Categoría: Crisis and Conflicts

The Hamas’ defense in the Gaza strip

It is not easy to manage and defend the repulsing urban zones. Its employment demands high requirements to the Hamas combatants:
An enough motivation, which encourages them to follow the armed way and risking their lives for its cause. That appeases and rationalizes them the inevitable fear for the fighting in the nearby distances with a superior enemy, until the seniority offers to them new impulses. A good training in the infantry fighting, which gives them trade and confidence. A successful cooperation between the small units that garrison the zones, that guarantees them a cohesion without fissures in their tenuous and lean deployment and that allows and facilitates the command conduction and the accomplishment of his plans. To get iron nerves tempered by everything previous, that accustom them to fight in solitary or in small groups, refusing to flee in face of the implacable threat of the heavy Israelis military fire.

To all this «professional» tension that these irregular fighters support, there joins the tension created by a civil fierce fight. That they keep, for their will, intermingled with their unarmed families and homes, which turn out to be equally threatened and attacked. For all this, among the two tens of thousands of existing Hamas militias, not more than 20 % of them can in these moments use this kind of defensive fight.

These urban irregular enemies protect themselves extending their defensive positions beyond what would be necessary in a conventional defense. Covering this way a major occupied surface. In the defense zone they establish several reinforced delaying points. These protect the most critical positions of the zone, incorporate in the defense the buildings with steel structure , specially resistant, and form fire bags to ambush the Tsahal soldiers that gets through. But there are very few resistant buildings in the crushed and mistreated Hamastan. The resistance nests have in the Gaza zone more importance, provided that the occupation of the zone of defense is more tenuous, they cannot strengthen the positions too much for not stand out them to the Tsahal, the sights are more short and exist numerous approximation routes. They depend on the delaying points and they fall back to them, if are invaded or destroyed. Numerous alternative or exchange positions exist, more of the habitual in this kind of fight. This allows to deceive the Tsahal about the forward limit of the defense position, its real extension, the limits of the sectors that form it, the intentions of the rebel command of the zone about its defense and to disperse the heavy fire of the attacker. In the edges of the urban zones they never establish these fixed positions. Those are occupied by combat advanced parties which mission is to receive the possible explorers or civil observers, to avoid surprises and to deceive about the real tracing of the defensive zone. The occupants of combat advanced positions, distributed in pairs of sentries and some very small mobile patrol, fall back in their moment towards the more interiors delaying points.

These Hamas urban «fortresses» are diffuse, secret and imperceptible to the strangers. Only in a few hours their previous works are reinforced and occupied. It is necessary to enter in the houses to detect perforated walls and to find alleys under a furniture or a carpet. Its communication routes need more working time to get done, but also are less evident. Their firing positions are not complex. They need a few interlaced firing sectors, an immediate protection against the Israelis irruption in mass or with commands, a few covers against the heavy normal fire and a sufficient concealment that keeps them away from the sights of the enemy probable successive positions and his approximation avenues. The obstacles and the mines, even false in certain percentage and always distantly to not betray them, will serve to break in parts the enemy assault and to offer to them more static targets, for example for the mortars, which will have registered its fires. The destruction that generates the ample heavy fire support without aiming to a precise target, reinforces the rebel combat positions, surrounding them with debris that divide and impede the accesses of the military, except when they are reached by a ordnance direct impact. To operate this defensive net structure the Hamas militias have prepared numerous and narrow tunnels, dragging trenches and gaps in garden walls and interior walls of the buildings. In such a way that, away from the enemy sights, allow them to occupy the combat and observation positions at wish, to defend them more or less time or not, to move among them and to reinforce the most threatened or pressed positions.

Generally the Hamas irregulars would try to shoot from the front, with isolated or couples snipers preferably armed with the SVD sniper rifle, at individual and small groups of Tsahal infantry soldiers. And to attack from the flank or the rear at the enemy units that penetrate in their defensive zone, which already are disintegrated in squads or platoons with one or two armored vehicles in close fire support. Those prepared communications aforementioned allow them to appear, always in small number, behind or at the flanks of the Israelis units, while these stop, regroup, ask or receive instructions, or decide where to advance, and to erode them, causing some casualties. For example, from a basement or a floor, through an irregular hollow in a yard or garden wall, under a parked or destroyed vehicle in the street, where emerges a narrow tunnel with a covered and disguised mouth. From these positions the armed rebels fire some RPG-7V rockets or several short blasts, always aiming, of the Soviet RPK light machine gun or the obsolete RPD, but which always appear with irregular rebels. The interior houses courts serve them to place the mortars, which constitute their the only «heavy fire» fighting source, protected by a near infantry position. They fired them with the maximum angles on the abundant, large and always excessive Israelis concentrations. The usual mortar is the 82 mm. Russian modern M-1937 model. Here that the attacker presents three times more men (in fighting means the proportion must be 20 to 1) neither favors nor facilitates their labor. But this offers the persecuted Hamas defenders more targets against use their exiguous fire power. Especially because, in a given moment, is small the attackers’ proportion that are putting in real distress the defenders. Similar positions, protected by the houses and the interior courts environment and surrounded by innocent and unarmed inhabitants, are those that they use to stubbornly launch their free flight rockets, the Kassam and the Iranians, more modern and with more operational range which receive dismantled, on the Israeli nearby populations at the north of the Gaza strip.

The crucial moment for the defense comes when the Hamas zone commander decides to evacuate it, after having stopped and delayed the enemy assaults for some time. Trying to cause him losses as high as possible, but without been exposed excessively to a fighting in the close distances, or to be outflanked or to lose his freedom of action. This is inexorably tied to the transfer of space to the Israelis enemies. For it, the Hamas militias avoid and get through in opportune moment (using the night or a stop in the enemy attacks), the direct assault of their enemy, not his extensive or vague bombardment, without precision. The militias have enough exit tunnels directed to not very nearby buildings (often official and even respectable (mosques), offices, companies and some houses) or dry riverbeds (wades) and not evident bushes in the open land. From there they could disperse through the outside in very small groups towards friends reception positions, in the first moments. The protection of the evacuation is therefore vital and both entrances or exits from these tunnels are always covered by resistance nests, which take to end their rigid defense.

Some tactical and operative conclusions for this defense fighting.

The ground defense of Gaza is very difficult to maintain through the time. The strip lacks geographical space to be able to establish a flexible defense deployed in depth. This is necessary to give power, solidity, continuity and support to the rejection fight.

On the other hand, the external supply of weapon, ammunitions and military equipment to Hamas is strangled by Israel. That has bombarded accurately the zone of communication tunnels around Rafah, at the south of the strip, which were concealing crossing the border with Egypt. To guarantee its complete sealing, the Tsahal has established, at least, two «military locks» managed by mechanized infantry and tanks, near Netzarim and Tel Katifa and transversely to the land strip. Which practically prevent the transit (traffic is merchandising) of military equipment proceeding from Egypt.

Hamas’ «military» structure socially agrees with the local Palestinian clans. Its tactical top unit is a reinforced «battalion» of about half a thousand men, for giving it a practical «name». In its elite units, Hamas tries that the formation, training and equipment of the infantry militias are homogeneous. The mutual support of the sectors of the defense during an Israeli assault, is this way difficult and precarious. It is more difficult yet to realize counterattacks, not sectorial countershocks, over the ground Israeli penetrations against the Gaza strip.

Those will attack following 2 or 3 different and convergent directions. Seeking to disperse the Palestinian rejection fire, to disturb the command conduction of the defense and to break the coherence and consistency of all the position. With the first assaults, as unexpected as possible, on the edge of the populations, to obtain a few advanced depart positions and to be already on their interior. To continue then their difficult systematic work of advance and sweep. There are two Israeli indispensable infantry mechanized brigades in this operation: the Givati and the Golani. The first counts with small units trained for the assault with limited objectives in urban zones. The Golani is famous for her fight against the Syrian tanks in the war of the Yom Kipur of 1973, blocking their pass across the Golan Heights, to the plains of Galilee, and forming part of a tactical task force of combined arms of the Tsahal. The Golani has 4 or 5 battalions well trained in the urban war, using training camps very similar to the Palestinian populations.

Hamas, in its desperate fighting, is going to look for the serious enemy erosion (Israel is very sensitive to the men’s loss) in the numerous isolated microcombats that will happen during the irruption and the Israeli advance in the populations. But without being able to give a tactical transcendence, far from it operational, to its present military struggle.

The best thing that Hamas can do now is to leave this Numantian combat, without military hope. Looking for protect and keep its militias and people and to be prepared for another better occasion. Where, its blood’s effort in Allah’s path, this is the sense of the military «yihad», would be more useful and productive tactical and operatively

THE TOXIC ASSETS.

Which is the role of the toxic assets in the appearance and the development of the actual global economic crisis? How does it turn into a toxic assets, a consumption lending or a mortgage loan? We do not like the term «toxic assets», because they are neither pathogenic, nor are a poison. We can call them harmed, depreciated or devaluated financial assets.

The Theoretic Basic Financial Cycle.

The banks receive multiple deposits and give the received cash to their different borrowers: institutions, companies and individuals. A part of these lending comes back again to the bank, as new deposits. Since nobody keeps the money in house or in the company or in the official public office, except for the immediate minor quantity payments or in the cases of social real or menacing catastrophe.

It is always supposed that the banks monitor and control the successive partial payments of their borrowers, for the given amount and its interests, at their maturities. But the financial «engineers» arise, Bill Clinton in 1998 realizes an important deregulation of the financial practices and Greenspan acted as an irresponsible qualified madcap. In effect, in April, 2000 he unnecessarily raises to 6 % the legal basic rate. But the recession was coming up and the telecommunications and computer companies crisis, on its way. And then he has to lower it, probably too much, to stimulate the economy. And the FED facilitates the transfers of liquidity to the USA banks. This way, there is liquidity at low prices in the system for a long time.

The Disturbing and Uncontrolled New Financial Ways.

Many banks, probably too many, begin to “securitize” their loans. Turning them into medium-term bonds. And they sell these assets titles to other banks and to investment or pensions funds. Both in their country and overseas. That seek to earn more with them, that investing in the Treasury and good rated companies bonds at their countries.
All that complicates with the rapid «on line» world round communications, with the international transactions, with the ignorance of the real scope of the overseas generated financial titles and with the differences of interest rates between nations and groups of nations. Mix it perniciously and malevolently with external strange factors to the financial system: the «passions» or untidy appetites or exaggerate desires. Which are difficult to know and to control for the men. The greed, the fear and the egoism then arise and get out of control. Disturbing, contaminating and degenerating the financial system. But coming up from the persons and not from its complete and limited functioning financial frame.

And we have a big problem, in the shape of a born within itself chaos. Where nobody knows well the quality of what assets he has. For this, he would have to unravel a complicated hank of transfers and exchanges of assets, of refined creation. Destined partly to conceal faults and spurious and embarrassing origins of the assets. And this happens basically because the usual relation between lender and borrower broke. The former, defending its business, if he has to remain with the lending, as assets in his balance, already will give it to whom reasonably could pay all the debt. And will worry about following the payments up to its final liquidation. And as the disturbed situation is complicating and tensing, the possible bad debts, those at the limit of their financial capacity, will easily turn into real bankrupts. And the whirlwind continues feeding, spreading and harming all of us.

AN IRRATIONAL MARKET?!

Unlike a healthy market, how does behave an irrational market? The prices of the raw materials (commodities), specially the crude oil, and of the companies shares, are they formed now in an irrational market? It is curious to indicate, that the most abrupt falls, that the differences most accused between prices and real values are forming in the more speculative, less mature, less juridical sure, more financier or socially weak markets. Do we have an irrational market like these ones?

Introduction to the volatile situation in the world irrational market.

From the beginning of October, we are assisting at an abrupt fall of the value of the assets of equity securities in all the stock markets of the world: from New York up to Tokyo, passing through Europe and the so called emergent markets. These last seemed to be relatively immune to these devaluation, initiated at the beginning of 2008, but already they have joined late and intensely the first concerned. The nearness menacing of the world financial crisis, has concerned with unusual strength the collapse of their stock exchanges and the flight of the foreign investors.

The free market, its characteristics and properties and its functioning.

The market in general is the effective meeting of the economic agents, that are all the citizens, as institutions, employees, consumers, companies, pensioners, etc., to realize the economic transactions. The market as philosophy, as economic institution, as idea, concentrates and materializes in the numerous specializing active markets: Of employment, of credit, of supplies and shops, of services, of common stocks and bonds, of long and short distances transport, etc. On every market the agents divide in buyers, borrowers, bidders, employees, etc. and in sellers, lenders, sellers, businessmen, etc.
The money is the accepted payment mean that allows us to subdivide the «value» or cost of the goods and services, in a suitable and manageable number of units and sub units. So that, referred to it, the prices, measured in multiple and sub multiple of the monetary unit, are more precise and acceptable, that the value relations that allow to establish the barters. This is one of the principal functions of the money. And, because of it, happen the claims for its increase (liquidity) in these moments of economic and financial crisis. Really the money is there, neither has gone away, nor has faded away. If the money could vanish or rot, as the smoke or the seeds, it might not be money. What happens is that it does not circulate as it had to, it does not facilitate the transactions; it is stopped, good guarded or hoarded, waiting more benign and clear economic times. For example, neither the iron nor the diamonds, with specific extreme values, can be used as money. The iron oxidizes and its unitary value is so low, that its transport and exhibition would be a problem. The diamonds have a value that is not proportional to its weight, but to the square or something more of it. This way, a big one costs about the double of all its assembled pieces.
The Traditional Economy presupposes that the performers agents are absolutely informed about their selection of goods possibilities, that they buy and sell rationally, that they are not emotionally affected, etc. This happens like the physicochemical law of the ideal gases, which establishes that the molecules that form them, lack a valuable volume or weight and that they do not interact in their seemingly behavior. This was the way that had the Economy approaching in its origins to the Science, translating its expositions, assuming the simplified formulae established in the first moments of the scientific empirical investigations. The economic agents act on the markets by approximation, by successive rough estimates. Seeking to realize, in general, more an acceptable transaction, that to achieve continuous «opportunities» or to manage «to gain the last dollar». If a transaction supposes an advantage suited for both parts, generally it is accepted.

Which are the operational factors that act in the creation and the correct functioning of the markets?

Let’s see a sufficient, but not exhaustive list, of them. With it, we will have another idea of the market. The one that its qualities or needs gives.

The proximity and accessibility of the agents to them.
The economic profit, the usefulness or the efficiency that offers the good or service and its remuneration.
The existence of an effective, less complex as possible logistics (this can increase unnecessarily and inevitably the intermediaries prices), that delivers in time, place, quantity and class or kind the products or services demanded (to do the forecast) and bought. To have the sufficient, suitable and well located storage and manipulation means. To possess the tracking, control and management, computerized or not means, that are sufficiently modern and adapted to the volume and the diversity of the articles and services.
The existence of the sufficient varieties in class and quantities, to allow the transactions in a fluid and constant way. As corollary, the need of enough transactions, according to the offer and the payment means.
The absence of monopolies or oligopolies of offer or demand.
The existence of civil and trade codes sufficiently developed, with their laws and complementary regulations. Which give juridical safety to the transactions. As corollary, the existence of a state and regional effective and collaborator bureaucracy, which, at least, neither squeezes excessively the citizens, nor is indolent.
The existence of a road and railway infrastructure and a net of wire and wireless communications, both sufficient and sure. As corollary, that exists social peace in the country.

The irrational market: the exogenous disturbances in the functioning of the market.

We have not mentioned yet the strange factors to the market. Those that nest, grow and even can rush off in the rational, sensitive and emotional human soul.

In spite of the Traditional Economy, the economic agents are persons, hold to the feelings and yet to the passions or untidy appetites and very vehement desires. And the feelings are the engine that generates the humanized energy, for good or evil. A pure idea can inform the soul, but alone it is cold and does not stimulate or get running it.
When the market disturbs by external factors, which are emotional in this case, that pervert its natural function, specified in «facilitating and attending the transactions», its simple and basic rules are altered. If in the markets, and therefore in the transactions, act agents altered by the greed, the fear and the selfishness, its functioning alters and more yet degenerates. The economic agents are in the habit of anticipating the future that they glimpse, the enjoyment of an object or entity and the menacing misfortune. But the upset ones magnify them, up to the point that they concern or get hold of their spirits. So, the enjoyment turns in too big and the possible threat turns an almost sure catastrophe.
It will buy and sell to speculate, or high over the real present and still future needs, or to hoard, or to alter the prices, removing them from the real value of the things, which is created in a healthy and sufficient market. It is then when we can speak with property, as the good old people did, about the «stock exchange game». Because they buy and sell shares rashly, in the edge of the razor, without a net below. And it is not investing and even taking calculated risks, as in any enterprising and creative investment.
We have left off the healthy market, which already does not exist, on having broken its rules and characteristics. And we enter, without almost realizing, on an irrational, false market, probably still free, but harmful. This one is a pseudo market, a junk open shop, the free meeting of vile people in the thoroughfare, concealing intentions, to buy and sell with deception between them. It is a commercial amorphous, undifferentiated magma, with maelstrom and whirlpool rules, which attract all and everything, in a «chaos born within itself«. And one of the worst thing, always with unpredictable results, consequences and duration. This is what happens in Hydrodynamics, with the laminate flow, turns into whirlwind on having increased enough its speed, within the liquid and gaseous fluids. And what happens in Mechanics, when we raise revolutions, over its design technical characteristics, of a car engine. And in a few dozens of km we can melt it.

The Biological Warfare

ITS REAL POSSIBILITIES AS TERRORISTS’ USABLE WEAPON AND IN THE MODERN WARFARE. ITS INSTRUMENTS AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT.

The biological warfare is the military use, as war weapon, of the living pathogenic, animal or plant organisms, and of the natural poisonous products, called toxins. Since the germs and the bacteria are used in it, it is also called germ warfare, though this term only incorporates a part of the biological agents capable of being used aggressively against the men.

The military use of the pathogenic microbes.
The pathogenic organisms, which produce diseases in the man, can classify in 4 big categories or types: the fungi, the bacteria, the virus and the rickettsia, an intermediate entity between these 2 last ones, in its nature, size and characteristics.
The bacteria are unicellular organisms of spherical (they take the suffix coco in the name), cylindrical (the bacilli) or spiral (the espirilium) forms. They reproduce by transverse repeated division and, often, the partial microbes remain united forming a chain. Many of them can move by means of their whips or eyelashes (shorter). According to Lauria, the virus is a genetic element constituted by ribonucleic acid and desoxirribonucleic acid, suitably to move from cell to cell and capably of synthesizing with the available amino acids its particular proteins, which will form then the infective viral particles. It is not known neither its origin nor the date of its appearance, since the existence of fossils virus is ignored. Elford, in 1931, managed to measure its size, which varies between 10 and 300 microns. Also the virus classify in vegetables, animals and bacteriafhagous, every type with their specific characteristics. Their vital cycle has, among others, 5 important phases for us: fixation to the cellular surface, penetration inside the cell, multiplication of the virus at the cost of the components of that one, liberation of the new viral individuals and their dispersion in the environment.
The military employment of the pathogenic microbes is difficult, because they are living organisms. The military usual vectors, the conventional (explosive grenades) and the reactive artillery (rockets with ballistic path, without autonomous direction) and the air bombs, turn out to be too aggressive and destroy them before their dispersion in the target. To eliminate these serious limitations, bombs with ceramic cases have been developed, which has been tried satisfactorily with flies infected with the bacterium yessinia pestis, the causer of the bubonic pest. Also it has been tried its dispersion through the air, using dispensers means of several types. But its control and the estimation of the effect on the target are very difficult. During the 40s of last century, biological desiccated and freezing of the microbes technologies were improved. With them it was seeking to prolong their life and to increase their resistance, allowing them a major storage time, their dispersion using explosives and to achieve a longer exposure in the environmental conditions.
Their real employment by means of not military transmitters has been more common. In 1763, during the war in North America between Great Britain and France for the control of all the European colonies, the military British command decided to try to infect with smallpox the hostile Indians. With this motive 2 sheets and a handkerchief from the room of infected by smallpox in a British hospital, were delivered to 2 Indian chiefs. The disease spread soon among the tribes.
Soon after the suicidal air raids on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, in September, 2001, some packages and letters supposedly containing anthrax spores, active or in vitro, acquired or stolen in pharmacological investigation laboratories began to appear in the USA, in the post offices and the addresses. The collective paranoia of these tragic moments helped to increase the extension and the importance of these facts. And it constituted a multiplier of the propaganda perverse effect in any type of individual or collective terrorism aggression. Whose purpose is the terror extension, generally using violent indiscriminate actions and the threats of repeating them. That do that all the members of the attacked collectivity considering themselves to be possible or probable, according with the cases, goals of these future actions.
 

The toxins as a warfare weapon.
The toxins are poisons naturally produced by the plants or the animals, so much the big or visible as the microscopic ones or microbes.
The toxins have certain advantages for their employment as war weapon. They are natural, not more or less complicated, costly and unstable synthesis chemical products. This facilitates their production in pilot or manufacturer plant scale. Some of the biological toxins are among the most poisonous products that are known. Their effect is made without the presence of the producing agent. This one, as an alive organism, presents problems in its manipulation, as being more unstable or perishable than toxins. That is to say, they can be preserved and spread easier, by means of explosive special grenades or with aerosols or atomizers dispensers, boosted by inert or neutral gases.
The enterotoxin B of the golden estafilococo is the responsible of the majority of the food human poisonings. This bacterium can grow in multitude foods and on having done produces the toxin, which is consumed by the consumption. In general, the enterotoxin B is not lethal, but a dose of only 50 micrograms already causes vomits and diarrheas in the adults. The deliberate use of this toxin is possible. For example, during a siege by the irregular rebels, always relaxed and no hermetic, to military defensive positions, and trying to scourge and to debilitated the vital enemy resistance. The sharp sound effect produced by the operating toxin is called almost onomatopoeicly «the whistling sound».
A more terrible toxin, which it is possible also to find in the food, is the butolinic A toxin, produced by the clostridium butolinic bacteria. It is the most powerful known poison, a microgram kills an adult. The normal appearance of the bacterium associates with the badly preserved food, as the expired or badly sterilized during its manufacture tinned vegetables. It is a neuroagent that causes that the nervous system accumulates in excess during its functioning the acetilcolin, in a similar way that do the of nervous type agents used in the chemical warfare.
The castor toxin exists in the seeds and the leaves of the common castor plant. Its use by the secret service Bulgarian agents known as the umbrellas’ assassins, was confirmed in the 70s. In the free ends of those were concealed a mechanical launcher, which was projecting a pellet impregnated with the castor toxin and capably in the short distance of going in the naked meat. Two Bulgarian dissidents fled from the communist regime in their country, were positively identified of having being murdered this way in London.
 

Its appearance in the History. Modern situation.
From very ancient the pathogenic agents and the toxins have been used with military purposes. The poisoning of the enemy water fountains or to throw the infectious patients corpses over the enemy defensive walls, are military methods used by Alexander the Great or the Mongolian. It is only in the modern times when the use of biological agents in the war has acquired a stigma character. This way, no modern nation has admitted its employment in combat against her enemies.
We have an extreme example of how the use of biological agents by profane persons can go away of control, in the siege of the Genoese city of Kaffa, today called Feodosiya, placed in the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea. During in it the biological harmful effects were reasonably circumscribed inside the walls of this city. In the middle of the XIVth century the Mongolian were besieging the city. The Mongolian were throwing over her walls, using catapults, the dead men’s bodies by the bubonic pest. It is thought that some Genoese ships that departed from the city towards their metropolis, could carry the plague’s bacillus, which was habitually lodging in the rates. Hereby the bubonic pest could reach Italy, and begin the massive and fulminating epidemic known in the History as the Black Death, which almost depopulated the European continent in that century.
From the 80s of last century, the genetic engineering and the biotecnology have turned into technically industrial instruments destined to improve the life conditions of the humanity. One of its possible applications is the development of vaccines against the pathogenic agents, both the natural and the reinforced by genetic actions on the first ones. This can allow the most developed countries to acquire a certain more or less widespread immunity, which is never absolute, against these biological attacks. Whereas their potential enemies, less technologically developed and with fewer economic resources, except the crude oil producers during the expansion phase of the sales cycle, would be defenseless against the biological military agents.
Its military use is punctual and restricted.
The effective, precise in the time and controlled use of biological agents in the modern combat is difficult and its results are also too vague. For the majority of the biological agents, its own nature does that its controlled launch on a target is difficult. Between the effective action on the enemy and the beginning and the development of the disease, it exists an unavoidable delay, due to the inevitable incubation periods, that goes from the hours to days; which is never acceptable in a mobile military operation. Always exist the natural and the acquired immunities (by vaccination or more or less controlled exposure), that prevent from specifying the real probable results, the number of enemy casualties derived from a biological attack. The theoretical estimated effects are diminished by certain climatic conditions, the rain, the fog, the solar luminosity and the extreme temperatures, or altered by the winds, which drag them of the surface target.
For all this, nowadays the military use of biological agents has a restricted employment in the special operations and the more or less concealed harassment of the enemy, technique where the time is not a rigid and critical parameter. This way, the goal of debilitating the enemy, more than eliminate him totally, does that the calculations of the conflicting forces correlation have to be neither so exact nor so punctual in time. The dissemination of the biological agents becomes directly, without the employment of the heavy ammunitions used as vectors. And the time between the exposure and the development of the disease, betrayed by its symptoms, constitutes then a planning factor within the attacking plan.
 

Its difficult and improbable use by terrorists and madmen.
Attempts have been, as the already indicated about the anthrax spores and this that we report now. In 1980 the French police assaulted a home of the Red German Army Fraction in Paris, placed in n º 41 A, Chaillot street. Those which chiefs committed simultaneously suicide later in their isolation cells in Germany. There they found a simple but effective installation «washing-up basin» type for producing the butolinic A toxin.
A natural repugnance exists in the men to experiencing the diseases, specially the infectious, the disfigurement ones and the extreme debilitating. It is only enough to see the announcements about all kinds of health centers, which offer something like a youth elixir, similar to that Ponce of León looked for in The Florida in the 16th century. The age is inevitable and implacable, but it is sought to keep, almost by all the means, the use and enjoyment of the maturity, which deterioration is one of the most fearsome effects of the diseases. The infectious serious diseases are in the habit of passing with external catastrophic symptoms. The man s attacked from inside in his aspect, in his integrity and in his capacities, by a painful and even disgusting way, up to his infamous death. This is not the death more or less adorned by us, to make it glorious and less disgusting, which is waited for the soldiers in the battlefield.
The manipulation of the pathogenic microbes and their poisonous derivatives imply high pharmacological and chemical technology operations. Here any leak or impurity leads to the failure of the experiment or to an affection of the manipulators (the most nearby and exposed possible carriers). And already we know something of how these pathogenic dwarfs and their organic products operate over us.
The fundamentalist Islamic fanatics do not find in the Noble Koran nor in the Prophet’s sunna any inducement, stimulus or excuse for their employment in the war. The microbes and their humors are in the category of the pork, the dog, the aquatic animals without fins, of the banned by Allah, all of them impure and detestable for the faithful Muslim. When the Book descended from Allah, the “ansars” or Islam’s devout could acceptably died by the sword, the mace, the axe, the lance and the arrows, in defense of the Umma or universal Islamic community and to extend its domains, applying the Jihad or sanctified war in many aleyas or verses of the Koran.
One also speaks about the possible utilization of the most attainable and known for the biological warfare means by the madmen. But a mad is not an demented. The demented has degraded his cognitive and volitional powers, by the physical deterioration of his cerebral tissues, due to the age or certain diseases (ictus, cerebral arteriosclerosis). The mad, for his part, has a portion of his feelings, ideas and concepts affected, upset and missed. But the madman is capable of reasoning specially in the topics that I will call «objectives», which are outside of his deliriums and mental affections. The madman can believe that his more or less individual terrorist actions, will be important to subvert the political regime of a country. But the mad can know how to mix sugar and potassium chlorate (the pills to disinfect the throat) to make a domestic explosive. Though the ETA (BASQUE SECESIONIST REVOLUTIONARY GROUP) adds sulphur to it, here it is not needed and only reduces the weight efficiency, since the chlorine takes charge connecting with the potassium and forming potassium chloride. In any case, the sulphur can be obtained, as component of the gunpowder, if there exist sensitive products restrictions, treating with commercial chlorhidric acid the sodium bisulphide, a photographic developer. Or how to concentrate the cars batteries liquid, to obtain sulphuric acid, base to obtain nitric acid (for the cotton powder or without smoke powder) and nitrates (the oxygen supplier in the smoke gunpowders, base of the pyrotechnic. And the madman also has very much, a lot of fear, probably more because a hypochondriac specific component, about the degrading diseases, stigmatized by the social group.

THE WORLD BANKING CRISIS

Have we in march a Banking Crisis of unknown scale? This banking crisis, is it a fault of the theories of the so called new conservatives or «neocons»?. Does the banking world crisis obey to a structural deficiency of the capitalism?, that would appear periodically, never in the same manner, and with more or less force and extension in each economic cycle.

Or are the culprits of the world banking crisis rather an important number of bankers of many developed nations, together with the authorities of these? The first ones, more than bankers, are «trashy window bank employees». And they are lacking of foresight, stupid and eager of money and power, in a sinister and criminal amalgam generated in a «chaos born within itself». The authorities are responsible of not having established a legal frame of alertness and regulation of the financial structure, increasingly sophisticated and complex. Which is adapted to such so evident, important and vital activity for the modern economies, as is the reasonable guarantee of the banking deposits and the generation of the banking enough credit. The fool is that who ignores what he must know.

Do this suppose a return to the ideas of the socialist economy? Do we need a Great financial state Brother?, another heavy, costly, slow, slightly productive, official mechanism. Nooo. The mission of the Public Powers is to establish a frame or financial practical, legal and modern method or way of action. With the sufficient means for its control and the correction of the alterations produced by the inevitable diversions (like a driver or a ship pilot), in a constant, relatively simple and agile way. Then, it is necessary to allow operate the economic agents, that are all of us, acting as consumers, businessmen, borrowers, employees, institutions, etc., in the different partial markets: of credit, transport, supplies, stocks, etc. Why has it to be the State?, because it is the institution that is supposed must control and rule, over persons and private entities.

Why cannot be the IMF or the World Bank, born in the Breton Woods agreements and with long actuation history, the supranational organizations that execute these new labors of inspection and correction? I believe that because they lack the legal and coercive means, to impose their economic criteria to sovereign different states. The proof is the compound attitude of the European states against the world banking crisis, make concrete in specific, individualized, different actions, for each participant state. For much that, in its origin, it was called Common European Market. When the states are too heavy and cumbersome juridical, historically and socially, the unanimity is very difficult and laborious.

We will see the mechanism of the creation and of the contraction of the credit, from the mechanism of the creation and of the retreat of deposits in an economic system. The reason is that both are the core of the origin of the current financial chaos, in progressive and advanced development …

How does banking activity work? Why and for what are credits requested to the banks? Why is it very important that the banking «assets» are healthy and recoverable at their ending time? Are healthy the parameters of the current financial activity: system liquidity (European M2); relative volume of non-paid expired debts; maintenance of the bank deposits; control of the “general level of prices”; confidence and credibility of the different economic agents, etc.?

The banking receives all classes of deposits from the public: checking, savings and time limit accounts. And even it emits certificates or bonds with its guarantee, which sells to big public institutions, companies and investors. Also the banks lend to others them «cash» and even come to the Central Bank of their Systems, asking for funds for different time periods. All this money the banking «owes» to the public in general. So it the items that represent it, appear in their «liabilities». For the use of this money, the banks pay a few interests to their depositories (rather little) or to their lenders and bondholders (slightly more). The own funds of the banking would join also these «liabilities», always a small fraction of them, represented by their shares and not distributed earnings, which they owe to their owners or shareholders. We call «banking» to the set of the bank system of an economic integrated system. And, «banks» to the set of these public and private specialized agencies of that one.
A part of that money, the banks keeps it in their branches windows and strongboxes, forming their treasuries and the legal and voluntary reserves. Let’s suppose that the banks keep as «cash» one of every 5 monetary received units. The other 4 units of money they give for different periods and prices (types) to their «credit clients» or borrowers: companies, public organizations, banks and persons, both natives and foreigners. Even they do it buying bonds and IOUs of companies and their shares and increases in capital. Those all use them for their needs and investment decisions, treasury, circulating and to buy for the consumption both in short and long term. They are in the habit of being over their real possibilities of bringing together their own payment means.
We consider the houses mortgages to be directed to an investment, specially in certain countries. Since the persons who take them, believe that if they have to sell the houses, «always» they will receive more than they cost them. And their real use value, if they are made well, are kept reasonably along the life of their first owners. This would mean that Spain would have a saving rate very superior to the attributed in the official statistics. Since a part of the public would be saving, even over his possibilities, in a good of the type «value deposit». Why the difference with the statistics? For a difference of criterion, as almost always it happens. I call “value deposits” of to the goods in which it can concentrate and keep and still be used without a valuable deterioration. The houses (well constructed and located), the jewels and the ancient coins (at their real value), the money (in moderate inflation times) are goods generally used as value deposits by the persons. And it is not a car, even a high class one, which value loses value excessively after the purchase.
In addition, a part of the lent money comes back to the banks, as new deposits of their borrowers. Because nobody uses immediately all the received money, keeping only the necessary cash for the minor immediate payments. Neither it is hidden at home or in the company, except during social catastrophic periods. This is going to generate more reserves and new available cash for lend or invest by the banking.
In the General Economics books is demonstrated that with that initial mentioned reserve of 1 monetary unit of each 5 received, the set of the banks can manage to give on credit up to 5 monetary units. More that creating bank money, what they real and more properly make is to multiply the possible credit to the society, whom they serve and from whom they benefit, with their activity as financial intermediaries. Our reader will have felt that, likewise, when the banking has to attend to payments and sell assets for it, the set of these then contract in the proportion 5 to 1. And as an intrinsic quality of the money is that it cannot vanish, so we call this essential process, as credit creation and not of bank money.
Those lends in general are, together with his modest own money reserves, the «assets» of a bank. The part of its balance that it can immediately use, demand, realize or sell other one in the secondary or interbank markets. It is very important that these assets are sure, chargeable in their proper moment, good. Since if an anomalous punctual retreat of money by its depositories happens or presents a good investment of or lending opportunity, the bank has to recover the cash, liquidating a part of these «assets» or paying with healthy assets.
How are now the performing parameters of the bank activity? The immense majority of the credit in general granted by the banks is good and recoverable. The real number of bankrupts of declared bad debts is low and controllable. The public in general (companies. Institutions and persons) keeps his deposits in the banking and attends to the payments, staggered in the time, of his lends in general or of his liabilities (payment of services, to suppliers, obligations). The liquidity of the system, the European M2 or his American equivalent, is high and even lightly inflationary. And it is more than sufficient to allow to realize all the economic necessary transactions, which is one of the principal functions of the money. Nobody has money «per se», but to use it in a more or less near future or, at least, with the hope or intention of doing so.
Another thing is that it is retained, kept under bed, buried or shut in the branches strongboxes. Why? For fear and distrust, which are the demons of the anticredit. In effect, the latter point or parameter, that which noisy and essentially faults, consists in the fact that the confidence, the guarantee, the solvency and the respectability among the agents of the system tends intensively to 0.
And the prolongation of the banking crisis, characterized by the deterioration and the disturbance of its essential activities, will turn progressively the potential bad debts in real, will restrict the creation of bank deposits and will extend in “shocking waves” the damages to the whole economic system.
There are no good thinking listened heads. The social leaders that risk, do not apply half measures, compromise themselves and always mistake something, are cornered, ignored or they can not arise or act. Because they are not politically correct, full of calm and good nature, expert in communication and manipulation of emotions, and using anesthesic words of the action, the revulsive and the concerted effort. The national societies face now an incredible, unthinkable problem a few months ago. And they are deprived in these moments of a social guiding and governing ideology and, in general, of useful, helpful and reliable leaders.

The Interest rates and the Liquidity. Another vision of the intimate Reasons of the Crisis.

It is said that with the descent of finantial rates, money is injected into the financial system, wrinkled by the confidence lack in the institutional or final borrower. And all resolved. But not. With the rates descent the business are facilitated. The private ones, the managerial ones and the public ones. On having stooped the bar of the financial costs, I can get tangled up better, can better attend to the payments of a mortgage at variable rate, or risk in another investment with minor marginal yield (the additional yield that the new investment will give me). The rate is a «relative measure» of the official value of the accepted means of payment.
The liquidity is the European M2 or his USA equivalentl: the money (about 8 % GDP) and the cuasi money: the deposits and easily realizable titles of debt (without term deposits). If there are no means of payment, though they are cheap (interest rate), I can neither spend nor invest. Where there is no flour, everything is gloomy, says the popular Spanish wisdom.
But already we have liquidity (the M3 (that includes the M2) is growing (to about 11-12 % in the last months) and the rates are very low. The compound action of October 8 of the principal central world banks, has left them in 1,5% in USA and 3,75% in the Euro monetary zone. Then, what does happen to us? Well, we do not have confidence in the possible investment. Or we are afraid that we will have difficulties to pay the loan. And the fear spreads as oil. The people handle numbers, but it cannot easily handle feelings or intuitions. Because they are not easy to measure. And one lacks moral courage and education to walk along these seemingly unknown ways.
The rates are like the engine and the liquidity, the fuel. Why does not run the car? Because it does not have driver: the will of the experienced driver who guides it. Apart that a productive investment does not produce at once. A nuclear power station takes 15 years, since begin the planning and decision works. Four legislatures. And they cannot risk, without a regulatory insured frame. There are 25 million houses constructed in Spain. Are needed many more? And, many people have been bought at excessive prices, thinking that its price always would grow. I calculate in 450 thousand the normal replacement (for around 50 years of house life). We have been constructing 650-700 thousand during the last three or four years.

Some corollaries or consequences of enormous importance.

The absolute liquidity does not exist, because there is no money in reserves to simultaneously attend to all the depositors. Not neither in any bank, nor in any country. For definition of what is the using of money. This happened to the British Northern Rock, which had long tails in the windows. In Spain there are around of 2,2 trillions of Euros in bank deposits.
It is necessary to re-establish the confidence in the bank system of every country. Then there will be credibility and monetary money and enough credit surplus. This is more difficult in these moments, that a few months ago. Because the public is started realizing that his money is not have in the basement of his bank branch. In fact the real arrears is minimal yet. Another thing is that the borrowers are all potential bad debts, especially if the economies deteriorate. And the banks with these captive and depreciated assets can not do anything.

Military Operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A Fourth Generation (asymmetrical, Guerrilla) War in Central Asia.

How do Western and Pakistani Armies develop their military operations against the Taliban and al-Qaeda?  What is the idiosyncrasy of the 40 million Pasthuns who live in the territories infected by them? How is the Pashtunwali or honor’s code of their tribes? How can be better attacked the presence, a perfect control does not exist, of the rebels and terrorists in the wide zone on both sides of the «Northwest border» Afghan Pakistani? The instruction, the omnipresent use of the heavy fire support and the mentality of the great modern armies, do they facilitate the efficient military operations against indomitable fanatic religious rebels in their own lands?

The social and military situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Taliban and al-Qaeda form two vertically organized movements and from below to up. The ideological and geographical nearness allows them to collaborate tactically. That does that its cells do not know exactly which are the higher chiefs. They only know where they have to go to receive support or to send or to receive information or to communicate with another «peer» cell. The commands of these movements act by exception, not by presence or by deliberate action. This allows them to operate well, without the intervention of its high commands. The death of the mullah Omar and two or three chiefs in an American bombardment, would concern little its efficiency, its real military irregular levels of action. The «martyrdom» of the aforesaid or Bin Laden or his «managing director» al-Zawahiri would perform almost equal importance as their existence.
The operative key of the Taliban resides in their innumerable local chiefs (sheiks), with their small guerrillas bands. They are the persons in charge of intimidating, teaching, scaring, attacking and occupying more or less temporarily some of the numerous settlements and hamlets. According to the pressure degree that they should exercise on the villagers in order that they inform them, hide them and support them. Evidently its elementary degree of operative development keeps the movement at the defensive. Without being able to dispute to any of the present Armies in these areas, any territory or village. Without being able to realize other attack actions beyond ambushes, assaults to very small enemy isolated units, harassment by medium range fire, kidnapping, short duration isolated incursions and ways and paths mined. Ideologically concentrated in the conversion to their movement, to their semi nomadic cells, of the most related or nearby Pashtuns. In a minor and less extensive degree, operate the more independent cells of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Their usual procedure for assault a weak defended or without fighting spirit position is this: at dawn they bombard with the fixed rocket launchers heavy fire, then they approach to use mortars, finally, the assault it is realized by several independent squads, that converging advance shooting AK and RPD or PK machine gun bursts and their RPG and RL personal grenade-launchers.
Afghanistan almost lacks asphalt roads: there are only two. The most important gives itself a round turn all over the country, joining the principal populations, Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, etc. So they called it Ring Road. Then there is the North-South Road, which follows this tour, at the east of the country. They are not great thing. The asphalt have between half and one inch of thickness; the heats soften it and pot-holes and bubbles are easily formed. But, under a protuberance can hide an explosive device. It is necessary to cross slow the roads, looking at the soil and looking over the horizon, searching for carelessness observers, not very distant. The Taliban have the habit of recording on video the ambushes, to hang them on Internet. They are not in the habit of using cables activators; these are expensive and weigh, and the rebels are in isolated zones and the logistics is weak and complicated. The devices are activated by the pressure of the vehicle or by an frequency  transmitter with a given range; even serves an electronic opening door device. With the frequency inhibitors, the soldiers try to offset the radio waves in the probable frequencies used in the zone. Being the most expensive and complicated transmitters, that with more range, power and frequencies range. It is the game of the cat and the mouse. The problem is that the guerrillas of an area receive a radio activator that uses an unforeseen frequency.
As for the usual attack by the light and medium weapons fire, the guerrillas do not approach too much. They are less trained and equipped than that the professional military men. They act roughly scourging. Their more frequent weapon, the AK in its variants 47 and M are not precise beyond 150-175 m., in linear shooting. The mortars fire turns out to be imprecise and can be eluded against a mounted patrol. Nevertheless, against the civilians and the vehicles and goods traffic these assault skills are sufficient and effective. The most  terrifying and effective weapon of the Taliban is the illuminated fanatic suicidal. That looks for, as passport to the Houris’ Garden (it is not an eternal prize!!), to carry with him the major number of dead and mutilated enemies. But the attacker could be a religious madman, but is not an idiot. The suicides do not attack the military prepared or fortified positions. Endowed in their defensive perimeter with complicated wire fences, pits, walls, spaces between obstacles, alarms. Because they know that the explosion will vanish in the air and that they will not let him to approach the sentries outposts, because already they are waiting for him. The principal weapon of the suicide is not his explosive belt or jacket. They are the surprise, the freedom of action and the initiative.
The units of the Allied armies (in Afghanistan) or of the Pakistani army act employing battalions and regiments. With the battalion forces they try to sweep a zone in a direction, in whose opposite limit they have deployed a military «bolt». With a regiment they are in the habit of carrying out a search and annihilation operation in a given area. They are probably too much forces. The highland guerrillas have a natural weapon which lack the soldiers trained in «our way «: the patience and sobriety. In Vietnam they were lonely raised to the trees, and there were silently and stilly waiting, until the crossing of the soldiers who were sweeping the operational zone. Covering with mud the roof of an Afghan hut, it prevents the observation of its interior by the thermal vision airborne devices, crewed or not.
In 2002 the Pakistani began to send troops to the Waziristan and other Pashtuns zones, reaching progressively 80 thousand deployed men there. In their operations, destroyed Taliban training fields and captured many terrorist chiefs. But their regular war tactics and techniques, alienated them the favor or the neutrality, according to the cases, of the tribes, since there were taking place very easily civil innocent victims with them. Finally, in the autumn of 2005 the Government reached an agreement with the tribe chiefs or Maliks, moving back from the zone. It was a low intensity conflict: in the last 2 years 700 military men died. The problem was that it was clearly seen that the military men could not dominate the Pashtuns areas and clean them of terrorists. Since then, the reprisal raids are sporadic and punctual, over detected and given targets, which not always is obtained or destroyed.

The geographical space of the Pashtuns tribes (Afghans and Pakistani).

From Pakistan, looking from the Punjab (or «the land of the five rivers») towards Afghanistan, appears the great bed of the Indus river. This acts as geographical border with the Pashtuns lands, forming an enormous natural moat, which never stopped their raids. Then appears an irregular mixture of plains and mountainous spurs, in lands that turn out to be fertile when they can be watered, shaped by the first heights of the Suliman great mountainous chain. Beyond, the big mountains crown. Towards the north, forming perpetual snow zones, there are Alpine type pastures and heights forests, up to reaching the spurs of the massive chain Hindu Kush. Towards the south, spread the lowest Waziristan mountains, in which appear rocky outcrops at more than 3000  m. of altitude. Descending more toward south, are bush covered spurs and gullies, up to the desolation of Zheb and Mekran areas, already near the Indian Ocean, in the Baluchistan.
These intricate heights provide a wall that prevents massive invasions from one or another side of them, provided the passes are dominated. The most famous still nowadays is Khiber, since it opens the way between Kabul and Peshawar.
In the Baluchistan live the Baluchi, Braui and Pashtun (in the northern part) etnia tribes. In the South and North Waziristan’s regions the Pashtuns are more concentrated, forming a real Pakistani Pashtunistan. Within the great pashtun etnia, the Mahsuds (these specially inclined to break the agreements and treaties) are in the Waziristan central zone, the Wasirs and the Afridis live in the zone of Tirah and the Mohmands, at the north of Tirah. The zone of Chitral, at the north of the border, is formed by the Bajaur, Dhir and Swat districts. The Waziristans are the most problematic, independent and turbulent tribes. Their lands are poor and rough, in which scarcely they find an elementary sustenance. Formerly, up to the first third of last century, they were in the habit of descending occasionally in armed raids up to the Indus valley. To obtain value goods, mounts, jewels, foreign women, attacking and harvesting its inhabitants, which were Hindu of race and religion, and therefore, unbelievers. More to the south-east of the lands of these tribes, without coming yet to the Indus valley, are the lands also mountainous of the Khattaks, Bangashis and Yusufzais, all also Pashtuns. Tribes that produced first class Sepoys for the semi irregular British units operating in these zones.
The Afghan heights around the border with Pakistan are the other great slope west of the mentioned mountainous chains, crowned at the north of the country by the great Hindu Kush. The absence of European explorers in the Afghan side (Afghanistan was an independent country opposite to Russians and British), does that they are less studied and very little known by non specialist people.
In Afghanistan, the Pashtuns are at the south and south-east, reaching 35% of the population and around 12,5 millions persons. Another important Afghan etnia are the Uzbecs (10%) and the Tajiks (25%), which live in the north of the country, bordering the Tajikistan and Uzbekistan independent republics. In the center live the Hazaras (20 % of the population), related with the Persian and in the south are the Baluchis (10 %), related, in turn, with the Pakistani Baluchistan tribes. The flow of Afghans, specially Pashtuns, towards Pakistan or coming back home, when the military conditions are smoothed, does that the figures, lacking for decades of an official census, are variable and vague.
In Pakistan are 4 great etnias: the Pashtuns, the Punjabis, the Sindhi and the Baluchis. Precisely, the country is nowadays divided in four big provinces: Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan and the Northwest Border, each one formed by numerous administrative districts. There exists an autonomous tribes zone, that goes between the last province and the border with Afghanistan and that is governed by the central federal authority. The tribal zone possesses 7 tribal agencies and 6 small districts. The individuals of Pashtun etnia are approximately 25 millions in the country.
After the independence of Pakistan in 1947, the dispute arose with Afghanistan for the possession of the wide frontier tribal zones, which was looking for its exit to the sea. Both countries almost came to the armed conflict, until they signed in 1963 an agreement of borders determination. The borders existing during the British domain were ratified in it. And Afghanistan stayed as an interior country, without access to the sea routes.

Social anthropologic particularities of the Pashtuns tribes.

The internal relations of the groups, families and local families groups and clans, are characterized by incorporating into them certain rites, rules, attitudes and taboos. These gather, value and quantify their vital needs, their primary emotions and their beliefs. The Islam is rigorously followed in the wide zone we treat. They are all of the sunni branch, that accepts the Koran and the Prophet Sunna, his acts and remarks (hadices) due gathered by his disciples, as the orthodox sources of Allah’s revelation to the men. The differences reside in the rigor with which they examine and accept the sources of the Sunna. This assumption forms a part of the social inculturation, strengthening and cohesion of these groups.
These societies agree and are ruled by an authority, more or less respected and obeyed. The more be perfected and advance towards the exterior the society, the power of this authority will become strong and grow and will spread in influence areas. The smaller and isolated is the group, the authority power will be more moderating and integrating, acting as the first between the «equal ones». In these last cases, the meeting of the active members (men, hunters) of the clan in assemblies, “jurgas” (in its language), etc., has supreme and sanctioning value of the deviant or solvent conducts for the group. Evidently, in these local councils, the prestige and the power of each individual member counts, and in them some are more «equal» than others. These local chiefs or Maliks are like favored negotiators with the different governments, who enjoy a personal more than institutional authority, and whose agreements can be ignored by the adult males, if are not confirmed by the assemblies.
Their code of customs and honor is the Pashtunwali. It establishes to the individual certain rights and demands from him certain social duties towards the family, the clan and the tribe. The basic disputes on women, gold or valid money and lands are in the origin of the durable hatreds in these tribes. And that must be kept up to avenging the perceived affront. The own fragility and weakness of the society demands the appearance of the protective values. These might be the hospitality, the loyalty, the friendship, the scorn of the strange, the revenge of affronts and damages, the individual and collective honor. Each of them protects and enlarges in some measure or shade the small human group. As we will see the relations they are interpersonal, in the areas of the family, the clan and the region. They are projected by the opportunity, the nearness, the exchange of goods and the relation. And become strong with the loyalty, the respect of the accepted procedures and the treatment time. And depending on the accumulation of these elementary successive acts. A stranger can aspire this way to his integration, in a personal manner. And not for the quality or importance of his category or institutional position.
The hospitality takes implicit the reciprocity, when one travels, is alone and is not aggressive. This sometimes is perfected by the endowment of an escort to the traveler through insecure zones. The violation of this «escort» by an assault supposes a serious affront for the clan that provided it. The loyalty between the members of the group, sometimes very unstable, cohesion it. The honor inflates the self esteem and appearance before everybody. The revenge, in absence of a real justice, search to punish and then to repair the damages and affronts real or perceived. The scorn of strange not adorned with good qualities or menacing the group, seeks to prevent a priori their integration in it, as a passive defense form. The friendship embraces the ties with the equals and within the group. If someone joins these elementary groups, he is object of loyalty and friendship in a personal way. These values would increase by his performance, ways and personal behavior. It would be the case of a native forces chief, accepted by them for the pays, the honor and the status that they offer and project on the regional clans. The acceptance is not with the cargo, but with the person.
Another characteristic of the social organization of these frontier semi independent tribes is that they stimulate a relative endogamia. With it they seek to isolate, to protect, to support or to increase their idiosyncrasy, influence and patrimony. But, without been biological harmful its use. As it would be between the members of the same family or small or nearby clan. In effect, the marriages not only suppose and carry individuals exchanges between the families of the married. They also produce exchanges and flows of gifts, visits, relations and power plots. In a few little evolved societies, living in a difficult way and, sometimes surrounded temporarily by hostile, the matrimonial relations produce a «revenue», an increases of social positions, influences and goods, which are very estimated by the families.

How is it necessary to confront the approximation towards the frontier tribes and foment their pacification? So that they isolate and expel the violent radical elements. And assume a more lasting and strong ties with the central authorities of both implied countries.

The highland villages are numerous, small and spread for both sides of the common border. In them can be camouflaged a small group of «regulars» Taliban, waiting that the jerky military flood passes away. Apart, the Taliban enjoy a complicated system of natural caves, reinforced by communication tunnels, endowed with extended zones for waiting and the storage of all classes of goods. This system is used to facilitate the traffic between both countries, without having to use the frontier passages or the most habitual and known gorges, as «parts» of the complete journey. And as temporary refuge, when the Allies carry out reprisal or rebels searching operations, on Pashtun zones where they have been more active. Taliban are Pashtuns. Only are distinguished from the local tribes by their major religious proselytism and military activity. Some of the villagers whom the soldiers meet in their patrols and searches, could be «part-time» Taliban and sympathizers. Two or three men of a native group that pass along a rural way, can be a  Taliban team moving across.
Here it is possible to exploit an atavism that survives in all the collectivities. And that is shackled by the civic and moral education in the so called educated nations. And that is the egoism, as original fruit of the defense need and of the chronic shortage of original resources. That generates in the most primitive societies a distrust towards the non nearby neighbor, who is collectively estimated as a competitor and a probable enemy. The Taliban are foreign in Pakistan, and committed in a foreign war. Apart from their select and absorbent radical interpretation of the sunni Islam. Following the mentioned general guidelines it is easy and simple, though laborious and necessarily progressive, to achieve that the Pakistani Pashtuns close up their lands to the Taliban. Avoiding this way the spread of their doctrine and methods. And the extension of their operative refuges towards the west of the Indus, which always will prevent their possible eradication of Afghanistan.
The military operations in the modern wars (of third generation) demand to detect the most rapid and precisely a mechanized enemy, along all his deployment, up to his reserves. Then attacks him with ground and air heavy fire, including tactical rockets. But here the enemy is evasive, dispersed, worse armed, bad trained, unruly. He is native, is tough and scanty, hides easily, is a born predator, usually does not defend his positions. The operations of the military big units and units let escape the guerrilla teams, through infinity of tactical «interstices» or microvacuums of military «combat capacity». It is necessary to operate with nearness at his microtactical military level. To the diffuse, tenuous, but omnipresent «swarm» of the Taliban is necessary to interpose a civic military «swarm». Formed by voluntary elements, more qualified, professional and trained than the guerrillas.
It is necessary to create small «action units», for combined “social military” actions. That are capable of reaching the Taliban habitat and to expel them from it, progressively and firmly. Interposing between them and the tribes, his real guerrilla habitat. Units that, in its basic or standard model, would be formed by a squad of infantry light local loyal trained forces, a squad of professional foreign infantries and a group of civil technical personnel for tribe promotion and education with suitable material. Its logistics and support will be based on ground units and heliborne forces, centrally controlled from 2 or 3 near operative bases. And complemented by mobile columns in vehicles or of cavalry, forming a support patrols’ network in a region.
Once made firm these small flexible units, can arrive there major forces and brigades of work and education, to go garrison the zone and stimulating its social improvement. It is necessary to possess money to buy the will of collaborators and sympathizers. This can become facilitating work and social distinction to them. And to realize the necessary plans of development.
To eradicate the opium crops can be an independent strategic goal. And it is necessary to value very well its opportunity and possibility for every small zone. It is necessary to offer the natives an alternative of peace, progress and well-being, within their beliefs and ways, in order that they expel the Taliban.

THE OPERATIONAL STRATEGY. ITS SCOPE AND CHARACTERISTICS.

The first level of the activity of the defense of an organized Society is called national strategy and also, some old-fashioned, great strategy. In it must be considered also the economic and diplomatic resources of the State, as part of the resources of a nation to obtain her big strategic goals in a war.

The military strategy or simply strategy treats, in the second great level of activity in the national defense, of the definition of the big goals of a war, of a theatre of operations or a campaign, and of the assignment of the military, generally scanty or very scanty resources, to get them.

The tactics devote itself to the best accomplishment of the combats against an enemy, whom is opposed to the achievement of our strategic goals by military means. The combat skills and technics are the bricks which help to construct the tactics. They are the specific knowledge of weapons, movements, protections, which the men personally and collectively learn with the training and their experience.

Between both levels of the military action exists a space of essentially practical and eminent activity, so called operational level or operational strategy. Its mission is to optimize the use of the tactics and of the available resources in the campaign and in the theatre of operations. To do that, it defines and conceptualizes the battles, the marches, etc., both the military operations and their correct succession, depending on those decisive goals.

So it gives to the tactics and the decision to which it is orientated, a superior importance. Which is far beyond of the pursuit and the exploit of the tactical success. That is to say, the operative strategy uses the tactics as one of its immediate instruments. Integrating them to reach the goals that are entrusted to it and being orientated to them, taking part then of its strategic nature.

This way, the operational strategy defines its own goals in the military theatre or campaign, which are the incapacitation and the disorganization of the enemy, through the action over his operational and strategic vulnerabilities. The first is orientated against the enemy combat capacity, seeking to incapacitate positionally or functionally it, and simultaneously protecting the own combat capacity. The second is achieved by the occupation or the destruction of the enemy critical vulnerabilities in the operations zone.

These vulnerabilities are those elements, possessions or reasons that give sense to the fight that the enemy makes against us. That is to say, whose loss inevitably infuses a hopelessness sensation and a uselessness sense in continuing the fight in these circumstances, which only is now oriented to accumulate more losses.

In the World War II, the occupation of the enemy capital and the fall of his government were critical strategic vulnerabilities. To which get through an operative strategy of mobile offensive war: as example, the spring campaign of 1940 in the western front. The same thing Hitler looked for in 1941 in the Soviet front in relation with Moscow. Surely in this total war, almost of extermination, in the East front, its occupation had not had the importance that was assuming him. But Moscow was constituting a great railway «hub», a vital center of railway communications for the whole USSR at the west of the Urals mountains. And, in this respect, it had been a critical permanent vulnerability of the military operational level.

To achieve these intermediate strategic aims, the operational level has several specific operational means that are the intelligence, the imbalance and the incapacitation of the enemy, the tempo or operations and combats relative speed, the logistic organization and its physical support, the full supplies line and the correct sense of the commands.

It uses these means to lead and to optimally use (without squandering) the tactical – operational means at its disposition.

These are:

the area transitability (in the whole geographical dimension of the nature of the lands, climate, station and day hour),

the combat capacity (all kind of military means like men, equipment, supports and combat or carrier vehicles) and the operational movement capacity (big and small tonnage transports, the supplies and replacements of all kinds and combustible and the deposits and accessible parks in the zone) available,

the freedom of action and the «favorable interfaces of action» with the enemy (that exist and that can also be created always, by means of the extension or the decrease of the «field of action» over him, like a tactical operative zoom, or by means of its change to another sector of the front or in the depth of the enemy zone). With these last 2 «systems» we can act always according to our criterion and interest and not simply reacting to the enemy actions.

Hereby, the mentioned 10 «operational systems» realize the employment and the functioning of all the levels of the National Defense. And they go from the conception and the great creation of goals and interests. Received from the high command and ultimately from the nation, including the allocated resources, up to the practical final accomplishment of them. Involving also the necessary and the inevitable and imposed by the enemy tactical employment of the military means, as stages for the optimal attainment of those entrusted goals. These “operational systems” are full developed in my book “On the Nature of War”, specially dedicated to the international educational military market.

The Counterinsurgency War in Iraq

 Possibilities and Faults of the Conflicting Rivals. Why can win the Iraqi authorities?
The whole virulence and force estimated in the Iraqi insurgency are ballasted by his divisions, his divergent or opposite interests, his scanty real combative capacity and his problems to join combative major effective units. The people is neutral in these moments and only a certain degree of constraint, at least suggested, inclines it punctually and temporarily in favor of one or other. The Iraqi army is lacking experience, spirit of body and combative interest; but it is native, not occupant, and does not depart from zero and with the skill and professionalism of his advisors and cadres, it can advance stages rapidly. The cost to pay for all is the time, prolonged in an internal painful and costly struggle.

The Iraqi insurgency and his political-military characteristics.


The Iraqi rebels constitute a strange and not miscible miscellany. Among other factions or groups, they are present: Al-Qaida groups of with nearly autonomous character, coordinated by Abu Ayyub al-Masri; this nickname wants to say, «father of Ayyub, alias The Egyptian», very slightly identifying, except in villages and places in the field. Loyal Baazists (the party had militias that were activated militarily very little before the assault on April, 2003) to Saddam Hussein and former members of his army and administration. Islamic volunteers of several countries. Members of the intelligence agencies of, at least, Syria and Iran. The Sunnis and Chiís social religious local and regional militias. The national resistance Sunni net, principally formed by previous members of the Iraqi administration and army, opposite to the ex-president, but dismissed with excessive wisdom and hurry by Paul Bremer, which are joined now by patriots and religious Iraqis and irritated young unemployed men, before the prolongation of the occupation and the good work of the Coalition forces. Not very much time ago, there were detected common criminals bands. Local groups of clans chiefs and masters of the war, making be worth his political and economic rights.
The Iraqi rebels do not have to win a war. Its principal strategic goal is to remain active with a sufficient wearing intensity. Its forces do not have to return to home. All those of the coalition, yes. Simply not retiring, not losing, they compel the Coalition forces to keep its onerous struggle for a vague, indefinite time or to withdraw and return to house.
Something similar happened in Cyprus. The National Organization of Cypriot Fight or Ethniki Organosis Kipriahou Agonos or E.O.K.A., commanded by general Georgios Grivas, alias «Dighemis», took to end a difficult guerrilla warfare, because the scanty of the field, the force of the enemy and the lack of good hiding places, for the independence of the island against the British domination. Finally, the Enosis or political union with Greece was not obtained, but the independence of the island. Grivas, in his «General Plan for the Revolutionary Action in Cyprus» was emphasizing, «it is not necessary to believe that we, by means of these form and procedures, will get a material and total defeat of the English forces in Cyprus. We rather look for his moral defeat, harassing and upsetting them in such a way that, ultimately, we obtain the goal of the struggle. That one was until the end our strategic goal. We owe the success to the fact of having stuck firmly to it».
The propaganda constitutes a strategic basic aim of all the Iraqi rebels, with which the agencies and the western communications means collaborate filled with enthusiasm. Any rebellious assault successfully and showy is immediately broadcast to the world. This always debilitates the will of permanency of the USA and his allies. His legions called by his families, want to return, to enjoy the varied and superfluous consumption goods and the exotic vacations. The Spartan mothers, something unthinkable nowadays, were saying to her children when they were going out in campaign, when the benign station came and they leave the winter barracks: «you shall return with the shield or on the shield». When they were fleeing, the big and heavy shield of the Greek hoplite, capable of resisting the tremendous blows of the Sarisas or long lances of 5 m., principal weapon of their phalanxes, was a hindrance and they were rejecting it.
The insurgents know that the fight will not finish simply with the returning home of the forces of the coalition. This makes that some Iraqi groups, more worried by the serious and always unforeseeable consequences of a social chaos that could be established then, could be attracted with political and civil arrangements to leaving the weapons. Also, a great majority of the Iraqis do not want the return to the power of the Baaz party and its exclusive repressive methods of government and permanency in power. On the other hand, it is necessary to explain and convince the Iraqi people that the best way, in order that the military foreign presence stops, is the disappearance of the armed general revolt. The constant improvements in trade, services, supply of energies are having positive effects and must be exhibited emphatically by the National administration. Reciprocally, its destruction or sabotage by the rebels must be capitalized always against them by the communications means and agents of the Iraqi state.
The existential and ideological dispersion of the armed rebels does that its military co-ordination is difficult and only temporal, partial and for convenience. This dispersion, in turn, makes very difficult the political fight of the Iraqi government and his foreign allies against an insurgency with multiple and yet opposite interests and political and social aims.

Its operative characteristics.

The armed rebels are elusive, defending themselves by the concealment and, in less measure, with a certain local mobility. Also they possess a higher availability or combative alert during the offensive actions that they tackle. Let’s remember that any military set, from the crew of a tank up to an army, spends most of his time not deployed or ready to fight. His time passes doing labors and operations that will allow him to fight in the chosen moment. So much if he is training, embarking, moving, being equipped, being supplied, being reorganized, waiting or resting, any unit is not in full combat availability.
An autonomous advanced Iraqi band, depending on a chief of sector, consists of ambush groups, execution and kidnapping groups and sabotage groups. His functions are evident. Every functional specialty has a coordinating chief, who depends on the former one. In the cities and related road ways, the components of each group are not numerous, as maximum a few teams. They try to support its communications across a communications point, functionally dependent on the headquarters, which acts as intermediary in them to avoid enemy detection. The “effective modern” electronic follow-up of the mobile phones is deceived with corridors and couriers. In this auxiliary group of the command (a primitive and without logistics S-4, which depends on a civil parallel organization of supply), a primary service of health joins, carry out by male nurses. The most serious cases go to hospitals or particular loyal doctors, if they exist in the zone.
The insurgents nets are secret or latent and operate aggressively only against the mobility of the army and the police, which they surprise, are a nuisance, cause damages, kill and mutilate. The assault from several directions creates bags of fire and enfilade zones on the enemy. This produces besides a synergetic and enervating effect in the attacked one. That is similar to the result of multi traumatism or to that of multiple nº 8 or 9 pellets in a minor hunt piece. They lack of enough punch to give decisive blows or to finish off an important enemy. They erode a military unit (not a small unit or isolated elements), but they do not annihilate it.
Against the prepared military positions established in depth they are not effective, though it exists afraid of the guerrillas and a lot of money is expended protecting them. Their bands lack important combat capacity and are also easily canalized towards approximation avenues with registered heavy fire and medium grazing fire. For the moment, they lack engineers’ training, which would allows them the punctual break of the static protector barriers. And of superior training, to use the crawling individual approximation, without time limitation, in their diverse missions out and inside the military and police camps and facilities.
The logistics is a great disadvantage, especially the supply of equipment and no handmade goods. They possess many small active rears or bases, many full surrounded by their enemies, which activities can be detected always. The supply of the bands is provided by the support organization.

To win the battle for the favor of the Iraqi people.
The rebels, by force or thanks to their popularity, are capable of being mixed and to be diluted in the civil population. And to hide safe in houses, stores, garages, buildings, caves, etc. Though a part of the population is with them, a degree of constraint exercised by armed rebels exists always. If the Iraqi army is capable of permanently protect a neighborhood or population from the assaults or the presence of hostile irregulars, it also can progressively demand the due national loyalty to its inhabitants. What is inadmissible is that the civil local populations are intermittently subject to the armed pressure of one and another rival. So demanding from them a loyalty that does not offer safety to them. The clearly hostile recalcitrant elements in the different places, can be temporarily re-located in zones assured by the government, to neutralize them. The collective punishments of the populations are never suitable. Probably these are only justified, at least largely, by the immediate safety of the military forces. In any case, it is necessary to explain well the reasons for its application.
The rebels are tactics and operatively semiautonomous. The communications between the bands are moderated and even scanty, both the explicit ones and, especially, the tacit ones. They win the combats fitting their advantages with the weaknesses of the enemy army. The techniques of feigning retreats and establishing ambushes are useful to they against non skilled forces and still not too much motivated. They can choose the place and the moment of their attacks and carry out the necessary training to dominate the skills to be used in those.

Command, control and communications of the bands.
Its high dispersion exercises a considerable tension in its command structure (principally in the middle and high commands), because of its extensive and flat flowchart.
At the same time, this spatial extension allows them to cut temporarily the lines of communications of the enemy, with a psychological important negative effect. The systems of command, communications and control are slightly primitive at the moment, which impedes the regional concentration of bands or groups for more important actions. Its effective real command is divided by the dispersion of the chiefs and groups and the disparity or the antagonism of interests.

The Iraqi Army and its allies.

The abuses against the civil population are always counter-productive in a counterinsurgency struggle and more in an internal revolt. Sometimes, the hurries to form new troops lead to a deficient or incomplete training of these. They are not vaccinated against the stress, specially here the mental one, nor against the frustration of the not fulfilled plans or of the ungrateful enemy surprises. This leads to discharge almost inevitably the anger and the enervating impotence in the civil population, intermingled voluntary or by force with the rebels.
The wars against the armed irregular are by its Nature long, painful and difficult. The prolong character originates from the need that a popular force, departing almost from nothing, develops and spreads. And managing to moral or militarily defeat a regular own or of occupation army. The difficulty and the cruel evil arise from the high civil component that takes part in them. They are wars located in the home courtyard, in the own or occupied rear.
It is necessary, therefore, to avoid the prolongation of the conflict, which is mining the conviction of the own forces and allowing that the enemy should spread, strengthen and prevail.
The basic problem of the new Iraqi army is its lack of democratic convictions in the western style, in order to defend the new regime. It operates, as much, as a civil Police, which is not forced to die in its trade and which normally acts in its operations with overwhelming means superiority. If they do not feel and assume some values, it is not possible to accept the commitment with them. And acquire this way the necessary availability to work actively for them or to die in its defense. Already there have entered in active service several hundred thousands of Iraqi military and police men formed by the North Americans. But they are fundamentally destined to surveillance, custody and garrison labors. Their frame of mind and combative disposition are low and unequal, according to their origin. This is now a mass army.

The American military doctrine. Has it effective application here?
The massive employment of the heavy fire capacity continues being the principal «argument» of the US Army. Its doctrine (Field Manual 100-5, Operations, last edition of 1986) does not emphasize the initiative and rests in reacting to the enemy action from covered positions in the whole operations zone. One of the operative principles that gets force in this renewed doctrine is that of the simultaneity. This one establishes to beat at the same time, with heavy fire of artillery and aviation, the first and the second enemy assault echelons and even its reserve, using then aviation and tactical rocketry. The infantry and tanks forces are designed, in a secondary employment, to counter-attack this beaten enemy in all its depth, to assure the decision.
Here the detection and the selective attack to the enemy weak points don’t exist. Nor the general saving of means (that the contributors pay to the industrial corporations) and human lives. Nor the skilful, risky and fruitful maneuvers of functional or positional dislocation of the enemy forces. The Marshall Von Hindenburg invented the adage: «A battle without Schwerpunkt (principal effort) is like a man without character». Acting the North American army evokes a heavy, forceful mace, hammering and excessive. The Afrika Korps, on the contrary, remembers us an elegant, agile, unforeseeable, sufficient and effective foil.
The pompously so called fourth generation wars are the counterinsurgency wars or guerrilla warfare or irregular wars or armed revolts or liberation wars or organized banditry, which always have existed, coexisting with the conventional variants of warfare. They are those that the USA has lost or not gained lately: Vietnam, The Lebanon (peace disembarkation of “marines”, then demolished in their barrack) and Somalia (the uncontrollable and unforeseeable wasp’s nest of «all against all» by the local lords of the war and the Islamic militias). They are uneven wars (they call them now «asymmetrical warfare») against an enemy of lower technological military level relative to the regular enemy forces, always rooted in the own or occupied civil population and slight militarily intense but very extensive in the space and the time.
With embarrassing frequency, when the human or technological North American «sensors» detect some probable rebellious Iraqi or from the foreign “muyaidin” activity, first they devastate the building, the «block», the zone. Then they go to sweep up and to do the corpses inventory, the «body count», because they are very scrupulous with their statistics. Sometimes among the rubbles they can meet the corpses of an Arabic innocent and numerous family. They abuses of the attrition, which is indiscriminate and perverse when the enemy fuses with the civil ones. They neglect the active, unexpected patrolling, which needs proportionally less material and human means, but more trade, moral courage, freedom of action and creativity in the low and intermediate commands and NCO and in the men.

Effective counter insurgents operations in Iraq.

A complex operation of search, location and combat and destruction of the bands will demand successively to the military forces: to locate them, to converge on the zone, to attack and to defeat them, to be reorganized and reequip and to be dispersed. These seemingly unconnected operations of numerous small units, coordinated by the intention and aims of the high command and by the responsibility in the execution way of the direct commands, they enjoy great initiative, rapidity and maximum flexibility. This allows to the national army to take the freedom of action and to keep the initiative and a high relative mobility with the enemy, during all the offensive decided operations. Technique, tactical and operatively, the Iraqi military men must be, by trade and capacities, more professionals, more actives, better equipped, more lethal, more effective, that the irregular forces to which they search and fight.
During long time yet the air and spatial North American means, as spy satellites, not crewed planes and planes of the system Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS), will have serious limitations for the detection and monitoring of small ground forces, even regular ones, in the difficult crossing areas and with possibilities of concealment, as mountains, jungles and forests, marshes and urbanized zones (industrial, of storage and distribution and of housings). These not only offer concealment, but also covered from the heavy and light fire up to the close distances of combat.
An observation and of combat patrols’ net constitutes the fighting system adapted and advised for this type of irregular warfare. Carry out against an enemy trained (it has been given sufficient time for do it), with aroused fanaticism, re-grown by the successful or believed successes and improved by a natural selection (the most clumsy and worse are falling down first, and let’s not say the suicides of only one use, who immediately leave the fighting), but that still has not matured structurally nor operatively. They constitute the natural sensors to detect the operative rebellious activity previous or between offensive actions, so as that the civil Iraqi population accepts and supports moderately well its own army.
In January, 2004, the North American intelligence intercepted a memorandum of 17 pages written by Abu Musad al-Zarqawi (the former Al-Qaida local delegate chief, which has passed away to the Houris Garden) and directed to Osama bin Laden, in which he was expressing to him his worry for his survival: «In Iraq there are no mountains where we could shelter, nor forests in whose thickness we could hide. There are spies on eyes everywhere. Our backs are exposed and our movements, in view of all».

Locating, deceiving and penetrating them.
A necessary complement of the regular net are the false rebels bands. These would be destined to operate in zones inclined to the insurgency, from where some of their members  come from. Their activity and concealment would be favored by the decentralized character of the rebels groups. Their missions would be to obtain information, to prove the loyalty of the civil ones and to annihilate small enemy groups or lone suicidal terrorists. They should not be bigger than a reinforced squad or section, except in combat special occasions.
The false rebels bands were used by enough success in the fighting against the kikuyos of the Mau-Mau in Kenya, against the Soviet guerrillas by the Germans during the World War II and against the Hukbalahap communists of Luis Taruk, the Supreme, in The Philippines by the Philippine army. In Spain the so called «counterparts» were used between 1946 and 1949. Their operative scope was minor. It was a question of «neutralizing» the rural population of the zones where the forces of the hostile «groups” were operating, by means of visits of the simulated guerrillas to the villagers. There came a moment that in the villages all were distrusting of the not habitual bands, that were coming in search of food and other helps, since it was not known if it was a counterpart.
The patrols’ and small military positions net has three operative purpose: to deny the initiative and the mobility to the guerrillas; to cut their communications with their bases, with their collaborators’ net and between the groups; and to frighten away them, like to the hunt, from their protective civil bases and their isolated redoubts.
The official net operatively covers a wide extension and so is capable of receiving the sensitive information. The knowledge of the rebels of its neighborhood and of its zone can be one of its major assets. Their refuges and depots would end located. The present impunity conviction of the rebels would disappear. With the advantage of being a native army, its initial weapons must be the discretion, the silence, using more the knives and hand grenades than its assault guns, the relative mobility with the enemy, with the night as collaborator and shelter in its operations.

The necessary ideal supply system.

The difficulties of supply in a great extension area, «empty» of enemies and without «hard» targets, can be overcome with: an anticipating logistics (a good calculation of the foreseen necessary supplies, with the commitment of the commands users); endowed with smaller and nearby pre located depots; using heavy fire pre located bases for support covering the operations zone; using all the possible common parts in equipment, food (caring of religions influence), etc.; and using small mobile armored units (minimum the reinforced interarm platoon provided with light vehicles, which could rapidly reinforce the normal military patrols). The utilization of gun and transport helicopters centralized directed, allows to rapidly create, once clarified the situation, a gravity center of the counterinsurgency effort and to supply rapidly and provisionally the most committed small units.

Lightness, mobility and relative speed in operations.
The necessary mobility of the regular forces in the fighting against the hostile irregulars of all kind prefers light combat vehicles. The Abrams tanks and the VCI Bradley need re supply every 8 hours in constant actions and are not silent, but very evident in their operations. They are designed to act massively by the fire, maneuver and shock in a gravity center of the effort against enemy regular modern forces. Also they can serve to crush a civil enemy population, as the Israelis did in Gaza, during the operation of rescue of their captured soldier.
But here we are trying to eliminate diverse guerrillas, intermingled with the Iraqi people. The armored light vehicles type Mowag 25 Piranha (14 Tm.) of Swiss design and with several manufacturing plants and the new American armored Humvee (4 Tm.) might mark the superior and low limits for the military armored vehicles to be employed in this counterinsurgency struggle.

To surround, to disperse the enemy rejection, to disturb its command and its plans and to destroy them.

Also they (the net) can react to the rebel detected activity, establishing rapidly way controls, and sufficiently sealing a more or less extensive zone. While the hermetic ring is closed next with other nearby troops or with heliborne forces. This simultaneity of initial actions has a synergetic effect that protects the small isolated military units, with exposed vulnerable flanks, in their initiative.
The surprise, besides, is a fundamental principle of this war. The relative rapidity neutralizes the alert notices that their civil Iraqi friends can pass to the bands. In Cyprus, the scanty British helicopters (it were the 50s in last century) were turning irrelevant the communication efforts of the collaborators’ net of  the E.O.K.A. about the movements of the British troops.
The best effect on the detected boxed band is achieved here by the concentric and inconsiderate attack (maximum impulse or quantity of used movement) with limited aims, by some advance spears with enough combat capacity (minimum, the reinforced platoon with heavy infantry weapons) over the interior of the siege. Since the sweep of the siege area from one or two directions is more laborious and gives the enemy, specially individual or by teams, a slip away chance. The static military forces can then be contracting by successive jumps the internal or both perimeters, according to the cases, established of the siege.

To gain the struggle through the time.
The patience must be a characteristic of all the implied ones in this war. Also it is necessary for to be effective, to reach a minimum of trade and seniority. In the zones most favorable to the bands, it is very easy that the operations of search and siege are initially closed in emptiness. It is necessary to go gaining and selecting their zone population, as we have said before, in order that the military trade and the people loyalty combined should produce its military and social incomes. The successive victories of the Iraqi army will be gaining to it the favor of the people, because all they want to be emotionally with the winning side. And because the interests of the Iraqis are volatile, unlike and yet contradictory, based on the loyalty to the family, to the clan and to the tribe.
In this type of war the armed forces cannot defend from the enemy all its possible targets. Besides, never there would be enough remaining troops to keep the initiative and to carry out a multiple, flexible and mobile offensive action against the armed rebels. Here there are no fronts to establishing and cozy, protective and supplying operative rears. What exists are armed enemies groups, their logistic support and information groups and many groups of sympathizers with them. That are integrated all according to the different personal courage of their different members. And all of them widespread and established through a big territory without limits or classic rears.
To liberate sufficient forces, the Iraqi army has to defend only its strategic objectives and its operative communications. The defense of towns and minor objectives, specially out of the Sunni zone (in the center and south center of the country), must fall in local units of police and of loyal civil self defense. These supported by military mobile units of its sector. With help of the heavy fire and the airborne mobility of the North Americans, even with the support of some of its elite units (rangers, marines, armored), the Iraqis can be trying to carry out major actions of siege and annihilation of bands and groups of them. To increasing the confidence and the respect of the own population and its experience in the resolution of its challenge of pacification of the country.

HEZBOLLAH.

In the active vanguard of the new «Supranational Undemocratic Revolutionary Totalitarianism» of the 21st century: the Islamic Radical Intransigent Fundamentalism (the IRIF). Brilliant, characteristic and terrible origins, stimulated and trained by the Jomeini’s Revolutionary Guards.

Hezbollah arises after the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon in June, 1982. Hezbollah takes advantage of the great reigning confusion for it, between the established Lebanese different factions (among them, Amal, the Shiite political religious organization which was receiving then the loyalties of the great majority of the Lebanese Shiites), the neighboring states and the great powers. Hezbollah is going to prosper in the emptiness of power and action created by the frustration of some ones and the weariness and the skepticism of others. Hezbollah’s catalyst is going to be the Islamic republic of Iran. Which is going to infiltrate through the Antilibano mountain chain up to the Bekaa altiplane, her revolutionary, selected, capable and motivated «volunteers», throughout the first months following the invasion. They were not too many. But the sufficient ones to indoctrinate, train armed militias and support and stimulate the creation of local active Shiite groups. This was Hezbollah’s original core.

The Islam is, in its simpler meaning, a simple faith, with external and social well definite, easy to follow and observe rites. In the Islam there exist five great rites, which are symbolized in its iconography by an opened hand: The profession of faith, short declaration that opens anyone the entry to the Islam; the 5 daily invocations (the Salat) to Allah; the fasting in the Ramadan month (the Roza); the charity (the Zakat) with helpless, disabled and poor persons of the Umma (Muslim universal community) and the peregrination to Mecca or Hajj at least once in the life, if resources are possessed, which is realized in community, between the seventh and the tenth day of last month of the lunar calendar, Dhul i Hijja. The administration of the Zakat corresponds to the ulemas or to the ministers, according to the sects. This gives them a power and an independence that no civil lay power of the Muslim countries has even dared to question.

There exists a great ideological and practical difference between the Sunnism and the Shiism. This one feels pursued, in reason of the dynastic and ideological orthodoxy that proclaims and defends. The schism in the Islam start from the fourth caliph, Alí, cousin, son-in-law and companion of the Prophet. The death of his grandson Hussein in Kerbala’s battle, Iraq, in the year 680, will mark the real beginning of the schism between the Shiites and those whom it will be called later Sunnis. Anchored in the original past, the Shiism does not evolve, as part of its identity signs, and admits fewer revelation sources. This way, it historically assumes a fatalistic, passive attitude, even of physical suffering for it, waiting for the return of the last missing imam (caliph), the seventh one since Hussein. Imam is the name that the great politician religious guides take in the Shiism. That one, which is hidden, not died, will return as Mahdi (the guided by Allah), at any one moment of the History, to make triumph the orthodox Umma (the Shiites). But also in the Shiism cases of insurgent action have existed, even with certain success and popular active implantation, as in Jomeini’s Iran or in the Lebanon with Hezbollah or Allah’s party. The Shiites constitute today about 12 % of all the Muslims.

Unlike what some pseudo trendies deduce, Hezbollah’s hostile vision towards the West derives more from the religious dogmas of the islamist totalitarian organization, that from the foreign policies of the democratic powers. During the short war of 2006, Hezbollah led its operative campaign with a high strategic and tactical knowledge and great profusion of conventional armament. Its ideologists understand and value its «blood struggle» as part of the Islam’s war against the unfaithful persons. A general war without political conventional borders. And which goal is, first, to re-define the map of Middle East according to those interests, and, finally, to manage to establish a world Islamic orthodox order.

The Hezbollah’s thinkers do not consider the Lebanon as a possible reality right now. Only when the western influence is eliminated in the zone and Israel destroyed, the Muslim Lebanon will be able to have a proper entity. For Hezbollah, the Western world is one in its hatred and hostility towards its vision of world Islamic unity. In this delirious puzzle, the United States (the Great Satan) are the command of this conspiracy and its aggressive campaign. In them Israel is only one more weapon against the Muslims. Only that is very active, nearby and, till now, very effective. We are not forgotten other modern democratic countries in this attributed and sealed role, despite of us. France, Germany, Great Britain, etc., and even Russia and, lately, China are associates, co-religionists, collaborators, friends of Satan. This about «Satan and company» gives unit of intention and coherence to Hezbollah. Only the «Union of the Islam» can defeat to this unfaithful persons’ tremendous federation. And from this, for example, Hezbollah’s recognition to the Islamic politically active and provocative Iran, as part of that one. In Hezbollah’s lexicon, the Islamic republic of Iran is «Iran el-Islam», which indicates that Iran is only a province of the great «dar el-Islam», the world future caliphate, the Umma in action, in the Shiite version.

There is in Hezbollah a strong integration phenomenon of fanaticism: the promised Paradise already is here or, at least, within reach of the simple faithful believer. It consists in joining the Umma and fulfilling a few clear and simple rules: the so called «5 rites of the Islam». Then Hezbollah preaches them that the Koran says that if they fight in the «blood struggle» of Allah, God «will reinforce them in their resolution and will give them the victory» (caution, to the Umma). And to those who die in this roses path, the immediate and sure prize is the «Houris garden» during an indefinite time (caution, not necessarily eternal). Where all their sensory and sensual appetites will be satisfied, to their personal mundane and wished range. And those who do not fall, specially belonging of the families or the most ancient clans of the «community», will see their material wealth increased with good part of the booty of war taken to the unfaithful persons. It is all a complete, simple, coherent and satisfactory program, specially for the oppressed, those without option, the overwhelmed, the prosecuted and the resentful from this difficult world in which they live.

The Jihad or Muslim Holy War

How it was interpreted and it is interpreted today? What role could have terrorists in it? Is it possible to come to a pacific living together with most of the Islamic people?  How can we control the imames, the preachers and readers in mosques, almost always without a reliable, sole and canonic formation in the Koran and the Sura?  What can really do the ulemas and muftis (the Islamic Law doctors, not theologians) in order to control the «Terrorism in the name of the Islam» and establish a reliable peace of the Islam with all peoples in the World?

What is and what does mean the Jihad in the context of the Muslim revelation?
The Islam is, in its simpler meaning, a simple faith, with external and social well definite, easy to follow and fulfill rites. The rites are canonize actions by a religion and necessary in order that it imbues in the personal and collective soul of its believers. In the Islam there exist 5 big rites, which are symbolized in its iconography by an opened hand:
The faith profession, short declaration that opens anyone the entry to the Islam. The 5 daily invocations (the Salat) to Allah. The fasting during the Ramadan´s month (the Roza). The charity (the Zakat) with the helpless, disabled and poor (in this order) of the Umma (Moslem universal community). And the peregrination to Mecca or the Hajj at least once in the life, if there are possessed enough resources, which is realized in community, congregating nowadays simultaneously several million persons, between the seventh and the tenth day of last month of the lunar calendar, Dhul i Hijja.
The Jihad, the holy war, the blooding effort in Allah’s path, is directed against those that THREATEN the Umma. These can be whether the hostile external unfaithful persons, as the not Muslims which coexist in dar-el-Islam, the lands where the Umma rules politically, and that have broken their «protection agreement» with it. The Jews and the Christians have theoretical right to it, as peoples mentioned in the Koran and that hold some of the books considered also as prophetic by the Islam. The Jihad is considered to be a practically equal obligation to one of the so called Five Pillars of the Islam, already mentioned.
The Koran has numerous “aleyas” or verses that prescribe and encourage the struggle armed in Allah’s way. Used by an “imam” or preacher, which directs the prayers and Koran readings in the mosque, and which credentials are not so much an exquisite Islamic formation of several years in a credited madrassa (Koran school), but rather to possess an empathy with his community and a certain gift of oratory, these absolute, direct and repeated “indications” can turn out to be incendiary.
The Moroccan terrorist “El Chino”, who next committed suicide in Leganés, presided several times, as was said, the Islam prayer in the M-30 road mosque. Was the imam “El Chino” a reliable follower of the Noble Koran?
Sura (chapter), 4, aleya (verse) 33 (29) «…Oh, believers…do not kill yourselves…».
2, 10 (11) «When it is said to them: Do not commit disorders (voice with which the crimes are defined) in the Earth, they answer: Far from it, we introduce in it the good order (the Good)».
2, 11 (12) «Alas!, they commit disorders, but they do not understand it».
28, 77 «As Allah does the Good, also make you the good and do not foment the corruption (the Evil)» (murder of innocent and of peoples that receive you -the lands of dar-el-Ahd-, drunkenness, drugs, unnecessary damages of the things).

We have respectfully taken TWO translations of the Noble Koran to realize a SELECTION of the aleyas that treat on the Jihad. We don not use the sunna (tradition) of the Prophet, which can be an object of controversy, about its legal legitimacy, with the Chiís and other minor Islamic groups.
Sura 2, aleya 186 (190) «Do the Holy war for Allah’s reason against those who make the war to you».
2, 187 (191) «Kill them anywhere that you find them and expel them wherefrom they have expelled you (Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans? But, perhaps did they come first there?)».
2, 189 (190) «Attack them (the unfaithful persons) until there is not presently idolatry and all adoration is given to Allah». It repeats almost exactly in 8, 40 (39).
2, 212 (216) «The war has been prescribed to you and you have taken distaste of it».
2, 214 (217) «The temptation of the idolatry is worse than the slaughter. The unfaithful persons will not stop doing the war to you, while they have not made you resign your religion, if they can».
2, 215 (218) «Those who leave their country and fight in Allah’s path (the Jihad) can wait for His mercy».
4, 7 (69) «Those who obey Allah and to His Messenger will enter in the society of the righteous, of the martyrs, of the virtuosos, whom Allah has filled with His benefits».
4, 74 «That fight in Allah’s way those that change the life in this world, for that in the Last one. And that who fights in Allah’s way, as dies or turns out to be victorious, We will give him an enormous remuneration».
4, 79 (77) «…have exclaimed: Lord, why do you order us the war? …Answer them: The possession of the life here below is small thing; the future life is the real good for those who fear Allah. Here they will not cheat you even in a filament».
4, 105 (104) «And do not weaken in chasing these people. If you feel sorry, also they feel sorry, but you expect from Allah what they cannot hope».
9, 39 «If you do not go to the battle, Allah will punish you with a painful punishment: He will replace you by another people».
9, 92 (91) «The weak persons, the patients, those who do not have means, will not be forced to go to the war, provided that are sincere respect of Allah and His Messenger». (This makes fall practically the obligation of the Jihad in the Umma, which must contribute this way a suitable number of muhaydins).
9, 124 (123) «Oh, believers!, attack the unfaithful persons who surround you: that they always find in you a rough reception».
47, 4 «When you find unfaithful persons, kill them up to the point of doing with them a  slaughter and put chains strongly on the captive ones to prevent them from fleeing».
47, 37 (35) «Do not show cowardice and do not call the unfaithful persons to make the peace, when you are the strongest».

The principal branches of the Islam and their ideology.
The Sunnism, which follow 90 % of the Muslims nowadays, also accepts as Allah´s revelation the tradition (the Sunna) of the Prophet. These are his facts and his commentaries or hadices. The major or minor rigor in the selection and acceptance of this tradition characterize three of its theological schools, founded astride between the VIIIth and IXth centuries.
The most opened and flexible school, the Chafií, founded by the Palestinian al-Chafii, died in Cairo on 820 at the age of 53 years, opens an encouraging door for the pacific evolution of the Islam. It accepts also the consensus of the wise persons of the community and the analogical reasoning or qiijas, as correct ways for the adjustment of the Islam to all the times and places, from his “rural, illiterate, poor, medieval and surrounded of hostile peoples, origin”. For it starts from the hadiz: «Allah recognizes the Good in what the Muslims have judged as such «.
There exists a great ideological and practical difference between the Sunnism and the Chiism. The last feels pursued, in reason of the dynastic (the Chiism arises from the fourth caliph, Alí, cousin, son-in-law and companion of the Prophet) and ideological orthodoxy (it admits fewer revelation sources), that it proclaims and defends. This way, it assumes historically a fatalistic, passive attitude, even of physical suffering for it, waiting for the return of the (caliph) Imam missing. Imam is the name that the political – religious guides take in the Chiism, not only the common mosques´ prayer. That one will return as Mahdi (the guided by Allah), in a given moment of the History, to make triumph the orthodox Umma (themselves).
But also cases of insurgent action have happened in the Chiism, even with certain success and popular implantation, as in Jomeini’s Iran, in the Lebanon with Hezbollah or Allah’s Party and his subsidiary Hamas, in Palestine.
It seems to be clear that the Sunnism is more prepared to treat and accept the pacific living together and the relations of all kinds with other religions and political ideologies, at least in certain moments and countries. And that with the Chiism is necessary to negotiate nowadays from a position with more determination and strength.

The modern violent Muslim radicalism and his possible ways and solutions towards a pacific and respectful living together.
The radical Islamic insurgents devoted themselves between the 60s and 80s in last century, to attack to those that they were qualifying of Moslem corrupt and false, socialistic or liberal pro occidental governments. Their fortune was small for all the effort made: the retreat of the Soviets from Afghanistan, with the logistic western support, and the capture of the power in Sudan, guided by al-Turabi, after they infiltrated and got strong in his Army, which is still a unique case. From 90, their aims is Western developed countries.
Their operative present characteristics are:
Their unnecessary and indiscriminate brutality, which discredits them before their religion. Already we saw a minimal example of 4 moral important aleyas, which they despise and not comply with, without Allah had changed them for they. Sura 2, aleya 100 (106) «We do not abrogate any verse of this Book, nor we will make erase any one of your memory, without replacing it by other one equal or better».
The absolute absence of venerable and pious ulemas and muftíes in their side.
Their great operative decentralization owing to the universality of the Umma, which goes beyond the idea of nation or race. But that prevents them from obtaining strategic aims, though their punctual actions are important, painful and fearsome.
Their failure in joining actively and firmly to a social wide group, which gives coverage and permanent impulse to their movement. The most mentally ill activists are in the habit of being isolating progressively of the society (at least, emotional and ideologically) though they «live» inside it, for the sake of their violent methods, to which they sacrifice everything for the efficiency. They follow a process of segregation, purification (in their improvised and not orthodox rites, they fast, use water from Islam´s sacred places and green banderoles with inscriptions of the aleyas that favor their cause), consecration and radicalization. Up to coming to the death and even to the suicide in their limited actions. And then they become extinct, as weak, sterile and deviant that are, far from the Umma and her real interests.
Their zeal of publicity, to which the West contributes insensitively, stupid (it is not to know what it should know) and glad.
Their present aim is to strike any government, since the radical and aggressive caliphate in dar-el-Islam does not exist nowadays.

In the face of this own terrorism (war actions against general, innocent and indiscriminate personal targets), the Islamic world is paralyzed and do not knows what to say or do. The spokesmen and intellectual affirm that the Islam is peace and tolerance. But this is not totally true, as we saw before. The majority of the Muslims take away from the attacks for opportunism, to protect the Islam, worried by the increasing rejection that it suffers in Western countries. But, when do the ulemas or the muftís intervene in the polemic? Almost never.
Never was carried out inside the Islam a deep reflection on the political and religious opportunity of the violence. Does someone know Islamic active pacifists? It is not the case  that the intellectual laymen Moslem react. These are not operative in the way that we know in the West, since for a good Muslim the politics, the society and the religion form the only, exclusive and inseparable trinity established by Allah. Besides, the social and political failure of the intellectual laymen Arabs remains tied with that of the nationalistic, leftist and Europeanized elite, that stimulated the independence of the different Arabic nations after the World War II.
The Islam has to assume that the Jihad was necessary for the establishment and the defense of the believers’ primitive community, the Prophet establishing the Islamic state from the violent destruction of the jahiliyya (the existing barbarism previous to the Islam Arabic). And even the Jihad could be useful for its RAPID extension through the world, according with the existing condition of culture and development of the medieval civilizations. But  its historical opportunity does not exist nowadays and then it must be replaced for «another type of EFFORT in Allah’s way», which concept already exists in the Sunna and that might be recaptured and proclaimed by the ulemas and the pious muftis, which are the ideologists of the real and everlasting Islam. And, certainly, those enjoy the most ample political, social and economic independence: they are respected and / or fearsome by the governments in their respective countries, and are usually those who administer the Zakat or the canonical alms.
Since the emergence of 4 principal theological Sunnis schools before mentioned, the principle of the personal reflection effort, the ichtihad, got power in the Islam. The ichtihad is going to allow the development of the Arabic culture, so much for the civil aspects (sciences, trade, literature, art), as for the enrichment of its theology. It is the base of Islamic lawyers as al-Chafii. The ichtihad is a source of brilliancy, creativity, enrichment, progress and peace in the way of the personal and collective effort towards God (this is the nucleus and the reason of the Islam), when already the Umma has spread and multiplied enormously through the world.
But, circa the XIth century (V century from the hégira or march to Medina), the theologians close the door to the ichtihad. The methodological Islamic approach alters: from then, it is imitating, repeating and following itself and abusing of the doctrine compendiums.

What can really do the ulemas and muftis (the Islamic Law doctors) in order to control the “Terrorism in the Name of the Islam” and establish a reliable peace of the Islam with all peoples in the World?
Would it be possible that the most illustrious and lucid theologians and lawyers of the Islam were assessing and facing the tremendous internal and external problems of living together, which the Umma faces?
Would it be possible that they were agreeing  to use (already we know that it is not new at all) the reflection from the canonical sources, as instrument of advance, adjustment, external relations and perfection through the time of the Islamic community?
Would it be possible that they were preaching against the free and sterile violence that is exercised in the name of the Islam by some very hallucinated minorities?
Would it be possible that they were controlling the quality of training of the imames in the different countries and the exclusion of their noble functions of the upstarts that, being served of the direction of the prayers, preach fanatical, deviant ideologies, criminals and without real future?
Would it be possible that they will declare that the interests of the Islam and of the Umma have Spain and the rest of Europe as good friends, a part of dar-el-Ahd, the countries where the Umma does not dominate politically, but it is in peace with their inhabitants and can realize its performances and rites?
Some of the craziest Islamic guerrillas were the Algerians in the 90s. Without being not at least studious of the Islam and with very earthly interests, they were excommunicated (of the Umma) in their delirium, some groups to others. The takfir or anathema stems from kfur or ungodliness. This one relates directly to the religious chaos or jahiliyya, previous to the Islam in Arabia. For it is declared impious someone who is or tries to be a Muslim and is exiled, at least morally, of the Umma.
Would it be to ask too much the ulemas to use the institution of the takfir against the most recalcitrant, dangerous and criminal Islamic terrorists, which act turned aside perversely (maliciously or after being reprimand by them without result) in name of the Islam?