Once again a number of stories on the interwebs have caught my attention so I of course must share them with my loyal readers.
I'll start with The Long War Journal's Somalia page. It's an update of the near daily occurances in Somalia. Pay special attention to dates November 27, 28, 29, 30, December 2, 5, 8, 11, 12, and 16. Look at those casualty numbers for civilians caught in the crossfire between African Union forces and Shaahab. I don't think the AU is going to get the results they want by accidently killing more civilians than they do Shaahab fighters. While Shaahab is likely to blame for many of the civilian deaths (mortars tend to end up in places you didn't expect) the AU is going to get the blame.
Next up is this story from CNN.com about a border patrol agent killed in Arizona yesterday. He was killed in a shootout with bandits who target illegal immigrants. Three things about this put me on edge: 1) there is enough immigrant traffic that bandits are able to sustain their operations, even 18 miles north of the border; 2) violence is clearly migrating north of the border; 3) this attack occured one mountain range over from where I live.
Third, is a threat by an Iranian general that American generals will be targeted and killed in revenge for the Iranian nuclear scientists who were attacked last week. The article is from Foxnews.com so I'm taking it with a grain of salt and I doubt that this general speaks for the government but there is likely a lot of anger over the terrorist attack that killed one of the scientists and injured the other. Do I think Iran is capable of conducting an assasination attempt here in the U.S.? I doubt it, but Iran does have a tremendous amount of influence with certain insurgent organizations and militias in Iraq; namely Jaysh al Mahdi and the Jaysh al Mahdi Special Groups as well as a couple of other, more violent Shia groups. All of these organizations have access to EFPs and could obtain knowledge of the movement of one of our generals meeting with a key Iraqi political or military figure. Not sure Iran has the cojones for an attack of that much political magnitude however.
Finally is this report from Iraqi authorities claiming Al Qaida in Iraq is planning suicide attacks in Europe and the United States this Christmas holiday. My blog post about Al Qaida using affiliate groups discusses the reasoning behind this potential operation. However, I'm finding this information hard to believe, partially due to the source. Iraq may be cooking the intelligence books in order to attempt to make it appear that AQI is still a significant threat, not only to the Iraqi government, but the West as well. From my recent experience, AQI is all but finished. While they will continue to be a minor threat in Iraq and carbombs and IEDs will continue to go off, the organization lacks leadership and has for the most part alienated the Sunni population. I find it unlikely that they will be able to rebuild their force and reputation and be a threat to the Iraqi government. I also find it unlikely that AQI would waste valuable money, time, resources, and suicide bombers to conduct an attack against the West when they so desperately need all those things currently in Iraq. While the attacks against Spain in 2004 led to Spain pulling its forces out of Iraq and the attacks in 2008 in London likely hastened the U.K.'s removal of most of their forces, any attack now will likely backfire on AQI.
But I'm not an insurgent with a potentially global reach and I've been wrong before.
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