What is at Stake in Afghanistan

Great quick read on what is at stake in our conflict in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan: What Is at Stake? - Brookings Institution

Of particular interest is the part where the author ties Pakistan into the fate of Afghanistan. Everyone needs to remember that Pakistan is a nuclear nation, with a small stockpile of weapons.

"A victory for the Afghan Taliban would encourage its new partners, the Pakistan Taliban, in their struggle to take over the world’s second largest Muslim country. This February several Pakistani Taliban leaders united their forces and proclaimed their allegiance both to Omar and bin Laden."

This issue isn't going away soon, and it isn't going to be solved with force of arms alone.

Say Goodnight, Blackwater

The Iraqi government has denied Blackwater a renewed operating license, effectively putting an end to the operations of one of he most well known private military contractors in Iraq. This action is, of course, in response to the Blackwater shooting incident in 2007, as the license was denied for the firm's use of 'excessive force'. The State Department, who is the client for Blackwater, has not confirmed who will be taking over the privatized diplomatic security mission in Iraq. There are two other PMC's (private military contractors) operating in Iraq, but we'll have to see who gets the contract.

Here's an interesting idea, how about booting the PMC's altogether? I know, that's a stretch, but while I recognize the need to utilize PMC's due to U.S. force limitations, I don't like the diplomatic or security consequences.

CNN Wire Article | ABC News Article |
Reuters Article

Well, sure. It's not like anything else has worked.

From abu muqawama: Well, sure. It's not like anything else has worked.

The U.S. is falling behind in th deployment of advanced herbivore brigades. I'm troubled.

Theater or Reality? Pakistan Practices Shooting Drones

Since August, the U.S. Military has been using drones to hit Taliban and al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan. While this has been officially condemned by the Pakistani government, there has been nothing more than words on the issue. Recently, the Pakistani military conducted exercises in targeting and shooting down drones.

Pakistan's Army Practices Drone Shoot-Downs | Danger Room from Wired.com

It's an interesting read, and the region remains worth everyone's attention.

Nuclear Terrorism as Theater

The article below consists of a Q/A session with an Terrorism expert from the Rand Corporation. In case you don't know, Rand does an excellent job of tracking and cataloging threats, terror organizations, and outcomes worldwide.

Expert says nuclear terrorism is not a major threat (10/20/08) -- www.GovernmentExecutive.com

A couple of key points to take away from this article.

"We talk about the next catastrophic attack not as a matter of "if" but "when," implying that it's unavoidable"

"Instead of spreading fear, our leaders should speak to the American traditions of courage, self-reliance, and resiliency. Heaven forbid that an act of nuclear terrorism ever actually occurs, but if it does, we'll get through it."

Read the article, draw your own conclusions. Many folks don't necessarily agree, but remember this: One goal of terrorism is to create fear and insecurity. Even the *thought* of a terrorist organization with a nuke achieves this goal.

Terrorist Fear Mongering Seems to be Working Less Well

Bruce Schneier weighs in on how perhaps fear mongering as a secuirty tactic may be on the decline. One can only hope.

Schneier on Security: Terrorist Fear Mongering Seems to be Working Less Well, Part II

Taliban and al Qaeda Split?

I don't have time for an in depth analysis, but this could be very interesting news.

Sources: Taliban split with al Qaeda, seek peace - CNN.com

First of all, I think it's interesting on two points. First, this is a shift in Saudi policy regarding Afghanistan. For the past 25-30 years, the Saudi government and Royal family has always dealt with Afghanistan through intermediaries, usually Pakistan. For these talks, they are going directly to the parties involved.

Second, we must remember that al Qaeda's relationship with the Taliban has always been one of convenience for al Qaeda. It would appear that the Taliban have begun to question the value of that relationship.

Or, it's all business as usual, with double talk and misdirection. Very possible.

The Police Have Themselves an RV

The Sherrif's Department in Richland County, South Carolina, have purchased a new (used) armored personnel carrier for their Special Response Team.

Not a big deal. Lots of departments have armored vehicles for transporting officers on raids, etc. They are great for protecting officers in a high threat environment.

However, what makes this story fascinating is that said Richland County APC has an M2 .50 caliber belt fed machine gun mounted. What in the name of all that is good and holy does a law enforcement agency need with a .50 caliber machine gun? The .50 cal will cause extreme damage to just about anything not armored, and isn't really a 'precise' weapon; it's typically fired by 'walking' the rounds into the target since it lacks sights. Jeez, that's what I want on my street during a raid on a drug house, a deputy literally spraying .50 caliber rounds at a target that said rounds will probably come out the back of!

Here's the media release. And here is another source.

Railhead, TIDE, and Government Terrorist Databases

The National Counterterrorism Center is running a program called 'Railhead' to upgrade the government's mater list of terrorists. Yes, there is a centralized master list, which is then used to create more targeted watchlists like the TSA's infamous no-fly list.

There are problems with the Railhead program, however. Rep. Brad Miller, D-NC, has authored a letter (here) pointing out some serious issues with the NTC program.

Miller, who chairs the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, cited "severe technical troubles, poor contractor management, and weak government oversight," which he said had brought the Railhead program to the "verge of collapse."

Railhead is supposed to replace the aging Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), originally built by Lockheed Martin. TIDE may have been functional and effective when it was delivered, but ad hoc developemnt practices and shoddy program management have seriously degraded its effectiveness.

Data tables have been added to the original TIDE database, without concern for duplication of data fields or proper indexing. As a result, over half of the 463 tables are not documented or indexed. What does that mean? Without a data dictionary (something that lets users know what is stored where, why, and how, in a database) it is nearly impossible for new users and admins to grasp just exactly what is stored in those ad hoc tables. This will result in data not be returned during database searches and a lack of database integrity.

Without a detailed index of the data stored in each table in TIDE, the SQL search engine is blindfolded, unable to locate or identify undocumented data.

For a mission as important as TIDE, seeing reports that the technology side has been so poorly managed just makes me shake my head.

So Railhead was supposed to come behind and fix everything, right? Well, in theory. But there are problems, of course.

First and foremost, there are accusations of financial misconduct and a lack of oversight within the Railhead project. But more concerning to me is that decisions are being made at a technical or program level that may render Railhead even less effective than TIDE.

Many of the undocumented tables in TIDE have been added over the years as 'enhancements' to the system, with the overall goal of improving effectiveness. As mentioned before, that has resulted in data being stored in multiple places, what I call 'data fracturing'.

The Railhead program cannot make sense of all this fractured data, and it appears that project managers have decided to just disregard it out of hand.

"Pocket liter [sic]," for instance, the scraps of information obtained when law enforcement, military or other officials empty a suspect's pockets, including phone numbers, addresses or credit card information, is contained in 23 seperate tables in TIDE, rather than one single uniform table. But as problematic as the current TIDE system is, counterterrorism analysts may lose access to key data if the new Railhead system comes on line as planned at the end of 2008. "Specifically, users will no longer have access to data that will not be migrated [to the new system], such as pocket litter and border summaries," another recent Railhead document warns.

So, Railhead will not migrate everything from TIDE? Why not? Is that a technical decision? A policy decision? Whatever it is, it seems to be a step back from where we are now.

TIDE is built in Oracle, one of several industry standard relational database management systems (RDBMS). It has (well, it had, prior to the creation of the ad hoc tables) a defined relationship structure, which lays out which tables are related to which other tables, and how. That is what relational databases are designed to do. Railhead is abandoning an RDBMS approach in favor of storing the data in an XML format. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a method of marking up data to describe what the data is and what it does. It can be like a database... but it isn't a database. There are concerns that the new Railhead will have inflated storage requirements and poor performance due to the decision to use XML. I tend to agree with those fears.

XML is a fantastic tool to transfer data in a neutral format from system to system, since it carries with it an internal description of what the data is. However, it does not contain, necessarily, a descriptor that explains how that data relates to other data.

So we have a deployed IT system that is a technical mess (TIDE), being replaced by a new system that is having serious development problems and is suffering from some questionable policy decisions (Railhead). Where does that leave us?

References:
Ars Technica Article
Rep. Miller Letter
Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight Staff Memo
CNET Article

There Is No Terrorist Profile

Well, it would appear that Britain's own MI5 has determined that there is no way to accurately profile people for being a terrorist.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/aug/20/uksecurity.terrorism1

It concludes that it is not possible to draw up a typical profile of the "British terrorist" as most are "demographically unremarkable" and simply reflect the communities in which they live.

In a world gone crazy, where "Islamic extremists" are practically the bogeyman, this is a refreshing look on the real world of terrorism.

Crucially, the research has revealed that those who become terrorists "are a diverse collection of individuals, fitting no single demographic profile, nor do they all follow a typical pathway to violent extremism".

Rational actions. That is the important thing to understand. Terrorists are people who are rationally acting on perceived slights or political motives, and they can come from all types of people or populations. And stereotyping undermines the capabilities of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to effectively identify and classify threats. This research should only reinforce that simple fact.

Musharraf Resigns

President Musharraf of Pakistan has resigned.

Another article.

Okay, this bit of news hit me this morning, but I didn't have time to comment on it. Still don't really, so here's the highlights.

Pakistan scares the crap outta me and it should frighten you too. They are having stability issues, internal political violence, and they can't seem to shake the Taliban in their tribal frontier. All that isn't terrible... but they also have nuclear weapons. Sleep on that.

Musharraf wasn't the best game in town, but at least he played ball (to a point) with the U.S. That may have actually hurt him politically.

The ISI (Inter Services Intelligence), which is the Pakistani intelligence agency, has historical ties to fundamental Islam, ties to assassination plots (both against enemies and internally) and generally does whatever it wants. Without a strong hand guiding the ISI, or at least in collusion with it, they concern me. A lot.

I repeat, Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

As I was reading reports in Musharraf's resignation, a quote jumped out at me: 'Local media reports said he had been granted "safe passage" out of the country.' This is like saying, "President Bush resigned today, and was granted safe passage out of the country." That tell you anything?

I'm not a complete expert on counter-terror or counter-proliferation, but I certainly wish for more stability in any nation with a nuke arsenal.

File all that away in your happy box. I hope to have some more on this topic as I find some time to do some reading.