GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Middle East mercenaries – historical review

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: Time

26February2011 4:00pmEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: While the protests convulsing Bahrain and Libya this past week occurred in vastly different contexts — and will likely produce very different results — both were met with conspicuously swift crackdowns. And in both cases, reports suggest the Libyan and Bahraini regimes deployed foreign fighters and mercenaries against their own citizens, lethal clashes that left scores wounded and many dead.

Though difficult to substantiate in the current chaos, reports from eastern Libya, in particular from the city of Benghazi, claim that snipers and militiamen from sub-Saharan Africa gunned down residents on the streets. The Dubai-based al-Arabiya network says some of the guerrillas were Francophone mercenaries recruited by one of the sons of dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Qatar-based al-Jazeera detailed pamphlets circulated to mercenary recruits from Guinea and Nigeria, offering them $2,000 per day to crack down on the Libyan uprising.

And, as further reports of defections from the Libyan military filter in, the cornered Gaddafi regime may turn more and more to hired guns from abroad. On television channels and Twitter, frantic rumors circulated about Gaddafi preparing for a mercenary-backed counteroffensive against his opponents.

While the violence appears to have pushed Libya to a tipping point, protests in Bahrain slackened after a week of bloody confrontations between demonstrators and the country's security forces.

Sectarian tensions underlie the unrest, with the tiny island kingdom's Sunni Muslim monarchy pitted against the country's predominantly Shi'ite population. A significant segment of the state's security personnel are Sunnis brought in from countries like Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Pakistan to buttress the ruling dynasty's authority. It's a policy that Shi'ites say is symbolic of widespread institutional discrimination in Bahrain, and it played a key role in clashes earlier this month when uncompromising — and often foreign — security forces violently dispersed protesting crowds, killing at least six.

The popular outrage surrounding the use of these foreign soldiers in the crackdowns isn't surprising, but it's only in the past century that the armies of most of the world's nation-states have actually reflected the demographics of their countries. For centuries before, most militaries contained whole regiments of mercenaries and roving soldiers of fortune and were often staffed by officers from foreign lands.

The term freelance — now a feature of journalistic lingo — still carries its original martial connotation from a time when companies of fighting men raised their blades in the service of the highest bidder. (read full report)

"GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE" is an intelligence briefing presented by Griffith Colson Intelligence Service, and provided to the public for informative purposes only. All subject matter is credited to it's source of origin, and is not intended to represent original content authored by GCIS, it's partners or affiliates. All opinions presented are those of the author, and not necessarily those of GCIS or it's partners.

GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: Delegitimizing the Jewish State

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: RIght Side News

09February2011 9:27amEST

GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: In a move that caught the Israeli government and the Jewish world by complete surprise, on October 21, 2010, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Tomb of the Hebrew Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem "an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories," admonishing the Israeli decision to add these biblical shrines to the list of Jewish historical and archaeological sites as "a violation of international law."[1]

What is less known, however, is that the driving force behind "the attempt to detach the Nation of Israel from its heritage" (to use Israeli prime minister Netanyahu's words)[2] was the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which pressured UNESCO to issue the declaration and drafted its initial version.[3] U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has recently described the OIC as "a strategic and important partner of the U.N."[4] In fact, it has been the OIC that has successfully exploited its marked preponderance at the U.N.—where it constitutes the largest single voting bloc—to turn the world organization and its specialized agencies into effective tools in the attempt to achieve its goals, two of which are to bring about Israel's eventual demise and to "galvanize the umma [Islamic world] into a unified body."[5] (read full report)

 

 

 

"GCIS/MSS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE" is a cooperative intelligence briefing presented by Griffith Colson Intelligence Service and Machaseh Security Service, and provided to the public for informative purposes only. All subject matter is credited to it's source of origin, and is not intended to represent original content authored by GCIS, MSS or it's advertisers or affiliates.