Brussels Shows Europe’s Shockingly Dysfunctional Approach to Security by David Ignatius, Washington Post
The value of catastrophic events is that they can help people face up to problems that are otherwise impossible to address. Maybe this will be the case with Tuesday’s horrific attacks in Brussels.
Europe is facing a security threat that’s unprecedented in its modern history, at a time when its common currency, border security and intelligence-sharing are all under severe stress. If Europe were a stock, a pragmatic investor would sell it, despite the sunk cost and sentimental attachment. Without radical restructuring, it’s an enterprise headed for failure…
Comments
Vicrasta......this is exactly what I mean....Assad intel officer working closely with IS in Palmyra is suddenly a "refugee" in Germany.....remember the Assad intelligence service had been trained by the Russians for the last 40 or so odd years....
Ahmed al-Khalaf helped Assad coordinate with Da'esh in Palmyra (& looted artefacts too):
Assad regime intelligence agent Ahmed al-Khalaf turned up in Germany after coordinating with Da'esh in Palmyra.
https://unfetteredfreedom.wordpress....ees-in-europe/ …
Part of the German problem is they do not have the same refugee screening process we had in Berlin in the Cold War days in order to fish out such individuals mentioned above...last German government comments are that they are somehow missing 500,000 individuals they knew arrived in Germany....how can you lose 500,000???
Vicrasta----this is my deep concern about terrorism in Europe...how much of it is being supported by Russian FSB efforts in support to the Putin political warfare directed at both the EU and Obama..??
Many might laugh it off as scare mongering or being anti Russian but in reality who thought Russia would militarily annex Crimea and actually invade eastern Ukraine in the 21st century attempting to upset the 25 years of peace/security structures in place since the Wall fell?
The use of terrorism as a valid tactic is fully within the confines of the Russian stated non linear warfare .....who would have ever assumed the creation of refugees or the use of starvation also fits inside non linear warfare? Anything can be used as long as it weakens overall the West.
Really worth the read of a long article that is a valid thesis.......notice the date it was written and then look at Russian actions now in Syria.....and the total non interest in bombing IS which Putin openly and publicly stated was the reason he went to Syria in the first place.
https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/...mic-terrorism/
How Russia Manipulates Islamic Terrorism
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 8, 2015
QUOTE:
Taken from the article.....
Last year I wrote about the murky role Russia was playing in the Syrian war, bolstering the Assad tyranny while facilitating the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) and other Salafi-jihadists as a means of dividing and discrediting the Syrian opposition. Moscow’s action were in line with the strategy it had used to defeat the separatist movement in Chechnya, infiltrating the insurgency, driving it into extremism, and facilitating the arrival of al-Qaeda jihadists who displaced the Chechen nationalists. In Syria, Russia’s actions accord with the strategy adopted by the regime and its Iranian masters to present Assad as the last line of defence against a terrorist takeover of Syria and a genocide against the minorities. New evidence has emerged to underline these points.
UNQUOTE:
NOTICE that even in this article there is linkage between the FSB and AQ.....just as there is a deep tie in by Assad with IS and a deep tie in to Iran.
The Obama WH appears to be totally oblivious to this in their dealings with Putin NOR figure it in their so called Syrian/IS strategy which we all know they have none....
This is the most unimaginative WH in over 70 years...but wait if it applies to a legacy then they can really get creative....
As someone who has spent a greater part of the working career and private life dealing with German intelligence services and a few other "befriended services" here in Europe......the Europeans can take care of themselves.
The core problem is again just as the US discovered in Iraq and AFG....the ability to speak Arabic or any number of other languages ie Russian fluently not just street use wise. Not only is the language ability critical...can the individual walk, talk and sleep Islamic jihadi ideology.
The second core issue is the ability to share intelligence which since Snowden has become a serious issue.
The third core problem is the perceived view that the US IC services work against Europeans not with Europeans.
The fourth core problem is the single word "trust" between the "befriended services".....
Even in the 70s/80s when I was chasing RAF here in Germany the US would not "share"...they had a bad reputation of wanting everything but not reciprocating in kind.
We all hear the term intel sharing BUT if one is in that particular business you would be astounded to find out it is not quite that easy...just take the term "Five Eyes"....that all but eliminates most of the European services--AND that info is the richest that truly needs to be passed BUT you cannot pass it without going to jail under this Administration since Snowden.
It takes years to get a qualified individual into a terrorist group and then how do you communication with him if he is deep in especially IS....they tend to have actually a very good OPSEC concept that I first identified in 2005 at Abu Ghraib as being due to GDR MfS training and yet the Army laughed at my reports ( I was surprised to have not gotten in further info requests back) and I never heard anything back from National levels. The GDR intel officers had their own institute at the University of Baghdad and were actually quite good AND spoke Arabic.
I will give an example out of the RAF days...I was at a shootout with three identified RAF members in Celle in the mid 80s....one killed, one seriously wounded, one captured unwounded.
I shouted at the raid team to stop shooting at the wounded terrorist which is extremely hard when the adrenal flows in a raid team--why I had received a personal indirect tip before the raid that he was a deep cover agent and he would be there with this group---it had taken this particular German service eight long years to get him to where he was in the group and then wounded by another service blew his cover.
Eight long years and then blown in a heartbeat.....and working to get into IS is even harder...UNLESS you are the Russian FSB that has flooded IS with Russian islamists many recruited before hand by the FSB.
My deep concern as it is for some others here in Europe is the potential that the Russian FSB has a far better insight into IS activities in Europe BUT due to non linear warfare the FSB is working against European security interests as they support the political warfare course Russia is on right now. The FSB right now is actually three times more active in Europe than the KGB was at the height of the Cold War and it is harder to find them in the "open borders EU".
Why do I say that....check the public comments made by some of the Russian elite political types in the minutes after the Brussels attack....they parallel exactly what I am saying and it took the Russian government literally hours before they issued a condolence statement.....
Back to the Belgium security services...they are small far smaller than most of the rest of Europe and have 10 times the number of jihadists than the rest of Europe....the reasons for this deep pool is worth a complete other article.
They need the help of everyone right now from all services and Europol..not critique even if mistakes were made. Mistakes can be used later as lesson learned.....but right now they must move and quickly and actually they have been rather quick if you notice their constant raids...they were literally hard on the heels of this cell and missed two of them in their last large raid which can always happen.
In this type of urban guerrilla warfare there is simply no such thing as 100% protection for civilians.
I am far more concerned about the report of 400 IS trained cell members..is it really just info warfare by IS are true...??
Actually based on the IS OPSEC tactics and training up to now...actually do believe the numbers as they have had time to train this large of a number fighters over the last two years especially on the bomb maker side and then funnel them back into Europe.
The U.S. also dealt effectively with a number of leftist terrorists groups in the 1960s and 70s. That threat was significantly different in scale with the exception of the Algerians in France and the IRA in the UK. Nonetheless your point is taken, and I'm confident Europe will adapt quickly. That may mean some hard decisions will have to be made. More than likely there will more attacks, and the media will play into the hands of the terrorists.
Hmm...sovereign agencies...I'll have to think about that for awhile. At budget time, not necessarily a bad description!
I wouldn't even call Europe's approach dysfunctional, mostly because there's no "European approach", in the sense there's a "U.S. approach". There's 28 countries in the EU, 28 *different* countries in NATO, *57* countries in the OSCE (some of the same as in the other two organization)..... Each of those collections have a different set of relationships amongst themselves...it's almost as complex as the U.S. Intelligence Community. :) But it's only dysfunctional if you ignore the fact that these are still separate countries, rather than a collection of states or provinces answering to a central government.
Maybe as dysfunctional as pre-9/11 counter-terrorism intelligence in the USA just maybe?
Perhaps observers like David Ignatius should recall Europe's experience of terrorism is longstanding and in the past has often been defeated by individual national efforts, with the help of neighbours and sometimes by a reluctant USA, e.g. Northern Ireland.
Thanks WaPo.
This is only a shock to those who persist in treating Europe as a single country, rather than the collection of countries bound by common economic interest (reflecting the EU's origins as the European Coal and Steel Community). In pursuit of economic growth, the countries adopted a common currency and dropped internal border controls so workers could flow back and forth. They've surrendered little else -- no one looks to the EU for direction on national policy or security. Internal laws, relationships with OSCE and NATO, relationships with countries outside of Europe, and even non-economic relationships with each other are defined individually.
While the EU may have the ambition to become the United States of Europe, it'll be a long time (and probably a cold day) before the member countries let it happen.