Situation Report: U.S. troops heading to Helmand; Canadian commandos going to Iraq; Egyptian Foreign Minister dishes to FP; defense budget coming Tuesday; Assad’s executioners; and lots more
By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley
Helmand surge. By the end of the month, there’ll be several hundred more U.S. soldiers stationed in the embattled Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. There is no specific breakdown of how many troops will move south to help Afghan forces there hold the line against a resurgent Taliban, but the Guardian reported Monday that the group would be roughly the size of a battalion, which could be anywhere from about 300 soldiers to as many as 800.
Spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Col. Michael Lawhorn, emailed FP that the deployment is meant to “bolster force protection for the current staff of advisors and to provide additional advisors” to help re-equip and train the Afghan army’s 215th Corps, which has been battered by months of heavy fighting. The unit recently had several of its top leaders removed for what one U.S. official called “poor leadership.” Asked if the U.S. forces would engage in combat, Lawhorn said that “our mission remains the same: to train, advise, and assist our Afghan counterparts, and not to participate in combat operations.” But as U.S. commanders have said, American forces have the right of self-defense, even if U.S. officials have refused to use the word “combat” to describe a firefight last month in which a U.S. Green Beret soldier was killed.
The end of the beginning. It’s federal budget day in Washington, D.C., though on the defense side, some of the bigger budgetary lines the Pentagon wants Congress to fund have already been publicized. Chief among them are the $7.5 billion that will be requested to fight the Islamic State (a 50 percent increase from 2016), and the $3.4 billion to beef up U.S. and NATO capabilities in Eastern Europe. The $582.7 billion defense budget request also calls for major spending on cyber security, more firepower for submarines, new robotic boats and underwater vessels as well as new missile interceptors to be installed on American warships.
The official rollout happens at 1:30 p.m. when Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Paul Selva brief the press. Watch live here. As is customary, after the big numbers are rolled out the individual services will take the podium in the Pentagon briefing room to walk us through their plans. There’ll be some surprises, SitRep has learned, so check back with us later for updates.
The terms of war. Republican president candidate Sen. Ted Cruz keeps calling for “carpet bombing” the Islamic State, and several times has cited the 1991 Gulf War as a model for the current fight. His comments have caused some confusion over what, exactly, he means. So FP’s Dan De Luce reached out to retired Air Force Gen. Chuck Horner, who oversaw the air war in Iraq in 1991, to see what he thought about the whole thing.
“Anybody who says that I kind of wonder what in the hell they mean. It’s one of those terms that doesn’t really have a meaning,” Horner said. The former general added that he doesn’t use the phrase “carpet bombing” because it has no technical meaning in military doctrine and stresses that his forces used precision weapons explicitly to avoid indiscriminately hitting civilians in 1991. It’s not only retired brass who have pushed back against Cruz’s comments, however. Vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Paul Selva, and the commander of the current war effort in Iraq and Syria, Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, have already dismissed Cruz’s talk as out of sync with American values, and an idea that could endanger the “moral high ground” held by the U.S.-led coalition.
Pulling out, or doubling down? The Canadian government announced Monday its six CF-18 fighter planes would end their bombing runs on the Islamic State by Feb. 22 and come home. But don’t count Canada out. A close look at what Ottawa is doing in Iraq actually reveals a growing mission that may increase the dangers for Canadian troops.
The number of Canadian Special Forces troops training Iraqi forces on the ground will grow from 69 to just over 200 as part of an overall ramp-up of deployed Canadian forces from 650 to 830. And those troops have been given the mandate to fight, if they have to. “I want Canadians to know that we will be involved in engagements as we defend ourselves or those partners who we are working with,” Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance said Monday. Vance also said Canadian troops would continue to “mark targets” for coalition aircraft to hit, something that American military officials insist U.S. troops do not do in Iraq.
Canadian commandos have already been involved in combat on several occasions with ISIS fighters in northern Iraq, including a significant 17-hour battle in late December in which they fought alongside Kurdish peshmerga forces to beat back an assault by hundreds of ISIS attackers.
Assad’s executioners. The U.N.’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria has released a grim new report alleging the Assad regime has carried out a widespread campaign of “extermination” and torture of detainees amounting to an ongoing “crime against humanity.” The report is filled with gruesome stories from survivors of the Assad regime’s prisons, writes FP’s Siobhan O’Grady writes, with allegations of murder and torture, including beatings, mutilations against inmates as young as seven.
No sympathy. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told FP’s Yochi Dreazen, Siobhan O’Grady, and John Hudson that his government is unhappy that recent terrorist attacks inside his country have prompted other governments to question the competence of Egypt’s security services rather than to extend condolences and support. “Egypt has been treated as a culprit, and not as a victim,” Shoukry said in an exclusive interview. “When we have seen terror operations in other areas, there was a rush to solidarity. You would have thought that similar solidarity would have been shown to Egypt, especially as it goes through a very difficult stage.”
Morning, all. We’re into another week here full of Pentagon budget briefings and intelligence hearings on the Hill. If you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ! Best way is to send them to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley.
Syria
U.S. prosecutors have charged Umm Sayyaf, the wife of senior Islamic State leader Abu Sayyaf who was killed in a May 2015 U.S. Delta Force raid in Syria, with the kidnapping, detention, and death of U.S. aid worker Kayla Mueller. Despite the charges, Sayyaf remains in Iraqi custody and is unlikely to ever see the inside an American courtroom. Prosecutors reportedly filed charges against Sayyaf to complicate any future efforts by the Iraqi government to trade Sayyaf with the Islamic State in a prisoner swap. The case highlights what might become a problem for U.S. forces in Iraq — the lack of detention facilities to hold captured ISIS militants grabbed on the battlefield by American commandos. FP’s Paul McLeary and Dan De Luce ran that one down last month.
Following the collapse of the Geneva peace talks, Secretary of State John Kerry is pouring on the pressure to reach a ceasefire between Syrian rebels and the coalition fighting alongside the Assad regime. U.S. officials tells Reuters that the move is designed to lure rebels back to the negotiating table by giving them time and space to receive humanitarian aid and briefly recover from the onslaught of Russian airpower. At the same time, Shiite forces fighting for the regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad continue to squeeze the rebel-held city of Aleppo, backed up by relentless Russian airstrikes.
Chechen Republic leader Ramzan Kadyrov said his special forces have deployed to Syria to assist the Assad regime and call in Russian airstrikes against its opponents, the Wall Street Journal reports. Kadyrov admitted that Chechen forces deployed to Syria have suffered casualties but did not put a number either to their combat losses or the number of troops operating in the country. Chechen troops have also served abroad on behalf of Russian foreign policy alongside Russian troops in eastern Ukraine.
Libya
Libya lost a MiG-23 in combat against the Islamic State while bombing the city of Derna, where members of the group have been active. The cause of the crash, which the pilot survived, remains unknown but officials attributed the loss to “technical problems.” This is the second MiG-23 lost in the war against the Islamic State in Libya, with a second jet crashing in Benghazi back in January.
Russia
Russian defense minister Sergei K. Shoigu announced surprise military exercises in Russia’s southern region along the border with eastern Ukraine, as violence there escalates. The defense ministry offered a number of explanations for the drills, from testing troops’ military readiness to preparation for dealing with a natural disaster, but the move has put the Ukrainian government and its supporters ill at ease. The announcement of exercises comes just as the Obama administration has announced it will spend $3.4 billion in military support to Eastern Europe to hedge against Russian aggression in the region.
Russia’s defense ministry will increase spending on the development of offensive cyber capabilities, with plans to invest $250 million a year, according to SC Magazine. A large chunk of the money will be focused on developing malicious software which can cripple the industrial control systems that run critical infrastructure systems such as energy grids, financial networks, and transportation systems. An anonymous intelligence official from Russia’s Federal Security Service told the magazine that Russia sees itself as engaged in an arms race with the U.S., one of the world’s most advanced powers in offensive cyber capabilities, as is looking to built its own deterrent.
Who’s where when
2:30 p.m. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is holding a big hearing today on the worldwide threat assessment of the U.S. intelligence community with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; CIA Director John Brennan; Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart; FBI Director James Comey; and NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers. Watch it here, and read Clapper’s assessment here.
Navy
The top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee lit into the Navy over its management of the troubled Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) criticized the service over the lack of available mission packages for the LCS, saying that it has “not yet demonstrated effective capability” for the promised Mine Countermeasure or Anti-Submarine Warfare packages. The senators urged Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson to ensure that the LCS program doesn’t cut corners on testing in order to speed up the program’s already delayed deployment schedule.
Bots ‘n’ stuff
The Army has seen cockroaches scatter into the walls when the lights come on and decided that this is something they’d like to see more of. Defense One reports that researchers at the University of California Berkeley have made a robotic cockroach for the Army that can mimic the much-hated insect’s ability to shimmy into tight spaces. The goal of the program is to develop robots that can pry intelligence out of confined spaces, whether in combat or natural disasters.
Russia is working on an unmanned ground vehicle, a small robotic tank known as the Uran-9, which it hopes will take the export market by storm, the National Interest reports. Russia’s Rosoboronexport export agency says it expects the Uran-9 to provide fire support for special operations teams involved counterterrorism operations and urban warfare. The Uran-9 is equipped with a cannon, machine gun, and anti-tank guided weapons and is operated from a control station inside a truck.
