introduce a new product in 2011 designed to provide an enhanced level of reporting and analysis.

In 2010, the cartel wars in Mexico have produced unprecedented levels of violence throughout the country. No longer concentrated in just a few states, the violence has spread all across the northern tier of border states and along much of both the east and west coasts of Mexico. This year's drug-related homicides have surpassed 11,000, an increase of more than 4,400 deaths from 2009 and more than double the death toll in 2008.

Cartel Dynamics

The high levels of violence seen in 2010 have been caused not only by long-term struggles such as the fight between the Sinaloa Federation and the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization (also known as the Juarez cartel) for control of the Juarez smuggling corridor but also from the outbreak of new conflicts among various players in the cartel landscape. For example, simmering tensions between Los Zetas and their former partners in the Gulf cartel finally boiled over and quickly escalated into a bloody turf war along the U.S.-Tamaulipas state border. The conflict has even spread to states like Nuevo Leon, Hidalgo and Tabasco and has given birth to an alliance between the Sinaloa Federation, the Gulf cartel and La Familia Michoacana (LFM) called the New Federation.

Stratfor and Angelina Jolie

Hah, I never figured one of these Stratfor articles would give me an excuse to post an Angelina Jolie picture. 

It has occurred to me that if I mentioned Angelina Jolie several times in this post, that all of the people searching for Angelina Jolie in Google would get the Angelina Jolie search results page, which might draw traffic to my post that mentions Angelina Jolie if my mentioning Angelina Jolie enough times gives me a high enough ranking in Angelina Jolie searches.

[Knucklehead pointed out in the comments that I spelled her name wrong. I've corrected the error]

Of course I would never stoop that low.

At any rate, my excuse for posting her picture is that it is from the movie Hackers, a silly piece of nonsense that was her first theatrical release. It features roller skating, high school attending, Elite Hackers who use Macs to pull juvenile hacking pranks and yell "hack the world" now and again. However, they're soon battling an Eeevil Hacker Dude, who also roller skates a lot, and has a nefarious plan to to blackmail the world by sinking oil tankers. It's so goofy it is actually entertaining.

The movie came to mind because Stutnex, Wikileaks and the 4chan group Anonymous (the first of whom just got arrested) and their Wikileaks revenge attacks, hacking and other computer-based tomfoolery have been recently all over the news. 

Of course, China has long stood at the nexus of government sponsored hacking, but they all face their own issues with dissidents challenging their network security.  The latest Stratfor article, which discusses China's situation follows.


CHINA AND ITS DOUBLE-EDGED CYBER-SWORD
By Sean Noonan,  December 9, 2010

A recent batch of WikiLeaks cables led Der Spiegel and The New York Times to print front-page stories on China's cyber-espionage capabilities Dec. 4 and 5. While China's offensive capabilities on the Internet are widely recognized, the country is discovering the other edge of the sword.

China is no doubt facing a paradox as it tries to manipulate and confront the growing capabilities of Internet users. Recent arrests of Chinese hackers and People's Liberation Army (PLA) pronouncements suggest that China fears that its own computer experts, nationalist hackers and social media could turn against the government. While the exact cause of Beijing's new focus on network security is unclear, it comes at a time when other countries are developing their own defenses against cyber attacks and hot topics like Stuxnet and WikiLeaks are generating new concerns about Internet security.

One of the U.S. State Department cables released by WikiLeaks focuses on the Chinese-based cyber attack on Google's servers that became public in January 2010. According to a State Department source mentioned in one of the cables, Li Changchun, the fifth highest-ranking member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and head of the Party's Propaganda Department, was concerned about the information he could find on himself through Google's search engine. He also reportedly ordered the attack on Google. This is single-source information, and since the cables WikiLeaks released do not include the U.S. intelligence community's actual analysis of the source, we cannot vouch for its accuracy. What it does appear to verify, however, is that Beijing is regularly debating the opportunities and threats presented by the Internet.

A Shift from Offensive Capabilities

On Nov. 2, the People's Liberation Army Daily, the official paper for the PLA and the primary medium for announcing top-down policy, recommended the PLA better prepare itself for cyber threats, calling for new strategies to reduce Internet threats that are developing "at an unprecedented rate." While the report did not detail any strategies, it quoted a PLA order issued for computer experts to focus on the issue.