Pentagon deploys to the crisis in Nepal; Naval ships pound Yemen’s Aden; Japan seeks closer U.S. defense ties; And a bit more.
The death count has eclipsed 3,500 for the massive quake that hit Nepal on Saturday leaving some 1 million children in urgent need of outside aid to the region. More than 6,500 are reportedly injured and dozens more also died in neighboring China and India. BBC has the latest.
The Air Force yesterday dispatched a team of around 70 personnel to help with the recovery efforts while additional U.S. service members in the region remain on standby to help where directed in the coming days. More from Air Force Times’ Jeff Schogol.
Did extending the U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan contribute to the deaths of two Western hostages held in Pakistan back in January? President Barack Obama reportedly tightened restrictions guiding the U.S. drone program two years ago, but approved a waiver loosening those restrictions for the CIA’s drone operations in Pakistan to protect American troops until the pullout from Afghanistan was complete. Once the Afghan mission was extended, so too was the agency’s waiver. The disclosure, from the Wall Street Journal’s Adam Entous, follows Obama’s admission of “full responsibility” last week for the accidental deaths of American Warren Weinstein and Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto who were killed in a U.S. “signature strike” in Pakistan more than three months ago.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is in the states this week where he’s expected to talk stronger defense ties with the U.S. as the White House maintains its focus on Asian-Pacific security. AP’s Mari Yamaguchi previews Abe’s U.S. tour here.
From Defense One
The Saudi-led coalition should pause and develop a strategy for avoiding civilian harm now, and accept some of the advice on civilian casualties learned from their U.S. partners, writes Sahr Muhammedally, senior program manager for MENA & South Asia at the Center for Civilians in Conflict.
The Obama administration’s national security strategy is simply too vague for lawmakers to craft an efficient defense budget, argues Rachel Rizzo of the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security.
Sen. Rand Paul, civil libertarian and perennial enemy to the NSA’s domestic surveillance, is suddenly quiet on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plan to keep the USA Patriot Act alive, National Journal’s Dustin Volz and Emma Roller write.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle lined up to defend the White House’s drone program. National Journal’s Lauren Fox has more.
Tonight at the Watergate, Defense One Live hosts an intimate author’s conversation with Defense One’s Gayle Tzemach Lemmon and Executive Editor Kevin Baron about women in combat and her new book, Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield. To RSVP, email pboynton@defenseone.com, or read a bit more here.
Welcome to Monday's edition of The D Brief, from Ben Watson and Defense One. If you'd like to subscribe, click here or drop us a line at the-d-brief@defenseone.com.If you want to view The D Brief in your browser, you can do that, here.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry meet with their Japanese counterparts, Gen Nakatani and Fumio Kishida, in New York City today ahead of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s sit-down with Obama at the White House on Tuesday. The two secretaries and their counterparts will speak to the press this morning, likely sometime after 11 a.m. EDT. Stream it live, here.
Sen. John McCain said the U.S. drone program shouldn’t be run by the CIA—even though it’s a far safer option than putting U.S. troops in harm’s way to kill terrorist leaders. McCain, on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jim Acosta, said: “Obviously, as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, I have some bias, but it seems to me that as much as we could give responsibility and authority over to the Department of Defense, because that's really not the job of the intelligence agency… [and] it's clearly a subject for review by both Intelligence and Armed Services committees and the entire Congress.” Read the entire transcript here.
In a shift from precedent, families of U.S. hostages can now communicate with kidnappers and pay ransoms without fear the criminal justice system will pursue them for aiding terrorist groups, White House officials reviewing the admin’s hostage policy told ABC News: “Diane Foley [mother of journalist James Foley, who was killed by the Islamic State group in August]… told ABC News last September her family was ‘told very clearly three times that it was illegal for us to try to ransom our son out…’ Foley said Saturday that with the new policy, which officials discussed with her last week, it seems the government is ‘trying to make it right in their way.’”
Obama administration officials are dialing back their expectations for the $1 billion train-and-equip mission in Syria, which was supposed to begin in March, citing fears the effort will fragment the opposition further. The most recent figures from U.S. officials put the number of rebels ready for training close to “several hundred.” More on that this morning from Reuters.
In Syria’s north, rebels are on the rise and perhaps more than ever before, Assad’s forces appear to be on the defensive, writes Liz Sly of The Washington Post. On Saturday, a patchwork of rebel and extremist forces—some armed with advanced anti-tank weapons—captured the northwestern city of Jisr al-Shughour, some 300 kilometers north of Damascus, after four days of fighting Assad’s troops. The U.S. provided rebel groups a small number of anti-tank weapons last year, but many of those rebels were later co-opted by the Nusra Front, elevating concerns about the prospects for success with Washington’s Syrian train-and-equip mission, according to The New York Times’ Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad.
Meanwhile in Iraq, ISIS seized control of the western Thar Thar dam and a military barracks northeast of Fallujah in Anbar province on Saturday. The commander of the Iraqi Army’s 1st Division and at least 120 other Iraqi troops were reportedly killed during the raid. More on the strategic importance of Thar Thar, from The Long War Journal’s Bill Roggio and Caleb Weiss.
Gulf warplanes continued to pound targets in Yemen’s capital of Sana’a while naval ships bombarded the port city of Aden yesterday. Riyadh also announced the arrival of its first National Guard troops to reinforce its border police on Saudi Arabia’s southern flank on Sunday. Clashes also killed seven and wounded dozens more in the southern city of Taiz yesterday, where Houthi rebels seized a military brigade on Wednesday, hours after Riyadh announced an almost-immediately rescinded halt to its air campaign under increasing international pressure to reduce the number of civilians killed while targeting Houthi forces. More from the NYTs and AFP.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt returned to the Persian Gulf this weekend after relocating to the Arabian Sea to deter Iranian ships from possibly reinforcing Houthi rebels in Yemen. That from Stars and Stripes, and a bit more on the credit being given to the U.S. Navy for helping persuade those Iranian ships to turn back, via the NYT’s Helene Cooper.
Rebel attacks in eastern Ukraine killed one member of Kiev’s military and wounded seven others yesterday, Reuters reports. Ukraine’s military spokesman said separatists are using larger-caliber weapons the Minsk 2 ceasefire outlawed—the same weapons that the U.S. State Department said last week had reached its greatest density in eastern Ukraine since August.
And unsurprisingly, Kiev’s military has a growing problem with draft dodgers. That via WaPo’s Karoun Demirjian.
ICYMI: U.S. special operations troops operated out of more than 80 countries last year training local security forces so a greater number of U.S. troops wouldn’t have to. “From Honduras to Mongolia, Estonia to Djibouti, U.S. special operators teach local soldiers diplomatic skills to shield their countries against extremist ideologies, as well as combat skills to fight militants who break through.” More from WSJ’s Michael Phillips.
And while this U.S. Air Force pilot finishes his Ph.D at California’s Stanford University, he’s also working on a way to send swarms of drones carrying 1-2 kilograms of humanitarian aid into Syria and other deadly conflict zones. Watch the BBC report, “Syria: Drones to SAVE Lives” here, or read a profile of the 33-year-old C-17 pilot Mark Jacobsen here.