Instability in NW Syria; Does Trump want Afghan peace talks or not?; How Yemen became a chaos state; Fitness-tracker snafu just got worse; and just a bit more...

Increasing instability in NW Syria. Pro-Assad warplanes (difficult to tell who exactly, since Russia is supporting Damascus) carried out airstrikes on the rebel-held province of Idlib in northwest Syria this morning, killing more than a dozen people, the Washington Post reports from Beirut.  

Backdrop: “The attacks took place as hundreds of delegates met in the Russian resort town of Sochi for a congress that Moscow has billed as a chance to discuss a political framework for a postwar Syria. Most of the country’s political opposition is boycotting that meeting, citing a lack of commitment from the Syrian government to an ongoing United Nations peace process.”

Why Idlib is so important: “Idlib is one of four rebel-held areas where violence was supposed to have ceased. Under the terms of a deal struck by Russia, Iran and Turkey — three key sponsors of Syria’s globalized war — Idlib was designated last year as a de-escalation zone where pro-government troops would end their military campaign, ­except against forces of the ­Islamic State and al-Qaeda-linked groups.”

What this means, for now: “Hundreds of thousands of civilians are penned into a shrinking swath of territory as government forces advance from the southeast and al-Qaeda militants active in the enclave turn the screws on those who do not submit to their rule.”

There is a lot more going on in the kaleidoscopic battlespaces of northwest Syria, which is also the scene of a Turkey-backed invasion into Kurdish-held Afrin. We could list just the takeaways from Monday, but we’ll send you to read this list from the Atlantic Council’s Aaron Stein.

ICYMI: Turkey is deeply opposed to the U.S. supporting Kurdish fighters in and around Syria. But if you need a bit more info as to why, Ankara’s minister of foreign affairs has an op-ed for you on America’s “policy anomaly” at the heart of this matter. Find it in The New York Times, here.  

And: U.S. Central Command’s Gen. Joseph Votel said Monday that the U.S. recognizes its NATO ally's concerns but won't abandon the coalition of Syrian Democratic Forces fighting ISIS on the world's behalf. That, from Defense One’s Kevin Baron, traveling with Votel in the Mideast, here.

From Defense One

The War in Yemen and the Making of a Chaos State // Ben Watson: Aid workers, journalists, and experts describe little-appreciated realities about a 1,000-day conflict and — just maybe — how to turn things around. Don’t miss the two-minute explainer video, or the half-hour podcast with extended versions of the audio interviews.

America's Longest War—and the Ally That Fuels It // The New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti, via: How Pakistan has perpetuated the Afghan conflict.

'The Military Has Seen the Writing on the Wall' // The Atlantic’s Uri Friedman: The United States is preparing for a war with North Korea that it hopes never to have to fight, says Senator Tammy Duckworth.

US General to Turkey: We're Not Pulling Back // Kevin Baron: Gen. Votel said the U.S. recognizes its NATO ally's concerns but won't abandon the coalition of Syrian Democratic Forces fighting ISIS on the world's behalf.

Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Email us. And if you find this useful, consider forwarding it to a friend or colleague. They can subscribe here for free.

That OPSEC snafu just got worse. Believe it or not, the news about troops’ widespread use of smart fitness devices got a bit worse on Monday when “Internet sleuths found ways of using the publicly available Strava data to identify individual users of the tracking service by name, along with the jogging routes they use in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan,” the Washington Post reported.  
As a result of the whole episode, the Pentagon dispatched Essye B. Miller, the Defense Department’s acting chief information officer, to review whether new policies are required.
Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Robert Manning III: “We take these matters seriously, and we are reviewing the situation to determine if any additional training or guidance is required, and if any additional policy must be developed to ensure the continued safety of DOD personnel at home and abroad.”
Strava, the company that makes the trackers “issued a statement Monday saying that it ‘is committed to working with military and government officials to address sensitive areas that might appear,’” the Post reports. That’s a bit of a pivot from earlier statements. “Strava had originally responded to the allegations Sunday by saying that users should check their privacy settings.” More here.

Coming this evening: a State of the Union tradition of praising the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. The New York Times reports “President Trump is expected to promote his strategy to win the war in Afghanistan” in this evening’s address — his first as POTUS. However, “He’ll be the third president to do so.”
Some lines from senior U.S. officials over the years:

•  “We’re at a point where we clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and stabilization and reconstruction activities," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on May 1, 2003.
• “The Taliban is gone from power, and it’s not coming back,” said President George W. Bush on Dec. 16, 2008.

Said POTUS on Monday to reporters: “We’re going to finish what we have to finish. What nobody else has been able to finish, we’re going to be able to do it.” More here.
By the way: President Trump said the U.S. is not negotiating any peace deals with the Taliban, he also said Monday.
Why that’s strange: “We just spent two nights in Afghanistan with CENTCOM’s Gen Votel this weekend,” tweeted Defense One’s Kevin Baron, traveling with Votel. “U.S. commander after commander said they were glad they had a new South Asia strategy specifically with the mission goal to pressure the Taliban to reconciliation talks.”
The media office of the Taliban responded, too, asking President Trump on Twitter to reach the group through their office in Doha "once you're ready to discuss your exit" from Afghanistan, Al Aan TV’s Jenan Moussa noticed Monday on Twitter.  

Transparency in retreat. Here’s some data we won’t know about the Afghan war: "the size of the Afghan army and police force and the number of civilian airstrike casualties," The Wall Street Journal writes off the latest quarterly report sent to Congress by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
One more thing: There will be a few troops at this evening’s State of the Union address. And Air Force Times has a bit more on the “Army staff sergeant who helped save a fellow soldier’s life during a mission in Syria (Justin Peck) and a Marine Corps corporal (Matthew Bradford) who became the first blind double-amputee to re-enlist,” here.

Trump administration refuses to follow Russian sanctions law. Washington Post: “The decision was made public after nightfall on deadline day for implementing sanctions against those who do business with Russian defense and intelligence firms, as required under a 2017 law” enacted largely to punish Russia for interfering with the previous year’s U.S. president election. “The Trump administration had a decision to make whether they would follow the law and crack down on those responsible for attacking American democracy in 2016,” said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "They chose instead to let Russia off the hook yet again.”
According to The Daily Beast: “Monday’s episode marked the latest chapter in a months-long tug-of-war between Capitol Hill and the White House over a sweeping sanctions law that the administration, critics contend, has refused to fully implement and has dragged its feet in doing so.” More, here.
Why it matters: One of the main reasons was apparent more than a year ago, when Trump appeared open to rolling back sanctions. Some critics worried that “he also may ease restrictions on exporting U.S. arms and technology, rules they say are critical to curbing the development of Russian military capabilities.” Read the January 2017 piece from Defense One’s Patrick Tucker, here.
The spin: The day before the sanctions announcement, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said “no one cares” about the possibility that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the runup to the election. That followed the release of a Washington Post-ABC News poll showing that half of Americans approve of the way FBI special counsel Robert Mueller is conducting the investigation.

In the Black Sea, dangerously close encounters of a Russian kind. "A U.S. EP-3 Aries aircraft flying in international airspace over the Black Sea was intercepted by a Russian Su-27," U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa announced Monday.
Can you get much closer? "[T]he Su-27 closing to within five feet and crossing directly through the EP-3’s flight path, causing the EP-3 to fly through the Su-27’s jet wash."
The intercept lasted 20 minutes shy of three hours, ABC News reports. Afterward, the Russians denied any unsafe behavior, saying “The whole flight of the Russian Su-27 was strictly in accordance with international airspace rules, there were no abnormal situations,” according to the ministry of defense. More here.

Nikki Haley wants to raise the profile on Iran’s role in the Yemen war. “Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley led the 14 other members of the Security Council on a trip to Washington that included lunch with President Donald Trump and a stop at a military hangar to see what the U.S. says is evidence that Iran is arming Houthi rebels in Yemen,” The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Catch a photo of the tour, snapped by al-Jazeera English’s Whitney Hurst, here.
So why the tour in DC? “A U.N. panel of experts concluded in a report earlier this month that Iran violated an arms embargo by supplying weapons to Yemeni rebels,” the Journal writes. “But at a meeting last week, several countries including Russia, China and others said the conclusion was “circumstantial” and not sufficient to merit Council action, according to sanctions experts familiar with the meeting.”

In Yemen, a new front appears to have opened in the multi-faceted war — this time in the southern port city of Aden, Reuters reports on location.
The short read: After three days of fighting, “Residents said forces loyal to the [UAE-backed] Southern Transitional Council (STC), formed last year to push for the revival of the former independent state of South Yemen, seized the last stronghold of Hadi’s Presidential Protection Forces in the Dar Saad area of northern Aden, in battles that at times involved heavy artillery and tank fire.”
For the record: "The fighting began on Sunday after a deadline set last week by the STC for Hadi to dismiss bin Daghr’s government, which the STC accused of corruption and mismanagement. The government denies the allegation," Reuters reports. "The government-run Saba news agency put the death toll in two days of fighting at 16 and the number of wounded at 141. An official at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said at least 36 were killed and 185 were wounded."
What this means: The Saudi-backed, internationally recognized government has been at least temporarily pushed out of its stronghold in Aden. Hear Oxford University’s Elisabeth Kendall explain a bit more about the latest from southern Yemen and why it matters to the rest of Yemen, here.
Locals are reportedly overjoyed: “Aden residents said STC fighters had earlier overrun Presidential Protection forces outposts in central Aden’s Crater and Tawahi districts... Witnesses said hundreds of people danced and sang as they celebrated the STC victory with fireworks that lit the night skies over Aden. The crowd chanted slogans demanding restoration of the southern state.”

To better understand why unification of the country isn’t on their mind — and why the notion is so deeply problematic — check out our three-part report on how Yemen has descended into a chaos state, here. (In a hurry? Start with the two-minute animated video explainer, here.)
Another thing: The Houthis say they launched another ballistic missile into Saudi Arabia. That, via AEI’s Maher Farrukh, here.

And now for something completely different: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the U.S. after years of internal lobbying, The Verge reported this weekend.
The pros: There would be "a massive vehicle-tracking network generating as many as 100 million sightings per month, each tagged with a date, time, and GPS coordinates of the sighting... A historical search would turn up every place a given license plate has been spotted in the last five years, a detailed record of the target’s movements. That data could be used to find a given subject’s residence or even identify associates if a given car is regularly spotted in a specific parking lot."
The cons: “The system gives the agency access to billions of license plate records and new powers of real-time location tracking, raising significant concerns from civil libertarians.”
Said ICE spokesperson Dani Bennett: “Like most other law enforcement agencies, ICE uses information obtained from license plate readers as one tool in support of its investigations... ICE is not seeking to build a license plate reader database, and will not collect nor contribute any data to a national public or private database through this contract.” More here.

And finally today: NE Ohio wants a missile defense shield, Ohio’s WOSU public media reported Monday. Their jump: “The Ohio House of Representatives voted unanimously on Wednesday to pass SCR 8, which calls on the U.S. Missile Defense Agency to select Camp Ravenna for a future East Coast missile defense system.”
A bit more about the site and the plan: “Camp Ravenna, an Ohio Army National Guard site in Portage and Trumbull counties, is currently being used to train troops prior to deployments and for routine military exercises. The resolution is nonbinding, but if the camp is selected, Ohio would benefit from hundreds of new jobs.”

In case you were wondering: The vote comes on the heels of Daily Show host Trevor Noah’s December attempt to get Kim Jong-Il to aim his missiles at Toledo, a jibe that did not amuse the editorial board of northwestern Ohio’s largest newspaper. Read the Blade’s take, here.