Debka Mideast News
June 14, 2002
Al Qaeda
1. Container Stowaway Terrorists Steal into America
In the last two months, between 75 and 125 operatives of the fundamentalist terror network, al Qaeda, are known to have illegally penetrated the United States, mostly through American ports. Many more are estimated to have slipped through unbeknownst to US authorities.
On Monday, June 10, shortly after the revelation of a "dirty bomb" plot against America, President George W. Bush vowed to track down any "would-be killers" involved in the alleged al Qaeda plot. "There's a just a full-scale manhunt on. We will run down every lead, every hint," he said.
The US president sounded as though he was talking about the accomplices of Abdullah Muhajir aka Jose Padilla. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report he was thinking of a different kind of would-be killers, word of which has been muted in the public domain.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terror sources disclose that the United States is locked in a battle to fight off a many-tentacled al Qaeda operation to smuggle terrorists through American ports in ordinary sea-going containers. (DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue No. 39, November 30, 2001, first exposed al Qaeda's exploitation of shipping containers to move terrorists clandestinely between countries.)
This invisible stowaway traffic has burgeoned since early April, making the United States and the world's shipping industry increasingly susceptible to the threat of terror attack by invaders from the sea. US port authority sources believe penetrations occurred at New York, New Jersey, Long Beach, Miami and Savannah, Georgia, as well as Port Everglades, Florida. Container, oil and bulk ports are especially vulnerable.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terror sources, the battle is relentless. US Coast Guard, Special Forces and CIA and FBI counter-terror units routinely conduct massive manhunts for stowaway terrorists. Some sources report firefights between hunters and terrorists trapped in sea containers. In all such confrontations, US forces have eliminated the interlopers. American and international shipping sources, mainly in Europe and the Middle East, estimate that between 15 and 25 terrorists may have died. In Miami and Savanna, containers with secret human burdens were unloaded from incoming vessels. Anti-terror squads shifted the boxes to a quiet corner of the harbor, drilled holes in their sides and filled them with gas and smoke bombs. The stowaways suffocated to death.
However, for all their efforts, the US hunters have not apprehended a single live al Qaeda terrorist landing by sea. This omission goes some way toward explaining the loud fanfare surrounding the capture of Muhajir-Padilla.
Some of the stowaways arrive complete with arms or explosives, the nature of which the US authorities are at great pains to keep dark. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's US sources failed to come up with any descriptions, or even confirmation of whether the weapons are conventional, radioactive, chemical or biological. However, shipping sources told us witnesses had seen suspect containers appearing to be quarantined after their al Qaeda infiltrators were killed, suggesting the suspected presence of toxic substances.
By developing this backdoor sea container route for slipping terrorists into America, al Qaeda's leaders have come close to achieving the objectives they set themselves after their suicidal minions hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11. The Islamic fundamentalist campaign of violence against America and the West has assumed a new and vigorous dimension, quite different from its publicly presented visage. The route is believed to have been long planned, possibly even before the 9/11 atrocity, as a vehicle for launching the second calamitous al Qaeda terror assault against America. The threat applies equally to the international container traffic that carries much of the world's lifeblood. Experts have opined that a "dirty bomb" exploding in a container at sea would stop the world's container traffic cold until a credible security system for sea-going containers was in place.
Background checks for seamen and stevedores, heavily armed National and Coast Guardsmen, special FBI and CIA units patrolling American harbors, gamma-ray devices for inspecting cargoes, quarantine areas in large ports, are part of the changing landscape in US docks. They are guarding against the possible use of port installations and vessels for a repeat of last September's deadly attacks. Security budgets are strained beyond limits. To enhance port security efficiently, further legislation and allocations are needed to boost the number of mobile scanners, radiation detectors, exclusion zones for high-risk vessels, harbor escorts and sea patrols. Proposed too are stiff penalties for shippers failing to post detailed manifests in advance of their entry into American ports.
In the case of container terror, US and other intelligence services were again slow to pinpoint the danger despite indications from October 2001of al Qeda plans to exploit sea containers - both for secretly transporting terrorists and as a terrorist combat weapon. There were no measures in place to prevent the many armed terror cells from fanning out among ports, mainly in Europe, in order to stow away aboard container vessels bound for US harbors.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources learn that Livorno, Italy, is one of those ports. Other names are kept under wraps so as not to hamper the international investigation in progress. For the same reason, it is impossible to name the shipping companies unknowingly targeted for this traffic, only that one is a major American firm and another is a reputable Middle East shipping line. Investigators have concluded that al Qaeda owes much of its success in planting its operatives in ship's containers to its links with criminal elements to be found in most of the world's big container ports.
Even for this project, the Islamic terror tacticians employ a rough-and-ready hierarchy, as can be inferred from the objects the stowaways leave behind:
1. Spartanly outfitted containers for low-ranking terror operatives, usually Pakistani, who are provided with barely enough food, water or even ventilation to survive the journey. Some do not make it. Their mission is to draw attention away from the movements of senior terrorist gangs.
2. "Operational" containers transport complete terrorist units, carrying weapons or explosives, who are ready for action upon landing. Their furnishings are more comfortable; they have sleeping arrangements, decent food and drink, chemical toilets, medicines and adequate ventilation.
3. "First Class" passage is laid on for elite al Qaeda units: The containers are divided into private cubicles and furnished with air-conditioning, purified water and high-class food. These privileged stowaways usually have a contact among the ship's crew, making it safe for them to come out at night for fresh air.
In some of the stowaway containers, US counter-terror authorities were dismayed to find uniforms of American dockworkers and even US Coast Guards, along with the appropriate tags and ID for free access to port facilities, including off-limits sections. Groups of 5 to 7 of these men dressed as port workers have been sighted hurrying over to waiting vans and driving off at speed.
On May 22, 2002, Fairplay International Shipping Weekly reported:
" More details have emerged about an apparent infiltration of Islamic extremists through US ports during the past two months. Some of the men slipped through security disguised as stevedores, according to Bob Graham, chair of the Senate select committee on intelligence. He said he had seen reports indicating that some extremists might have been wearing safety jackets and protective helmets to give the appearance of dockworkers. US Coast Guard officials have refused to divulge any information about the reports, but Graham stressed: 'The American people have a right to know.' He said 25 extremists 'entered in a foreign country, hid out in a container and then entered the United States'.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terror experts say that al Qaeda's ability to secrete a sizeable group of men aboard a single vessel disguised in the correct made-in- America apparel, lay on the vehicles to whip them past US security out of port and over to safe hideouts inside America, speaks volumes about the network's logistical and intelligence skills. It also denotes an infrastructure more comprehensive and efficient than previously believed, an improved version of the base of operation from which the 9/11 strikes were launched.
The US anti-terror authorities have not thus far succeeded in laying hands on a container-borne terrorist group. Trying a different tack, they have turned to the inspection and tracking of cargo at its points of origin. In the last two months, hundreds of US agents of all branches of security and intelligence, including Special Forces, have been deployed in ports in Europe and the Far East, where they are developing new security standards and monitoring ocean-going containers before embarkation. Since then, the illegal container traffic has slowed somewhat. But it is too soon to say whether the new counter-measures are indeed taking effect, or al Qaeda has implemented in full its plans for moving men and weapons into America.
2. Container Terrorism Threatens Global Maritime Industry
Container-terrorism ö the smuggling into the United States of weapons, explosives and terrorists on board container ships ö and US counter-measures ö are leaving their mark on Washington's trade relations. Tightened security at US ports rebounds on Europe and the Far East, where economies are built around mega ports, through which the bulk of the world's container traffic passes.
US authorities, including counter-terrorism agencies and the Coast Guard, as well as Congress, totally agree that the US must set up its forward line of defense far from its borders, at the ports of origin of containers bound for American shores. US agents and security personnel are known to be quietly fighting "container-terrorism" in Canadian and Italian ports.
Real admiral Paul Pluta, US Coast guard assistant commandant for marine safety and environmental protection, put it neatly when he said in January, "We have to push out our maritime border to give us the information we need for maritime security."
Congressman Don Young from Alaska added, "We must make sure that the sub-carriers from Liberia and elsewhere go through the same type of security as we do, or they don't ship product to this country. Then you have a way of having secure ports".
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington report the Bush administration is setting up a "global container security system" that will include all US ports and the 10 largest ports in the world, mainly in Europe and the Far East, where uniform security procedures and screening equipment will be in place to track containers shipped to the United States. Any container coming from a port that is not certified as safe by the United States will not be allowed into its international waters or ports.
The United States currently takes in more than 11 TEU (Twenty Feet Equivalent Unit) per year, according to the following breakdown: six from northeast Asia, one from the southeast Asia, two from Europe and the Middle East, 1.2 from central and south America, about 500,000 from the Indian subcontinent and another 200,000 from Africa and Oceania. The freightage comes from hundreds of ports scattered across these regions.
International shipping experts consulted by DEBKA-Net-Weekly see monumental marine jams ahead if the10 mega port security program goes into effect. Since the 10 mega ports will handle enormous quantities of containers, all US-bound cargoes will have to be carried by super freighters. This will create an immediate problem: ports along the eastern seaboard of the United States cannot handle giant vessels. Shipping jams around the world and coming and going from US ports will cause a sharp spike in shipping rates and the prices of goods. Some products may be priced out of the American market with devastating effect on production in the exporting countries.
Moreover, dozens if not hundreds of small ports around the world, that now handle some of the container traffic to the United States, may stagnate or even shut down, for failing to meet the steep cost of stiffened security standards. Such shutdowns will have the effect of putting out of business international medium and small-size cargo vessels that will be unable to fill their holds, and displacing large coastal populations whose livelihoods depend on those small ports.
The American way of dealing with container security has aroused the indignation of some governments, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Europe and the Far East. The European Union in Brussels was quick to issue a rebuke, calling for European ports to be reorganized immediately in such a way as to dictate to Washington - rather than be dictated to - on security systems.
But not all European governments toe the line laid down in Brussels. Some have independently initiated stringent security measures in the hope of meeting American requirements. The Italian port of Livorno, for instance, has installed a new container-screening device at a cost of more than $3.5 million. Two such devices will go into use at the big port of Genoa.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Far East sources report that authorities in countries of northeast Asia and southeast Asia, where more than 60 percent of the world's America-bound container traffic originates, are prepared to wait until what they regard as America's security fever abates in time and the strict regulations and restrictions are eased. Asian governments have great faith in the bread and butter rules of profit and loss prevailing in the American perception of international trade. Above all, many Europeans and Asians quite frankly accuse the United States of exploiting the global terror threat and homeland security as media for taking control of the world shipping trade. If this is so, they warn, the Americans will have a tough fight on their hands.
"Dirty Bomber"
A Pawn in High-Powered Battle of Wits
Intelligence and counter-terror sources consulted by DEBKA-Net-Weekly are mystified rather than enlightened by the account by US authorities on Tuesday, June 11, of how they foiled a radiological bomb plot by detaining one of the plotters, an American citizen called Abdullah Muhajir aka Jose Padilla, at Chicago's O'Hare airport on May 8.
Attorney general John Ashcroft in Moscow, followed closely by deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz and FBI director Robert Mueller in Washington, reported Muhajir was picked up on his return from Pakistan. He had been assigned to scout out security arrangements at the target site, they said, after taking part in high-level al Qaeda discussions on the building of a "dirty bomb" and its detonation in the Washington area.
Many terror experts wonder what occasioned this dramatic to-do over the Padilla case, when the checkered career of the 31-year old American of Puerto Rican descent was well known to several intelligence and counter-intelligence services friendly to Washington. Some had even built up dossiers on him, dating from 1995, when he converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam and began working for extremist Middle East Islamist groups in the Middle East, including the Egyptian Jihad Islami.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly intelligence sources, filling in some blanks, report that during the years 1998-2000, when he ostensibly lived in Cairo with his Egyptian wife, he actually traveled extensively on behalf of his fundamentalist terrorist masters. Sometimes he used his American passport, others, Saudi and Pakistani documents made out in his Muslim name. His travels took him to Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Albania, Bosnia and the Palestinian Authority. Some sources raise the suspicion that he also served the CIA as a double agent for penetrating radical Muslim terror groups, including al Qaeda and its close associate, the Egyptian Jihad Islami.
During those two years, he is known to have formed a connection with Palestinian terrorist operatives, entering the Gaza Strip at the Egyptian-Israeli crossing point in early 2000. Israeli security at the border crossing let him off lightly, not wishing to betray their interest in the American. But they did keep a discreet watch on his movements as the guest of local Hamas and Jihad Islami leaders. They took note of Padilla's meeting with Nabil Aqal, a commander of the Hamas military arm, Izz-a-deen al-Qassam. Aqal's name recurred eighteen months later in July 2001 as the selfsame senior Hamas contact man who hosted another western national belonging to al Qaeda, the shoe bomber Richard Reid from Great Britain, who faces trial in the United States for attempting to blow up an American Airlines Paris-to-Miami flight on December 22, 2001. (See also DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue 62, May 31, 2002.)
When taking the time factor into account - al Qaeda planners take at least 18 months to two years for preparing a major terror strike - it is conceivable that the American operative's call on Aqal in the Gaza Strip blazed the way for Reid.
Indicating that US intelligence treated this link seriously, American agents, who in April 2002 tailed Padilla from Pakistan to Egypt and onto the Chicago flight from Zurich, were authorized from Washington to search him with a toothcomb with special attention to a new pair of Adidas sports shoes he acquired in Cairo. After the experience of the British terrorist, they were directed to make sure Padilla's shoes had not been packed with explosives for blowing up the Zurich flight to Chicago. Both the suspect and his belongings were clean.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources also reveal that, during his month's stay in Cairo earlier this year, Egypt refused to let American agents tail Muhajir and check on his contacts, insisting that Egyptian security watchers would shadow him every moment from landing to departure and promising to hand over their reports.
The Americans therefore had no way of knowing if he bought the shoes himself or was handed them by al Qaeda, as a move in the ongoing cat and mouse game between the terror network and US intelligence.
Notwithstanding his broad travels, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources familiar with his record say he is no heavyweight terrorist professional. A past smalltime member of a Chicago gang and drug pusher, Muhajir has been exploited by al Qaeda as a messenger and, sometimes, as a decoy for US intelligence. Although when he converted to Islam in the early nineties he promised to turn a new leaf and get out of crime, he was not able to kick his own drug habit. Muhajir stayed in dope smuggling on behalf of various organizations, including al Qaeda, but demanded a bigger slice in the major league traffic. His Islamist masters did not trust him enough to integrate him in the major smuggling rings, calling on him only for insignificant missions and only then on condition he carried messages around the countries he visited.
Not all the addresses he was given were real; some were front organizations or bogus to test his bona fides. Our sources have found no intelligence data indicating his al Qaeda bosses trusted him enough to hand out the real addresses of important operational figures or centers.
Given Muhajir's lightweight personality and standing in the organization, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terror sources dispute two theories, whose publication followed on the original disclosure of his arrest. One was that Abu Zubaydah, the most senior al Qaeda captive in American hands, gave away the "dirty bomb" plot and the lead to Padilla. The second, that Padilla himself had been assigned with executing the radiological bomb attack.
Neither holds water for the following reasons.
In the first case, even the dates do not fit the theory; in the second the subject's personality does not.
Abu Zubaydah was caught in Faisalabad, East Pakistan, on March 28 by a joint US-Pakistani team. As DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported on April 19, this al Qaeda high-up was so badly wounded during his capture that it took American doctors days trying to resuscitate him, starting in the US military plane that transported him from Pakistan to an American military hospital on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Through April, they fought for his life and finally pulled him through. However, according to our sources, Padilla left Pakistan for Cairo on April 8, when Abu Zubaydah was still at death's door. There is no evidence that the suspect met him before this. He is not known to have ever reached Faisalabad, spending most of his time in Islamabad or Karachi. Neither is there evidence that the two met earlier, in December 2001, as claimed, to discuss radiological bombing strikes in the United States. Abu Zubayadah was heavily engaged in other urgent business throughout that month. Heavy Tora Bora battles were in progress in East Afghanistan and, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources, Abu Zubaydah was in charge of managing the grand al Qaeda exodus from Afghanistan and Pakistan and setting up the escape corridor that carried the fugitives through Baluchistan and Iran to the Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. That month, he was constantly on the move, flitting between Tehran and Baluchistan, once spotted fleetingly in north Iranian towns along the escape route. He was not seen in Afghanistan after late October when he turned up at Konduz airfield in northwest Afghanistan to oversee the Pakistani-Saudi airlift to safety of thousands of al Qaeda fighters defeated at the battle of Mazar-e-Sharif. Abu Zubaydah left the country aboard one of the last departing transports.
It is scarcely believable that in the middle of this hectic month, this high-ranking al Qaeda officer would find time to meet a low-grade courier and talk about a radiological bombing attack in America.
The impression gained by our intelligence sources is that the US officials who made the announcement overplayed their hand in an effort to show they had caught a big fish. To build up Padilla, they showed him in discussions with top al Qaeda leaders on a strike of great magnitude. Another of their motives may have been to dangle the suggestion that Abu Zubaydah was spilling the beans, part of the intelligence and military war of nerves between Washington and the terrorists.
America wants to demonstrate that the Afghan War is over. One way was to have the loya jirga convene in Kabul this week to select a head of state and place the interim prime minister Hamid Karzai at the head of an administration that will govern the country until the 2004 general election. Karzai's election as president is necessary to draw a line against the past and the Taliban-al Qaeda regime in Kabul, and to demonstrate that Afghanistan and Pakistan are no longer launching pads for mounting terrorist attacks against the United States.
In contrast, the Taliban and al Qaeda aspire to demonstrate that the Americans have missed their goals and the Afghan War was but one stage in their ongoing war with the United States. The Islamic organization's strategists believe that a single devastating terror attack in the United States in the near future would blot out the American military victory there and their own defeat.
In this battle of wits, each side is striving to make the opposite side stumble and lose their resolve. The men in Washington calculate that the realization that its top men are being picked off one by one and are "singing" has a good chance of demoralizing the operations chiefs of the Islamic terror network and putting them off their terror offensive against America. Some might even be persuaded to turn themselves in.
Padilla is a pawn in this game. Transferring him to the Defense Department's custody and solitary confinement in a military brig at Charleston, S.C. as an enemy combatant for an indefinite period violates his constitutional rights as an American citizen. On the other hand, he is fully protected from, and out of the reach of, any al Qaeda cells and sympathizers in the United States wishing to shut his mouth or exact vengeance.
Should they become convinced Muhajir-Padilla was a double agent working under cover for US intelligence, the Islamic group would have to admit its ranks are more permeable than it thought.
Both adversaries use such stratagems to misdirect attention from hidden moves.
Kashmir
Here Comes Iran
US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said after talks with Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in New Delhi on Wednesday, June 12, that he has seen indications of al Qaeda activity in Kashmir, although he has no specific information about the identities of the terrorist group's operatives, their numbers or locations.
Anxious to highlight Rumsfeld's statement, the Indians immediately leaked information that their intelligence services had intercepted radio transmissions from two al Qaeda groups operating inside the province. According to New Delhi, one group is in the Bandipore area in northern Kashmir and the second in Khag Beeru, in central Kashmir.
But within 24 hours, after his talks in Islamabad with Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, Rumsfeld backtracked, declaring his information on the al Qaeda presence in Kashmir was "speculative and unverifiable".
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in New Delhi and Islamabad, Rumsfeld's self-contradictions may have been an attempt to cover a diplomatic misstep. They may also signify a worrying gap in his understanding of the situation between the two nuclear adversaries. A more realistic explanation would be that the US official simply lost patience with the bickering between Indian and Pakistani leaders and decided to stop digressing from his primary mission of de-escalating the war threat.
What Rumsfeld did was to inform Vajpayee and Musharraf in blunt terms that the United States, caught up as it is in a global battle against terrorism, refuses to countenance a full-scale war on the subcontinent. Should one erupt, Rumsfeld cautioned the two leaders, Washington would hold both equally responsible and take punitive steps.
Knowledgeable sources in New Delhi and Islamabad told DEBKA-Net-Weekly that, while Vajpayee and Musharraf understood Rumsfeld's threat to be serious, neither was prepared to budge an inch from his position. Both are convinced war is unavoidable, whether this summer or several weeks hence. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources disclose that, as soon as Rumsfeld left the region, the Indian and Pakistani rulers ordered their respective military chiefs to maintain battle alert and continue to prepare for war.
At the same time, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Gulf sources reveal a fresh source of tension in Kashmir ö this time between Pakistan and Iran. Over last weekend, Musharraf toured moderate Gulf emirates and Saudi Arabia to win their leaders round to the Pakistani cause. He said he came as a Muslim leader seeking help from fellow Muslims in confronting Hindu India, adding that he had taken the regional lead in stemming the spread of Iranian influence in the Gulf and Indian subcontinent.
Musharraf, attended by Pakistani generals, specifically told the Saudi crown prince Abdullah that the Pakistani military was capable of defeating the larger Indian army unaided. However, he feared that Iran, impelled by its spiritual leader Ayatollah ali Khamenei, would take advantage of Pakistan's preoccupation with the war against India to move Iranian troops into Kashmir and Baluchistan and stir up the local Shiite populace to rise up against Islamabad.
Much in the way Vajpayee shared intelligence data with Rumsfeld on the al Qaeda presence in Kashmir, Musharraf showed Abdullah evidence of Iranian Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers turning up in the Indian-controlled Kargil province of Kashmir. Some, he said, had come from Lebanon, fresh from training Hizballah fighters in guerrilla warfare and the operation of an array of missiles, ranging from anti-tank to anti-aircraft. Musharraf said it was up to the Saudis, the Gulf States and Pakistan to limit Iran's push into the Indian subcontinent, lest this expansion be mirrored in other directions, such as the Persian Gulf.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources note that the Pakistani ruler misaddressed his appeal. Abdullah leads the pro-Teheran line in Riyadh and is working towards a rapprochement between the kingdom and Iran. His reply hardly satisfied the visitor from Islamabad, merely that Saudi Arabia would stand by Pakistan in its dispute with India.
Chinese Army
New Generation of Missiles and Bombers
The publicly announced Chinese 2002 defense budget of 166 billion renminbi yuan (US$20 billion) - 17pc over last year - reveals no more than a fraction of Beijing's real outlay on defense.
Hidden from the public gaze are secret R&D programs, dual-use space programs, intelligence agencies, and other related costs, as well as special "large project" funding sources from the Bank of China for major defense projects that are carefully omitted from the regular defense budget.
Nevertheless, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Far East expert gains the firm impression that the regular People's Liberation Army is transforming into a leaner fighting force. Defense Minister General Chi Haotian announced on 1 August 2000, the 73rd anniversary of the founding of the PLA, that 500,000 Chinese soldiers had been decommissioned since 1997, when the Communist Party ordered the PLA be reduced to a standing army of 2.5 million soldiers.
In addition, the PLA is increasingly moving towards a modern professional force structure, rather than the current selective quasi-conscript system. These force reductions are relative, as the Chinese military is still the largest in the world. Recent estimates suggested that PLA troops numbered 2.5 million, with 1.2 million reserves, and 1 million personnel in the paramilitary People's Armed Police (PAP) force.
In addition, the exact number of additional paramilitary forces from predominately rural militia organizations such as the 'Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Agricultural 1st Division' is not available but is certainly immense (with potential mobilized forces of light infantry in the tens of millions during a time of crisis). Hence, the PLA will remain the world's largest military force into the foreseeable future. China's potential for fielding colossal forces is, in addition to its current technological modernization, of far more immediate concern to its immediate neighbors than is commonly appreciated in the West.
The bulk of PLA ground force divisions, currently numbering over 100, will probably remain low to medium technology forces, used for internal and border defense. They will also take the brunt of planned troop reductions. Perhaps from 12 to 18 elite divisions (zhu li bu dui, or 'main force units'), plus integral rapid reaction or 'fist units', comprising a total of up to 300,000 or more troops, will become fully modernized for large-scale joint-service operations.
They will be equipped with long-range precision weapons, high-firepower and high-mobility systems, night vision systems, advanced C4I, surveillance, technical reconnaissance, IW, electronic warfare (EW) and targeting systems. These elite units will be able to deploy anywhere within and near China's borders within 24 hours.
The PLA's traditional weapons procurement policy was you shenmo wuqi, da shenmo zhang (weapons determine how war is fought, or make do with what you readily have), but has now been changed to da shenmo zhang, zao shenmo wuqi (make whatever weapons to meet the requirement of war). The major 1995 and 1996 missile and combined forces exercises near Taiwan were seen by some as the initial stages of a long-term practical effort to develop forces to realistically wage 'a limited war under high technology conditions' (gaoji jixu tiaojian xia jubu zhanzheng).
In addition to the army, the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) and PLA Navy (PLAN) are undertaking a more technically sophisticated modernization process. They will introduce significant numbers of modern aircraft including Jianjiji J-8IIM, JH-7, FC-1, Su-27/J-11, Su-30, and J-10 fighter-bombers, strategic airlifters, aerial refueling tankers and electronic surveillance aircraft. The first J-10 fighter-bombers were put into service with the Chinese air force in May.
The navy is seeking new frigates, destroyers, conventional and nuclear submarines, and possibly aircraft carriers, along with correspondingly increased anti-submarine warfare, surface warfare, ship-borne air defense, sustained naval operations, and amphibious warfare capabilities. Air and naval modernization efforts will also include related weapons capabilities, particularly precision-guided munitions (PGMs). These programs have been accorded an even higher priority than ground force modernization, and could be realized before the year 2010.
The PLA Navy, PLAN, is gradually transforming from a coastal defense force to a "bluewater navy" capable of projecting force abroad. Aircraft carriers could be useful for enforcing regional territorial claims or supporting an invasion or blockade of Taiwan. China has been unable to apply military pressure to cease repeated atrocities committed against ethnic Chinese communities in nations such as Indonesia. An aircraft carrier task group and related amphibious assault capabilities would provide Beijing with military leverage in this problem area.
Whether or not PLAN is developing aircraft carriers, it has been confirmed that the ex-Russian carrier Varyag has been acquired by the Chinese navy and is docked under high security at the port of Dalian.
The PLAN also has a modernized version of its Luhai-class of destroyers under construction that may employ a modern missile vertical launch system (VLS) and advanced sensors and electronic countermeasures (ECM).
China has also reportedly taken steps to shift its strategic nuclear doctrine from one confined to a secure second-strike counter-value capability, to a more flexible strategy of nuclear deterrence requiring increased counterforce tactical, theatre and strategic nuclear weapons. China's nuclear forces may be increasing in inverse proportion to the decline in corresponding US and Russia forces.
New missile technologies (ballistic and cruise) are being developed domestically and through foreign technology transfers, particularly from Russia and other ex-Soviet states. However, China is very concerned about the Bush administration's abrogation of the 1972 ABM Treaty, unopposed by co-treaty member Russia, and the resulting possibility that an interlocked network of US national, regional and tactical ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems, with the possible participation of Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, could negate China's relatively small nuclear deterrent force.
China is now in the process of fielding a new generation of ballistic missile with multiple warheads (DF-31, DF-41, JL-2) and the development of long-range ground attack cruise missiles.
It is also probable that China will seek to develop aspects of innovative asymmetrical warfare. For example using IW techniques such as sabotaging military and commercial computer/telecommunications networks, and exploiting global multimedia coverage through focusing on the current Western societal squeamishness about the potential for large civilian or military casualties in any conflict.
Asymmetric warfare generally is defined as "attacks by a weaker or more technologically backward opponent on a stronger foe's vulnerabilities, using unexpected or innovative means, while avoiding the adversary's strengths." Asymmetrical targets, intended to paralyze an enemy and induce a loss of a will to fight, include electrical power systems, civilian transportation networks (aviation, ground transport, railways and highways, seaports and shipping), television networks, and computer and telecommunications systems. However, the PLA's doctrine of asymmetrical warfare should not be confused with outright terrorist activities, as this has never been officially advocated, and China has significant Islamic fundamentalist terrorist problems of its own.
HOT POINTS
5 June: Early Wednesday, June 5, a Palestinian terrorist drove a stolen vehicle from the West Bank into Israel, trailed the early Tel Aviv-Tiberias bus that was packed with commuters, mostly soldiers, drew up close and detonated the 100-kilo charge in his car behind the bus, as it passed Megiddo junction in northern Israel. The blast ignited the bus's fuel tank, setting the entire vehicle ablaze. Of the 17 passengers killed, 13 were Israeli soldiers on their way to base. More than 50 were injured, some in surrounding vehicles. Firefighters had to control the flames before first-aid paramedics could reach the trapped victims. Police inspected the ambulances racing to the scene for hidden charges.
The attack took place the morning after CIA director George Tenet warned Yasser Arafat in Ramallah that if he did not put a stop to Palestinian terror and suicide killing, he would be left to face Israeli military might alone. The bomb-car is believed to have been rigged in the West Bank town of Jenin. Israel holds Arafat and Palestinian Authority responsible for strike.
8 June: DEBKAfile's sources in Washington and Jerusalem agree that the talks President George W. Bush is conducting with President Hosni Mubarak over the weekend at Camp David and his White House meeting next Monday, June 10, with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, are no more than time fillers for Washington to gather itself for the main US offensive against Iraq.
CIA Director George Tenet, while on official business in Cairo, Jerusalem and Ramallah to reorganize Palestinian security forces for fighting terror, was secretly engaged on another mission: the setting up and training of a Kurdish military force to fight Saddam Hussein alongside the United States.
According to one report, he secretly visited to the northern Jordanian town of Anah, close to the Jordanian-Iraqi-Syrian frontier junction, to rendezvous with the commanders of the advance US Special Forces units and CIA combat contingents, who have been in Iraq under cover since mid-March, Kurdish leaders and officers of the Israeli force stationed in Jordan. According to another source, Tenet crossed the Euphrates into northern Iraq.
The Kurdish leaders he met, Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Masoud Barazani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), are old foes who have come together to join the American military operation for unseating Saddam Hussein. Their price, according to DEBKAfile's intelligence sources, was a personal guarantee from the US president that America would exert all its military might to protect the Kurdish tribes of North Iraq against Iraqi military punishment before, during and after the US campaign, in the light of their woeful experience eight years ago. CIA forces who then tried to assemble a Kurdish army against Saddam were betrayed by Kurdish renegades, enabling Iraqi forces to wipe out the CIA training camps and bases in northern Iraq. President Bill Clinton ordered US intelligence officers to exit Iraq forthwith, leaving the Kurds to their fate. Iraqi tank columns massacred some three to four thousand Kurdish fighters, while several hundred escaped into Turkey, who handed them over to the Americans. Until recently, the Kurdish refugees in the US were denied any status; some were even indicted on charges of collaboration with Iraq.
Last week, on the recommendation of the CIA director, President Bush and other top US officials, including defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, received the two Kurdish chieftains.
DEBKAfile's military sources report Saddam Hussein has countered US moves by relocating around six elite divisions of his Republican guard in the north and west, unwillingly tipping his hand on the Iraqi defense plan against a potential US-Kurdish-Turkish offensive coming from the north. Dividing those divisions into two armies, the Iraqi command moved one out of Kirkuk and stationed it along the Lesser Zab River that washes down from the mountains dividing Iraq from Iran into the Tigris. The second army is disposed in western Iraq along the Tharthar Wadi, 90 km northwest of Baghdad.
These moves placed the Jordanian army in a state of battle preparedness along the Iraqi frontier and sent the Jordanian King Abdullah off to Jeddah on Wednesday, June 5 to petition the Saudi crown prince for support against Iraq. As these maneuvers advance, Yasser Arafat is expected to unleash as much terror as he can to back up Saddam's military moves and impede American efforts to unseat him. He knows that if the Iraqi ruler is weakened or finished, the Arafat regime will go the same way.
9 June: According to DEBKAfile's intelligence sources, the new reforms Yasser Arafat instituted in his government this week are far from cosmetic. Two visitors last week joined a long line badgering him to overhaul his bloated, corrupt and terrorist-ridden government, Egyptian intelligence chief Genera Omar Suleiman, and CIA director George Tenet. They warned him that if he did not mend his ways, he would be even more isolated internationally than he is already. Arafat responded with a typical two-step.
He did indeed appoint a new, slimmed down cabinet, but he did so by "presidential decree" ö not as a prerogative of the legislative council ö thereby distancing his regime even further from democratic norms and strengthening his autocratic grip on government.
Even more importantly, he appointed retired General Abdel-Razzaq al-Yahya as key interior minister and head of the newly streamlined security force. The 73-year old retired army man is general depicted as a nonentity incapable of exercising authority over such powerful security and intelligence figures as Tawfiq Tirawi and Muhamad Dahlan's underlings. However, DEBKAfile's intelligence and military sources tell a different story. Al-Yahya who lives permanently in Amman is very close to the heads of Iraqi military intelligence in Baghdad and hobnobs frequently with Iraqi agents based in the Jordanian capital.
In view of his pro-Baghdad inclinations, DEBKAfile's intelligence sources in Tel Aviv and Amman see no obstacle to the new interior minister working in close harness with Tawfiq Tirawi, Arafat's most trusted West Bank security chief and commander of the Fatah's al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - particularly when Tirawi maintains a strong working relationship with Iraqi military intelligence agents operating in the West Bank.
Al-Yahya's appointment will therefore strengthen the pro-Baghdad faction in the Palestinian leadership, which consisted until now of only one minister, Azzam al-Ahmad, who stays on as minister for public works. Al-Ahmad is in fact Arafat's liaison man with Saddam Hussein and one of the few Palestinians whom the Iraqi ruler trusts implicitly. Significantly, too, Samir Rochah, head of the Arabian Struggle Front, a stooge of Iraqi military intelligence, has recently turned up in Arafat's innermost circle, another signpost to the Palestinian Authority's pro-Baghdad tilt under Arafat's lead.
10 June: Washington staged an all-star performance to announce that an American member of the Islamist terror network al Qaeda had been had been arrested on May 8 on suspicion of plotting a "dirty bomb" attack in the Washington area. The name of the man in custody, Abdullah Muhajir also known as Jose Padilla, was first released by US attorney general John Ashcroft Monday, June 10, during a visit to Moscow.
Muhajir was known to Middle East counter-terror agencies, according to DEBKAfile's intelligence sources, and they report he also spent time in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip in 1999, studying explosives techniques with Hizballah and Palestinian bomb experts. Those sources point out that he is not the only al suspected Qaeda bombing plotter rounded up by US law enforcement authorities in recent months. More than 100 are thought to be in detention and undergoing interrogation.
DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly have since October 12, 2002 been reporting on various aspects of al Qaeda's preparations for purchasing or building a dirty bomb or bombs for exploding inside the United States with the help of its cells in Spain, North Africa and Pakistan. International organized crime groups have been used as intermediaries for the purchase of radioactive substances. The intelligence sources we consulted estimated that the Islamist network may have acquired between 3 and 6 radioactive bombs for exploding in the United States and Israel. Some put as high as 50-70,000 the potential number of casualties if such a device were to be detonated in an American city like Washington.
DEBKAfile's intelligence sources say Muhajir was not a prime mover. His American passport made him useful for spying out the security measures employed at potential target sites in the United States. However, the Bush administration is under increasing pressure to show results in protecting America from terrorists, in the face of spreading public criticism of US intelligence and counter-terror agencies' performance.
As to Ashcroft's choice of Moscow as the venue for his disclosure, DEBKAfile notes that Bush during his visit to Moscow and St. Petersburg in late May faced Russian complaints that the US war against global terror had so far been disappointing.
11 June: President George W. Bush's conversation with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon on Monday, June 10, rounded off a series of White House consultations with Middle East leaders, starting with Saudi crown prince Abdullah and including Jordanian king Abdullah and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. A scarcely noticed omission was Syrian foreign minister Farouk Shara, who called off his planned trip to Washington - for very good reason.
Syria was the key issue on the Bush-Sharon agenda. The Palestinian issue figured no higher than third item down because of the broad consensus between the two leaders. The US president signed on to the Israeli prime minister's proposition that Yasser Arafat's administration has a long way to go towards reform before a possible Middle East summit can convene. According to the Bush statement in his joint appearance with Sharon before reporters, the conference is not there yet "because no one has confidence in the emerging Palestinian government."
That disposed of, DEBKAfile's political sources in Washington report that Sharon gave the US president a detailed rundown of the Assad regime's active backing of terror and its involvement in plans for mega-terror attacks in Israel.
He said that Damascus, seat of the most extreme Palestinian organizations and transit station for al Qaeda operatives moving around the Middle East, was building a powder keg under Israel and regional stability by its massive arming and support of the Lebanese Hizballah.
In view of the explosive terror build-up orchestrated from Damascus - and coordinated at the strategic level also with Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein - Sharon is quoted by DEBKAfile's political sources in Washington as advising Bush that a Middle East peace conference, like the one urged by the US State Department, would simply be the cue for a major flare-up on Israel's northern frontier and/or a mega-terror attack to sabotage any peace efforts. The same applied to any serious consideration of the Saudi crown prince's peace proposal.
According to DEBKAfile's military sources, Bush also conferred with Sharon on America's military preparations for its campaign against Iraq, in particular, areas of overlapping interests, such as defending Jordan against Iraqi invasion or attack and US-Israel defenses against Iraqi chemical or biological attack on Israel or US military targets in the Middle East.
Tuesday, June 11, the Israeli prime minister zipped round Washington, touring Capitol Hill, meeting leaders of Congress and members of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Monday and Tuesday, he called on Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condaleezza Rice and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. He also conferred with American Jewish leaders, before taking off for home via London for a brief encounter with Tony Blair.
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