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February 1:
The two Islamic separatist groups battling the Philippine government
for an independent southern homeland appear to be joining forces
under the leadership of the son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi,
reports adnkronos.com. The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)
and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have agreed to
establish a joint council, to be chaired by Saiful Islam Muammar
Gaddafi, in the coming year. The new effort, dubbed the Bangsamoro
Solidarity Council, will mark a long-delayed rapprochement between
the two groups; the MILF split from the MNLF in the late 1970s to
pursue a more religiously motivated insurgency.
February 3:
Ties between England and Afghanistan are in a tailspin following yet
another revelation of plans by London to engage members of the
Taliban without first consulting Kabul.
The Financial Times reports electronic documents seized
from a team of western and Afghan officials in late 2007 reveal that
British forces in Afghanistan had drawn up a secret plan to build
military training camps for 2,000 former Taliban fighters.
Unbeknownst to the Afghan government, the camps would provide
military and vocational training, and equipment to recruits in an
effort to “drain popular support for the Taliban.” Two of the
diplomats linked to the plan have been expelled from the country,
but Afghan officials remain puzzled: “We have operational
discussions... on a weekly basis, so [why] did they keep this secret?”
February 4:
Amidst an across-the-board thaw in relations in recent years, India
and Pakistan have agreed to strengthen security and intelligence
exchanges and “build channels of communication at the level of
scholars.” A new agreement signed in early February will create a
mechanism whereby each country’s top strategic-military think tank
will collaborate in state-sponsored workshops, eventually leading to
joint military research projects,
according to the Agence France Presse. Security cooperation between
the two historic regional rivals has lagged behind the broader
diplomatic opening in recent years, as former Indian defense
secretary Shireen Mazari acknowledges: “except for contacts at
international forums, we never had open discussions on security
issues.” “Huge gaps still exist,” admits Sujit Dutta, a scholar at
India’s participating think tank, but “this may help us to achieve
some frank exchanges of views.”
February 5:
For South Korea’s new president, Lee Myung-bak, recalibrating his
predecessor’s controversial “sunshine” policy towards the DPRK and
repairing frayed ties with Washington have become top priorities.
According to the Taipei Times, that process will soon get
underway with the reinstatement of a “military operational plan,”
codenamed OPLAN 5029, by the end of the year. The effort constitutes
a joint contingency plan with the United States to “handle political
turmoil and a sudden exodus of refugees, natural disasters that
include floods and earthquakes, or the regime’s loss of control over
nuclear and biochemical weapons.” South Korea’s former president,
Roh Moo-hyung, had put a freeze on the plan in early 2005, citing “a
possible breach in national sovereignty.”
February 6:
Baitullah Mehsud, the operational chief of a group of Pakistani
militants termed the “neo-Taliban,” has replaced Osama bin Laden as
the West’s most deadly threat, according to the Nigel Inkster,
former deputy chief of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, MI6.
The Times of London reports that Mehsud, a Pashtun warlord
from South Waziristan frequently linked to al-Qaeda, has been blamed
for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto last December as well as a
number of planned attacks against Western targets in Afghanistan and
Europe. Inkster and other observers now say Mehsud and his coterie
of “next-generation” Taliban extremists represent the top terrorist
threat to the West.
[Editor’s Note: Mehsud’s group is distinguished from the Afghan
Taliban led by Mullah Omar by its focus on Pakistani and Western
targets – a position that has strained its ties with traditional
elements of the ousted Islamist movement, which remain focused on
the overthrow of the Karzai government in Kabul.] |
