Deadly attack on Kabul university; Turkey flushes ISIS from Syrian town; Last inter-American war ends, for now; Iranian patrol boats harass US destroyer; and a bit more.
Attack on American University in Kabul kills 13, including seven students. A 10-hour standoff with Afghan security forces on Wednesday resulted in two gunmen shot dead while Kabul’s special forces (aided by American SOF) rescued 750 students and staff. Thirty-five students and nine police were also injured in the attack, which so far no group has claimed responsibility for, the BBC reports this morning, adding: “The attack comes two weeks after two university staff—one American, one Australian—were kidnapped by unknown gunmen. Their whereabouts remain unknown.”
And we have a bit more information on the Tuesday death of a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan’s Helmand province: Green Beret Staff Sgt. Matthew Thompson, age 28, from Irvine, Calif., and working with 1st Special Forces Group’s 3rd Battalion, out of Washington state’s Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Thompson was killed when his vehicle hit an IED in Helmand province, injuring six Afghan troops and one other American soldier.
As the U.S. keeps up its work with partner forces from Iraq to Afghanistan, it’s worth checking in on how it distributes weapons to these partner forces. Answer: with very little accountability, according to a new report from C.J. Chivers of The New York Times. Chivers works off a “weapons-tallying compiled in a project led by Iain Overton. Overton is a former BBC journalist who is now the executive director of Action on Armed Violence, a charity based in London that researches and lobbies against weapons proliferation and violence against civilians.”
What Overton discovered: “the Pentagon provided more than 1.45 million firearms to various security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, including more than 978,000 assault rifles, 266,000 pistols and almost 112,000 machine guns… Many of the recipients of these weapons became brave and important battlefield allies. But many more did not. Taken together, the weapons were part of a vast and sometimes minimally supervised flow of arms from a superpower to armies and militias often compromised by poor training, desertion, corruption and patterns of human rights abuses. Knowing what we know about many of these forces, it would have been remarkable for them to retain custody of many of their weapons. It is not surprising that they did not.”
And the bottom line: “Today the Pentagon has only a partial idea of how many weapons it issued, much less where these weapons are. Meanwhile, the effectively bottomless abundance of black-market weapons from American sources is one reason Iraq will not recover from its post-invasion woes anytime soon.” Read the rest, here.
After less than nine hours, the formerly-ISIS-held northern Syrian border town of Jarablus fell to Turkey’s cross-border offensive, Euphrates Shield, giving Turkey a post-coup attempt confidence boost—while also giving its allied soldiers abundant time to snap and share selfies from the “battle,” such as it was. Some fighting was reported, resulting in a few Turkish allied injuries, but the fight for Jarablus was much more swift than expected. The result is a somewhat random composite picture of how ISIS defends cities it “holds”—staying to fight in Manbij and Ramadi, but almost entirely ditching the towns of Tal Abyad, Fallujah and now Jarablus.
But Jarablus did give the Pentagon a chance to tout the role of fighters from its embattled train-and-equip program, as the Washington Post’s Missy Ryan reported Wednesday. “U.S. officials said the Syrian forces, who they refer to as the ‘vetted Syrian opposition,’ made up at least part of the hundreds of Syrian fighters who, along with Turkish troops, easily retook Jarablus on Wednesday. It’s unclear exactly what role the Syrian fighters played in the lightning-fast battle.”
Also provided by Washington: A-10s and F-16s.
And while we’re on the A-10: a new GAO report joins in the chorus of “Warthog” fans who say the U.S. Air Force should pump the brakes on its A-10 retirement. That, here.
Oh, by the way: Turkey created a Twitter account for its offensive, complete pictures of generals pointing, soldiers sleeping on the streets of Jarablus and Photoshopped pictures of Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu talking on the phone with State Secretary John Kerry with the message about the Kurds moving to the east side of the Euphrates—that message was in fact publicly delivered by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. More from the Turkey IO front, here.
Turkey is also backing down from their offer to allow Russia to use its air base at Incirlik, Air Force Times reported Wednesday.
And over in Manbij, Kurdish fighters have found fake weapons made by ISIS to draw the eye and weapons of coalition jets. Video here.
Elsewhere in Syria, a coalition airstrike Tuesday on an ISIS weapons facility may have killed civilians near Raqqa, Syria, CENTCOM said Wednesday. Their announcement said “what appeared to be a non-military vehicle drove into the target area after the weapon was released from the aircraft. The vehicle's occupants may have perished as a result of the strike.”
And in an update that could sweep the rug out from under one of the Obama administration’s crowning achievements, a new UN report says the Assad regime doesn’t appear to have gotten rid of all of those chemical weapons. Reuters has a bit more on why that very likely points to an upcoming fight in the Security Council—where, of course, Russia and China hold veto power—over additional sanctions on Damascus. “The inquiry found there was sufficient information to conclude that Syrian Arab Air Force helicopters dropped devices that then released toxic substances in Talmenes on April 21, 2014 and Sarmin on March 16, 2015, both in Idlib governorate. Both cases involved the use of chlorine,” Reuters writes. The report also says ISIS fighters are the only ones who could have used sulphur mustard gas in Marea, Syria, on August 21, 2015. More here.
Quick question: Does Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton have a plan to deal with the Syrian war? AP’s Politifact says that’s largely a “no.” Read why, and how close the candidates’ plans get to an actual plan for the country that addresses matters beyond simply ISIS, here.
From Defense One
How Obama is enabling the next president to launch illegal wars. If his administration gets its way, it would be even easier for future commanders in chief to take military action without approval from Congress. Bruce Ackerman explains, here.
Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. On this day in 1944, the U.S. 4th Infantry Division and the French 2nd Armored Division liberated Paris. (Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.)
Iranian patrol boats are fanning tensions in the Strait of Hormuz as “four Iranian military vessels sped close to a US navy guided missile destroyer with their weapons uncovered” this week, AFP reported. “The USS Nitze shot warning flares, sounded its whistles and attempted unsuccessfully to communicate with the Iranian boats during Tuesday’s incident” that a U.S. defense official called “unsafe and unprofessional.”
Here’s footage of the episode, which would seem to highlight the benefits of filming, narrating and releasing film of such encounters in a timely manner.
Historic moment for South America as Colombia and FARC rebels “met in Havana on Wednesday night to sign a historic peace accord, marking the end to a guerrilla war that has seethed for more than half a century,” NPR reports after nearly four years of talks from a conflict that “has killed more than 220,000 people and displaced millions.”
The next step: “President Juan Manuel Santos says he'll be holding a referendum on Oct. 2, with a yes-or-no vote on the agreement.” More here, or check out the Council on Foreign Relations’ backgrounder on the conflict, here.
A rather enormous security risk has been discovered at the place where the U.S. makes plans to fight Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. The risk: “Army Maj. Gen. David Haight, Army Ranger, decorated combat veteran and family man...led a double life: an 11-year affair and a ‘swinger lifestyle’ of swapping sexual partners that put him at risk of blackmail and espionage, according to interviews and documents,” USA Today reported Wednesday after some FOIA work.
Why it’s a problem: “If an adversary such as Russia had learned of Haight’s affair and sexual adventures, he would have been a prime target to blackmail.” More here.
And NATO just announced U.S. jets will accompany Bulgarian ones “for the first time, in response to a request by the Bulgarian authorities" on the alliance’s air policing mission in the Baltics beginning September 9.
F-35 complications continue. The U.S. Air Force said last week “its version of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 jet [is] ready for limited combat operations,” but “the Pentagon’s top tester warned that the U.S. military’s costliest weapons program is still riddled with deficiencies,” Bloomberg reported Wednesday. “The most complex software capabilities ‘are just being added’ and new problems requiring fixes and verification testing ‘continue to be discovered at a substantial rate,’ [Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department’s director of operational testing] wrote to Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James; General David Goldfein, the service’s chief of staff; and Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s acquisitions chief.” That, here.
France has launched an investigation into the alleged hack of blueprints “on the combat capability of its six new Scorpene-class submarines” in an effort “to bolster security for Australia’s $50 billion submarine project,” The Australian reported Wednesday, adding India believes the leak came from “overseas,” perhaps even from France. More here, and you can read a bit of context—including U.S. worries about security leaks even before the story broke—on that Paris-New Delhi submarine deal here.
Finally today: Can the Pentagon harness the potential of startups to benefit U.S. national security? It’s a question worth asking as Defense Secretary Ash Carter keeps up his Silicon Valley ambitions via the DIUx program, which has now spread to Boston. And it’s a question tackled by Ben FitzGerald, Senior Fellow and Director of CNAS’ Technology and National Security Program, in a new podcast series you can find here.