Mideast Roundup
1. Saudi Arabia
Subsidizes Musharraf's Front vs India
The omission from the Bush Middle East policy speech of the slightest reference to Saudi Arabia, or Crown Prince Abdullah's Palestinian-Israel peace plan, was certainly not lost on Riyadh.
The key to the president's change of face on Saudi Arabia, as on the Palestinian Authority, comes from a series of US intelligence reports recently laid before the US President.
One refers to a private conversation Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf held with the Saudi crown prince in the course of his Gulf tour on June 18-19.
Officially on a mission to explain his country's position on the Kashmir dispute with India, Musharraf was actually chasing emergency funds to underwrite the cost of maintaining Pakistani forces on the front line facing the Indian army. Islamabad is also short of money to pay for its latest arms purchases in preparation for war and its crash drive to turn out as many nuclear warheads as possible in time for a full-blown eruption of hostilities.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, Musharraf successfully pitched prominent Pakistani millionaires and business executives based in the Gulf, getting them to put up about $55 million for their country's war effort.
The Gulf emirs he put the touch on pledged another $75 million - although their record of making good on pledges is patchy. But the Pakistani president was pleasantly surprised when the de facto Saudi ruler agreed to underwrite about 60 percent of the cost of keeping Pakistani troops war-ready on the confrontation line with India, although the price tag was steep:
A.
Abdullah demanded a guarantee of Pakistan military muscle for defending the oil kingdom. If Saudi Arabia comes under threat, Islamabad must make military forces available for its defense - armored corps officers, pilots, naval personnel and missile crews and technicians.
B.
He insisted that Pakistan's military, security and intelligence services conceal from the United States any information on Saudi citizens in Pakistan and refrain from helping American forces hunt them down. Any Saudi nationals captured in the course of Pakistani crackdowns against Islamic extremists must be handed over to Saudi intelligence personnel at the Saudi embassy in Islamabad, who will arrange for their repatriation.
C.
The Musharraf government must make sure there is no hitch in the flow of moneys from Saudi Islamic charities and welfare societies to the thousands of Muslim madressas, or religious schools, in Pakistan which they support.
The Pakistani ruler agreed. He even promised to freely permit Saudi Islamists associated with al-Qaeda or backing the network, to continue operating in his country.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and counter-terrorism sources point to this action as the first ever taken by Crown Prince Abdullah, almost openly, to assure Saudi al Qaeda partisans the freedom to pursue their activities overseas without fear of official harassment.
The Saudi ruler had no illusions his pact with Musharraf would stay secret for long. Our intelligence sources report that Washington was soon tipped off from Israel, Russia and other countries, the incoming data supplementing the dossier US agencies had already compiled for the president.
The Saudi cash pledge for Pakistan's anti-India war effort caused a stir in Washington and the White House. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Gulf sources add that the crown prince's gesture fits in with his two-tier strategy for turning the kingdom into a major player in the Gulf and the Middle East and a challenge to US influence. Saudi meddling in the India-Pakistan conflict gave rise to deep concern in the US administration. Fearing Musharraf would henceforth balk at seriously counteracting Islamic extremists in his country, including al Qaeda, Washington dispatched General Tommy Franks, head of the US central command and commander of the Afghan campaign, post haste to Islamabad this week. His mission was billed as a United States-Pakistan conference on continued military cooperation between the Pakistani army and US special forces in the ongoing action against al Qaeda hideouts in Pakistan. But Franks lost no time in demanding that the Pakistani president stand by his undertakings to Washington to crack down on Islamic militants, whether holed up in the country or making trouble in Kashmir.
Musharraf's reply was to send a Pakistani unit to raid an al Qaeda hideout in Waziristan in the east on Tuesday, June 25. The result was a failed operation in which ten Pakistan soldiers were killed and a severe setback to the collaborative effort to flush the al Qaeda terrorists out of their Pakistani and Afghan lairs.
Abdullah also has his eye on the roughly 5,000 American servicemen left in the oil kingdom.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say he is sparing no effort to drive out the US military advisers attached to his own National Guard and to the army bases under defense minister Prince Sultan's command. He also wants to see the back of military personnel belonging to nations regarded friendly to Washington, such as Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
US and British intelligence operatives in Saudi Arabia report Saudis security forces are deliberately turning a blind eye to local al Qaeda cells' attempts these last weeks to assassinate undesirable foreigners. Earlier this month, an Australian military adviser was attacked outside the big northern military city of Tobuk near the Jordanian border; this week a car bomb killed a British banker in Riyadh. The Saudi communiquÎ alleged the Briton was connected with an alcohol smuggling ring and was murdered by a feuding gang member. But intelligence information reaching Washington and London showed his killers to have been a local al Qaeda cell that keeps watch on foreigners in the Saudi capital.
Everything happening in recent weeks indicates that Saudi security forces and Saudi intelligence have let al Qaeda operatives and backers well off the leash and assured their freedom of movement inside the oil kingdom and, through verbal arrangements with local rulers such as Musharraf, over a broad swath of territory - taking in Pakistan in the north, Iran, Iraq and the Gulf states in the east and Syria and Lebanon in the north and west.
The Saudis are moreover helping to further the economic interests of the countries playing ball in this endeavor, pumping investment cash into industrial development in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and opening up their borders to the free passage of goods.
This too facilitates the cross-border traffic of terrorists.
Recently, Saudi Arabia and Iraq agreed to reopen their border crossing points, closed since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, thereby providing their goods an alternative route to the one traversing Jordan. Saudi money has been sunk into several new industrial plants in the suburbs of Baghdad, another example of the ways in which Riyadh is irritating Washington and sabotaging its efforts to keep Saddam's Iraq isolated.
US-Saudi relations have sunk to their lowest ebb ever, to the point that administration officials have been heard to remark that America cannot afford to avoid striking at the heart of the oil kingdom once the offensive against Iraq and terrorist bases in Syria and Iran is underway. As DEBKA-Net-Weekly revealed on March 12, Cheney explicitly warned Abdullah that the kingdom's territorial integrity might be forfeit if he left it to the United States to purge the terrorist bases flourishing on Saudi soil. Under that scenario, the vice president stressed, the oil fields would not be left in the hands of a regime harboring al Qaeda's logistical infrastructure. Washington, he said, would have to favor the opponents of the House of Saud who covet its oil resources.
That was the first intimation by a senior American official of Washington's willingness to dissever the Saudi kingdom and redraw the Gulf region's state boundaries.
Since then, the Abdullah-Musharraf agreement and Bush's thundering omission of any mention of Saudi Arabia in his Middle East policy speech - effectively denying it any role in the future of the Palestinian people - have pushed Riyadh and Washington further along the path of confrontation.
2. Iraq
Sends Crack Troops Against US-Backed Kurds
Saddam Hussein is out for American and Kurdish blood in northern Iraq.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report Military Directive 531 signed by the Iraqi leader on June 11 ordered commando units to head to northern Iraq, following intelligence reports indicating that US special forces and CIA personnel had made impressive strides in recruiting and training Kurdish fighters for their anti-Saddam combat units.
The Iraqi commando squads are comprised of elite members of the Republican Guards and special military intelligence combat units.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, the presidential decree directed the commandos 'to wage a secret, tenacious and sustained war to destroy enemy forces that have invaded the Iraqi motherland'. No sooner had Saddam signed the order than the Iraqi units were on the move. Some parachuted deep into northern Iraq while a second force was ferried into the area by Republican Guard helicopters. A third group was detached from nearby bases.
Their orders were as follows:
1.
Use ambushes and night raids to attack and destroy Kurdish and US camps, communications bases and arms depots. Inflict heavy enemy casualties.
2.
Always use the element of surprise in launching attacks.
3.
Take into account you will be on your own and cannot expect outside help.
4.
For the operations, break open the secret emergency stores located in the field. Commanding officers and their deputies know where they are cached. The stores contain weapons, explosives, ammunition, food, drinking water and medical supplies.
In recent months, Iraq has distributed emergency stores in the following strategic areas: Klar, in the oil province of Kirkuk; the Dahuk region north of Mosul in central northern Iraq; Rawandiz, in the northeast near the Iranian border; Amadiyah, near the Turkish frontier; and Zakho, close to the meeting point of the borders of Iraq, Turkey and Syria.
Iraqi military intelligence has moreover established three forward command centers in northern Iraq to supervise and coordinate the special units'operations. They are located near Siniar in western Iraq, across from the border with Syria; outside Summel, northeast of the Ayn Zalah oil field; and in the Rost area, very close to the Iranian border.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources add that Saddam first gave orders to set up the command centers and commando units back in February, when he found out that US special forces and CIA agents were about to land in northern Iraq.
The average Iraqi commando squad is composed of five or six well- trained fighters. Five or six larger units have between 15 and 25 combatants each. Each unit has been issued its operational and attack missions. These include terror strikes against civilians in the Kurdish cities, towns and villages where the population appears willing to cooperate with the Americans.
Saddam held his hand before launching the attack in order to lull his enemies into a false sense of security and the belief they were in full control of a friendly region. The Kurdish trainees and their American special forces instructors will now be called upon to prove their mettle in real combat against crack Iraqi troops.
3. Iran
Moves Forward Line to Lebanon
Iran's ulterior motive in providing massive support for Lebanon's Hizballah - manpower, military instructors and state-of-the-art weapons systems - is simple: a strategic decision to locate its forward line of defense far from Iranian soil and Tehran's vulnerable nuclear center at Bushehr. The Iranians have therefore built up the Shi'ite religious, political and terrorist organization as the most potent Muslim intelligence power outside their own Islamic republic, with long arms outside the region.
Iran's plan came to light in mid-June when officers from the Iranian air force's general staff arrived in Damascus. They were under orders to set up a permanent Iranian air force annex in the Syrian capital. Some of the officers belonged to the air force's operations branch, while others came from its intelligence wing. An Iranian colonel, a wing commander, led the group.
Intelligence sources in the Middle East who spoke with DEBKA-Net-Weekly believe Iran is making secret arrangements with Damascus to deploy a tactical fighter wing in Syria to provide air cover for Hizballah forces threatened by Israeli bombing. But in a pinch, the fighters could be used to attack US naval targets in the Middle East. Most of the US Sixth Fleet is concentrated in the eastern Mediterranean, in an area stretching from Cyprus to the shores of Syria and Lebanon.
Iran as adopted a double-edged policy.
Tehran hopes to create a strategic deterrent to any attack on Hizballah by pouring large numbers of missiles into Lebanon, capable of hitting targets in any corner of northern Israel and parts of central Israel as well.
By posing a threat to the US Navy, Tehran is also aiming for a similar strategic balance that will dissuade the Americans and Israelis from attacking military targets inside Iran itself, especially the Bushehr reactor and nuclear industries, including uranium enrichment facilities.
In the event of a coordinated US-Israel assault, or separate strikes, against Iranian targets, the Iranians plan to retaliate by sending their air force to hit US targets, while Hizballah missiles rake Israel's strategic installations -- main airports, seaports, military airfields, military industries, oil refineries, water pumping stations and power plants.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources note that Iraq already maintains a forward air command center in Damascus. The Iranian and Iraqi centers would be housed in different wings of Syrian air force headquarters in the military section of Damascus International Airport, Damascus-West. They say Iranian and Iraqi officers held at least one coordinating meeting this month with senior Syrian officers present.
Despite its secret September 2000 military pact with Syria, Iraq has so far refrained from stationing combat aircraft at Syrian airfields. Iran is in no hurry either to park its fighter-bombers in Syria. But our intelligence sources report the Iranian air force intends its planes to begin operating out of Syrian air bases from the coming September.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources covering another front, Iran has in the last ten days stepped up the flow of al Qaeda men traveling across its territory to Lebanon via Damascus. Arriving in Tehran from Pakistan and Afghanistan by plane, train or truck, al Qaeda fighters are put aboard aircraft that transit Iraqi air space to Damascus, where they are transferred to Lebanon. Another route takes them by train or truck through Iran's northern mountains into northern Iraq and onto Syria.
From Syria, they cross into Lebanon or one of the Gulf States, although most of the Saudi nationals are directed to Damascus whence they fly home to Saudi Arabia.
4. Syria
Strategic Junction on the Anti-US Axis
'If tomorrow Assad were to shut down Damascus international airport to planes flying al Qaeda operatives in from Iran, Saudi policy in the Gulf, Middle East and Indian subcontinent would fall flat.'
That was how a Middle Eastern intelligence source defined for DEBKA-Net-Weekly the key role Syrian president Bashar Assad now plays in the alliance Saudi Arabia's crown prince Abdullah has been assembling and nurturing since last August. That alliance binds Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad, as well as Syria, the Lebanese Shiite Hizballah and the Palestinians, into an anti-American regional bloc (as first reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly No. 46 on January 25, 2002).
The same source added: 'Imagine Assad telling the Iranians they must stop transferring arms and men to Hizballah through Damascus and must get out of the bases in the Lebanese Beqaa Valley, where they train Hizballah and al Qaeda fighters. What would happen? Tehran's entire Middle East strategy would cave in.'
Not only Saudi Arabia and Iran, Iraq too would be in big trouble if the Syrian president halted the flow of illegal Iraqi oil exports through Syria's Mediterranean ports or, still worse, closed those ports to the arms Iraq is buying on international markets. Saddam would then find himself ill prepared for the anticipated American military offensive against him.
Put more simply, if Assad kept the keys to Damascus international airport in his pocket and left them there, he could save US president George W. Bush from the most vexed headaches of his anti-terror campaign in the Middle East.
But, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's experts, the young Syrian president adores his linchpin role. In order to remain king of the mountain, he is even prepared to go along with his family's oldest nemesis, Yasser Arafat. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who visited Damascus last week, was surprised by Assad's cockiness and his flat refusal to work with Egypt and Jordan - and by implication with the United States -- on the Palestinian issue. The Americans do not scare me, he reportedly boasted in anticipation of President Bush's Middle East speech.
The Syrian president believes he has it made. Wooed by every Arab leader, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and ala Qaeda pour more than $1.2 billion a year into his coffers. As for US disapproval, he is confident that not all is lost. After all, he has a prize to dangle for Washington: Since Damascus airport became the main hub for peripatetic al Qaeda, the information his intelligence service can garner is unparalleled anywhere in the world.
Assad's head is not completely in the air. He often seeks the advice of General Ali Aslan, an old crony of his father's, the late president Hafez Assad, on matters of intelligence and terrorism.
This month, the general advised him to throw the Americans a bone of information on a terrorist plot to hit a US target in the Middle East. The target, which the Americans are keeping secret, was evacuated and an ambush set for the assailants, who were captured and are now being interrogated.
But the interrogation begun several days ago has raised a number of troubling questions. Were the attackers really al Qaeda fighters, or decoys lured by Syria to execute the hit in order to make the information Damascus laid before the Americans credible?
The exercise was a success for the Syrians, who gained points on the public opinion and diplomatic fronts. US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assistant secretary of state William Burns had to acknowledge grudgingly that information from Damascus had saved American lives.
The Syrians then launched themselves into another such exercise. They claim to be holding the man who is believed to have recruited Mohammed Atta, one of the ringleaders of the September 11 attacks in the United States. He is Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a German of Syrian descent. Damascus claims his interrogation could finally lay bare the command structure behind the hijacking attacks. They even complain that the Americans are hindering the investigation and getting in the way of Syria's secret services.
But the truth, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, is that the Syrians have not allowed Americans investigators direct access to Zammar. They only agreed to their officers putting to him questions provided by the Americans and jotting down the prisoner's answers to hand back to them. So no American agent has seen the prisoner and no one has been able to establish his real identity or even confirm that the Syrians handed over the genuine questions and answers. There is another conundrum: Why is this particular al Qaeda operative in Syrian detention when hundreds more stroll the streets of Damascus at liberty?
The same doubts apply to Zammar's role as Atta's recruiter and his knowledge of the 9/11 conspiracy.
It was clear from the cold words President Bush addressed to Bashar Assad in his June 26 speech that Washington was not buying the Syrian ruses. He said bitingly that Assad had to decide once and for all whether he fought terror or supported it. First of all, he must shut down without delay all terrorist headquarters and offices based in Damascus and stop backing the Hizballah.
Suddenly, Bashar Assad found himself in the same frigid place as Yasser Arafat.
Sources in the Middle East, among them DEBKA-Net-Weekly's experts, now believe a US assault on Syria may possibly come about before an offensive against Iraq. Assad may feel he is at the top of the Middle East heap, but an American attack can easily turn his position of strength round to become his greatest vulnerability. All Bush has to do is to shut down Damascus international airport to achieve immediate and excellent results for his Middle East military campaign against terror.
China
Great Military Leap Projected
Informed sources in Washington tell DEBKA-Net-Weekly that the US National Security Council and the Departments of Defense and State are holding back publication of their annual assessment of Chinese military capabilities and strategic intentions. They fear that this blunt, realistic outline of where growing Chinese capabilities are heading could both complicate Sino-US relations and have a disconcerting effect at home.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's China expert reveals some of the report's highlights.
China's massive high-tech modernization effort is increasingly focused on aerospace-defense and dual-use efforts. They are a continuation of the improvements outlined in the three past annual DoD Reports to Congress in People's Liberation Army (PLA) weapons of mass destruction, aircraft, ground equipment, warships, telecommunications, amphibious and airlift power project, China's security and military grand strategy, doctrine, and its overall threat to Taiwan.
In June, US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declined an invitation to Beijing to discuss resuming military exchanges between the US and China. Instead, he sent Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodman. Bitterness still lingers on both sides from past episodes, such as the Chinese Air Force J-8D ramming in April 2001 of a US Navy EP-3E reconnaissance aircraft, forcing it to land on Hainan Island, and the May 1999 destruction of the Chinese Embassy by a USAF B-2 bomber. Reports of China's weapons supplies and training facilities for the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists (first revealed in DEBKAfile Oct. 6, 2001, and DEBKA-Net-Weekly No. 33, Oct. 12, 2001) have resurfaced again recently in the United States.
In March 2002, General Cao Gangchuan, director of the PLA General Equipment (Armaments) Department, reaffirmed China's need to develop advanced technology to 'boost comprehensive strength and its military prowess'. President Jiang Zemin, who is head of China's powerful Central Military Commission, has reportedly been working closely with General Cao to implement the PLA's modernization drive, aiming at a capability for 'winning a regional war using modern technology, particularly high-technology'.
These urgent efforts have a parallel with China's crash programs in the 1950s and 1970s to develop nuclear weapons, nuclear submarines, ballistic missiles, and space technologies under Marshal Ni Rongzhen. Co-operation with Russia to create a "multi-polar world", also ultimately aimed at a rapid modernization of the PLA, has run into a snag as Putin leans closer towards the American camp.
The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) - and how to achieve it - is a very serious matter in China, spurred by a potential confrontation with Taiwan, possibly with US and Japanese intervention, India's ongoing development of strategic weapon systems, China's territorial claims in the South China Sea, and its ambition to recover lands 'lost' to Russia. The pressure of the last may intensify as China grows economically stronger and Russia weaker - and both become more nationalistic.
Independence movements in Tibet and western provinces with large Islamic populations could also pose serious internal threats that could be exploited by external opponents. However, for at least the near- to mid-term, China's geopolitical-military center of gravity will likely focus on its south-eastern flank, within its current 'Two Island Chain' strategy of pushing out its defensive perimeter.
The Chinese are firm believers in the 'assassin's mace' (sha sho jian) - secretly devastating weapons that exploit an enemy's weaknesses before that enemy can develop countermeasures.
Their evolving RMA doctrine of local war, active peripheral defense, and rapid regional power projection, is underpinned by new strategic concepts and operational techniques.
The "strategic frontier" entails a full range of competitive boundaries related to the notion of comprehensive national strength - including land, sea and aerospace frontiers - and economic and technological advances.
"Strategic deterrence" implies the non-violent use of military power to deter war or to achieve national political objectives, and "gaining the initiative by striking first", rather than passively waiting for an enemy's first blow.
A Chinese asymmetric RMA strategy will emphasize the development of niches of technical excellence (for instance anti-satellite, anti-stealth, advanced sensors, electro-magnetic pulse weapons, directed-energy weapons, information warfare, and electronic warfare). This targets an enemy's weaknesses, rather than attempting to match a major potential opponent such as the US across the board in all areas of leading defense technology.
Information technology (IT) systems are seen as both an opportunity and a weakness through the use of innovative information warfare (IW) techniques.
Quick, pre-emptive strikes, possibly using ballistic and cruise missiles, are intended to prevent an enemy build-up of strength. It is a common misperception that the PLA will only be capable of Western 1980s-style maneuver warfare by late 2010. The PLA is changing its fundamental military doctrine and paradigm and will leapfrog generations of obsolete equipment within the next decade. However, modern IW and RMA concepts are combined with traditional Chinese military concepts such as those of such respected strategists as Sun-Tzu and Mao Tse Tung.
At the same time, the Chinese army is moving urgently to replace its obsolescent weapons inventory based on 1960s technologies. Nothing but military power commensurate with its growing economic strength will satisfy a nationalistic China bent on becoming a more active regional and global player.
Enhancement is achieved by large-scale technology transfers from the West and Russia - for instance, highly miniaturized integrated circuits, rapid-transmission and large data capacity telecommunications systems, and various types of supercomputers, as well as advanced composite materials, state-of-the-art nuclear power systems, and a broad range of innovative aerospace systems.
China is quietly preparing a few surprises relating to aircraft carriers and other defense systems for those who have tended to ignore the military implications of China's current technological transformation.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's China expert projects some of Beijing's military advances in the next two decades, classifying them as Basic, Radical and Breakthrough
Basic
The PLA with continue to incrementally improve its mobility and transport (for instance heavy airlift), combined-force operations, C4I systems, logistics, and equipment standardization;
Major weapons systems to be either improved domestically or procured include combat aircraft, missiles, fighting ships (including aircraft carriers and more advanced surface combatants, and conventional and nuclear submarines), artillery (including guided multiple launch missile systems) and armored fighting vehicles.
Elite, relatively small, rapid-reaction combat units (for instance, mechanized, airmobile, marine), for containing regional conflicts, are being developed to increase Beijing's regional power projection over the next decade. Their equipment and training will match those of modern Western forces.
After these steps, the PLA will overall continue to technologically lag behind the US, UK, Japan and other advanced Western nations by perhaps a decade or more, but still be able to develop the weapons and tactics to invade Taiwan.
Radical
This potential could take the form of new capabilities realized through the unique ('with Chinese characteristics') integration of various ITs, advanced materials and advanced manufacturing systems:
A mobilization scenario could include mass units of light infantry equipped with effective, but cheaply manufactured, high-tech weapons, linked together with adequate modern C4I systems (including mobile digital communications systems) - all within a common combat doctrine to permit operational integration with more sophisticated rapid reaction elite 'fist units'. The latter could be a high-tech form of 'People's Warfare' through a fusion of conventional and irregular techniques.
In combination with the above, the use of various cost-effective innovative technology weapons (for instance IW, large numbers of anti-tank and anti-air portable precision guided munitions, and advanced sea mines), combined with unconventional tactics, could provide an effective asymmetrical warfare capability against superior, more conventionally structured, enemy forces
An accelerated domestic development through foreign technology transfer and procurement of advanced aerospace systems such as stealth fighter aircraft, long-range GPS-guided cruise and ballistic missiles for precision deep-strikes together with improved conventional munitions and more flexible mobile launch operations. This is happening now with China's new Hong Niao series of land-attack cruise missiles.
An accelerated qualitative, and perhaps quantitative, build-up of tactical and strategic missile forces armed with conventional, nuclear and possibly chemical-biological warheads (including mobile short-range solid-propellant ballistic missiles of the D-11 and D-15 SRBM terminal guidance series; DF-20 and DF-22 IRBMs; and the DF-31 and DF-41 ICBMs and the new JL-2 SLBM), and related military space-based C4I assets, together with a corresponding shift in doctrine from a counter-value retaliatory to a pre-emptive counterforce strategy.
This more radical program could allow the Chinese armed forces to overtake the most advanced militaries (including Japan) in the next decade at the regional level.
Breakthrough
Advanced ITs used for various IW and EW applications to provide an overall asymmetrical warfare strategy against superior enemy forces. In particular leveraging relatively inexpensive technologies against costly enemy weapons platforms. This could include specialized radars or other sensors to detect high-tech manned stealth aircraft, which could then be destroyed by PGM or DEW systems.
Directed energy weapons (DEWs) such as laser and high-power radio frequency (RF) systems, that could provide broad tactical and strategic advantages for anti-satellite (ASAT), ballistic missile defense (BMD), anti-aircraft, anti-optics, and anti-personnel applications.
Procurement and mass production of sophisticated long-range stealth cruise missiles with precision guidance systems (combined inertial/TERCOM/GPS), advanced remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) and space satellites for reconnaissance and other IW applications. This could be supplemented with a new generation of ballistic missiles, combined with a fusion of advanced sensors such as synthetic aperture radar (SAR), laser radar and over-the-horizon (OTH) and innovative passive sensor systems. The PLA would then move towards an 'unmanned missile strategy' in which manned combat aircraft would become of decreasing importance - a so-called 'reconnaissance-strike complex'.
Space systems, including some high-value sophisticated manned platforms and vehicles (for instance hypersonic aero-spacecraft). In addition advanced telecommunications, unmanned reconnaissance, surveillance, targeting, ASAT and BMD systems could be used to counter the space-based defense assets that the US and other Western powers are becoming increasingly reliant upon. This could be referred to as a 'Tianjun', or 'space army with Chinese characteristics'
The development of some form of a genetically-tailored biological warfare capability is considered a long-shot because of likely political restraints, potential ethical considerations, and intense international opposition. However, this is likely to be technically feasible considering China's R&D trends in biotechnology.
The Breakthrough scenario is not likely until 2010 or later.
However, when combined with the more near-term Basic and Radical projections, it could have profound implications for China's aspirations as a global economic and military superpower.
25 June: Ten days before President George W. Bush told the Palestinians to remove their leaders if they wanted a state (on June 24), an intelligence report landing on his desk informed him that Arafat had jumped the gun on the presidential statement. Instead of instituting democratic reforms, the Palestinian leader had overhauled and recharged his terror command structure in readiness for a savage terrorist offensive intended to reach also US targets in Israel and the Middle East.
In remolding his terror command, Arafat had two objectives:
First, to pack it with terror operatives whose personal loyalty to him is above question;
Second, to make sure the different arms of his terror machine are smoothly synchronized.
Another of the report's disclosures refers to the serious decline in Arafat's health in recent months. He is said to suffer from prostate cancer requiring surgery, as well as the threat of cerebral edema.
The fact stressed in this intelligence report is that, from the moment he was faced with demands to reform his administration, the Palestinian leader dropped all the top aides the American and Israeli media cited as would-be candidates for key roles in the reformed government and security services: Axed were Mohamed Dahlan, head of the preventive security apparatus in the Gaza Strip, his opposite number on the West Bank, Jibril Rajoub, for his close ties with Americans and Israelis, and Arafat's personal financial adviser, Muhammed Rashid. The followers of Dahlan, Rajoub and the Fatah West Bank secretary arrested by Israel, Marwan Barghouti, were all sacked.
They were replaced by trusted veterans. The key names are revealed here by DEBKAfile's counter-terror and intelligence sources:
Salim Zaanun, 70:
The Palestinian National Council chairman, who lives permanently in Amman.
His new task: Management of Arafat's connections with the Hamas and Jihad Islami commands in Damascus and Lebanon.
Maher Ghanem, 60:
Chef de bureau of Palestinian foreign minister Farouk Kadoumi (who never accepted the Oslo 1993 Accords).
His new task: Zaanun's operational liaison in Damascus with the radical Hamas, Jjhad Islami, and Ahmad Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command.
Tayeb Abd a-Rahim, 56:
Palestinian Authority Secretary
His new task: Coordinator between the Gaza Strip and West Bank terror operations of the Hamas, Jihad Islami and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Saher Habash, 75:
Head of the multi-group Intifada Committees.
His new task: Supreme coordinator between Salim Zaanun, Maher Ghanem and Tayeb Abd a-Rahim, and the only one reporting directly to Arafat.
Also in charge of Arafat's most secret terrorist connections, those he maintains with the Lebanese Hizballah.
Feisal Abu Shrah, 65:
Commander of Force 17's terror operations. He is senior to -
Muhamed Damra, 48:
Commander of Ramallah contingent of Force 17, Arafat's personal guard, and the defenses at the Palestinian leaders' headquarters. Damra is senior officer of the Ramallah government center's security detail.
His new task: To maintain direct lines of communication between Arafat and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards posted in Lebanon and the Hizballah secretary Hassan Nasrallah.
Damra is also controller of the Hizballah cells operating under cover in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. His direct commander is Saher Habash; he has no access to Arafat.
Arafat's most trusted terror operative. Pro forma head of general security on the West Bank, Tirawi retains his clandestine duties as chief of the terrorist arm of Arafat's Fatah organization - al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - and is the senior connecting link between his boss and Iraqi military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad as well as its agents in Amman, Ramallah and other parts of the West Bank.
Rashid Abu Shbak, 42:
Officially, Dahlan's second in command in the Gaza Strip security service.
His new task: Director of the Gaza Strip joint terror operational command shared by Fatah, Force 17, elements of the various Palestinian 'security' services, Hamas, the PFLP and the Jihad Islami.
Bush's move against Arafat and his regime has an unspoken significance: He has virtually lumped them in with his original 'axis of evil', alongside Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Syrian President Bashar Assad is but a step away from joining this black list. When the US president orders military action in the Middle East to go forward, every regional member of this axis will be targeted by American might. Clearly, the US president is now as determined to remove Arafat is he is to get rid of Saddam Hussein and Nasrallah.
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