There has been yet another IED attack in Russia on the rail system. After Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia is one of the ‘hottest’ place for IED attacks and yet many go unreported in the mainstream news. Most target critical infrastructure such as oil and gas pipelines or transportation.

My immediate thought is whether the future of Russia may one day look like Nigeria. With dozens of ethnic groups, religions and a history of separatism and Islamic extremism it’s not unthinkable. Combine that with the country’s increasing reliance on its oil and gas industries for both economic and political power, and key elements are there for such a campaign.

Fresh from the WSJ this morning.It seems Iraqi insurgents are beginning to steal signals from US drones. Evidence backing John Robb’s Global Guerillas theory seems to mount daily. Here’s the article

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber—available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet—to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights. Still, the intercepts could give America’s enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under U.S. surveillance.

Read the rest.

Comment: This is the other side of technology that we haven’t heard much about. While certainly it is not a surprise to many experts, it is an area that seems largely undiscussed in public. I would hope the military is already planning for contingencies that include the enemy taking control of unmanned land, sea and air vehicles. But the article continuously stating that things are ok, and no damage was done makes this author rather suspicious. One has to wonder whether this is also occuring in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The ‘honeymoon phase’ of unmanned vehicles is slowlycoming to an end.

For those still peddling the line that piracy is carried out by poor, starving Africans, victimized by evil European fisherman, this article not only provides evidence to the contrary, but speaks to the advanced nature of it in both a business and social sense.

It is a lucrative business that has drawn financiers from the Somali diaspora and other nations—and now the gangs in Haradheere have set up an exchange to manage their investments.

[...] “Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 ‘maritime companies’ and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,” Mohammed said. “The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials … we’ve made piracy a community activity.”
[...] “The district gets a percentage of every ransom from ships that have been released, and that goes on public infrastructure, including our hospital and our public schools.”

Reading the article, I almost think I’m reading Global Guerillas. As pirates continue to extend their reach offshore, and Western nations continue to needlessly devise ridiculous non-lethal anti-pirate weapons, despite the fact that the problem of piracy was solved centuries ago with firearms, it would seem naive to believe a few semi-coordinated naval ships unwilling to actually use lethal force will solve the problem. If anything, I’d wager that piracy will actually increase due to the international naval presence as that will drive up the profit margin for successful raids, similar to the failed American War on Drugs where the DEA serves only to maintain and ensure the profitibility of drugs.

Lastly, given a previous Wired article discussion of the international side of the business, this blogger wonders whether such a new “stock exchange” will further internationalize the business past the traditional diaspora connections and secondly, whether this could be an early attempt, or even precedent for similar “black stock exchanges” in other illicit businesses such as drugs, weapons, people and other smuggling for example. If decentralization and internationalization are key driving forces in crime and terrorism, it would seem that “publicly traded criminal enterprise” may be a logical extension. Readers?

Radical splinter groups self-financed with drugs and well armed. This may be a small foretaste of things to come in the next several decades.

The killings, last month, have terrified this small town near the Mexican border, in part because the authorities have now tied them to what they describe as a rogue group engaged in citizen border patrols.

The three people arrested in the crime include the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a Washington State-based offshoot of the Minutemen movement, in which citizens roam the border looking for people crossing into the country illegally. Former members describe the group’s leader, Shawna Forde, 41, as having anti-immigrant sentiments that are extreme, at times frightening, even to people accustomed to hard-line views on border policing.

The authorities say that the three suspects were after money and drugs that they intended to use to finance vigilantism, and that they have been linked to at least one other home invasion, in California.

Will we one day see cross-border raids by American militia groups into Mexico? If drug violence increases or some event acts as a catalyst increasing militia groups and bringing more mainstream Americans into it, there may one day be. As the economy continues to decline and federal and state services are cut, at times drastically, we can expect to see not just radical groups like those mentioned in the article, but local communities organizing their own security. It will likely start with those on the edges of bad neighborhoods, or in places where neighborhoods have been gutted by the housing crisis and are going downhill fast.

Readers, what indicators should we watch when considering whether such groups will remain on the fringes or begin to grow? Unemployment rates among young white males? Law enforcement funding? A perceived lack of immigration reform? Some terrorist attack or major event wherein the perpetrators are found to have crossed in in from Mexico illegally?

The head of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, has made an unusually public statement for a man and indeed an agency that usually remains invisible.

[...] Mumbai, Mexico City and Jakarta, saying they had become partially ungovernable. He noted the rise of private security firms to protect wealthier residents in sealed communities or to support the army, as in Iraq. “The increasing privatisation of core state responsibilities in the military and security areas carries with it the danger – even in Western states – of the erosion of the state’s monopoly on the use of force,” Uhrlau said.

[...] “Some states are now only partially able to carry out their original core responsibilities – protecting their people from violence,” Uhrlau said. This could lead to the destabilisation of entire regions and promote international terrorism, he warned. Afghanistan provided a good example of how a “failed state” had provided a base for the al-Qaeda network, Uhrlau said. Europe had its own problems, particularly in the Balkans, where the causes of conflict were “far from overcome.”

Sounds like someone bought him a copy of Brave New War. I’ve discussed ungoverned spaces before here at Coming Anarchy, and said they are defined as “a physical or non-physical area where there is an absence of state capacity or political will to exercise control.” While the post focuses on failed and failing states, cities are no less relevant. Indeed, ungoverned spaces exist in every ghetto around the globe whether in Los Angeles, Paris or Lagos. As militaries focus more on urban combat, it is indeed time for our intelligence agencies to focus more on urban intel collection and that means focusing more on HUMINT and less on fancy new toys.

Our pal Schloky has fired up his new site naxaliterage.com and I just wanted to give him a shoutout.

Shlok Vaidya was in India this summer investigating the vulnerability of the Indian railway system. His interest lies in the Naxalite insurgency, systempunkts and the effects on the global economy. Naxalite Rage is his new blog to examine these issues. It looks sweet, I urge you to take a look. (Added to the blogroll)

Swarm theory on National Geographic. Don’t worry, I already sent this to John Robb a few days ago.

It seems global guerrilla infrastructure attacks aren’t just being exported from Iraq to Afghanistan, but also to the United States. This breaking news story of a disrupted plot in NYC is just a taste of what’s to come:

NEW YORK —As first reported by NewsChannel4’s Jonathan Dienst, three people were arrested and one other was being sought Saturday in connection to a plot to blow up jet-fuel lines at John F. Kennedy International Airport, officials said.

[...] Sources said the plot involved a plan to blow up a Buckeye jet-fuel pipeline at JFK setting off a potential massive explosion. Buckeye provides fuel to all three NYC-area airports. Buckeye spokesman Roy Haase said the company, which moves petroleum through pipelines in a number of states, had been informed of the threat from the beginning.

As planes become inaccessible targets, airports are the next down the chain. Filled with people, they are not just a mass-casualty target but also important transport nodes. A few coordinated car bombs, even if only in empty parking lots could shut down major airports across the country. I hope everyone’s read Brave New War.