STRATFOR'S MORNING INTELLIGENCE BRIEF SITUATION REPORTS - Jan. 5, 2004
1232 GMT -- THAILAND -- Two bombs exploded Jan. 5 in the town of Pattani in southern Thailand, killing two police officials and wounding several people. Two other bombs were defused. The bombs exploded in Pattani a day after armed gunmen set fires at 21 schools and raided a military armory in the neighboring province of Narathiwat. 1228 GMT -- BRUSSELS -- A letter bomb exploded at the European Parliament in Brussels on Jan. 5. No injuries were reported and no other information was available, but it was the fifth letter bomb mailed in slightly over a week to different European Union agencies. 1225 GMT -- GEORGIA -- Exit polls in Georgia show that Columbia University-trained lawyer Mikhail Saakashvili was elected president with about 86 percent of 1.8 million votes cast, Agence France Presse reported Jan. 5. 1219 GMT -- CHINA -National health authorities in China confirmed Jan. 5 that a man in southern Guangdong province is the country's first case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) since a global epidemic was declared over in July 2003. 1217 GMT -- CAMBODIA -- Cambodian Judge Oun Bunna said Jan. 5 that an Egyptian national and two Thai citizens, held since May 2003 on suspicion of having ties to the Muslim militant group Jemaah Islamiah, will be tried on terrorism-related charges. A lawyer for the three detained men said his clients have not committed any crimes and claimed they are charged with crimes that are not even covered under Cambodian law. 1208 GMT -- LIBYA -- Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, made apparently contradictory statements concerning outside troops in Libya. He told the Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat on Jan. 5 that no U.S. and British forces would be stationed in Libya; however, he told Britain's Sunday Times that there would be "no problem" with U.S. or British troops being located in the country. 1204 GMT -- PAKISTAN - Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf met at the summit of the heads of South Asian states on Jan. 5 in Pakistan's capital. The Islamabad meeting reportedly was conducted "in a good atmosphere" and officials with both governments said it was intended to open a door for starting a dialogue on Kashmir. 1202 GMT -- IRAQ -- British military forces likely will remain in Iraq until 2006 or 2007, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Jan. 5. About 10,000 British troops are in Iraq. 1159 GMT -- SAUDI ARABIA -- Saudi police prevented a bombing attack on Jan 5 on an electricity distribution branch on the outskirts of Riaydh -- when they found a grenade placed in an adjacent building. 1157 GMT -- BRITAIN -- Heathrow International Airport in London and other British commercial airports are on high alert Jan. 5 amid continuing concerns that al Qaeda or other Islamic militant groups could launch strikes. ************************************************************************ Geopolitical Diary: Monday, Jan. 5, 2004 Nerves are taut globally as security alerts mildly disrupt trans-Atlantic travel. It is impossible to tell the quality of the intelligence these alerts are based on or how sensitive U.S. intelligence is at the moment -- it could be set to react to anything. Nevertheless, all the chatter -- on the Islamist and the U.S. sides -- is about an impending major attack by al Qaeda. The process is beginning to feed on itself as unconfirmed reports from Islamist Web sites become equally unconfirmed reports from U.S. sources with the media reporting them all -- like a series of mirrors multiplying an image. That and the bickering between British, French and American intelligence and security services over who did what and when have made the noise level deafening. It is impossible from the outside to make much sense of the matter. Our suspicion is that U.S. intelligence has picked up some solid intelligence indicating an attempt to hit the United States via intercontinental airliners. Some names were attached to the operation as well. Although, as is usually the case with names, lots of people have the same ones, the spellings -- particularly when transliterated -- are uncertain and the people in question have three or four identities from which to choose. The United States decided to be prudent. Disrupting flights would inconvenience travelers, but not as much as being killed. Moreover, even if intelligence had the wrong planes and wrong flights, massive security alerts probably would cause al Qaeda to cancel attacks as too risky. That is not a bad outcome, not only because a canceled attack is better than an uncanceled one, but also because that forces al Qaeda to regroup and buys several weeks or months in which to disrupt them. Still, as we have argued, now is the time for al Qaeda to attack. The guerrilla war in Iraq is diminishing dramatically. The number of attacks has died down substantially since Saddam Hussein's capture -- and the last week has not seen the kind of action that took place even over Christmas. What is particularly interesting is that significant guerrilla operations north of Baghdad have almost disappeared. The Samarra-Tikrit region that was the heartland of Baathist operations has become nearly inert. Guerrilla operations have concentrated in Baghdad itself and to the west and south of the city. The geography of the operations seems to indicate that the Baathist resistance to the north has been broken or, if not broken, then is still struggling to recover from the intelligence penetrations surrounding Hussein's capture. If this pattern continues -- and it might not -- then the guerrilla operation will have changed its character dramatically. It will have contracted dramatically, so that it will be focused in a very small area of Iraq -- essentially Baghdad and the area west and southwest toward the lakes region. It is also declining in tempo from a low intensity, continual guerrilla operation to a sporadic guerrilla operation in which the emphasis is on bombing attacks on soft targets with only intermittent combat operations against U.S. forces. Just as al Qaeda, on a global level, must act now to re-establish its credibility, so too the Iraqi guerrillas are under terrific pressure to demonstrate their ability to continue fighting. Sunni leaders who were essentially siding with the Baathists until December have begun reconsidering their position. They are watching the developing entente between the United States, the Iraqi Shiites and Iran and are seeing the guerrillas flounder. They have no particular interest in the foreign jihadists operating in the country, but are looking to preserve their own power and interests. If the tribal leadership abandons the guerrillas --as they may well have done in the Sunni heartland -- then the native Baathist guerrilla forces will have lost their operational base. The Baathist guerrillas are caught between a rock and hard place. On the one side, the United States is breaking apart their support structure. On the other, the jihadists are trying to take control of the war away from them. As with al Qaeda, the Baathist guerrillas must act. Unlike al Qaeda, a spectacular operation will not impress anyone. What will impress is their ability to return to the tempo of operations they were able to mount prior to Hussein's capture. If they can't do that, they will have serious problems recovering. Iran, it should be noted in closing, decided to pass on a visit by Elizabeth Dole and a Bush relative and made it clear that it is much more interested in extending the 90-day suspension of sanctions on certain goods, as well as expanding the categories of goods that are exempt. The United States has no problem with this now. What is going on is that an Iranian election is coming Feb. 20 and Iran would like to show its electorate that the United States has publicly changed its policies before Iran shifted its own. The Iranians have grumbling going on among members of the Guardians Council, while the U.S. public, as measured by Leno and Letterman, has not yet noticed anything going on -- no Axis of Evil jokes yet. That being the case, we can expect new and public U.S. moves. The United States does not want the process of entente to be derailed by political upheavals in Iran, at least while the Bush administration's own political flanks are secure. _______________________________________________ Sndbox mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://a8.mewebdns-a8.com/mailman/listinfo/sndbox_sandboxmail.net
