NATO’s Rasmussen Discusses Afghanistan, Syria, 9/11 Attacks

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON – NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen discussed progress in Afghanistan, the brutal civil war in Syria and the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks during his monthly news conference.

Rasmussen called the 11th anniversary of the attacks “a moment to remember the citizens of 25 NATO and partner countries who died that day, and all the victims of terrorist atrocities around the alliance and around the world, from Madrid and London to Istanbul, Bali and beyond.”

Speaking from NATO headquarters in Brussels, Rasmussen said terrorism never can be justified or tolerated, and that NATO is determined to play its full role in the fight against it. “It is vital to our own security, and it is vital for the values and principles of international law that we uphold,” he added.

Allies and partners work tirelessly to detect and prevent terrorist acts, the secretary general said, “and that is why we have more than 120,000 soldiers in Afghanistan -- to ensure that country can never again serve as a sanctuary [from which] terrorists can plan and launch attacks against our countries.”

On the months-long civil war being waged between the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and Syrian rebels, Rasmussen said NATO has no intention of intervening militarily in the conflict.

“We do believe the right way forward is to find a political solution,” he said, “and we urge the international community to send a strong and unified message to the Syrian leadership to accommodate the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people. So our position remains unchanged.”

Regarding Afghanistan, Rasmussen said the alliance views insider attacks on the coalition by Afghan security forces with great concern.

“We are looking very carefully into each one, and we are doing everything we can, together with our Afghan partners, to reduce the risks as much as we can,” the secretary general said, outlining some of the steps being taken.

“The vetting and screening of recruits is getting stronger. We are seeing better counterintelligence efforts. [International Security Assistance Force] and Afghan forces are getting more training to understand cultural differences. And we are constantly adapting the measures to protect our forces to the situation on the ground,” he explained.

Last week, Rasmussen said, he discussed the attacks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and they agreed to do everything they can to tackle the problem.

“We will simply not allow the enemies of Afghanistan to change our strategy,” Rasmussen said, “and we will not allow them to drive a wedge between us and our Afghan partners.”

Every day, he noted, tens of thousands of ISAF and Afghan troops fight together against the same threat and for the same goal.

“We know that despite these tragic incidents, the vast majority of our forces have a bond of trust with their Afghan comrades and many Afghans have sacrificed their lives for ours.”

Challenges and setbacks should not overshadow the significant progress made so far, Rasmussen added.

“Afghan forces are getting more professional, more confident and better equipped,” he said. “Within weeks, they will reach their full strength of 352,000.”

The Afghan forces are genuinely moving into the lead, assuming more responsibility in the campaign and taking the lead in providing security for three quarters of the population, the secretary general said, and every Afghan province is part of this process.

“The insurgents are being pushed further back from the population,” he said, adding that 80 percent of their attacks take place in areas where just 20 percent of the population lives.

In what Rasmussen called an “unstoppable” process of transition, ISAF will continue to train and support the Afghan forces over the next 28 months so they can assume full responsibility for security.

“It makes a big difference that the face of the defense of Afghanistan in the future will be a very visible Afghan face,” the secretary-general said. “The enemies of Afghanistan will now be faced with their compatriots in the fighting. This will also make it more difficult for the Taliban and others to claim that this is a fight against foreign invaders, which is one of their most popular propaganda claims.

“Already now it’s clear that the Taliban can’t prevail on the battlefield,” he continued, “and that’s the reason why the Taliban and others resort to cowardly attacks against civilians, including children, as we have seen recently.”

As Afghans step forward, ISAF is moving into a supporting role, he said. “Planning for our new mission -- to train, advise and assist Afghan security forces -- is already under way, and I expect the initial guidance to be completed in the next few weeks,” he added.

Rasmussen said he will discuss the NATO mission in Afghanistan and other global security challenges in New York when the United Nations General Assembly meets later this month.

“We all know the cost of our mission in Afghanistan, and the investment we have made over the years,” he said. “So let me say this: we have an important goal and a mandate from the United Nations. Our strategy is set, our timeline is clear. And we will stay the course.”

Panetta: Iran Increases Support to Assad Regime

By Nick Simeone

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14, 2012 – Iran is increasing its presence in Syria, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said today, through apparent efforts to bolster the Bashar Assad regime by training a militia and other tactics.

“There’s now indications that they’re trying to develop or trying to train a militia within Syria to be able to fight on behalf of the regime,” Panetta said at a Pentagon news briefing. “So we are seeing a growing presence by Iran and that is of deep concern to us.”

The secretary said he hopes Iran thinks again about how much it wants to get involved in Syria. “The Syrian people ought to determine their future, not Iran,” he said.

Iran’s interference is adding to the killing in Syria, Panetta said, and “tries to bolster a regime that we think, ultimately, is going to come down.”

The secretary noted the increasing number of defections and problems within the Syrian military as further signs of collapse. Assad’s former prime minister, Riyad Farid Hijab, fled the country last week and a number of key generals have defected in recent months, as well.

Speaking alongside Panetta at the briefing, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the 18-month uprising is taking an obvious toll on the Syrian army.

“I actually think that’s why Iran is stepping in to form this militia, to take some of the pressure off of the Syrian military,” Dempsey said.

The fighting, Dempsey said, has left pro-Assad forces with resupply and morale problems. “Any army would be taxed with that kind of pace,” he said.

Panetta said U.S. efforts to end Assad’s rule are being worked primarily through diplomatic channels, with a focus on ensuring the security of Syria’s chemical and biological weapons as well as providing humanitarian aid to refugees and non-lethal aid to the opposition.

The Defense Department plans for “a number of contingencies,” Panetta said, but any notion of establishing a no-fly zone over Syria, as some rebels have called for, is “not a front-burner issue for us.”

Still, he said, “we are prepared to be able to respond to whatever the president of the United States asks us to do.”

Virginia Man Sentenced to 18 Months in Prison for Acting as Unregistered Agent for Syrian Government

WASHINGTON—Mohamad Anas Haitham Soueid, 48, a resident of Leesburg, Virginia, was sentenced today to 18 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for collecting video and audio recordings and other information about individuals in the United States and Syria who were protesting the government of Syria and to providing these materials to Syrian intelligence agencies in order to silence, intimidate, and potentially harm the protestors.

Lisa Monaco, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Neil MacBride, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; and James McJunkin, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office, made the announcement following sentencing by United States District Judge Claude M. Hilton.

Soueid, aka “Alex Soueid” or “Anas Alswaid,” a Syrian-born naturalized U.S. citizen, was charged by a federal grand jury on October 5, 2011, in a six-count indictment in the Eastern District of Virginia. He was convicted of unlawfully acting as an agent of a foreign government on March 26, 2012.

“Mohamad Soueid acted as an unregistered agent of the Syrian government as part of an effort to collect information on people in this country protesting the Syrian government crack-down. I applaud the many agents, analysts, and prosecutors who helped bring about this important case,” said Assistant Attorney General Monaco.

“Mr. Soueid betrayed this country to work on behalf of a state sponsor of terror,” said U.S. Attorney MacBride. “While the autocratic Syrian regime killed, kidnapped, intimidated, and silenced thousands of its own citizens, Mr. Soueid spearheaded efforts to identify and intimidate those protesting against the Syrian government in the United States.”

“By illegally acting as an agent of Syria, Mr. Souied deceived his adopted country of the United States in support of a violent and repressive despotic government,” said Assistant Director in Charge McJunkin. “Through today’s sentencing, he will now be held accountable for his actions.”

According to court records, from March to October 2011, Soueid acted in the United States as an agent of the Syrian Mukhabarat, which refers to the intelligence agencies for the government of Syria, including the Syrian Military Intelligence and General Intelligence Directorate. At no time while acting as an agent of the government of Syria in this country did Soueid provide prior notification to the Attorney General as required by law. The U.S. government has designated the Syrian government a state sponsor of terrorism since 1979.

Under the direction and control of Syrian officials, Soueid recruited individuals living in the United States to make dozens of audio and video recordings of protests against the Syrian regime—including recordings of conversations with individual protestors—in the United States and Syria, which he provided to the Syrian government. He also supplied the Syrian government with contact information for key dissident figures in the United States, details about the financiers of the dissident movement, logistics for protests and meetings, internal conflicts within the movement, and the movement’s future plans.

In a handwritten letter to a Syrian official in April 2011, Soueid outlined his support for the Syrian government’s repressions of its citizens, stating that disposing of dissension must be decisive and prompt and that violence, home invasions, and arrests against dissidents is justified.

The Syrian government provided Soueid with a laptop to further their ability to surreptitiously communicate, which he later destroyed. In late June 2011, the Syrian government paid for Soueid to travel to Syria, where he met with intelligence officials and spoke with President Bashar al-Assad in private.

To thwart detection of his activities by U.S. law enforcement, Soueid lied to a Customs and Border Patrol agent upon his return from meeting with President al-Assad in Syria, and he also lied repeatedly to FBI agents when they questioned him in August 2011. Following the FBI interview, Soueid destroyed documents in his backyard and informed the Mukhbarat about his FBI interview.

This investigation is being conducted by the FBI’s Washington Field Office with assistance from the Loudon County, Virginia Sheriff’s Office. The prosecution is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Dennis Fitzpatrick and Neil Hammerstrom of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and Trial Attorney Brandon L. Van Grack of the Counterespionage Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

Panetta: Syria Situation “Spinning Out of Control”

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, July 18, 2012 – As Syrian violence escalates and concerns grow about that nation’s chemical weapon stores, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said today the international community must place maximum pressure on President Bashar Assad to accept a peaceful transition from power.

“What is happening in Syria represents a real escalation in the fighting, and … by ignoring appeals by the international community [for Assad to step down], the violence there has only gotten worse and the loss of lives has only increased,” Panetta said, “which tells us that this is a situation that is rapidly spinning out of control.”

Panetta and British Secretary of State for Defense Philip Hammond briefed the press this morning after a bilateral breakfast meeting.

Both responded to questions about the reported assassinations in Damascus today of Syrian Defense Minister Dawoud Rajha and deputy defense minister Gen. Assef Shawkat, who was married to one of Assad’s sisters. Both were said to have been killed in a suicide bombing.

Syria’s state-run television said Interior Minister Mohammed Shaar was wounded in the blast, which reports said targeted a high-level security meeting.

“We're all horrified by the level of loss of life, the atrocities against civilian populations being carried out in Syria,” Hammond said, adding, “ … There is a sense that the situation is deteriorating and is becoming more and more unpredictable.”

Panetta and Hammond also addressed concerns about Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons and the regime’s potential use of the munitions against its own citizens. The possibility has been raised by Nawaf al-Fares, Syria's ambassador to Iraq, who defected from the Assad regime July 11.

The secretary said the United States has made very clear to Assad and his regime “that they have a responsibility to safeguard their chemical sites and that we will hold them responsible should anything happen with regards to those sites.”

Panetta added, “This is something that we and our allies are working very closely together [on] to ensure that they are fulfilling their responsibility to effectively secure these chemical sites.”

Hammond said the international community is “watching very carefully how the Syrians discharge their obligations with regard to these chemical weapon sites that they're sitting on.”

It is in everyone’s interest, he said, “that despite the chaos in the country, these sites remain under tight control and that there is no proliferation of materials out of those sites, and certainly no use of them against the civilian population.”

Hammond added, “We have differences with other international players on some issues but I think this is an area where all the major international players share a desire, a necessity to see these weapons kept under tight control and not used in any way, shape or form.”

Panetta said it’s more essential than ever that the United States and the international community “continue to work together through the United Nations, through whatever possible vehicles we have, to bring additional pressure on Assad to step down and to allow for a peaceful transition of government there in Syria.”

Defense Leaders Discuss Syria, Yemen

By Karen Parrish

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON  – The Defense Department’s senior civilian and military officer offered their perspectives today on the ongoing unrest in Syria and the threat al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula poses in Yemen.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters during a press conference that internal strife in Syria remains an issue of great concern.

The Syrian people’s revolt against ruler President Bashar al-Assad’s regime began in early 2011. Since then, Assad’s military has battled rebel forces in several cities. Estimates of those killed, both combatants and civilians, reach as high as 17,000-plus.

The secretary acknowledged the cease-fire nominally in place in Syria as part of former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s peace plan “does not appear to be working.”

“We continue to urge Assad to step down, that there must be a change there,” Panetta said. “They've lost their legitimacy by the huge number of deaths that are taking place in Syria.”

He emphasized the United States continues to work with other nations to bring diplomatic and economic pressure on Assad. The goal, Panetta said, is to implement political reforms, “have Assad step down and to try to return Syria to the Syrian people.”  

Dempsey added he has consulted on the issue with his counterparts in Syria’s neighbor nations.

“Two weeks ago, I was in Jordan,” the chairman said. “Today my Turkish counterpart is in the building, and we're trying to gain a common understanding of where we think we are and where we think we might want to go.”

Jordan is very concerned about the potential for increased refugees from the conflict, Dempsey said.

“That's a concern that an individual country might have that wouldn't necessarily be ours, but it's important to understand the complexity of the situation,” he added.

Panetta said he has seen intelligence reports indicating an al-Qaida presence in Syria.

“Frankly, we don't have very good intelligence as to just exactly what their activities are,” he said.

The group’s presence anywhere is a concern, he said, adding, “We need to continue to do everything we can to determine what kind of influence they are trying to exert there.”

Turning to Yemen, the secretary said DOD’s announcement earlier this week that U.S. military personnel are again training Yemeni forces does not mean U.S. ground forces are engaged there.

Panetta noted the disclosure this week of a failed al-Qaida plot to attack a U.S. airliner. The attack was planned to happen in Yemen, which demonstrated that the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula remains a threat, he added.

“We will go after al-Qaida wherever they are and wherever they try to hide. And one of the places that they clearly are located is Yemen,” he said.

The United States does have operations there, and Yemeni officials have been “very cooperative” in those activities, the secretary said.

“Our operations now are directed with the Yemenis going after al-Qaida,” he said, adding there is “no consideration” of U.S. military ground operations in Yemen.

U.S. efforts to target al-Qaida leaders -- such as the Sept. 30 U.S. airstrike in Yemen that killed terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki -- have been very successful, he noted.

“I think the fact that … we continue to be successful with regards to these kinds of threats is an indication of the effectiveness of the operations that we have there,” Panetta said. 

He added, “I do believe that we are making effective progress at going after those specific targets that represent real threats to the United States.”