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U.S. Troops Dying on Afghan Border With … IRAN?

Allied combat deaths in Afghanistan surpassed those in Iraq for a second straight month in June. Meanwhile, New Yorker reporter Sy Hersh writes that U.S. covert operators are infiltrating Iran.

What do these two developments have in common? Maybe nothing. But as we report in Thursday’s New York Daily News, one new factor in the record high casualties of the ever-escalating Afghan war is that American troops are suddenly dying along the country’s border with Iran.

At least 10 Americans have been killed in action since May 25 in Afghanistan’s Farah province, which lies on the Iranian border.

It’s worth noting that Hersh’s story claims U.S. operatives are cultivating Sunni allies opposed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who live in Iran’s Baluchestan province - which just happens to abut Afghanistan’s Farah province.

According to Pentagon statements, a few of the casualties were killed during operations ostensibly in two eastern Farah districts: Gulistan and Bala Baluk, which are near Helmand province. Helmand has been the site of some of the war’s worst fighting, and U.S. and NATO commanders say they have squeezed some Taliban out of Helmand and into Farah.

But when I asked the Camp Pendleton, Calif., Marines to identify the Farah districts where their men died, I instead heard back from a New York National Guard colonel, whose task force trains Afghan National Security Forces. Lt. Col. Paul Fanning, the spokesman, wouldn’t name the undisclosed Farah districts where Americans were killed, citing "operational reasons."

"Our personnel," Fanning explained, "absolutely were not in Iran."

So what about the other American and coalition troops killed who were not involved in the ANSF training mission?

One of the fallen was in the secretive Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command - an elite new unit which basically is Marine Force Recon on steroids - though he died closer to Helmand than the Iranian border. A mysterious casualty who fell somewhere in Farah province was reported by the military on May 29, but has yet to be identified publicly because next of kin cannot be located, according to Army Capt. Christian Patterson, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-101 at Bagram Airfield.

On the other side of Afghanistan, things also are heating up.

In the wake of a mid-June firefight between U.S. forces and opponents who may have been with the Pakistani Army’s notorious Frontier Corps, CJTF-101 has issued no less than six unusual statements about border clashes. A Black Hawk chopper was also shot down Tuesday near Pakistan, though without casualties. Most of the incidents were in Paktika and Khowst provinces on the border and involved rockets and mortars fired by enemy forces inside Pakistan, which were responded to by the U.S.-led coalition.

Questions About the Rescue in Colombia

The dramatic rescue of the FARC hostages raises a host of important questions, here are a few, with short answers following and lengthy answers below:

Was the rescue the cover for an arrangement with the FARC?
Probably not.

What effect will this have on future hostage releases?
It will probably lead to more units dissolving and possibly releasing their hostages.

Colombian security used a ruse claiming to be an NGO, could such ploys undermine the legitimate role of NGOs?
Possibly, it’s complicated.

Read the in-depth answers here.

Gap in Tracking Terrorist Financing Through Money Service Businesses?

The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) appears to have responded to a published report of a potential gap in the pursuit of critical information needed for terrorist financing investigations. On June 13, Moneylaundering.Com reported that FinCEN has never forwarded special information requests, authorized under Section 314(a) of the Patriot Act, to money services businesses (MSBs) to assist in money laundering or terrorist financing investigations. Under the Act, institutions which receive "314(a) requests" are required to search records for information, determine if they had recent activity with the subject, and respond to FinCEN.

The 314(a) program was one of the investigatory innovations included in the Patriot Act while I was a counsel on the House Financial Services Committee. Financial institutions wanted to assist law enforcement on new cases and saw Section 314 as a means of providing specific information in response to a specific request. But implementation was not complete until February 2003, when an email process enabled law enforcement to send requests in batch to thousands of institutions. On March 1, 2005, FinCEN ceased using e-mail and instead posted 314(a) requests on a secure website. That system was secure enough to survive a cyber hack into FinCEN's entire e-mail list, reported first on this site in 2005.

Experts disagree on the impact of FinCEN's decision to not send 314(a) requests to MSBs. Several experts told Moneylaundering.com that the lack of requests leaves a "huge hole" in the AML-CFT regime. But a former deputy director at FinCEN said that FinCEN "purposely" left out MSBs because they "really don't have customers. We felt it would be too overwhelming for MSBs to comply or for FinCEN to even track it. For FinCEN to add MSBs, they would have to reconfigure everything and I don't think anyone is ready to take that on." I wrote on January 22 about several MSB cases as proof of the difficulty in stopping terrorists' funds flows, and we reported on the initial issuance of Patriot Act regulations on MSBs back in 2005. The first "U.S. Money Laundering Threat Assessment," issued in 2006, reported, "FBI field offices consistently identified MSBs (money service businesses) as the third-most utilized money laundering method that they encounter..." Patrice Motz, who was Chief of the Money Services Business Section at FinCEN in 2001-2002 and is now a consultant, told me, "My experience both in government and industry suggests that the government investigators could benefit greatly from directing Section 314a Requests to the larger MSBs, especially in those areas involved in money movement, including money transmitters and stored value issuers and sellers."

The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has apparently responded to the new story by issuing a new data sheet on the 314(a) requests and clarifying the criteria for sending them. Included in the fact sheet rae updated statistics on the results:

Terrorism/Terrorist Financing - 275 cases
Money Laundering - 562 cases
Convictions - 47

By comparison, as of September 2005, 314(a) requests had resulted in "157 cases involving terrorism or terrorist financing and 272 cases involving money laundering," and 10 convictions.

This issue represents another of a series which deserve review under a broad assessment of the successes and failures of the changes enacted under Title III of the Patriot Act, as I discussed in detail on May 7.

Gap in Tracking Terrorist Financing Through Money Service Businesses?

The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) appears to have responded to a published report of a potential gap in the pursuit of critical information needed for terrorist financing investigations. On June 13, Moneylaundering.Com reported that FinCEN has never forwarded special information requests, authorized under Section 314(a) of the Patriot Act, to money services businesses (MSBs) to assist in money laundering or terrorist financing investigations. Under the Act, institutions which receive "314(a) requests" are required to search records for information, determine if they had recent activity with the subject, and respond to FinCEN.

The 314(a) program was one of the investigatory innovations included in the Patriot Act while I was a counsel on the House Financial Services Committee. Financial institutions wanted to assist law enforcement on new cases and saw Section 314 as a means of providing specific information in response to a specific request. But implementation was not complete until February 2003, when an email process enabled law enforcement to send requests in batch to thousands of institutions. On March 1, 2005, FinCEN ceased using e-mail and instead posted 314(a) requests on a secure website. That system was secure enough to survive a cyber hack into FinCEN's entire e-mail list, reported first on this site in 2005.

Experts disagree on the impact of FinCEN's decision to not send 314(a) requests to MSBs. Several experts told Moneylaundering.com that the lack of requests leaves a "huge hole" in the AML-CFT regime. But a former deputy director at FinCEN said that FinCEN "purposely" left out MSBs because they "really don't have customers. We felt it would be too overwhelming for MSBs to comply or for FinCEN to even track it. For FinCEN to add MSBs, they would have to reconfigure everything and I don't think anyone is ready to take that on." I wrote on January 22 about several MSB cases as proof of the difficulty in stopping terrorists' funds flows, and we reported on the initial issuance of Patriot Act regulations on MSBs back in 2005. The first "U.S. Money Laundering Threat Assessment," issued in 2006, reported, "FBI field offices consistently identified MSBs (money service businesses) as the third-most utilized money laundering method that they encounter..." Patrice Motz, who was Chief of the Money Services Business Section at FinCEN in 2001-2002 and is now a consultant, told me, "My experience both in government and industry suggests that the government investigators could benefit greatly from directing Section 314a Requests to the larger MSBs, especially in those areas involved in money movement, including money transmitters and stored value issuers and sellers."

The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has apparently responded to the new story by issuing a new data sheet on the 314(a) requests and clarifying the criteria for sending them. Included in the fact sheet rae updated statistics on the results:

Terrorism/Terrorist Financing - 275 cases
Money Laundering - 562 cases
Convictions - 47

By comparison, as of September 2005, 314(a) requests had resulted in "157 cases involving terrorism or terrorist financing and 272 cases involving money laundering," and 10 convictions.

This issue represents another of a series which deserve review under a broad assessment of the successes and failures of the changes enacted under Title III of the Patriot Act, as I discussed in detail on May 7.

The Importance of the Colombian Rescue Mission

As my colleagues Jonathan Winer and Aaron Mannes have written on the Counterterrorism Blog, the spectacular operation by the Colombian military to rescue 15 high-profile hostages was a tremendous blow to the FARC in Colombia.

In the interest of full disclosure, Ingrid Bentancourt is a friend of mine, and I have written about her in the past because of her tremendous courage in acting as a beacon of light in a narco-corrupted congress, and in defiance of her own political party. On a personal level, this was tremendously good news.

As I wrote in this paper published by the NEFA Foundation just before the hostages were freed, the FARC is in a period of decline that will likely end with its implosion and fragmentation into small criminal groups.

Since March the FARC has been pummeled, lost three of its seven members of the directorate, and now, its prize hostages. The FARC's historic leader, Manuel Marulanda, the unifying force of the organization, is dead. His hand-picked successor, Raul Reyes, was killed in an army attack on his camp in Ecuador. Another member of the high command, Ivan Reyes, was killed by his own bodyguards, who collected the reward money.

Dozens of senior and mid-level commanders have deserted, including Karina, the highest-ranking woman in the FARC's ranks.

Now, a brilliantly executed rescue operation by a military that has often (and rightly) been accused of gross incompetence and corruption, takes the one thing of value (besides the cocaine laboratories) the FARC still had.

This is not random, but the product of years of work in human and signal intelligence, almost always hand-in-hand with U.S. counterparts. It is worth studying because it was done right.

Here are some of the highlights from my sources who are familiar with the operation:

The operation took more than three years to develop. The penetration of the rebel rank over time provided much of the human intelligence that was vitally needed. The infiltrators worked their way up the ranks, until they had access to both the force that protected the hostages and the FARC's general secretariat. The reports of the undercover operatives was wedded, with U.S. help, to signal intelligence, and the combination of the two fed off each other. My full blog is here.

Indonesian Police Raids in Sumatra Yield Suspects, Bombs

Over the past three days, the Indonesian police counter-terrorist formation, Detachment 88, has conducted a series of raids in and around the city of Palembang in South Sumatra province. On 28 June, a Singaporean national named Alim (alias Omar, alias Taslim, alias Abu Hazam) was the first to be detained. According to the Indonesian media, Alim is a bomb-making expert who was trained in Afghanistan prior to 2001 and met Osama bin Laden on several occasions. Alim is said to have received further bomb-making instructions from Dr. Azhari Husein, the Jemaah Islamiyah bomber who was killed in a police shoot-out in East Java in October 2005.

On 1 July, eight (possibly nine) Indonesian nationals at three locations--all said to be members of Jemaah Islamiyah--were arrested. At one of these three locations, twenty assembled bombs and several kilos of explosives were found. The police are still not sure what target(s) were being contemplated by this cell.

Details on Colombia Hostage Operation Right Out of Spy Thriller

First accounts on the rescue operation, now being provided by Colombian military officials, while still veiled on some key points, suggest that Colombia carried out a spectacularly successful sting operation in which Colombian commandos pretended to be FARC officials come to take the hostages to a new location for a possible diplomatic negotiated exchange.

According to Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos in his Bogota news conference, Colombia infiltrated FARC's 1st Squad and Secretariat. How that infitration contributed to the commando operation was not specified, beyond apparently providing the geographic location of the hostages. Whatever the mechanism -- government agents run inside FARC? -- Colombian intelligence tricked the FARC into believing that the hostages, who had been divided in three groups by the FARC, should be brought together in a single group to be handed over to FARC leader Alfonso Cano for a possible diplomatic, negotiated solution to the hostage crisis that would achieve FARC political objectives. As a result, FARC's high command agreed to travel with the hostages as a means of transferring them to Cano on a helicopter that actually belonged to the Colombian military and was actually manned by Colombian intelligence personnel.

According to Minister Santos, not only were all of the hostages safely rescued, but two senior FARC officials and some 15 other FARC soldiers were arrested in the process, also without violence.

In short, based on the facts made public so far, Colombia appears to have conducted a sting operation straight out of a spy thriller which actually worked, rescuing the hostages without a single shot being fired, dealing FARC a devastating blow.

FARC is FARC’d: Assessing the Hostage Rescue

The first reports about the Colombian military’s rescue of the 15 hostages held by FARC (in Spanish) indicate an impressive intelligence operation. The hostages were held in three separate locations. Colombian intelligence had infiltrated one of the FARC fronts holding the hostages as well as the FARC Secretariat. They told the front commander “Cesar” that the hostages were being transferred on the orders of FARC chief Alfonso Cano. After gathering the hostages in one location the FARC unit was met by a helicopter, ostensibly from an NGO (that doesn’t actually exist). Then the hostages were loaded onto the helicopter and the FARC commander and his deputy were taken captive to be handed over to judicial authorities. The other members of the FARC front were permitted to escape.

The fifteen hostages were rescued without firing a shot. The long nightmare of the hostages and their families is finally over.

There are many implications to this tremendous success.

Read the complete post here.

Colombia Rescues Ingrid Betancourt and Three US Hostages

The dramatic news that Colombia had successfully rescued Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans held hostage for years by FARC terrorists represents a further break-through by the Uribe government in what has been an extraordinary year of successes against FARC.

We still don't have the details, but what is by now clear is that Colombia's decision to raid FARC camps across the border in Ecuador on March 1, which had the result of killing one of its senior leaders, Raul Reyes, and of obtaining critical intelligence held in FARC computers, provided information that in turn helped enable Colombia to secure a series of further objectives against FARC.

So far, all that is known is that the rescue took place in Eastern Colombia following months of surveillance by the Colombian government. Earlier this week, a French-Swiss mission had managed to resume contact with FARC hostage-takers. The former French consul in Bogota, Noel Saez, and the French-Swiss academic Jean-Pierre Gontard had met with a close associate of Alfonso Cano, the new FARC leader at an undisclosed location in the jungle in an effort to secure Betancourt's release. They had been authorized by the Colombian government to engage in dialogue in order to conclude a humanitarian agreement for a prisoner exchange. They were trying to restore a communication channel with the kidnappers. Clearly other things were going on at the same time. A prisoner for more than six years, Ingrid Betancourt has been reported to be in poor health. Less is known about the condition of the three US hostages kidnapped in 2003 during an anti-drug operation, Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes, and Keith Stansell.

This is a very big win for Colombia, which has steadfastly rejected FARC's demands for recognition, release of FARC guerrillas imprisoned by the Colombian government, and the creation of a demilitarized zone that would have allowed FARC safe-haven in designated areas. Prior to Colombia's March 1 raid, they were on a path to achieving political support for these objectives, aided by officials in Ecuador and Venezuela. With this rescue, which may well involve collaboration by defectors from within the FARC, the collapse of the FARC as a political, terrorist, and criminal force in Colombia, after 44 years, may be nearing.

Crossroads in History: The Struggle against Jihad and Supremacist Ideologies

In fighting Islamic supremacism, instead of an approach only based on tactical measures and efforts at clever twists of terminology, what if America had a true strategy that was instead based on the defense of our values on human equality and liberty?

The true challenge of Islamic supremacism to America and the free world is not about Islam, Islamism, or terrorism, but about us. It is a historic challenge to determine whether we truly have the courage of our convictions on equality and liberty and we are willing to fight for these ideals, or if we will instead accept the continuing growth of anti-freedom ideologies here and around the world.

Islamic supremacists are counting on their belief that America is no longer willing to fight for such freedoms, that it has gotten too soft to do so, and that regardless of the success or failure of individual Jihadist tactics, eventually we will tolerate a continued growth of Islamic supremacism. The crossroads in history that we stand at remains whether or not we will prove Islamic supremacists correct, or if the idea defined in our very Declaration of Independence and chiseled in a marble memorial in America's capital - that "all men are created equal" - is an idea that America will once again sacrifice to defend.

America and the West are at a critical crossroads in history in their faltering struggle with Islamic supremacist ideologies and Jihadist terror tactics. Increasingly, groups seek to halt any meaningful debate and halt any challenge to the ideology behind Jihad, and they seek to redirect such debate and action to focus only on the terrorist symptoms of such a supremacist ideology. Such diversionary efforts are being made by non-violent Islamic supremacist groups and activists, government officials, academics, and media commentators. The solution to this can be found in recognizing how Islamic supremacism (as any supremacist ideology) is opposed to our values, and in understanding America's historical experience in defeating other supremacist ideologies.

Why Mugabe Won

The tragic failure of the African Union to take any steps to sanction the fraudulent and violent regime of Robert Mugabe was a given as soon as the despot sat at the table. Because Mugabe knew his audience, or what was to be his jury.

Mugabe, correctly, told many other leaders that "their claims to power were no more legitimate than his," and chastised other for holding even worse elections than he did.

The tragedy for Africa is that Mugabe is right. And because he is right, Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, remains an open wound, hospitable to radical Islamist groups (Somalia, Kenya, South Africa etc. for al Qaeda. The west coast, from Sierra Leone to Cameroon, for Hezbollah, and the Congo as a free for all, for criminals, terrorists and rogue states) and rapacious militias (the Lord's Resistance Army) and countless criminal gangs (Nigeria being the prime example.)

It didn't help that host Egypt and main mover Libya have such wretched histories of their own in terms of elections.

In addition to Mubarak and Gadaffi, here is a partial list of those sitting in judgement of Mugabe and his thuggish regime, as I wrote about for the Washington Post My full blog is here.

NEFA Foundation: “The FARC in Transition: The Fatal Weakening of the Hemisphere’s Oldest Guerrilla Movement

Today the NEFA Foundation published a paper I wrote on the overall weakening of the FARC in Colombia and the likely options for its future development.

The new paper, "The FARC in Transition: The Fatal Weakening of the Hemisphere's Oldest Guerrilla Movement," is a followup to one I did analyzing the publicly released documents taken from the computer of the FARC's second in command, Raul Reyes, killed by Colombian troops in raid into neighboring Ecuador.

The paper posits that in the near term, the new FARC leadership-for the first time in its 44-year history dominated by urban, educated leaders rather than peasants lacking formal education-will try to launch a major military strike in order to prove its legitimacy to the rank and file.

In the long term, however, this group may be in a better position to negotiate an end to the conflict. However, in mid-term the FARC is likely to devolve into more isolated, criminal groups. Those commanders who control cocaine production and/or engage in kidnapping for ransom will survive in alliance with criminal groups, and those that have few outside sources of income will likely wither away. The consequences for the government will be the weakening of a major threat to the state, but increased criminal and drug trafficking activity.

13 Sickened at Wal-Mart - Cause Unknown

2 July 2008: The following incident took place at a Florida WalMart on Monday.

An East Naples Wal-Mart was evacuated for more than three hours Monday afternoon after more than a dozen employees and customers began coughing and complaining of respiratory problems.

But after hours of investigation, neither a Collier County hazardous materials team nor the Florida Department of Health could find the cause.

Complete article: NaplesNews.com

FLASHBACK - 13 February 2007: Incident at Spokane Mall

And at airport in 2006... HERE

Pentagon: Israel will soon attack Iran

1 July 2008: A senior Pentagon official says there is an "increasing likelihood" that Israel will launch an attack on Iran before the year's end, PressTV reported.

Read the complete article at Iran News

Radical Islam linked with Nazi propaganda

1 July 2008: Something we've been contending for quite some time, now a Maryland historian links roots of radical Islam with Nazi propaganda.

Read the entire article in the Jerusalem Post

Al-Arian Contempt Trial Set for August

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - A trial date has been set for August 13th in the case of Sami Al-Arian, who is charged with criminal contempt in a two count indictment for refusing to testify before grand juries investigating Islamic charities with suspected ties to terrorism. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said she expected a "straightforward" trial that would last one day, but Al-Arian's attorney, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, indicated that he would continue to challenge the indictment and suggested the trial may be more complicated.

The indictment charges Al-Arian with refusing to testify when called before federal grand juries Oct. 16, 2007 and March 20, 2008 despite a grant of immunity from the prosecution.

After the arraignment Turley spelled out his planned defense on his blog, writing:

In court, I informed Judge Brinkema that we believed that the indictment was invalid on its face. Among other problems, Dr. Al-Arian did not refuse to cooperate. Dr. Al-Arian had given two detailed affidavits that established that he had no knowledge of any crime by IIIT or its officers. He further offered repeatedly to take a polygraph examination to prove that he had given a truthful account and was not withholding information.

Even if that turns out to be true, Al-Arian is not charged with "failure to cooperate," but criminal contempt for refusing to testify before the grand jury, which two federal appellate courts have held he had an obligation to do.

Although Al-Arian's defense claimed today that their client was not prepared to enter a plea, Judge Brinkema proceeded to enter a plea of not guilty on Al-Arian's behalf.

Judge Brinkema agreed to consider releasing Al-Arian on bond pending trial, but deferred her ruling until she can hear from pretrial services about how best to ensure Al-Arian's supervision during his release.

For the complete article of today's events, please click here to visit the IPT's website.

“Islamic Finance” a Hot Topic in Washington Seminars - But Beware

In the last two months, in two seminars aimed at developing future counterterrorism policy attended by senior-level representatives from the Administration, industry (e.g., financial institutions, tech companies, and defense-related consulting groups), and the military, the subject of "Islamic finance" (or "shariah finance," used interchangably by many) has been introduced and discussed in favorable terms. Financial institutions are especially keen on reaching new markets, and others in the audience foresee the opportunity to engage in outreach and peace-building efforts. But they should take a breath and first survey that subject more deeply before diving into it.

Last November 14, Jeffrey Imm wrote, "Dow Jones, Wall Street Journal, and Islamist Financing," in which he exposed some of the players involved in setting up "The Wall Street Journal's Islamic and Ethical Finance Conference." As Jeff wrote then, it is painfully obvious that Wall Street mavens who lust for better connections and expanded markets in the islamic world often have no clue to the backgrounds, connections, ideologies, or ultimate goals of some of the central officials and organizations involved in many "Islamic finance" or "shariah finance" vehicles. Neither does Wall Street, nor K Street in Washington for that matter, realize that shariah finance vehicles are seen by Islamists as perfect indirect mechanisms for funding the implementation of extremist shariah law and/or violent jihad. Jeff's post is as informative today as when he wrote it. Moreover, other experts are now educating Washington and Wall Street to take a close look at the inner workings of otherwise attractive Islamic/shariah finance opportunities.

What Wall Street does understand (better than K Street) is the legal and political obligations under the USA Patriot Act and the Bank Secrecy Act. I am not advocating a wholesale boycott of any and all Islamic finance vehicles (yet), but the risks are worth throwing cold water on the idea at this point.

Two Worrisome Trends

There are two stories today that point to ongoing problems and the future contours of the conflicts in which we will be emerged in coming years.

The first is the extensive New York Times piece on who lack of resources, bureaucratic infighting and lack of unified vision (coupled with a high tolerance for Pakistan's game-playing) has helped allow al Qaeda to regroup in the tribal regions.

Perhaps the most disturbing item in the piece, which chronicles numerous disturbing elements that show how much the inter-agency process is returning to its pre-9/11 mindset the further the memories recede, is the following:

Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

Radical Islamist groups (as well as most radicalized groups) desperately need areas where they can gather to mutually reinforce their beliefs, weed out unbelievers and build a joint narrative that allows them to tell their stories to themselves in which they are doing the will of Allah.

Without that, members grow in doubt, drift away from the core beliefs and lessen in their ardor for the cause. Joint experiences are also vital to forging the kind of comraderie that needs to exist among groups that are prepared to kill and be killed.

To allow these camps to be reconstituted is perhaps one of the single most dangerous failures we face. My full blog is here.

The Lebanese powder keg

Saturday's explosion of a bomb in a building in a sunni neighborhood of Tripoli (Lebanon) killing one is a reminder of the tensions running high in Lebanon.
I just wrote an article for the Middle East Times on how the different players involved in the Lebanese puzzle are preparing themselves for the next stage.

You can read the full article here.
Here is an excerpt:
After the Hezbollah (the Party of God) coup in May and its "official" endorsement by Lebanese political forces and the international community in Doha, Lebanon is still very much facing an explosive situation.

Last week's heavy fighting between Sunni militants and Alawites - an offshoot of Shiism - (Syrian President Bashar Assad is an Alawite) in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli left at least nine dead and many more wounded.

One may deduct from this latest violence that the Doha agreement that allowed the election of the pro-Syrian Gen. Michel Suleiman and de facto handed Hezbollah the keys of the country, is not going down well with the Sunnis, the Druze, a large portion of the Christian community and finally some anti-Hezbollah forces within the Shiite community. In fact, they feel that once again the United States and France have sold out Lebanon to fit their geopolitical interests.

Diploma Mills Could Enable Terrorist Infiltration

Today’s edition of the New York Times reports on the nefarious activities of a “diploma mill” that has been successfully operating for some time, amassing huge profits while conspiring with its customers to provide anyone with the money, a worthless diploma that provides the illusion of academic achievement. These diplomas undermine the integrity of our workforce and may even undermine national security. As the article notes, visas can be issued to aliens who are able to document that they have degrees that would qualify them for employment in the United States, when in fact they have no such education and may have no intention of securing the job they apply for but simply desire to enter our country for other purposes.

When I first began working for the INS as an immigration inspector, students who sought entry into the United States were required to produce Form I-20 issued by the school they intended to attend. They were admitted for a period of one year that had to be renewed every year. Several years later, the INS changed the one year admission policy to call for the admission of foreign students for the duration of status as students. Today inspectors simply note the arriving student is admitted for D/S (Duration of Status). This removes a potential area of monitoring whether or not a student is still enrolled in school. There is a program known as SEVIS that is supposed to keep track of foreign students and exchange visitors in our country.

The problem is that with the lack of resources at ICE, a student who stops attending school may well be reported to our government, but in the game of “hide and seek” the student who decides to drop out of school may hide but the government has precious little in the way of resources to “seek.”

The news report on the diploma mill is disturbing but it only addresses one area of immigration fraud while there are many other areas in which the bad guys, including terrorists, are easily able to game the immigration bureaucracy through committing fraud that goes undiscovered.