Whatever Happened to the Atrocities Prevention Board?

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I should be analyzing the Administration’s case for war to punish Bashar al-Assad because someone in his regime allegedly used chemical weapons against civilians. I will do so soon.

But I keep thinking back to the President’s Atrocities Prevention Board.

Back in August 2011, Obama rolled out an effort to figure out how to prevent attacks like the one that occurred on August 21. It was a then-NSC Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights and now UN Ambassador Samantha Power baby, closely in line with the Responsibility to Protect standards an attack on Assad would ultimately serve.

And while it suffered from some potentially fatal problems (notably, a remarkable selectivity about which atrocities actually counted as such and which should, for expediency, be ignored), it was a thoroughly laudable effort, an attempt to find new tools to prevent the mass killing of civilians.

Here are some things a May update reported have been going on in Syria.

On Syria, the State Department and USAID have deployed experts to support targeted projects that lay the foundation for accountability and a democratic transition that protects the rights of all Syrian people, such as building a cross-sectarian network of civilian activists by training local leaders and activists, including women and minorities.

[snip]

In Syria, the United States has strongly promoted accountability efforts, supporting organizations that are collecting and reviewing evidence to establish criminal responsibility and that are leading efforts to help the organized opposition begin the process of developing Syrian-led accountability mechanisms.

I raise the APB not to declare its failure, but to point to parts of the framework that seem absent from the discussion of how to respond to the Syrian CW attack.

For example, the APB emphasizes multilateral work, with the UN a key player.

Our diplomats will encourage more robust multilateral efforts to prevent and respond to atrocities.  An effective atrocity prevention and response strategy – in which burdens are appropriately shared by other nations  – will require cultivating deeper and broader support among our bilateral partners, as well as international and regional organizations:

[snip]

  • UN System Capacity: The United States will work with the United Nations to strengthen UN capacity for conflict prevention and crisis management, including through preventive diplomacy and mediation, especially when UN missions encounter escalating atrocity threats.
  • Regional Capacity:   The United States will also work with our partners to build the capacity of regionally-based organizations to prevent and respond to atrocities.

Now UN Ambassador Power is not so optimistic about UN’s use here.

Recall: In July Russia blocked nonbinding #UNSC resolution condemning any CW use; last week even blocked press statement against CW attack.

Syrian regime must be held accountable, which #UNSC has refused to do for 2+ years. US considering appropriate response.

In 2011, Power’s Board believed one potential response to a crisis was a civilian surge.

Civilian Surge: State and USAID will increase the ability of the United States Government to “surge” specialized expertise in civilian protection on a rapid response basis in crisis situations.

Whereas here we’re going to surge cruise missiles, nothing more.

Read more →

Sources and Methods: A Case for War

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Screen shot 2013-08-30 at 2.26.03 PMI’m going to do a more detailed discussion of what the Administration just released as its case to unilaterally and illegally start bombing Syria.

For now, I wanted to point out something that stuck out to me. The map the Administration released — purportedly to show that the location of the strikes were logical Syrian government targets — includes a curious caveat.

Note: Reports of chemical attacks originating from some locations may reflect the movement of patients exposed in one neighborhood to field hospitals and medical facilities in the surrounding area. They may also reflect confusion and panic triggered by the ongoing artillery and rocket barrage, and reports of chemical use in other neighborhoods.

It suggests the US government is uncertain whether these sites are all actual attack sites; it may even reveal USG knows some of these locations may not, in fact, be attack locations.

Remember, the UN inspectors, who are not mentioned at all in the government’s case, will ultimately have forensic evidence from these sites.

All that said, consider how the number and location of sites plays in the case itself.

Local social media reports of a chemical attack in the Damascus suburbs began at 2:30 a.m. local time on August 21. Within the next four hours there were thousands of social media reports on this attack from at least 12 different locations in the Damascus area. Multiple accounts described chemical-filled rockets impacting opposition-controlled areas.

[snip]

We have identified one hundred videos attributed to the attack, many of which show large numbers of bodies exhibiting physical signs consistent with, but not unique to, nerve agent exposure. The reported symptoms of victims included unconsciousness, foaming from the nose and mouth, constricted pupils, rapid heartbeat, and difficulty breathing. Several of the videos show what appear to be numerous fatalities with no visible injuries, which is consistent with death from chemical weapons, and inconsistent with death from small-arms, high-explosive munitions or blister agents. At least 12 locations are portrayed in the publicly available videos, and a sampling of those videos confirmed that some were shot at the general times and locations described in the footage.

We assess the Syrian opposition does not have the capability to fabricate all of the videos, physical symptoms verified by medical personnel and NGOs, and other information associated with this chemical attack.

That is, the USG points to the sheer number of social media reports as proof that the attacks really happened, because the Syrian opposition couldn’t have faked them all.

And yet the USG’s own case suggests that those locations may be inaccurate, even though the locations are portrayed in the videos.

One more note: the government points to satellite imagery showing that attacks from regime controlled areas attacked some — but only some — of the areas in which there were reported attacks.

Satellite detections corroborate that attacks from a regime-controlled area struck neighborhoods where the chemical attacks reportedly occurred – including Kafr Batna, Jawbar, ‘Ayn Tarma, Darayya, and Mu’addamiyah.

That leaves out 7 of the reported attack sites, and only includes one entirely rebel-controlled site: Kafr Batna (taking the map at its word on who controls what).

For the moment, I mean that as nothing more than an observation.

Blurred Line? Really? What a Perfect Analogy

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As Barack Obama’s relentless pursuit of a violent intervention in Syria continues, cliches have been tossed out freely in each new segment of the corporate news cycle. We had “credibility” for quite some time, and then yesterday there was “go it alone” (see the capsule summary for this article on left of page for “go it alone” phrase) when David Cameron lost a parliamentary vote authorizing British cooperation in military action yesterday afternoon. But an article published last night by the New York Times provided, whether intentionally or not, the perfect analogy for Obama’s drive for war in Syria. When I tweeted it last night, the title for their article was “Military Analysis: Aim of a U.S. Attack on Syria: Sharpening a Blurred ‘Red Line’”. That phrasing immediately calls to mind the latest pop misogynistic hit “Blurred Lines”. [The “unrated” version of the video is definitely NSFW.] The Times has now changed its phrasing somewhat, with the latter part of the headline reading “Restore a ‘Red Line’ That Became Blurred”.

Okay, so by changing their phrasing, the Times appears to be signalling that they didn’t mean to draw a parallel with the song, but I still feel it is a perfect fit for the situation. The lyrics are a disgusting collection of violent sexual suggestions for what the artist wants to do to a “good girl”. And that seems to fit so well for what Obama wants to do to Syria (while Assad certainly doesn’t fit as “good”, the innocent civilians who will die do fit): “I’ll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two”. And if that isn’t enough, we even get this in the music video:

Who has a big d.

Doesn’t this strike, when all is said and done, amount to nothing more than Obama proving he has a big d? When even large numbers of military officers are now openly questioning the wisdom of an attack, and insisting that it will spiral inevitably into a larger regional war, Obama’s determination to proceed is all about the size of his d.

Granted, in the LA Times yesterday, there was an anonymous suggestion that Obama only wanted an attack “just muscular enough not to get mocked”, but from where we simple taxpayers sit, mocking seems the only tool we have left for trying to prevent one atrocity leading to many more under the guise of good intentions.

General Idris’ Close Watch on Assad’s CW

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In a piece summarizing the current state of intelligence, the AP reveals how uncertain US intelligence is about chain of control over Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons.

Intelligence officials say they could not pinpoint the exact locations of Assad’s supplies of chemical weapons, and Assad could have moved them in recent days as U.S. rhetoric builds. That lack of certainty means a possible series of U.S. cruise missile strikes aimed at crippling Assad’s military infrastructure could hit newly hidden supplies of chemical weapons, accidentally triggering a deadly chemical attack.

Over the past six months, with shifting front lines in the 2½-year-old civil war and sketchy satellite and human intelligence coming out of Syria, U.S. and allied spies have lost track of who controls some of the country’s chemical weapons supplies, according to one senior U.S. intelligence official and three other U.S. officials briefed on the intelligence shared by the White House as reason to strike Syria’s military complex. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the Syrian issue publicly.

U.S. satellites have captured images of Syrian troops moving trucks into weapons storage areas and removing materials, but U.S. analysts have not been able to track what was moved or, in some cases, where it was relocated. They are also not certain that when they saw what looked like Assad’s forces moving chemical supplies, those forces were able to remove everything before rebels took over an area where weapons had been stored. [my emphasis]

8 days after an attack they say they’re certain came from Assad loyalists, the intelligence community says it doesn’t know where all the CW are, doesn’t know who controls it all, and has questions about whether rebels seized (or took) CW after they were moved into place by Syrian forces.

With that in mind, I want to return to the stunning report from NBC last night that casually quotes General Salim Idris, head of the Free Syrian Army, claiming he has “sources” in Assad’s inner circle.

Salim Idris, commander of the Free Syrian Army, said sources in Assad’s inner circle tell him that’s exactly what happened.

[snip]

Idris also indicated that pressure also has been growing on Assad to respond to a series of rebel advances.

Not only does the report show Idris claiming — effectively — that people in Assad’s inner circle are so disloyal that they not only continue to communicate with him, but provide key intelligence about how much pressure Assad is under.

Read more →

Anonymous “Intelligence Officials” Contemplated a Rogue CW Attack 8 Months Ago

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In my Syria post last night, I expressed vague feelings that the alleged preparations of chemical weapons back in December might offer some insight into last week’s attack.

Here’s one way they might.

CIA beat reporter Joby Warrick did a story explaining that incident. We learned of that incident through one of the same kinds of intelligence — according to WSJ — we learned of last week’s attack, surveillance images.

Soldiers at one Syrian base were monitored mixing precursors for chemical weapons and taking other steps to ready the lethal munitions for battlefield use, the officials said. It was the first hard evidence that Syria was moving toward possible activation of its vast arsenal of chemical weapons, which includes nerve gas and other poisons.

Surveillance photos confirmed that at least one army unit began loading special military vehicles that transport bombs and artillery shells carrying chemical warheads, according to the officials. The moves followed specific orders to elite troops to begin preparations for the use of the weapons against advancing rebel fighters, the officials said.

But in spite of the fact that someone (the Israelis again?) captured these photos, analysts had the same questions about that incident they do now: who ordered the mobilization of the CW?

Intelligence analysts said the orders to prepare the weapons were issued about two weeks ago. They said it was not clear whether the decision came from senior Syrian leaders, possibly including President Bashar al-Assad, or from a field commander acting on his own, the officials said.

“Orders were issued.” That same passive voice.

In response to the incident, “intelligence officials” raised the possibility that an individual commander might release the CW without orders from Assad.

Still, the discovery that steps had been taken to activate weapons at at least one military base alarmed intelligence officials, because of fears that a single commander could unleash the deadly poisons without orders from higher up the chain of command.

[snip]

Although Assad is aware of the dire consequences of using chemical weapons, individual commanders could take matters into their own hands if their positions are being overrun, said a Middle Eastern intelligence official briefed on the latest intelligence findings.

“Once you’ve used the weapons, you know the world is coming after you,” the official said. “But if you’re a general and you think you’re not going to survive this, you might not care.”

Read more →

What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Report From James “Least Untruthful” Clapper

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It is a time pregnant with possibilities as the world awaits release of the US report on chemical weapon use in Syria. Today’s Washington Post informs us that we may see the report as soon as tomorrow:

The Obama administration believes that U.S. intelligence has established how Syrian government forces stored, assembled and launched the chemical weapons allegedly used in last week’s attack outside Damascus, according to U.S. officials.

The administration is planning to release evidence, possibly as soon as Thursday, that it will say proves that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad bears responsibility for what U.S. officials have called an “undeniable” chemical attack that killed hundreds on the outskirts of the Syrian capital.

The report, being compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is one of the final steps that the administration is taking before President Obama makes a decision on a U.S. military strike against Syria, which now appears all but inevitable.

Wait. What?

Marcy already mused on all the talking heads focusing on how a US response to Assad using chemical weapons on Syrian citizens is all about our “credibility“. If the US response is so tied up with credibility, how on earth can it be that the person charged with compiling the report on which we will base military action is the man whose obituary will be obliged to mention his admission that he lied to Congress, but that we should excuse the lies because he gave the “least untruthful” version possible? That is how the US will convince the world that, unlike when we lied about Iraq having WMD’s before we invaded, this time we aren’t lying about Assad?

Note also that Marcy mentioned yesterday that the US, through John Kerry, tried to prevent the UN carrying out its own investigation into the chemical weapon evidence. That move undercuts US efforts at credibility since outside, independent confirmation of findings would be a huge step in providing assurance that the US is being truthful.

The UN effort continues today, with the delegation of inspectors visiting a different Damascus suburb than the one they visited on Monday. (See the map in this BBC article for the sites at which chemical weapons were accused of being used in the attack.)

We get a bit of information from AP on how the UN team is operating:

The U.N. chemical weapons experts conducted their first field testing in the western Damascus suburb of Moadamiyeh on Monday. They collected samples and testimony after a treacherous journey through government and rebel-held territory. Their convoy was hit by snipers but members of the team were unharmed.

The ability of the UN team to interview victims (which is presumably how they got “testimony”) and then to take their own samples is a key part of making their work believable. Both environmental samples at the sites of attack and biological samples from the victims play a role in identifying whether and what chemical agents were used. See this informative piece from FAS on descriptions of symptoms that the investigators would be looking for when interviewing victims.

When Clapper finally releases the US report, one of the most important aspects in that report will be the provenance of any samples the US subjected to chemical analysis. We don’t have acknowledged “boots on the ground” in Syria, so how did the US get samples? What certifications, if any, are there on chain of custody documentation on those samples? As with most other accounts of the chemical attack, the AP article linked above mentions that Doctors Without Borders has documented the number of dead and injured from the attack. Samples and documentation coming from them would be seen as having a much greater level of independence than samples provided by the rebel groups that control the territory where the attacks are said to have taken place.

Even though their main website has been taken down, reportedly by the Syrian Electronic Army, the New York Times is continuing its reporting on the situation in Syria. An article published yesterday afternoon provides some useful background information on the ability of modern forensic methods to detect chemical agent use long after the fact: Read more →

Cruise Killing on the Passive Voice

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Before I lay out the chronology of the road to war against Syria, check out the language National Security Advisor Susan Rice used to blow off the UN investigation.

Ms. Rice sent the email to Ms. Power and others, officials said. “The investigation is…too late, and will actually tell us what we already know: CW was used,”

While the WSJ quotes Rice claiming to know who actually used the chemical weapons in the next line, ultimately it comes down to this:

“CW was used.”

Jay Carney today also used the passive voice in dismissing the UN investigation.

So the work of that team is redundant, you might say, because it is clearly established already that chemical weapons have been used on a significant scale.

The fucking passive voice.

But before we got to that point consider what happened. First (according to WSJ’s Arab diplomats) the always trustworthy Israelis caught someone moving CW into place.

One crucial piece of the emerging case came from Israeli spy services, which provided the Central Intelligence Agency with intelligence from inside an elite special Syrian unit that oversees Mr. Assad’s chemical weapons, Arab diplomats said. The intelligence, which the CIA was able to verify, showed that certain types of chemical weapons were moved in advance to the same Damascus suburbs where the attack allegedly took place a week ago, Arab diplomats said.

Then after the attack, according to Foreign Policy, US spooks overheard a Syrian Defense official “demanding answers” from an officer in the chemical weapons unit from which the CW would have been used.

Last Monday [sic], in the hours after a horrific chemical attack east of Damascus, an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people. Those conversations were overheard by U.S. intelligence services, The Cable has learned.

FP goes on to point out a lot of the important things we don’t know, such as why and on whose authority, even while laying out the case that CW was used. (Though here are some doubts about whether it was really sarin.)

Meanwhile, according to Gareth Porter, it took until Saturday for the UN to request access to the attack site. Syria granted that access Sunday. At which point John Kerry attempted to personally intervene to stop the investigation.

After the deal was announced on Sunday, however, Kerry pushed Ban in a phone call to call off the investigation completely.

The Wall Street Journal reported the pressure on Ban without mentioning Kerry by name. It said unnamed “U.S. officials” had told the secretary-general that it was “no longer safe for the inspectors to remain in Syria and that their mission was pointless.”

But Ban, who has generally been regarded as a pliable instrument of U.S. policy, refused to withdraw the U.N. team and instead “stood firm on principle”, the Journal reported. He was said to have ordered the U.N. inspectors to “continue their work”.

Meanwhile, the Administration also seems to be delaying the release of its own intelligence report, after promising it would already be out.

Q And there’s a lot of speculation that this intelligence report that presumably would link Assad directly to the chemical weapons attack might be released today. Can you give us an update on the timing?

MR. CARNEY: What I would say is that yesterday I made clear that the intelligence community is working on an assessment and that once we had that assessment we would provide information to the public about it in the coming days. And that remains true. I think that that’s speculation that it would come today rather than some other day. But it will come and I think you can expect it this week.

Do you get the feeling there are some holes in the intelligence report? Such as, if this was ordered by someone in Assad’s chain of command, why a Defense Ministry official would be making “panicked calls” about the strike?

There’s one more thing I find at least interesting about the intelligence.

Recall back in December, when the CW scares first started. We had evidence — as the Israelis claim we have no — of Syria pre-positioning weapons. And then Syria lost its Toobz access. I noted at the time that the utter lack of panic about the latter event suggested that we knew precisely why and how the Toobz came down. That detail may mean nothing about today’s events (though at the time it suggested that the source of the intelligence wasn’t SIGINT, because if the US had just lost its intelligence access it would have been panicking). But it seems notable, given the centrality of the “moving chemicals” intelligence again.

There is, to be sure, a great deal of evidence that (as both Rice and Carney said) “CW were used.”

But the Administration seems increasingly squirrelly allowing time to discover the rest of the occasion, which may be why a Syrian officer release CW without having had received an order from his superiors.

“Credibility”

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An embarrassing number of people in DC have been saying publicly since Friday that we have to launch cruise missiles against Bashar al-Assad or risk the “credibility” of the United States. John McCain. Mike McCaul. Adam Schiff. Former NSC staffer Barry Pavel.

But this WSJ piece — after describing how central the Saudis were in presenting earlier claims that Assad had used chemical weapons and in the midst of descriptions of how central a role Bandar bin Sultan is playing in drumming up war against Syria — reports that Saudi King Abdullah and others were bitching about US credibility as early as April.

In early April, said U.S. officials, the Saudi king sent a strongly worded message to Mr. Obama: America’s credibility was on the line if it let Mr. Assad and Iran prevail. The king warned of dire consequences of abdicating U.S. leadership and creating a vacuum, said U.S. officials briefed on the message.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, who was the first Saudi official to publicly back arming the rebels, followed with a similar message during a meeting with Mr. Obama later that month, the officials said.

I wonder if we started taking Saudi taunts about our credibility more seriously after Bandar made a show of wooing Vladimir Putin?

In any case, here we go, hastily getting involved in the war in Syria and potentially escalating it across the region as a whole, without proper review much less a plan on how to actually improve the situation in Syria.

Credibility.

Apparently, the only kind of credibility that matters for America’s place in the role anymore is if our Saudi overlords suggest we lack credibility if we fail to do their explicit, and long-planned, bidding.

Credibility.

Meanwhile think of all the things American has squandered its position as unquestioned leader of the world without confronting. Poverty, hunger. The most obvious, of course, is climate change.

How much more “credibility” would the United States have by now if, at the start of his Administration, Obama had launched not just a Manhattan project to dramatically curb American use of fossil fuels, but also invested the goodwill Obama had (back before he expanded the drones) to find an equitable, global approach to climate change.

Credibility.

Apparently, the only thing the Villagers in DC think could or should win us “credibility” is in unquestioningly serving as global enforcer against the brutal dictators our brutal dictator friends the Saudis wants us to punish (though the Saudis are quite selective about which brutal dictators they stake our credibility on).

America could have used its power and leadership to earn real credibility. Instead, we’re trying to suck up to Bandar Bush.

Who Is Disrupting Pakistan’s Peace Talks With Taliban This Time?

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Back in May, the CIA chose to take out Wali Ur Rehman in a drone strike that appeared to be follow-through on their vow to take revenge for his role in the bombing of the CIA outpost in Khost. As I pointed out on the day of the strike, the revenge killing came at a particularly sensitive moment, as Nawaz Sharif had been elected to head Pakistan’s new government but had not yet even taken office. Sharif had run on a platform that included a promise to enter into peace negotiations with Pakistan’s Taliban group known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan or the TTP. As could well have been expected, the TTP announced the next day that they were withdrawing their offer to take part in talks.

An AP article picked up by the Washington Post this morning informs us that Sharif has extended his offer of talks once again and that the TTP has shown interest in participating:

A senior Pakistani Taliban commander has welcomed the government’s recent offer to hold peace talks.

Asmatullah Muawiya said in a statement Thursday that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif demonstrated political maturity by reiterating his offer to hold peace negotiations in a speech over the weekend.

Muawiya said militants in Pakistan should respond positively if the government is serious about resolving the conflict.

With prospects for peace talks back on track, today’s news from Pakistan’s tribal region is all the more maddening:

A Pakistani Taliban commander believed to be harbouring foreign militants was killed along with four others in a roadside bomb explosion in South Waziristan tribal agency, officials said Thursday.

Ghulam Jan, believed to be a key commander of the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), was killed along with four accomplices when the improvised explosive device targeted his vehicle on Wednesday evening in Birmal tehsil, located about 27 kilometres from Wana, the main town in South Waziristan.

Assistant Political Agent Shahid Ali Khan confirmed that five people were killed in the blast which completely destroyed the vehicle.

Okay, this time it was an IED and not a drone, so we can’t immediately put blame on the CIA. Also, the Dawn article goes on to note that a pro-government faction has been fighting the TTP in that region for five years or so. Even with those caveats, we are left to wonder whether the CIA and/or ISI had a role in choosing both the target and the timing for this particular attack, since those two groups have shown in the past that they prefer violence over peace talks and are not afraid to take steps to disrupt talks. At any rate, it will be very interesting to see if today’s bomb manages to block the current move toward negotiations.

Morally Depraved Obama Fails in Response to Egyptian Massacre

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The New York Times headline for its story summarizing Barack Obama’s statement yesterday on the violence in Egypt parrots the administration’s hapless plea that Obama has few options in dealing with Egypt: “His Options Few, Obama Rebukes Egypt’s Leaders“. Obama’s grand statement delivered the stinging blow of canceling joint military exercises with the Egyptians. We also are reminded later in the article that the US has delayed delivery of four F-16 fighter jets without also being informed that this delay was announced prior to the massacre of Egyptian civilians.

In his statement, Obama never addressed the huge piece of leverage that the US does have in relation to Egypt. The roughly $1.5 billion in US aid that flows to Egypt each year is primarily for the military and supports about a third of the military’s budget. The article in the Times goes to great lengths to explain to us just why Obama can’t cut off this aid. We are told first that if we cut off aid, “Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates” will rush into the void to provide the missing funding And if that isn’t scary enough, we are told a couple of paragraphs later that cutting off the aid would open the door for Russia and China to step in.

With the death toll from the crackdown now above 600 and likely to go much higer, and with grisly videos surfacing of civilians being gunned down in cold blood by the military, we see a quote from the standard anonymous “senior official” who says “There’s a basic threshold where we can’t give a tacit endorsement to them.”

Just wow. The Egyptian military has staged a coup in which they have removed a democratically elected (although dysfunctional and failed) government and massacred over 600 of its citizens in cold blood. None of that rises to the level of the “threshold where we can’t give a tacit endorsement to them”? What on earth do they have to do to get the US to cut them off?

One answer to that question is in the next paragraph:

And it could destabilize the region, particularly the security of Israel, whose 1979 peace treaty with Egypt is predicated on the aid.

It would appear that Egypt can kill all of its own civilians it wants with the weapons and money we provide as long as they don’t also kill any Israelis.

But there is another insidious tie in the US aid to Egypt. US defense contractors are making tons of money off of it. From a Bloomberg piece describing US support of the Egyptian military two years ago at the beginning of the uprising against Mubarak: Read more →