Airstrike kills Pakistan Taliban leader?; Battle nears Yemeni port; Ceasefire in Afghanistan; State warns Russia on Syria; and just a bit more…

A U.S. drone strike has apparently killed the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, The New York Times reports after initial indications began surfacing in both local and social media on Thursday (and following three previous reports of his death going back to 2014).

Location of the strike: “in the Afghan province of Kunar, near the Pakistani border,” according to Pakistani intelligence officials and later confirmed by the Pakistani Ministry of Defense. Adds the Times, “The area where the drone attack is said to have taken place is considered a stronghold of both Pakistani and Afghan Taliban fighters. The groups are separate organizations, but they often overlap in the tribal borderlands between the two countries.”

The U.S. military confirmed they struck Kunar on Wednesday, but couldn’t give the Times “further details or confirm that Mr. Fazlullah had been killed.”

Spotted today in Afghanistan: The Taliban and Afghan troops walking peacefully together in the streets on this the first day of overlap between Kabul and the Taliban’s ceasefires.

Writes Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Frud Bezhan: “Today, we have seen a flicker of light in a long, dark tunnel.”

For your ears only: Now may be a good time to re-listen to our short discussion (starts at 46:13) with former State official Johnny Walsh on why we should seize this moment for Afghan peace talks.

From Defense One

What the Interwar Years Say About the US Army's Newest Force Concept // Lauren Fish: Technology isn't everything.

NATO Needs More Big Exercises, Too // Elisabeth Braw: More multinational training events would go a long way towards improving European defense – and it would strengthen the transatlantic relationship, too.

The Global Business Brief, June 14 // Marcus Weisgerber: F-35 axes Northrop sensor; SOCOM ups glide-bomb order; Microsoft pitches AI; and more.

The US Must Tell Bahrain's Rulers: It's Time to Reform // Salvatore Borgognone and Rachel Furlow: The crackdown by Sunni rulers on the Shi'ite majority is opening doors for Tehran.

Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. And if you find this useful, consider forwarding it to a friend or colleague. They can subscribe here for free. #OTD 78 years ago: The German occupation of Paris begins.

Spray and pray, POTUS speaks edition. President Donald Trump on day three of no official events on his daily schedule. This morning, he talked to the media and reporters outside the White House, and unleashed a barrage of opinions on a wide range of topics and news stories.
Some of what’s on his mind today: Crimea. North Korea (more on both below). Children taken from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. The FBI. Russia (also below). Joint exercises with South Korea (“I hated them from the day I came in. It cost a lot of money. I saved a lot of money. That’s a good thing for us”).
Oh, and Trump gave North Korea’s Kim Jong-un his personal cell phone number. And that doesn’t capture the half of it all. So we’ll try to sweep up some of what was most notable out of this Friday morning presidential messaging offensive.
Presidential soundbite 1: "President Obama lost Crimea. So it’s his fault. Yeah, yeah. It’s his fault. Yeah, it’s his fault.”
That, despite a consistent line from his own State Department saying otherwise — including this release entitled “Crimea is Ukraine” from March, calling Moscow’s spring 2014 offensive an “annexation of Ukrainian territory...by heavily armed Russian troops.”
A window into Trump’s thinking: “A few years ago Putin was in what was called the G-8. It’s better to have Russia in than to have Russia out. Because just like North Korea, just like somebody else, it’s much better if we get along with them than if we don’t." For a possible deeper look into his embrace of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un this week, we turn to...

Presidential soundbite 2: Customs and courtesies, Supreme Leader edition. Said the President of the United States to Fox News’ Steve Doocey: “[Kim] speaks and his people sit up in attention. I want my people to do the same.” Video, here.

• Related weekend reading: “It’s undeniable that the president is wrecking the U.S.-led international order. The only question left is whether he’s doing it on purpose,” Slate’s Fred Kaplan wrote Thursday.

Also today: Trump adds “a 25 percent tariff on up to $50 billion worth of Chinese imports,” administration officials announced Friday. Here’s the response: Beijing has “drawn up a list of $50 billion in U.S. products that would face retaliatory tariffs, including beef and soybeans — a shot at Trump's supporters in rural America.” AP, here.

Hodeida, Yemen, update: As of Thursday night Washington time, Reuters was reporting Arab warplanes and warships pounding Houthi positions outside Yemen’s main port. “The United Nations is struggling to avert disruption to the port, the main lifeline for food aid to a country where 8.4 million people are on the verge of starvation.” Reuters has a bit more here, but there’s not much more from the war zone as of Friday morning.

State Department to Syria and Russia: keep away from U.S. forces in the southwest. Citing “reports of impending Syrian government operations in southwest Syria within the boundaries of the de-escalation zone,” Foggy Bottom reminded the Assad regime and Russia “the United States will take firm and appropriate measures in response to Syrian government violations in this area,” spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement in Thursday.
The quick read: “We request that Russia fulfill its commitments in accordance with UNSCR 2254 and the southwest ceasefire arrangement.”
Appealing to Moscow, Nauert said, “The ceasefire arrangement and southwest de-escalation zone were initiatives by Presidents Trump and Putin to de-escalate the Syrian conflict, save lives, and create conditions for the displaced to safely and voluntarily return to their homes. A military offensive by the Syrian regime into this ceasefire zone would defy these initiatives, which have been a success to date... Russia is duly responsible as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to use its diplomatic and military influence over the Syrian government to stop attacks and compel the government to cease further military offensives.”
Also for Syria: $6.6 million to the White Helmets and the UN. Funds had been suspended back in March, but now State is opening its coffers for what it calls “the continuation of the vital, life-saving operations of the Syrian Civil Defense, more commonly known as the White Helmets.”
The UN agency receiving some of that money: the ceasefire monitors known more formally as the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism. Said State in support of that group: “Their mandate, collecting and analyzing evidence of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights abuses‎ will help ensure those responsible for these crimes are ultimately held accountable.” More here.

New U.S. airstrike this week against al-Qaeda in Libya, this one on Wednesday and allegedly finding its target some 50 miles southeast of Bani Walid.
It comes just one week since the last U.S. strike in Libya — also near Bani Walid — according to U.S. Africa Command. That one targeted four ISIS-Libya fighters. Wednesday’s strike is believed to have killed a fighter with al-Qa' ida in the Islamic Maghreb.
For the record, AFRICOM says, “This is the second U.S. strike against AQIM in Libya. The first on March 24, 2018, resulted in the death of Musa Abu Dawud, a high-ranking AQIM official.” Read a bit more about him from Georgetown University’s Countering Extremism Project, here. Or find what is essentially his obit over at The Long War Journal, which also has a tracker of where U.S. airstrikes have fallen in Libya since 2014, here.  

Chinese, US naval chiefs talk: Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson and Vice Adm. Shen Jinlong, People's Liberation Army (Navy) Commander, talked about Navy-to-Navy and bilateral military relations via videochat on June 14. It was their second VTC; the previous one was last July.

China will soon mandate location trackers in cars. Starting in two weeks, registering a car will also require installing an RFID chip to allow the government to track its movements, WSJ reports. Among the official reasons given for the move: urban planning, spurring the domestic RFID industry, improving security, and fighting crime.
How we know: China announced the move late last year, which displays a level of transparency not seen in U.S. law enforcement’s use of automated license plate readers, cell phone trackers, and the like.|
Panopticon, Xinjian style: Still, it’s worse in China’s far western region of Xinjiang, where a sophisticated surveillance net tracks the predominantly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority. Foreign Policy: “Part of what Beijing calls its anti-terrorism campaign, the system includes mandatory facial-recognition scans at gas stations and Wi-Fi sniffers that secretly collect data from network devices. Over the past two years, the technology has helped authorities round up an estimated hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other Muslims and lock them up in clandestine camps that China calls ‘re-education centers.’”
Western firms are helping: Many of the companies that built or supply this net are backed by Western investors and suppliers, which “raises the grim prospect that many people around the world are profiting from some of China’s worst human rights abuses.” Read on, here.
Speaking of population control measures — back stateside we have this lede Thursday evening from The Daily Beast’s Spencer Ackerman: “Separating refugee and immigrant children from their parents isn’t just an emotionally wrenching policy. It’s an enterprise that is benefitting intelligence and defense contractors.” Worth the click, here.

And finally this week: We’re a bit excited for the upcoming DC Comics sequel, “Wonder Woman 2,” which happens to be filming in our building — the Watergate Complex — this week in Washington.
Spotted: lots of 80s cars, cows, plastic coolers, Raleigh ten-speeds. And maybe even fanny packs. Read a bit more about the movie over at Entertainment, here.

Have a safe weekend, everyone. And we’ll see you again on Monday!