United States & the Americas

• The News – Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday that the United States would not pursue the Taliban leaders in Pakistan and that it was up to Islamabad to address the threat posed by the militants on its territory.
• McClatchy – When a couple of VM-22 Osprey tilt rotors joined a fleet of CH-53 helicopters, dropping out of the predawn darkness Friday in the northern end of the Now Zad valley in Helmand Province to deliver the first of more than 1,000 NATO and Afghan troops, it marked not only the first large assault since President Obama’s announcement that the U.S. would be sending more troops here, it also was the first major combat operation for the Osprey.
• France24 – Bolivian President Evo Morales easily won re-election this Sunday with at least 61% of the vote, according to various early exit polls. His closest challenger, conservative candidate Manfred Reyes Villa, is credited with only 23% of the vote
• Columbia Reports – A Colombian judge requested the arrest of a member of Venezuela’s delegation to the Latin American Parliament for the politician’s alleged ties to the FARC.
• Reuters – Thousands of people dressed in white demanded soldiers leave Mexico’s most violent city on Sunday, accusing troops of provoking a surge in drug-war killings and running protection rackets.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• CNN – Suspects in an explosive inferno at a Russian nightclub that killed at least 112 people will face charges Monday, authorities have said. The fire broke out Friday night in the Ural Mountain area industrial city of Perm, sweeping through a party in full swing at the Lame Horse, a nightclub celebrating its eighth year in business.
• RIA Novosti – An explosion hit Russia’s Angarsk Oil Refinery in east Siberia owned by state oil company Rosneft on Sunday, one person was killed, regional emergencies officials said. The plant belongs to the Angarsk Petrochemical Company, owned by Rosneft. It is one of Russia’s largest refineries processing west Siberian oil coming via Transneft pipelines.
• Prague Watchdog – To those who do not usually enter deeply into the logic of events in the North Caucasus, the Kavkaz Center statement will seem like an empty declaration which seeks to present the underground as a powerful underground terrorist organization with enormous resources – indeed, the sort of assessment that was heard yesterday from some Chechen and Russian officials and experts. While there may be grounds for such conclusions, the attempts of a group of Russian Muslims who have sworn allegiance to Dokka Umarov to take the credit for the blast at the Sayan-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power plant looked absurd, even though in that case there was an attempt to back the claim with concrete proof

Middle East

• MNF Iraq – Iraqi Security Forces arrested a Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM) leader and three suspected criminal accomplices today in southeastern Baghdad during a joint security operation. Acting upon joint security team intelligence, ISF and U.S. advisors searched a residential building in Sadr City where the suspected JAM leader was located.
• Al Sumaria – Iraqi Interior Ministry purchased a 49-million-dollar border surveillance system to monitor borders with Iran and Syria
• Voices of Iraq – Security forces on Sunday found Iranian-made rockets in a farmland near Kut, according to a local police source. “On Sunday, a force from the Information and National Investigations Department found a cache containing Iranian-made shells and rockets in a farm in al-Suweira district (135 km north of Kut),” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. “The cache included 12 rockets of different types and sizes, and seven missiles manufactured in 2006,” the source noted.
• NOW Lebanon – Al-Manar television quoted a security source on Sunday who said the army intelligence arrested a terrorist network consisting of four agents in the town of Majdel Aanjar in the Bekaa.
• Press TV – One man was shot dead on Sunday in southeastern Turkey in clashes between Turkish police and demonstrators denouncing the prison conditions of jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan
• UPI – Al-Houthi rebel representatives warned that continued Saudi intervention into Yemen could provoke widespread war in the region.

Iran

• Fars – The final stage of construction of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant is moving forward at a good pace, Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said on Saturday.
• Press TV – A senior Iranian official has admonished the Saudi government for entering the Yemen conflict by launching an offensive in northern parts of the country. Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani called into question the Saudi motive behind its offensive into northern Yemen, which he said had exacerbated the already worsening situation in Yemen.

A Stryker armored vehicle operated by Soldiers with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment sits stationary at a patrol base, Rajankala, Kandahar province, Afghanistan, Nov. 28. The U.S. Army operates from combat outposts to add flexibility to operations in their sectors.

South Asia

• The Australian – Two gruesome beheadings just outside the main Australian coalition base in Afghanistan’s southern Oruzgan province have served as a chilling reminder to newly arrived Australian Federal Police, Diggers and their coalition counterparts of the ability of Taliban insurgents to strike on their doorstep.
• Dawn – Pakistani security forces killed 13 militants, including a prominent commander identified as Gul Mulla, in gun battles in two parts of the northwest over the weekend.
• Dawn – Maulvi Rafiuddin, a ‘commander’ of militants and key aide to Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan chief, was among seven militants who were captured in Hangu on Saturday.
• Geo – At least four extremists have been killed including a key Taliban commander amid skirmishes with security forces in Dangram – an outskirt area of Mingora on Sunday morning, Geo news reported
• Times of India – An agreement on India-Russia civil nuclear cooperation that goes beyond the “123 pact” with US in offering India much firmer fuel supply guarantees even in the event of the bilateral arrangement being called off is likely to be a highlight of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Moscow.

Far East & Pacific

• Phnom Penh Post – Ethnic Uighurs who participated in violent demonstrations against the Chinese government earlier this year have travelled to Cambodia in a bid to seek political asylum, rights advocates said Thursday, sparking concerns that the government will ignore their requests and deport them to China.
• Yonhap – The U.S. envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, held a series of last-minute consultations with top South Korean officials Monday, the eve of his high-stakes trip to North Korea.
• Xinhua – Australia’s resources giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto will focus their energies on appeasing competition regulators across several jurisdictions, after signing a binding agreement for an historic 116 billion U.S. dollars iron ore merger at the weekend. Submissions seeking approval for the proposed joint venture have been filed with the European Commission and Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, with similar documentation expected to be submitted to regulators in China and Japan by the end of the year.

Europe

• euronews – Rioting has broken out in Greece on the first anniversary of the police shooting of a teenage boy. In Athens shops and banks were vandalised and rubbish bins set on fire by protestors, some of whom police say have travelled from across Europe to take part.
• Copenhagen Post – Participants in the COP15 climate summit should not be subject to Christmas symbols such as fir trees, says the foreign ministry. Although the COP15 climate conference is set to take place during the Christmas season, the Foreign Ministry believes the holiday and all its symbols should be kept well clear of the summit.
• Javno – Romanians voted on Sunday in a presidential run-off that could end a political deadlock holding up crucial international aid to the recession-wracked EU member.
• Times – The American author Anne Applebaum, wife of Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish Foreign Minister, has been given special police protection after the engine of her jeep exploded in as yet unexplained circumstances

Africa

• Garowe – Heavily armed Al-Shabaab militants attacked a mosque in the Somali town of Basra between Afgooye and Balcad, northwest of the Somali capital Mogadishu, killing seven people and injuring 13 others. According witnesses, the guerrillas forced their way into the mosque where celebrating people gathered to commemorate a ritual but met with force, leading to all out violence.
• AP – Gunmen killed five Rwandan soldiers in a series of attacks on the international peacekeeping force in Darfur, a spokesman for the mission said, marking a swift upsurge in violence in the western Sudanese region
• IslamOnline – From the very heart of a village in Wajir town in Kenya’s Muslim-dominated region, the voices of Quran students emanate and echo around the sleepy sprawling settlement. “This traditional system of Islamic education dates back to the times of our beloved Prophet (SAW),” teacher Moalim Nur Osman told IslamOnline.net.
• Magharebia – Two Algerian police officers were ambushed and killed by terrorists early Sunday morning (December 6th) in Sidi Aissa, M’sila province, El Watan reported
• East African – Officials in Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi are conniving with arms dealers and gold smugglers working for rebel forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a panel of United Nations experts charges in an unreleased report.
• VOA – Morocco says Guinea’s military ruler has undergone successful surgery for gunshot wounds sustained on Thursday in an apparent assassination attempt.  Guinea’s military government is offering a reward for the capture of the former head of the presidential guard whose men are accused of carrying out the attack.

A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System with Battery A, 3rd Battalion, 27th Field Artillery Regiment, 18th Fires Brigade (Airborne), launches a rocket during a live fire exercise on Fort Bragg, N.C., Dec 1 (photo by Staff Sgt. Jacob McDonald)

The Global War

• Reuters – Malaysia said on Sunday it recalled its envoy to the United Nations in Vienna for “consultations” after he voted against a resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency rebuking Iran
• Haaretz – The Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, was set to arrive in India on Sunday for the first official visit to the country by an Israeli military chief.
• Payvand – Russia has signed several Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) with India and Pakistan to join construction of Peace Pipeline in the two countries, said Russian state-owned gas producer Gazprom representative to Tehran

Sights & Sounds

Malou Innocent and Michael Goldfarb: Afghanistan Review – The speech: Was Obama’s heart really in it?… Mike calls BS on the effects of Obama’s lengthy deliberation… The catch-22 of Karzai’s corruption… How much wiggle room is there for withdrawing in 2011?… Malou: There aren’t enough troops for counterinsurgency to work

Heritage – The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam

United States & the Americas

• White House – Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan; Eisenhower Hall Theatre, United States Military Academy at West Point, West Point, New York
• Pentagon – Statement on Afghanistan to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary Gates
• Reuters – An Iranian man has pleaded guilty to U.S. charges he illegally bought an array of military equipment for Tehran as it prepared for a possible war with the United States, the U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday
• UPI – Bickering over the aftermath of Honduran presidential elections blighted the political scene Wednesday as opponents of President-elect Porfirio Lobo declared they would not accept his election as legitimate
• El Universal – President Hugo Chávez condemned the action of private banks that have done business with the money of the people and state institutions for their own profit, and assured that the time of the hegemony of public banks has comes in Venezuela.
• Columbia Reports – Colombian Defense Minister Gabriel Silva Wednesday denied an accusation by Venezuela that Colombia has a plan to bomb the socialist nation under the pretext of pursuing guerrilla groups onto Venezuelan soil.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• Russia Today – More than 10,000 people gathered in Moscow on Wednesday to commemorate the victims of the recent train crash. Hundreds more rallied in St. Petersburg.
• Russia MoD – Combat training in 2009 training year was conducted in conditions of forming a new make-up of the Armed Forces and reducing the period of military service on conscription to one year. Despite a large range of activities, we have managed to avoid significant reduction in the level of training in the Land Force and Air Force
• RIA Novosti – The first phase of the ongoing military reform to overhaul the structure of the Russian Armed Forces as well as its troop control and recruitment processes officially ended by December 1, 2009. The reform, which covers all fighting services, remains controversial in terms of necessity and effectiveness. The army is the first service to be overhauled.
• Kavkaz Center – Kavkaz Center received a letter on behalf of the command of the Caucasian Mujahideen, which states that the operation on destroying the “Nevsky Express” was carried out within the ongoing operations of strikes on strategic targets in Russia. Note that according to Russian authorities behind the organization of undermining “Nevsky Express” is Russian Mujahid Pavel Kosolopov, who by Moscow’s version, was behind all the loud sabotage operations in Russia in recent years.
• RFERL – Prosecutors in Chechnya say the killing of a prominent human rights activist in August was not connected to her work, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reports. The bullet-ridden bodies of Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband, Alik Dzhabrailov, were found in the trunk of their car hours after the couple was abducted in the Chechen capital, Grozny
• EurasiaNet – A protest movement against a planned Russian-Armenian uranium mine in southern Armenia appears to be picking up steam, with discussions underway with three political parties about a partnership
• SRI – Kazakhstan’s uranium output will be approximately 13,800 metric tons in 2009 and will rise to 15,000 metric tons in 2010, according to Zhandos Abishev, head of mining at the state holding and investment company Samruk-Kazyna.

Middle East

• MNF Iraq – Iraqi Police (IP) arrested 11 suspected members of the al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) terrorist group during two joint operations yesterday in northern Iraq.
• Voices of Iraq – A security force from the Ninewa Operations Command arrested two commanders of the Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) Organization, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.
• NOW Lebanon – The National News Agency (NNA) reported on Monday that the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) fired anti-aircraft artillery at 1:30 p.m. at four Israeli jet planes, which violated Lebanese airspace by flying over the villages of Al-Aarqoub, Hasbaya and the West Bekaa at medium altitude
• Haaretz – Lebanon’s new government Wednesday endorsed Hezbollah’s right to keep its weapons, the latest sign that the Iran-backed group has no intention of meeting a United Nations resolution calling for it to disarm
• ynet – Hezbollah Chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah met Wednesday with a Hamas delegation led by Mohammad Naser. The Beirut meeting also included top Hamas officials Osama Hamdan and Munir Saeed. The parties are believed to have discussed, among other things, the prisoner exchange deal which will lead to Gilad Shalit’s release
• Al Arabiya – Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz ordered on Wednesday 10,000 new homes to be built for those displaced in the southern province of Jizan, where forces have been battling Yemen’s Houthi rebels for four weeks. The king was on his first visit to the area since the war broke out

Iran

• Defense Update – The latest image of the Iranian missile test site of Semnan, taken last week (27 November, 2009) by the Israeli Eros B spy satellite shows the progress of construction at the site, with a siezable gantry tower constructed at the launch site, along with an associated launch pad, and fully constructed flame bucket diverting the missile’s exhaust gases from the hillside. The launch site is linked through separate tubing, to a nearby, sheltered underground facility located at the upper left hillside
• Fars – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Wednesday that Iran has decided to supply nuclear fuel for the Tehran research reactor through domestic plans, meaning that the country would soon start enriching uranium to the purity level of 20 percent.
• Press TV – After a Kuwaiti daily claimed that the Islamic Republic has called on the Islamic Resistance Movement of Hamas to swing into action in violence-ridden parts of Yemen, Iran moves to flatly reject the allegation.
• Mehr – The Basij forces will join campaigns to counter the enemy’s soft warfare against Iran, Tehran’s IRGC commander has said.
• Payvand – Iran releases 5 Britons; A statement from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that after investigation it reached the conclusion that their illegal entry was a mistake. Britain’s Foreign Office confirmed the release and said the yachtsmen are being towed to international waters, and were expected to head to Dubai
• ISNA – Iran and India have made agreements on the Peace Pipeline project and investment in phase 12 of South Pars gas field in New Delhi. Iran has generally agreed to hand over the Peace Pipeline (IPI) gas to India on Pakistan-India border in the two-day visit of Iranian delegation to India led by Director of Iran’s National Oil Company (NIOC) Seifollah Jashnsaz, Iran’s ambassador to New Delhi, Mehdi Nabizade, told ISNA on Wednesday

South Asia

• AFPS – Tens of thousands of additional U.S. forces slated for deployment to Afghanistan will be employed to target and eliminate terrorist leaders and assist the Afghan government to better safeguard and provide a brighter future for its people, the commander of U.S. Central Command said today.
• UK MoD – Deployed to ‘Artillery Hill’ in Helmand province, Lieutenant George Mowbray is mentoring members of the Afghan National Army (ANA) to man a working artillery position which provides firepower and support to Danish infantry troops.
• MEMRI – A top Taliban commander, who was also a member of the Al-Qaeda network, was killed along some of his friends in the southern Kandahar province of Afghanistan, according to a Pashtu-language Afghan news website
• dvids – Asadabad; Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft flew armed overwatch for friendly forces. Precision guided munitions were employed in a preemptive strike on an enemy compound when the enemy was observed massing at a known enemy location for a possible attack on friendly forces. As the enemy forces shifted from building to building in the compound, the buildings were destroyed and the threat to friendly forces was eliminated
• Al Jazeera – A suicide bomber has attacked Pakistan’s navy headquarters, killing one security guard and wounding four others, police say. The attacker detonated his explosives after he was stopped at the entrance to the heavily fortified naval complex.
• Dawn – Ten militants were killed and 128 wanted criminals were arrested from various parts of Hangu district in a joint operation conducted by police and frontier constabulary, DPO Abd ur Rasheed told DawnNews.
• Dawn – Two militants including a key militant commander, Mula Launcher were killed in Kurram Agency on Wednesday, according to official sources. Two militants were also injured and three were arrested in Spairkot, Khelwat and Dombaki areas of central Kurram Agency during a military operation.
• Geo – During the last 24 hours, Security forces have cleared compounds at Ziarat and Dunai Killi and recovered cache of arms and ammunition on Jandola sector in operation Rah-e-Nijat in the South Waziristan. According to ISPR, on Shakai sector, terrorists fired 8 rockets at Spin Jammat and Ladha Fort which was effectively responded to. Security forces cleared area upto Garez Sar Shahur River, Garezai Alged and defused cluster of IEDs. Security forces carried area domination operation near Mana Camp, Pash Ziarat and Pasal Kot and recovered arms and ammunition on Razmak sector. Terrorists fired rockets at Lakki Ghund which was effectively responded to. Security forces cleared 75 compounds at Qalandar village, during encounter an officer was injured
• Colombo Page – Sri Lankan troops conducting search operations in the former battle fields of Northern and Eastern regions continue to recover large hauls of weapons and ammunitions, the military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said
• Times of India – India’s first indigenous nuclear submarine, INS Arihant, will be inducted into the Navy fleet in two years. However, Verma refused speak about Russia leasing out its Akula-II ‘Nerpa’ nuclear-powered submarine to India for 10 years. “I have no response for that,” he said to queries on when Nerpa would join the Indian Navy
• Jakarta Post – Nearly 2,600 bodies have been discovered in single unmarked and mass graves throughout mountainous Indian Kashmir and some of the dead were likely innocent people killed by security forces, a human rights group alleges in a report.
• Telegraph India – The Centre is carefully observing the split in Ulfa, waiting for the rest of the outfit to come forward for talks, isolating commander-in-chief Paresh Barua.
• Daily Star – Arabinda Rajkhowa, chairman and one of the founders of Indian separatist group United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa), was arrested in Dhaka on Monday, reports BBC Bangla Service. Quoting Indian intelligence agencies, the BBC Kolkata correspondent reports that the Ulfa chief along with three to four other leaders was arrested in Gulshan in the capital.

Far East & Pacific

• Reuters – The Philippine government and the country’s largest Muslim rebel group agreed on Wednesday to return to formal peace negotiations, hoping to end over four decades of armed conflict on the resource-rich southern island.
• Xinhua – The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China has issued nine categorized provisions on the duties and operational procedures for its headquarters of different branches or at regional levels. The Headquarters of the PLA General Staff said the new provisions aimed at improving the contents and commanding methods of headquarters to better handle military operations in the information age and speeding up emergency response of China’s armed forces.
• RSIS – To date, three studies have been done on the carrying capacity of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. The studies are necessary as traffic will increase in the future, hence increasing the possibility of accidents. The studies will help improve measures currently undertaken or are being proposed to address safety of navigation. Apart from underlining the urgency of these measures, a comprehensive review of the measures will also help assure the users of the Straits.
• US Army – In the first training deployment for the Japan-based I Corps Forward, the U.S. Army, Pacific and the Japan’s Ground Self Defense Force will conduct Yama Sakura 57, a joint command post exercise, Dec. 7-14, at Camp Higashi-Chitose, on Hokkaido, Japan.

The guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins arrives for a routine port visit to Crete. Higgins is on a scheduled six-month deployment in the Mediterranean Sea. (photo by Seaman John Martinez)

Europe

• RIA Novosti – The Polish defense minister said on Wednesday Poland will send 1,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Currently, there are 2,000 Polish troops deployed in Afghanistan
• TIME – It is Europe’s dirty secret that the list of nuclear-capable countries extends beyond those — Britain and France — who have built their own weapons. Nuclear bombs are stored on air-force bases in Italy, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands — and planes from each of those countries are capable of delivering them.
• AKI – Two Tunisians held at the United States military prison at Guantanamo Bay have been flown to Italy to face international terrorism charges. Abel Ben Mabrouk bin Hamida Boughanmi, 39, and Mohammed Tahir Riyadh Nasseri, 43, were handed over to the Italian authorities late Monday and flown to Milan where they face arrest warrants. The pair are suspected of being members of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), one of the main components of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Africa 

• Press TV – At least 19 people, including 10 civilians are killed and some 70 others injured in heavy fighting between al-Shabab and Somali government troops in Mogadishu.
• Garowe – A high-ranking Al-Shabaab commander has joined Somali government after deserting the rebel group. Sheik Ali Hassan Gheddi, who was the deputy commander in-chief of Al Shabab fighters in Somalia’s Middle Shabele region took the decision to join the government side after realising his group was not working for the interest of the civilians
• Shabelle – Eritrea’s U.N. envoy denied that his country has been supporting Islamist rebels intent on toppling neighboring Somalia’s fragile government and said there was no reason to sanction Asmara
• New Vision – Ugandans are among the foreigner militants fighting alongside Al Shabaab to overthrow the Somali government, the African Union Mission in Somalia has said.
• ISN – Despite increased efforts of young members of the Somali diaspora to fight at home, it is unlikely that Somalia will turn into a large-scale training ground for jihadists, unless it becomes a major hotspot for confrontation against the West, Georg-Sebastian Holzer writes for ISN Security Watch
• Sudan Tribune – Five government soldiers were killed during an attack on rebel positions in Jebel Marrah of central Darfur on Monday, a rebel commander said.
• VOA – After driving them out of Uganda and chasing them across the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ugandan government troops are now fighting the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army in the CAR
• CSM – Leaked UN report shows FDLR, a brutal Rwandan rebel group operating in eastern Congo, operates gold, tin, and coltran mines. Key leaders still free in the US and France

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., Dec. 2, 2009. The testimony focused on President Barack Obama's decision to send an additional 30,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan. (photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad McNeeley)

The Global War

• Brent J. Talbot, Joint Force Quarterly  – Israel and the Iranian Nuclear Infrastructure
• NYT – U.S. and Russian negotiators are racing to solve remaining obstacles to a new arms control treaty that would replace a pact that expires Saturday
• Nosint – General Dynamics Electric Boat will christen Missouri (SSN-780), the U.S. Navy’s newest and most advanced nuclear attack submarine, at a ceremony at its Groton shipyard on Saturday, Dec. 5

Sights & Sounds

Robert Farley and Matthew Duss: Obama’s Afghanistan Strategy – Reviewing Obama’s speech… The Iraq surge worked, so this will too…right?… Matt: Al Qaeda wants us to make an open-ended commitment… Is Obama correct that Afghanistan isn’t another Vietnam?… Rob: Money spent on wars is still real money!

Heritage – A START Follow-On Treaty: Russian Nuclear Doctrine, Arms Control Objectives and U.S. Policy Response

United States & the Americas

• VOA – In a few hours, President Barack Obama unveils a new U.S. plan for winning the eight-year war in Afghanistan.  The president is expected to announce a substantial troop increase, while also mapping out a path to bring America’s military involvement in Afghanistan to an end
• Washington Post – President Obama has offered Pakistan an expanded strategic partnership, including additional military and economic cooperation, while warning with unusual bluntness that its use of insurgent groups to pursue policy goals “cannot continue.”
• Washington Times – The United States is about to lose a key arms-control tool from the closing days of the Cold War — the right to station American observers in Russia to count the long-range missiles leaving its assembly line. The end of full-time, on-site access will likely ignite complaints in Congress
• CSM – The Supreme Court Monday threw out a federal appeals court ruling requiring the release of photos that allegedly show abuse of US-held detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. The court cited a new law that allows the Defense Secretary to withhold such photos
• National Post – NATO confirmed Tuesday that Canada’s area of operations in south Afghanistan will expand slightly to include a northern suburb of Kandahar City known as Arghandab.
• RFERL – Russia is building arms plants in Venezuela to produce AK-103 automatic rifles and cartridges and is finalizing contracts to send 53 military helicopters to the Andean nation, Moscow’s envoy to Venezuela said.
• NPR – The discovery of several massive oil fields in Brazil has put a spotlight on a company little known outside petroleum circles: state-owned Petrobras, which is now gearing up to pump as much oil as it can. Brazil hopes to be a major oil player once these fields are in full production

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• Russia Today – The Russian lower house of parliament is discussing a draft law that may bring about considerable structural changes to the country’s court system. Defendants charged with terrorist offences may be tried by the Russian military criminal justice system due to the ineffectiveness of regional courts
• RIA Novosti – Russia’s Black Sea Fleet has terminated counterintelligence operations in Ukraine’s Crimea and is sending all ’special service’ officers to other posts, a Russian intelligence source said on Tuesday.
• RIA Novosti – The Russian Armed Forces will conduct large-scale Vostok military exercises in Siberia and the country’s Far East in 2010, the Defense Ministry said on Tuesday
• Itar Tass – The Neustrashimy patrol ship of the Russian Baltic Fleet has started to practice in the Atlantic Ocean, a source at the fleet headquarters told Itar-Tass on Tuesday. “Warships of the Baltic Fleet, among them the Neustrashimy, will be on oceanic missions until the end of this year and in 2010,” he said.
• Kremlin – Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh will make an official visit to Russia on December 6-8, 2009
• Caucasian Knot – Sunday. in Makhachkala, in the Shamil Avenue, unidentified persons shelled the car with Abrek Gadzhiev, head of the Magaramkent District of Dagestan. Mr Gadzhiev later died from his wounds in hospital
• EurasiaNet – For more than a decade Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have had a rocky relationship. But now, following an announcement by Tashkent that it is withdrawing from the Central Asian electricity grid, bilateral ties may take a dangerous nosedive
• Stephen Blank – Although they do not get a lot of attention abroad, water issues are truly vital in Central Asia.  Since those states who have water do not have oil and gas and vice versa, a fundamental economic-political asymmetry exists between them.  This has led to many continuing instances of disputes, rivalries, and clashes among them.  However, as the quality of China’s water becomes an issue and given the geography of rivers in Central Asia (including Russia and China), China’s waste policies, which have hitherto been for the most part unilateral ones committed to development and heedless of other parties’ interests, have become an increasingly important issue in interstate relations

Middle East

• Air Force – Iraqi and coalition efforts had combined to sustain the stability in Iraq set new records in November with zero airstrikes, zero weapons releases and zero shows of force. The last time aircrews had a clean streak was in June; however, June also had 16 reports of troops in contact, but in November there were only five.
• AFPS – Iraqi police arrested 11 suspected members of the al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist group during two joint security operations in northern Iraq.
• Voices of Iraq – Security forces seized a weapons cache in a farm south of Kut city, Wassit province, and arrested a suicide bomber north of Hilla city, Babel province. “The cache embraced light and medium arms,” the Iraqi Interior Ministry said in a release on Tuesday received by Aswat al-Iraq news agency. It said that the cache was found relying on an intelligence tip-off
  Daily Star – Britain is willing to step-up contact with Hizbullah as they begin to play a bigger role in Lebanon’s government, Foreign Secretary David Miliband told The Daily Star in an exclusive interview.Miliband told the paper this week he believed “carefully considered contact with Hizbullah’s politicians, including its MPs, will best advance our objective of the group rejecting violence to play a constructive role in Lebanese politics.”
• Al Manar – Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah announced on Monday the Resistance party’s new political document that was approved during the party’s General Conference that lasted for months.
• NOW Lebanon – March 14 General Secretariat Coordinator Fares Soueid told LBCI television on Tuesday that the existence  of Hezbollah’s arsenal in an independent Lebanese state, as discussed in Hezbollah’s political platform, is “impossible.”
• David Schenker – Syria and Turkey: Walking Arm in Arm Down the Same Road?
• Hurriyet – An Iranian woman, the leader of an atheist sect who has been held in custody in Turkey for the past month, is seeking asylum. Iran would execute her if she returned, she says
• Press TV – Houthi fighters in Yemen say Saudi warplanes have pounded residential areas north of the country, killing several women and children
• Saba – A source at the Interior ministry has said that al-Qaeda was behind kidnapping and murdering a detective in Mareb province, 130 km from Sana’a. Al-Qaeda members brought around Major Bassam Suleiman Torboush, head of Investigation at the Criminal Investigative Department in the province and seized him on Monday. They took him to an unidentified location, tortured him and then slew him in a terrible way

Iran

• Payvand – “A 250 bar (atmospheric) pressure test has been successfully carried out at the Bushehr nuclear plant,” Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Director Mohammad Ali Salehi said at a press conference with visiting Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko in Tehran
• Fars – Iran is due to boost the quality of centrifuge machines at its first enrichment facility in the central city of Natanz, Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Undersecretary for Foreign Policy Affairs Ali Baqeri announced on Tuesday.
• Mehr – Iran has “serious grievances” with Russia and China for voting in favor of the IAEA Board of Governors’ resolution against Iran; however, Iran said its strategic relationship with China and Russia will not change.
• Press TV – Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has confirmed that it has detained several British nationals in the Persian Gulf waters
• Xinhua – Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tuesday that the presence of Iran in Latin America means a serious defeat for Israel’s foreign diplomacy, the state-run IRNA news agency reported
• IRIB – Iranian and Ecuadorian industry ministers reviewed ways to develop industrial cooperation. Minister of Industries and Mines Ali-Akbar Mehrabian held talks with his visiting Ecuadorian counterpart Cavier Abad on late Sunday, accoridng to IRNA
• BBC – The doctor who died at an Iranian detention centre holding opposition supporters was poisoned, the Iranian authorities have said. But it was still not known if Dr Ramin Pourandarjani committed suicide or was murdered, an Iranian prosecutor said.

An Afghan woman and a young boy cross an open wash near the village of Bahrabad, Afghanistan, Dec. 1. The Provincial Reconstruction Team-Kunar medical staff surveyed the local clinic to see if any assistance was needed (photo by Tech. Sgt. Brian Boisvert)

South Asia

• AFP – France will not deploy extra combat troops to Afghanistan but may send more military trainers for Afghan forces, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s special envoy to the region said Tuesday.
• Al Jazeera – A suicide bomber has killed a provincial politician as he received guests at his home in Pakistan’s northwest Swat valley. A man with explosives strapped to his body walked unchallenged into the grounds of the house of Shamsher Ali Khan, a provincial assembly member, and blew himself up
• Dawn – At least four suspected militants have been killed and six others injured during clashes with security forces in different parts of Khyber Agency on Tuesday. According to official sources, security forces destroyed four houses belonging to militant commanders.
• Geo – As many as 15,577 Cash Cards have been issued to displaced families of Wazirsitan, said an ISPR statement here on Tuesday. The operation Rah-e-Nijat in South Waziristan Agency continued today. On Jandola Sector, during last 24 hours, security forces cleared Dunai Killi, remaining portion of Janata and recovered huge cache of arms and ammunition. Security forces conducted patrolling in areas around Bxu, Bakka Khel, Rucha, Bapsa, Sagai and Talib Khel. On Shakai Sector, security forces carried out consolidation of their positions at Asman Manza, Mola Khan Sarai and Kundi Ghar Sar. On Razmak Sector, terrorists fired seven rockets at Lakki Ghund, five rockets at Mana Camp and four rockets at Ladha Bridge near Makeen which was responded effectively. Security forces cleared 30 compounds at Kam Narakai and 72 compounds at Mir Khoni and recovered cache of arms. About operation Rah-e-Rast in Swat and Malakand, security forces carried out search operation in area Gulibagh, Tiligram and apprehended 5 suspects. A destroyed bridge by the terrorists constructed by Army Engineers has been opened for all kinds of traffic. On a tip off, security forces raided at Sarga Moray near Batkhela, and apprehended 5 terrorists.
• The News – Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) denied that the two men arrested in Chicago on terrorism charges were among its members
• Times of India – With reports suggesting China was building over two dozen new airstrips along the Line of Actual Control, Pallam Raju said there was no need to be worried as India was adequately strengthening itself

Far East & Pacific

• CBS – Philippine prosecutors charged the heir of a powerful clan with murder Tuesday in the massacre of 57 people, more than half of them journalists or their staff who were accompanying the family and supporters of an election candidate.
• Stars and Stripes – SASEBO NAVAL BASE, Japan — A visit here Monday by a Chinese defense ministry delegation put the communist country’s top military officials unusually close to the U.S. Navy and its advanced Aegis weapons system technology.
• Kyodo News – North Korea has redenominated its currency, the won, for the first time in 17 years, with the exchange rate between the old and new bills at 100 to 1, diplomatic sources and news reports said Tuesday.
• Washington Post – Chaos reportedly erupted in North Korea on Tuesday after the government of Kim Jong Il revalued the country’s currency, sharply restricting the amount of old bills that could be traded for new and wiping out personal savings
• Chosun Ilbo – It looks as though North Korea’s hereditary dynasty is firmly in place after all. Kim Jong-un (26), the third son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and heir apparent to the throne, is said to be working at the powerful National Defense Commission and deeply involved in major policy decisions.
• news.com.au – Australia’s most notorious terrorist Willie Brigitte will be free from jail next year, having served less than half his sentence for conspiring to blow up the nation’s only nuclear reactor and the power grid. Caribbean-born Muslim convert Brigitte made headlines in 2007 when he was sentenced in France, following his arrest in Sydney, to a maximum nine years in jail for joining an al-Qaeda-backed Pakistani terror cell out to bomb Lucas Heights nuclear plant, the national electricity grid and/or a military base

Europe

• Prague Monitor – The government approved a medium-term concept of the Czech military missions abroad until 2013, submitted by the defence and foreign ministers, Martin Barták and Jan Kohout.
• euobserver – The European Union is celebrating the entry into force of a new set of rules today (1 December), hoping to put a full-stop behind the years of wrangling, set-backs and lowered ambitions that have marked this lengthy phase of institution building. The Lisbon Treaty, named after the Portuguese capital where it was signed in 2007, is coming into place a full eight years after member states decided that the European Union needed both to address its democratic legitimacy – sometimes described as its democratic deficit – and allow for more flexible decision-making.
• AP – Italy is considering taking in other prisoners from Guantanamo to help President Barack Obama close down the prison, the country’s foreign minister said Tuesday, a day after Italy accepted two former detainees
• BBC – Libya has sentenced two Swiss businessmen to 16 months in jail amid a row over the arrest last year of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s son in Geneva.
• UPI – The United Kingdom contracted gas purchases from the Russian-backed Nord Stream pipeline to meet more than 4 percent of its demand by 2012, officials said.

Africa

• Shabelle – the two warring sides of the Islamists and TFG have claimed victory over heavy fighting that started early on Tuesday morning at parts of Warshadaha Street in the Somali capital Mogadishu, officials told Shabelle radio.
• The Australian – Somalian kidnappers fired shots at Australian photographer Nigel Brennan and his Canadian companion, Amanda Lindhout, during the night-time exchange which secured their freedom. John Chase, a British-based hostage negotiator for AKE group, employed by the families to secure the release last week of the two journalists, said the pair were initially treated well until a failed escape attempt in January.
• Al Arabiya – Kidnapping has become a lucrative business for al-Qaeda’s north African branch, experts said Tuesday after a French national and three Spaniards were abducted in the Sahel within days of each other
• Sudan Tribune – The Halayeb triangle region on Sudan’s borders with Egypt will be included in the upcoming elections despite its status as a disputed area, the Sudanese electoral commission said.
• Global Dashboard – The UN is pessimistic about the situation in Guinea. In Tambacounda last night, in the south-eastern wastes of Senegal, I met a World Food Programme employee from Dakar. Like everyone else in this one-horse town, he was on his way somewhere else, in this case to Kedougou, near the border with Guinea. He is going to investigate whether there are sufficient telecoms and internet facilities there, in case war breaks out in Guinea and a flood of refugees pours into Senegal. Similar preparations are taking place in Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Sierra Leone and Liberia
• BBC – Rwanda is to be declared free of landmines – the first country to achieve this status. The announcement is to be made at the Cartagena Summit on a Mine-Free World in Columbia.
• AFRICOM – The multinational Eastern Africa Standby Force (EASF) Field Training Exercise began November 29, 2009 with an opening ceremony in Djibouti. The historical exercise brought approximately 1,500 troops, police and civilian staff together from 10 Eastern African countries working side-by-side for the first time.

Defense Secretary Gates escorts Serbian Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovac through an honor cordon into the Pentagon, Dec. 1, 2009. The two defense leaders will hold bilateral security discussions on a broad range of issues. (photo by R. D. Ward)

The Global War

• Daily Pioneer – A year after the fidayeen attacks on multiple targets in Mumbai, we are still trying to put faces to the names of those who masterminded the diabolical plot. That’s a difficult task: Terrorists morph into various persona and switch identities, all the while spinning a web to mislead police
• Bloomberg – Yukiya Amano, a disarmament negotiator for the only nation attacked with nuclear weapons, faces immediate tests from a defiant Iran and provocative North Korea as he takes over the International Atomic Energy Agency today from Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei.
• TIME – While it is impossible, given their diversity, to paint one picture of women living under Islam today, it is clear that the religion has been used in most Muslim countries not to liberate but to entrench inequality. The Taliban, with its fanatical subjugation of the female sex, occupies an extreme, but it nevertheless belongs on a continuum that includes, not so far down the line, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan and the relatively moderate states of Egypt and Jordan.

Sights & Sounds

DW – Russian police have appealed to witnesses to come forward after a home-made bomb exploded, causing an express train between Moscow and St. Petersburg to derail, killing 25 people and injuring more than 100.

Lowy Institute – The Mekong River basins are one of the most important and dynamic areas in the world for the battle between economic development’s demands for energy and environmental and social sustainability. As world attention shifts to the pending global climate change negotiations in far-off Copenhagen, the ongoing damming of the Mekong River and plans by the riparian states to build new dams threaten the livelihoods of millions or people in Southeast Asia who rely on the river. Milton Osborne’s latest publication for the Lowy Institute on the Mekong River focuses on these plans by the Lao PDR and Cambodia to build dams on the Mekong and evaluates their potential social and environmental ramifications especially for Cambodia’s Great Lake and for the Mekong Delta in Vietnam

United States & the Americas

• NY Times – President Obama plans to lay out a time frame for winding down the American involvement in the war in Afghanistan when he announces his decision this week to send more forces, senior administration officials said Sunday.
• IPT – After years of investigations, and criminal and civil litigation, it is beyond question that the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) acted as a front group for Hamas, funneling money to the designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. All of these proceedings, however, have left many unanswered questions
• Ottawa Citizen – An Egyptian-born terror suspect has been released for a second time from a Kingston, Ont., prison built to hold immigrants accused of having ties to al-Qaida and to other terrorist organizations
• Xinhua – Canada and India have reached a major nuclear trade deal that will allow Canadian firms to sell nuclear materials, equipment and technology to the South Asian emerging market, Canadian media reported Monday
• Reuters – Venezuela on Monday shut down four private banks a day after socialist President Hugo Chavez warned he would not hesitate to nationalize any financial institutions failing to help national development
• VOA – Porfirio Lobo has won the presidential election in Honduras, with about 56 percent of ballots cast.  Election officials say voter turnout was high, in spite of a call by ousted President Manuel Zelaya to boycott the poll
• Reuters – A former guerrilla fighter who was jailed for 14 years is poised on Sunday to become Uruguay’s next president in a runoff vote seen as a referendum on the economic success of the country’s ruling leftist coalition.
• Columbia Reports – Authorities announced Monday the capture of 15 alleged FARC guerrilla members across Colombia’s Cauca department. According to Colonel Carlos Rodriguez Cortes, commander of the Cauca police, the arrests took place in operations across four municipalities in the region, including Corinto and Toribio.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• RFERL – Russian authorities are hunting for clues in the bombing that derailed a Moscow-St. Petersburg train, killing 26 people and wounding more than a hundred. One passenger recalls her ordeal amid the death and destruction
• RIA Novosti – Special platoons of sharpshooters will be included in Russian army brigades, a senior military official said on Monday. Lt. Gen. Valery Yevnevich, chief of the Main Combat Training Directorate, said the small units of snipers would start to be introduced into newly reorganized brigades before the end of this year.
• UPI – The foreign and energy ministers from Iran and Russia agreed on a series of joint oil and gas projects during a bilateral economic summit in Tehran
• Civil Georgia – Detention of a Georgian citizen in the village of Perevi is yet another “provocation by Russian occupation forces” aimed at fueling tensions in the areas adjacent to breakaway South Ossetia and keeping “local population under constant harassment,” the Georgian Foreign Ministry said.
• Russia Today – An explosion, which occurred at approximately 06:00 Moscow time, has damaged a passenger train on the Tyumen-Baku route of Russia’s Republic of Dagestan on Monday
• Kavkaz Center – As the source of KC from Dagestan reported, a fierce fire fighting between the Kadyrov’s apostates supported by Russian infidels on the one side and the Mujahideen on the other took place near the village of Aktash-aul (Russian name Lenin-Aul) during the whole day of Sunday
• Prague Watchdog – Three years of secret talks between Kadyrov and Zakayev. What were the results? (interview with Akhmed Zakayev) PW: Your story is still not entirely clear, as there’s no complete and definitive answer to the question “What was this?” We refer to your so-called negotiations with Kadyrov and the circumstances surrounding them.

Middle East

• MNF Iraq – Iraqi Police arrested four suspected members of IED-cells belonging to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) today during two joint security operations near Baghdad and Kirkuk
• Voices of Iraq – An army officer was killed on Monday by gunmen in southern Kirkuk, a senior police officer said. “Unknown gunmen shot and killed Colonel Muwafq Mohammad, intelligence official of the 46th brigade, at al-Nasr neighborhood in southern Kirkuk,” Shirzad Moufri told Aswat al-Iraq news agency
• Haaretz – Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah asserted on Monday that the use of violence was the most effective way to end Israel’s occupation of Arab lands, amid criticism in Lebanon of his militant organization’s refusal to disarm
• NOW Lebanon – Following a Monday meeting of its political bureau, the Kataeb Party issued a statement stating that it refusing to accept Hezbollah’s weapons as an alternative to the Lebanese army and added that Lebanese sovereignty must not be compromised.
• Press TV – Turkish police clash with demonstrators attending rallies to mark the establishment of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The clashes erupted after approximately 300 demonstrators attacked a police station in Mersin, on the Mediterranean coast, with stones and Molotov cocktails
• Daily Star – Saudi armed forces have recaptured the “strategic region” of Al-Dood mountain from Yemeni rebels on the Saudi-Yemen border, the deputy defense minister said on Sunday
• MEMRI – It was reported that the Houthis have recruited five cells, some for coordination and others for logistical support. Two of the cells operate in the United Arab Emirates, and one each in Qatar, Bahrain and the Saudi capital Riyadh
• Intellibriefs – Markets in Europe and North America avoided a panic sell-off on 27 November over Dubai’s financial problems, but anxiety continues amid speculation over tensions behind Abu Dhabi’s announcement that it will support banks.

Iran

• Al Arabiya – Iran’s parliament speaker Ali Larijani said on Monday Iran saw little benefit from its membership of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki lashed out at the United Nations atomic watchdog for implementing “law of the jungle.”
• ISN – The Iranian government has dramatically upped the ante in the diplomatic battle over its nuclear program, pledging to build 10 new enrichment facilities. Could this seeming escalation in fact mask progress towards a staggered denouement?
• Michael Ledeen – The IAEA drools on, announcing (surprise!) that Iran hasn’t really complied with the tough demands of the Great Powers.  Nobel Prize Winner al Baradei, at long last headed for retirement, proclaims that the investigation is at a “dead end.” The Great Powers sternly demand that Iran be nice.  The mullahs give them the finger, announcing ten more enrichment facilities and warning they mightwalk away from the negotiations on which President Obama had based his “new policy.”
• UPI – Student demonstrators during the post-election unrest that gripped Iran in June posed as members of the Basij militia, Iranian authorities claim.
• ITIC – President Ahmadinejad’s official trip to Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Senegal, and Gambia drew mixed reactions from the Iranian press last week. While pro-government conservative newspapers expressed their support of the president’s trip, the government’s critics had some reservations about the visits as well as the size of the president’s entourage
• RFERL – Five Britons have been detained in Iran after their racing yacht may have inadvertently strayed into Iranian waters, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said today.
• Press TV – The commander of the Iranian Navy says that the country’s naval forces will even chase Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, if necessary.
• Daily Star – Iran said on Sunday it has privatized $63 billion worth of government equity in state-owned firms, meeting half of the target currently set as part of its privatization drive
• Fars – Russia’s largest petrochemical company (SIBUR) is negotiating with Tehran over the construction of a number of petrochemical plants in Iran, Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said
• Payvand – Prominent Iranian reformist cleric, Ayatollah Hoseinali Montazeri criticized the role of Basij militia in the violent suppression of the post-election protesters and maintained the Basij was not established to serve “in the path of the Satan.”

The Afghan joint security force prepares to exfil from a compound near the village of Qal' eh-ye Shayhee in the Muhammad Aghah district. The force detained a sought after Taliban suicide bomb facilitator along with four other militants during a search in Logar province, Afghanistan Nov. 26

South Asia

• Asia Times – Ethnic imbalances in the Afghan National Army risk reigniting a civil war fought in the 1990s between the Tajiks and the Pashtuns. While the Tajik minority’s disproportionate dominance of security institutions is causing widespread resentment among the Pashtun majority, Tajiks increasingly view the Pashtun population as aligned with the Taliban
• ISW – This paper describes the Taliban’s multi-year campaign to exert control over Kandahar City.  Kandahar is the center of gravity of the Quetta Shura Taliban’s efforts in Afghanistan.   The paper demonstrates why Coalition forces have hitherto inadequately responded to the Taliban in Kandahar, and explains why ISAF will most likely allocate additional forces to the districts around Kandahar City in 2010.
• Al Jazeera – In an exclusive interview, Saif-Allah Jalili, the Taliban commander of the Kabul district, said on Monday that his men have been offered gifts and money by the French soldiers in order to persuade the fighters not to engage their forces.
• Xinhua – Two armed men riding a motorbike shot dead an employee of National Security Directorate (NSD) in Afghanistan’s northern province of Jauzjan, provincial police chief Mohammad Khalil Aminzada said Monday.
• IWPR – As the gateway to Afghanistan from Iran, many important figures passed through Herat – Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the Moghul emperor Babur. Some left their mark on the landscape and more than 1,600 monuments make Herat an important centre of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. But now the skyline of the city is changing dramatically with development that may threaten government plans to win it coveted World Heritage Site status
• Dawn – At least 61 militants were killed and 87 others, including locals, Uzbeks and Afghans, were arrested during the ongoing search operation in the Khyber tribal region, FC commandant Brigadier Fayyaz told a press conference.
• Geo – Over 600 extremists were killed and 70 security personnel martyred in the operation continued for six weeks in South Waziristan. This was told by director-general ISPR Major-General Athar Abbas in an interview to a foreign news agency. He said that the security forces would continue attacks on the extremists fleeing from South Waziristan to Orakzai and Khyber Agency
• Times of India – In what seems to be another example of China showing its assertiveness, the Jammu and Kashmir government has stopped work on a strategic road project after the Chinese indicated their reservations over the same.
• Times of India – Three people were killed and six injured when an IED exploded at Aamjhor village in Jharkhand’s East Singhbhum district on the first day of the 48-hour bandh called by Maoists on Sunday
• TamilNet – Several Tamil boys and girls including teenagers interned in the camps are called by name through announcing system by the Sri Lanka Army intelligence officers and are taken to unknown destinations, reports reaching from Vavuniyaa camps said. At least 10 young men and boys were thus ‘abducted’ on 21 November and around 30 youth, including girls, were taken on 27 November from Zone-0 IDP internment camp in Cheddiku’lam alone last week

Far East & Pacific

• Washington Post – For politicians in Japan, the road to scandal usually winds through construction companies, defense contractors or a mistress. For newly elected Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, the road leads to his mother, an octogenarian heiress
• Chosun Ilbo – China and Japan have agreed to hold their first-ever joint naval military exercise. The Xinhua news agency on Saturday said Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie met his Japanese counterpart Toshimi Kitazawa in Tokyo and announced a nine-point agreement including the joint military drill.
• news.com.au – A number of North Koreans have been arrested and could face execution for leaking information on the movements of leader Kim Jong-Il to South Korean news media, reports and sources say. Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, quoting sources in the communist state, said today “many North Korean residents” in the northeastern city of Hoeryong have been charged with espionage.
• Nosint – The Navy said Monday it will commission its latest submarine this week to reinforce its defense capabilities in the seas, according to Yonhap News. The An Jung Geun, capable of tracking 300 underwater targets simultaneously, will be commissioned Tuesday in the southeastern port city of Busan, the Navy said in a statement.
• Irrawaddy – An exchange of gunfire on Friday between the Thai navy and Burmese government soldiers   injured five Burmese soldiers in waters near Kawthoung Township in far southern Burma, according to sources.
• Stars and Stripes – Seven years into the mission here, about 500 U.S. military advisers remain embedded deep in the jungles of the southern Philippines, assisting the nation’s military as it takes the lead against a violent Islamic insurgency. So far, U.S. expertise and money have helped the Philippine government win pockets of stability and support. But the assistance has not been sufficient to stamp out persistent violence, and the ultimate goal of peace and stability remains elusive
• Voice of Malaysian – Today was a historic day for Malaysia with the arrival of the first of two Scorpene submarines for the Royal Malaysian Navy. Describing the acquisition of the vessels as the single biggest defence procurement to date, Yang di-Pertuan Agong Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin called on the RMN to safeguard the integrity and sovereignty of the country.

Europe

• UK MoD – The UK will deploy 500 extra troops to Afghanistan, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced today
• Spiegel – The German-ordered bombing of two tankers hijacked by the Taliban has already cost one Berlin minister his job. Now, Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg may be in the hotseat. Plus, new reports indicate that Merkel’s government knew more before the election than it let on
• BBC – Rwanda and France have restored diplomatic relations three years after they were broken in a row over responsibility for the 1994 genocide.
• Balkan Insight – A video of a man who claims to have worked for Kosovo’s unofficial secret service has been released in which he claims to been involved in a string of post-war political murders, attempted murders and beatings.
• IslamOnline – A Swiss ban on the construction of mosque minarets is echoing across Europe, with calls in the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy for referendums to ban the Muslim symbol
• Prague Monitor – The Czech military has bought two Israeli-made pilotless surveillance planes Skylark II for 50 million crowns, the news server Euro writes. They are to protect Czech troops deployed within foreign missions.
• Irish Times – Severe flooding has abated in many areas throughout the State, but the authorities are still on high alert to monitor the potential effects of rainfall and tides in the coming days, according to the emergency body coordinating the situation

Africa

• Garowe – Somalia’s militant group Al-Shabaab has seized control of Dobley, a southern border town located between Somalia and Kenya, witnesses said. Heavily armed Al-Shabaab militia entred the town without any military resiatance from their arch-rivals Hizbul Islam who have vacated it.
• Shabelle – the Islamist forces of Hisbul Islam organization have vowed that they will redouble their fighting against the TFG and AMISOM troops in the Somali capital Mogadishu, official said on Monday
• Garowe – Several Hizbul Islam officials led by Sheikh Ahmed Mohammed Islam (Madobe) have reportedly crossed the border into neighbouring Kenya, escaping the wrath of Al-Shabaab who ousted them out of Somalia’s southern region of Lower Jubba, sources said
• Asharq Al Awsat – Somali pirates seized a tanker carrying more than $20 million of crude oil from Saudi Arabia to the United States in the increasingly dangerous waters off East Africa
• AKI – Three Spanish aid workers have been kidnapped in Mauritania by militants linked to Al-Qaeda, Spain’s interior minister said on Monday. “It all suggests that it is a kidnapping. If so, and I believe it is, it all appears to be a kidnapping by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. It wouldn’t be the first time they have kidnapped European and North American aid workers in that area,” said interior minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba quoted by Spanish media.
• France24 – A group claiming to have kidnapped three French aid workers has threatened to kill them unless French authorities agree to direct negotiations on French policy in the region, specifically in Chad and Sudan
• RSF – Reporters Without Borders is extremely concerned about the Chad government’s harassment of the new, privately-owned weekly La Voix. On 28 November, one of its reporters was verbally abused by the interior minister and then detained for several hours while, on 3 December, a court is due to rule on a government complaint challenging its legality
• Sudan Tribune – Two members of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have surrendered to the UPDF intelligence squad in Nzara in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria State, according to military sources.

The Los Angeles class submarine USS Columbus departs Naval Station Pearl Harbor for a scheduled deployment to the western Pacific region. (photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Ronald Gutridge)

The Global War

• Lowy Institute – In a new Lowy Institute Analysis, Sarah Phillips and Rodger Shanahan discuss the re-emergence of a significant al-Qa’ida presence in Yemen. The authors focus on al-Qa’ida’s efforts to build relations with local Yemeni tribes, something that will be central to the movement’s prospects of cementing a long-term presence in the country. The authors point to the importance of undermining any potential nexus between al-Qaida and the tribes as critical to Western counter-terrorism efforts in the region.
• Douglas Farah – One of the disturbing and little noticed events of recent weeks was the crash (or destruction) of a Boeing 727 in the desert of Mali. The crash is disturbing for many reasons, among them these three: 1) the aircraft was carrying between 2 to 3 tons of cocaine, far more than other, smaller aircraft and boats that have been detected in recent months, indicating an escalation of the trade through the Trans-Sahel region; 2) The region where the aircraft was found, most likely torched by its crew to destroy evidence, in a area of heavy operation of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM); and 3) the aircraft departed from Venezuela, now Latin America’s primary transshipment hub from Latin America to West Africa, and source of all the major air shipments of cocaine that have been interdicted in West Africa
• Hurriyet – Former Soviet agent Col. Mihail Baturin persuaded nine important sources to spy for Moscow during his mission in Turkey, the ex-KGB man has written in his memoirs.

Sights & Sounds

Africa Today – Uganda has been losing ground in its fight against HIV and Aids. Is Kenya’s security being threatened by Islamist fighters in neighbouring Somalia? And Rwanda and France agree to restore diplomatic ties.

BBC – In the final part of this series, Owen Bennett-Jones examines the Islamic leader who confronted the might of the British Empire. The Mahdi was a devout man, who developed a huge following. This programme examines his rise to power and his clash with the British General, Charles Gordon

Newshour – Columnists Mark Shields and David Brooks go over the week’s headlines, including President Obama’s upcoming Afghanistan announcement and his promise to curb carbon emissions.

It’s probably my favorite holiday of the year, and I’m going to be taking a few days away with friends and family.

Will be back here on Tuesday.

It’s a crazy world, but I have much to be thankful for! If you are celebrating over the next few days, I hope you have an enjoyable holiday.