In Syria, the powers play hardball

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Michael Bell

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Monday, Jul. 23 2012, 2:00 AM EDT

Last updated Monday, Jul. 23 2012, 12:00 AM EDT

Realpolitik is liberating Syria from the Assad autocracy, while the institution-based international system – most notably the United Nations – has largely failed, because it depends on agreement among the permanent members of the Security Council.

Moscow seems implacably committed to supporting the Damascus regime. Such is the Russians’ commitment to their traditional activist role that they are underwriting their Syrian ally at great cost to their own reputation as a constructive institution-based player, rendering impotent the mechanisms so ably used in Libya.

Even if the Russians were acting otherwise, it remains dubious how effective UN and North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervention could be. A no-fly zone would have limited impact, since Syria possesses an impressive array of military hardware. A severe sanctions regime, even banks running out of money, might have less impact than thought. Sanctions would be ignored by Russia, China, Iran and others. NATO boots on the ground would be a disaster, embedding outside players in a complex world where denominational identity trumps international standards of right and wrong. Indeed, the regime continues to draw on significant public support, despite falling morale over the setbacks of recent days.

Now China Wants Law And Order

Sunset of the Forbidden City, Beijing (northwest cornor of the Forbidden City) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

June 11, 2012: Jianyu Huang, a Chinese scientist working in the United States, has been arrested and charged with passing stolen technology back to China. Huang was fired from his nanotechnology research job in April and has been charged with stealing and lying to security officials about these activities. Huang was born in China but moved to the U.S. and became an American citizen.

American intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies have increasingly been paying close attention to Chinese born American scientists, seeking out the minority that use their access to American technology secrets to either give or sell this valuable material to government or commercial organizations in China. This is all part of extensive Chinese intelligence efforts to steal American technology.

China sees this kind of broad-spectrum intelligence gathering as a major operation and one they intend to keep going as long as possible. Thus, during the last four years China has established eight National Intelligence Colleges in major universities. In effect, each school now has an “Espionage Department”. With this about 300 carefully selected applicants are accepted each year, to be trained as spies and intelligence operatives, and future commanders of these operations. The college trained operatives expect to make a career out of stealing Western technology. China has found that espionage is an enormously profitable way to steal military and commercial secrets. While Chinese Cyber War operations in this area get a lot of publicity, the more conventional spying brings in a lot of stuff that is not reachable on the Internet.

Iranian gov’t pays paramilitary hackers, bloggers to bring you Islamic Revolution 2.0

Iran battles “westoxification” using, well, westoxification.

by Cyrus Farivar – June 6 2012, 9:36pm E Cyberwar

Hundreds of Iranians gathered recently for a Hizbollah Cyber conference in Tehran

Hizbullah Cyber

TALLINN, ESTONIA—Iran has significantly stepped up its use of corporate acquisitions, online propaganda, and hacking capabilities in recent years, according to an open source intelligence expert.

Jeff Bardin, the chief intelligence officer at Treadstone 71—an American company that researches publicly available materials—told a packed session at the International Conference on Cyber Conflict on Wednesday that Iran has become much more sophisticated and pervasive in its use of online tools.

He outlined the major paramilitary organizations that operate within Iran, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Basij, and Ashiyane. The latter is a notorious hacker group that works in conjunction with the Iranian government. All of these groups, he said, share an overarching focus on an Iranian concept used to promote the movement that became the philosophic foundation of the Islamic Revolution: westoxification. It’s the loss of Persian language, culture, and influence to Western countries.

“[Iranians'] patience is, in my view, legendary,” he told Ars. “The United States is famous for underestimating the adversary.”

The IRGC, known in Persian as the “Pasdaran,” is a massive organization that touches nearly every part of the Iranian economy, including owning or controlling major corporations. Most notably, just months after the disputed presidential election of June 2009, the Iranian government sold a majority $7.8 billion stake in the Iran Telecommunications Company, a former monopoly.

“It smacks of a communist model,” Bardin said of the uncompetitive nature of awarding contracts to the IRGC. He added that by controlling the infrastructure itself, the Iranian government’s agencies could capture even tighter control over what was being said and done online.

Jihadists Arrive in Syria

Nasser ar-Refai, sheikh of Hawran (Daraa Governorate, Syria) with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Activists and rebel soldiers based inside Syria say a small but growing number of Islamist radicals affiliated with global jihadi movements have been arriving in opposition strongholds in recent weeks and attempting to rally support among disaffected residents.

Western diplomats say they have tracked a steady trickle of jihadists flowing into Syria from Iraq, and Jordan’s government last week detained at least four alleged Jordanian militants accused of trying to sneak into Syria to join the revolutionaries.

The same thing happened in Bosnia. So-called “Afghan Arabs,” battle-hardened jihadists from all over the Arab world who previously volunteered to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, ran off to Bosnia to fight a jihad against Serbs when no one else would step up to help out the Bosnians. They made virtually no impact on the course of the war, but some of them stuck around after the fighting was finished and are still causing trouble even today.