Tag: Geopolitics

Jihadi Rehab: Regime change and the ‘Prince of Counterterrorism’

Sep 21st, 2024
US grand strategy and Saudi counterterrorism: turning domestic insurgents into mercenaries

Prior to his ouster in a palace coup Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef was viewed by US and British intel agencies as someone they could very much do business with. Indeed, he had been educated in the US and later received training from the FBI and Scotland Yard.

Mohammed bin Nayef (MBN) had been for over a decade the Saudi regime’s most influential security official. Former director George Tenet regarded MBN as the CIA’s closest partner in fighting Al Qaeda, and the threat it posed to the House of Saud during 2003-6. The Prince “was someone in whom we developed a great deal of trust and respect,” Tenet said.

MBN would become head of Saudi intelligence in February 2012. Under his adviser and intel chief Saad Aljabri, MBN’s security ministries ran a network of informants inside Al-Qaeda in the Kingdom. The CIA would award MBN a medal in 2017. He had received the Legion d’honneur from the French also.

Lauded as the most successful Arab intelligence officer, he had access to President Obama’s inner circle. His approach to ‘counterterrorism’ in the desert kingdom was praised as “savvy” and “accomplished”.

Heading up the Ministry of the Interior, he was sometimes criticised in hand-wringing articles from US thinktanks and liberal media for treating human rights activists as ‘terrorists’. But it was approach to extreme Sunni militancy that interests me here.

That Al Qaeda was first formed by Saudi salafists and received much of its funding from powerful families in the country was an open secret, especially after the 9-11 attacks. This was a tricky issue for both the House of Saud and its sponsors in Washington and London.

A report reluctantly commissioned by Theresa May’s Home Office in January 2016 on funding for Islamist terrorism was subsequently left unpublished.

The shelving came to light in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing, in May 2017. As a spokesman for the Liberal Democrats wrote:

It is no secret that Saudi Arabia in particular provides funding to hundreds of mosques in the UK, espousing a very hardline Wahhabist interpretation of Islam. It is often in these institutions that British extremism takes root.

The report’s contents were considered too sensitive to publish, given the UK’s close cooperation with the Saudi regime. Prime Minister May had previously defended the extensive relationship as being effective counterterrorism, “keeping the streets of Britain safe“.

A decade or so earlier MBN’s innovations in ‘counterterrorism’ centred around the ‘rehabilitation’ of militants. Special prisons were built, including the ‘Mohammed bin Nayed Centre for Counselling and Care’. Dubbed in the media as ‘Betty Ford for jihadists’ (mostly captured Al-Qaeda operatives).

Times of Israel: “With its indoor swimming pool, sun-splashed patios and liveried staff, the Saudi complex has the trappings of a five-star resort, but it is actually a rehab center — for violent jihadists.”

Described as ‘cushy’ the approach would involve perks for its ‘beneficiaries’, including gyms, and passes out to attend weddings and funerals. Families of the inmates would be involved in their ‘care’ and would receive allowances for housing, medical treatment and education. And so would have a stake in the successful ‘rehabilitation’ of the wayward men.

But it appears this level of indulgence and largess was not extended to human rights activists. A critique of the policy found that:

The programmes’s counsellors reportedly seek less to disabuse imprisoned militants of their hard-line views than to reinforce the primacy of the Saudi state in determining the appropriate use of violence.

While non-violent rights activists were usually banned from travel overseas, ‘graduates’ of the centre could have international travel facilitated for them. As a father of a graduate said: “If you’re in Al Qaeda, they reason with you, give you money, a car, a wife.”

There was, reportedly, a high rate of recidivism with many militants arrested after Al Qaeda attacks, turning out to be have been graduates of the special prisons. It also appears that jihadists returning from Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere would often be sent for a stay at the special centres.

The House of Saud had gambled that they would not be overthrown by Al Qaeda, as long as they continued to tolerate Wahhabi schools and found a modus viviendi with domestic militants.

This ‘innovative’ approach to managing the Kingdom’s problem with Al Qaeda seems to have developed in the same period as a shift in American policy on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It is in this context that MBNs counterterrorist programmes must be understood.

This shift in US strategy took place in the years following the invasion of Iraq. It was reported on by Seymour Hersh in a February 2007 article for the New Yorker entitled ‘The Redirection’. Given all that has passed since, it can in my view, be considered a landmark piece of reportage.

According to Hersh’s reporting, US policy making circles were dismayed to see that the invasion of Iraq had led to an upsurge of Iranian influence in the region. Although they had recently focused their post 9-11 efforts on targeting Sunni militancy, a strong anti-Iranian sentiment among the US policy elite would mean a ‘redirection’, towards weakening Iran and its perceived allies in the region – chiefly Syria and Hezbollah.

Citizens in the US, Britain and elsewhere had protested en masse against the invasion of Iraq. So there clearly wasn’t public appetite for further large-scale military operations in the region. A different approach would have to be employed in order to realise the objectives.

The Machiavellian plan would see US agencies, and their British sidekicks, forge an alliance between the House of Saud, salafist militancy, Qatar, Turkey and themselves, with the approval of Israel.

‘Bandar Bush’ was Saudi national security chief at the time of the ‘Redirection’

The danger of working with the Salafis was self-evident. Sources that spoke to Hersh acknowledged they would be, “mobilising the worst kind of Islamic radicals. Once you get them out of the box, you can’t put them back.” And that the Salafis were “sick and hateful…if you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly.”

But US policy makers considered weakening Shi’ite influence in the region and smashing the remnants of Arab Nationalism as their primary objectives. The political outlook of the Salafist Muslim Brotherhood had long been understood as being more amenable to the economic and corporate imperatives of the anglo-american deep state.

A fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations Hersh spoke to:

..compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al Qaeda, in 1988.

This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”

As the programme was to be largely funded by the Saudis and Qataris, Congressional and Parliamentary oversight could be bypassed by the three letter agencies involved. It could be done ‘off the books’, in a similar fashion to the Iran-Contra funding scheme for operations against Nicaragua’s Sandinistas in the 1980s.

Hersh’s article is evidence that the quote unquote ‘Syrian Revolution’ was not so much a groundswell from the streets after the Arab Spring, but something having its roots, more perhaps, in Fort Meade, Maryland and Vauxhall Cross, London. Sy Hersh’s reporting implies that US clandestine activities in support of the Muslim Brotherhood against the Baathist state were already underway by late 2006. This is over four years before the Arab Spring and the supposed ‘Syrian revolution’.

American General Wesley Clark said publicly in 2007, that shortly after 9-11 Pentagon officials told him the plan was to: “take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran.“

I’m sceptical about the motives and timing of his ‘disclosure’. Others have sensed faux naivete in the interview. But it seems the public were being prepared to accept further chaos in MENA, and to have the impression that this was consistent with prior strategizing.

In 2013, former French foreign minister Roland Dumas would let slip on a talk show, that in 2009 he had met with officials at the British foreign office who were planning to oust the government of Syria.

While the BBC had been active in Syria (pdf) since at least 2004 working to make it a more conducive place for liberal ‘civil society’ and western ‘development’ NGOs.

It appears to be the case that MBN’s success in taking on domestic Al Qaeda militancy in the mid-2000s was to serve as a basis to enable the ‘redirection’ of jihadis; from domestic insurgency into effective mercenaries for regime change in Libya and Syria, and as a counterweight to the growing Ansarallah (Houthi) movement in Yemen.

Viewed in this context the rationale for elements of MBNs unusual ‘counterterrorism’ spending can be discerned. Ostensibly, the spending was undertaken with the aim to “recruit personnel and develop intelligence service contacts to penetrate Al-Qaeda.” But a few more details about the secret programmes have since come to light in relation to the case of Saad Aljabri.

Saad Aljabri described as “deep state liason between Saudi Arabi and western powers”

Aljabri was MBN’s right-hand man at the Ministry of Interior, a most senior non-royal security official, regarded by US officials as a ‘deep state liason’ between the Kingdom and the ‘five-eyes’ powers.

He is, though, now holed up in Canada after slipping out of the Kingdom to Turkey in May 2017, not long before his patron’s ouster and house arrest.

Security agencies there acknowledge that he is a likely target for Mohamed bin Salman’s hit squads. He seems to be a man who knows rather too much, as this account of the Palace coup relates: “He knows every foible, every misstep that Saudi royals have made.“

“In my opinion, he holds the keys to Pandora’s box for the current Crown Prince” said a former Canadian intel officer. “Any secrets they have, business dealings, security issues — it is information I’m sure the current Crown Prince wouldn’t want in public.”

Aljabri, accused of embezzlement, is the subject of lawsuits by state linked firms in Saudi. But the firms were first set up through MBN’s personal counterterrorism account. A network of front companies was established as “vehicles in the private sector to disguise sensitive activities.“

Aljabri and MBN’s defenders point to a December 2007 decree from King Abdullah authorising the spending. They say they were following ‘standard practice’ for intelligence agencies. A practice they had presumably picked up from their tutors in the western security apparatus. The 2007 decree authorised outlays for:
- Secret airports
- Aviation transport services
- Contracts with a Turkish construction company
- Security resources (including weapons and encrypted communications)
Somewhat surprising items for a domestic counterterrorism budget. The proportion of Interior Ministry revenues flowing into MBN’s own counterterrorism account would be boosted in subsequent years.

US and Canadian officials would prefer that the lawsuits against Aljabri be settled out of court to avoid disclosure of any sensitive details about covert US-Saudi programmes. In Boston, one of the cases has been thrown out of court. The director of US National Intelligence, Avril Haines invoked state secrets privilege to prevent disclosure of classified information damaging to ‘national security’. Similar motions have been filed by the Canadian CSIS in Ontario courts.

It seems that the door for MBN’s ouster in June 2017 was opened as the progress of the proxy military operations against the Syrian Arab Republic ground to a halt. And the consequences of adopting a ‘counterterrorism’ approach that enabled Al Qaeda linked sick salafis got out of hand, not least for the British; who had adopted their own soft approach to homegrown jihadis. I’ll take a closer look in a subsequent article.

_{Interested readers can find many sources on the connections of Manchester Arena suicide bomber on the page on A Closer Look on Syria}
What really happened to the Salisbury “nerve agent” victims?

Mar 30th, 2024
_{Featured Image: Fire service personnel use absorbent powder to soak up vomit they believed to contain fentanyl. (March 4, 2018)}

The 2018 Novichok affair poisoned relations not only between Russia and Britain, but also more widely between western governments and Moscow. The international response to the British claims resulted in greatly reduced diplomatic engagement.

Others have highlighted the many absurditities of the official narrative and the clear incompleteness of the official evidence for it. And I’ve previously covered the later events in Amesbury that were to be linked to the Skripal affair.

This article puts forward an account that reconciles evidence the Skripals were treated for a fentanyl/opioid overdose, with subsequent official findings that biomedical samples indicated exposure to a nerve agent. The article is somewhat narrowly focused, avoiding other questions as to who first poisoned the pair, or for what motive.

For some time I had wondered how the OPCW found indications of nerve agent exposure in the biomedical samples, when the reports and testimony suggested the pair had been exposed to fentanyl. I now think I can see how this came about or was, rather, brought about

This outline is intended as schematic, and as a starting point for further enquiry from a non-expert perspective, rather than as a definitive account.

After briefly presenting the evidence that the Skripals’ medical emergency was indeed due to fentanyl – or a similar opioid analgesic – and not a nerve agent; I’ll outline how, in principle, biomedical samples indicating nerve agent exposure could be consistent with medical treatment for symptoms of overdose of an opioid analgesic. Such a scenario is consistent both with the reporting and official statements concerning not only the Skripals, but also the other purported Wiltshire ‘Novichok’ victims.

Available evidence supports that their treatment plans were contrived and adapted, with the desired biomedical test results in mind.

First things first – they did not fall ill due to poisoning with a nerve agent

Initial reports indicated they were treated for fentanyl overdose:
- Paramedic responding to Salisbury drama thought drugs were cause, Salisbury Journal, March 15, 2018
A PARAMEDIC who was among the first to respond to
Sergei Skripal and his daughter told the Prime Minister they had
initially treated the pair for drugs. … The man, named Ian, said he
had been in the first ambulance service response car on the scene. Mrs May asked him: “At that stage you could only treat for what you can see?”

Salisbury MP John Glen interjected to say he had heard initial reports the incident was drug-related. To which the paramedic replied: “Absolutely that’s what I was treating for, that’s what we treated them for initially.”

That this was the the initial diagnosis and course of treatment would be later corroborated by testimony from a ward sister at the hospital, who told BBC Newsnight that there was no mention of ‘nerve agent’ in the original assessment and treatment of the pair. This was the case for at least 36 hours.

Other media reports in the days following discounted nerve agent exposure. The Daily Mirror reported a source from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down:

Scientists at the secret lab, which has state-of-the-art equipment to look for trace amounts of substances, have reportedly ruled out nuclear material or a nerve agent in preliminary toxicology tests...

Police officers at the scene after the Skripals were taken to hospital. Unaffected by the ‘military grade nerve agent’

Despite:
- the first responders, – including, apparently the CBRN trained Chief Nursing Office of the British army – who attended the Skripals not noting signs of nerve agent
- or being affected themselves by nerve agent exposure
- and a DSTL source having previously ruled out nerve agent
- and Police and Public Health England both assuring no risk to public
- and hospital staff not considering nerve agent poisoning during the first 36 hours, but treating for opioid overdose – (the details of blood tests taken by the hospital in this period are unaccounted for).
It was subsequently announced by Her Majesty’s Government that the Skripals were poisoned by ‘Novichok’ which was, they said, a very deadly and uniquely Russian chemical nerve agent…

So how would the Skripals have been treated? And how could the OPCW’s samples indicate exposure to a nerve agent?

After admission to the hospital they were found to be needing help with their breathing, and Yulia was ‘intubated’ – a tube inserted down her throat. As is consistent with standard practice in treating ‘respiratory depression’, the primary symptom of opioid analgesic overdose.

_{Fig: Decision Tree for Managing Opioid analgesic Overdose in adults}

The standard response to fentanyl overdose is use of naloxone. It is likely, then, that the first line of treatment by a paramedic, and then in hospital would be naloxone injections. Which are a relatively simple procedure. Naloxone kits are now even distributed to families of addicts

But the Skripal’s case was not an ordinary one, concerning persons with substance abuse problems. The pair’s identity becoming public was to greatly impact the hospital’s management of the case. Here is a summary of events at the hospital.

When the Skripals were found, an opioid overdose was suspected…

“The evening that Yulia and Sergei were admitted, at that point we were led to believe that they have taken an overdose, so there was no mention of nerve agent poisoning,” … ward sister in charge of the shift on March 4, told BBC2’s Newsnight in an interview broadcast on Tuesday. “They were needing their support with their breathing and support with their cardiovascular system.”

“At first, when they first came in, there was no indication of the fact that it was a nerve agent. And therefore, we take our normal protection when any patient comes in but would have not at that point taken any extra precaution in terms of protecting ourselves,” ..

But by the morning of the 6th the management of the case had drastically changed. London’s Counter Terror Policing Network (CTPN) had taken over the investigation. Police Officer Nick Bailey presented to the Hospital and specialists from Porton Down began to ‘advise’ the medics.

From that point on, doctors at Salisbury Hospital began to administer medical treatment, the details of which are kept secret due to medical “confidentiality” concerns. The hospital continued to receive advice from international experts, including the Porton Down chemical weapons research laboratory.

“Clinical decisions were ours, but we would be foolish not to take their advice, which we did. And I think that helped,” intensive care consultant Dr. Jukes noted. “When we began seeing some improvements, it happened a lot quicker than anticipated. Certainly, when you look at these groups of nerve agents, the expectations from the textbooks, the journals suggested a much longer period of recovery.”

The pair had been put into induced comas.

‘Anticholinergic syndrome’ would be among the effects of a fentanyl or other opioid analgesic overdose.

In general, the symptoms of opioid intoxication and nerve agents are dissimilar, with somewhat opposite actions. But cholinergic symptomology quite similar to that of nerve agent exposure can be caused by opioid reversal, such as that produced by naloxone’s opioid receptor antagonism. Naloxone treatment causes ‘precipitated opioid withdrawal‘ which is said to be intensely painful and disorientating.

Precipitated opioid withdrawal is characterised by the rapid onset of opioid withdrawal symptoms (such as aches, nausea and vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal cramps, dilated pupils, running nose, yawning) …

It can, then, be clinically necessary to mitigate the rapid loss of analgesia caused by opioid reversal.

Moreover, naloxone may be only briefly effective against long acting opioid analgesics. The effects of certain fentanyl analogues like carfentanil are said to be even less responsive to naloxone treatment.

But other ‘respiratory stimulants’ can be used to reverse opioid intoxication. One such agent is physostigimine – considered a “a safe antidote to treat anticholinergic overdose”.

Physostigmine is classed as a ‘reversible cholinesterase inhibitor’. While nerve agents are ‘irreversible cholinesterase inhibitors’.

Although it’s a standard drug that a hospital would have in its inventory, phsyostigimine also happens to be well known in the field of chemical warfare. So it is possible that once Porton Down’s experts began ‘advising’ medics, this drug was employed instead of naloxone.

Its use would, also, cause symptoms of precipitated opioid withdrawal. So it would be considered desirable to combine it with something to attenuate the intense withdrawal symptoms.

Combining use of the physostigimine as a respiratory stimulant, with the irreversible cholinesterase inhibitor diisopropylflourophosphate (DFP) – a weakly toxic analogue of sarin – appears to be a way for the ‘experts’ to kill two birds with one stone, three birds even.

_{Molecular structure of DFP}

DFP has an analgesic effect that would attenuate the symptoms of withdrawal produced by physostigimine’s opioid receptor antagonism.

The hospital would likely also have DFP available in its inventory. It can be used in eyedrops to treat miosis or glaucoma.

It happens that physostigimine is known to have a prophylactic effect against exposure to the ‘irreversible’ effects of nerve agents, including DFP. It is often used in experiments for this prophylactic effect.

Using the two agents in combination would be a method to pull the patients out of the symptoms of opioid analgesic intoxication, with the DFP and physostigimine mutually mitigating one another’s adverse effects.

Use of DFP would then leave biomarkers consistent with nerve agent exposure in the samples taken by the OPCW. I suspect this, or something along quite similar lines, is the explanation of how OPCW found signs of a “toxic chemical that displays the properties of a nerve agent” in samples taken in a public hospital setting.

Given that the British government was making great play internationally of the poisoning, it seems the advisers from Porton Down devised a treatment plan to suggest to the hospital doctors, that would leave biomedical traces consistent with exposure to nerve agent. So I suggest that after abandoning naloxone, such a combination of physostigimine and DFP was used to treat the Skripals’ symptoms of opioid analgesic intoxication.

The summaries made public by the OPCW of the closed reports don’t say anything about ‘Novichoks’, but only a “toxic chemical that displays the properties of a nerve agent”.

And this is said to be the same agent indicated by biomedical samples taken from Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley. This implies that Amesbury pair also received a similar treatment plan, once the management of that case was also taken over by security agencies.

As the UK requested that the OPCW reports be kept closed, we do not have the details of the test results. That this secrecy was requested would tend to imply that the results were only weakly supportive of the Novichok claims. Why request secrecy if they had stronger confirmation of the claims, given the intense international scrutiny?

Testing for biomarkers of organophosphate nerve agents can leave considerable indeterminacy; as the agents bind to the enzymes, and are often quickly metabolised in the body. The testing processes often can’t necessarily exclude exposure to another chemical substance with structural similarities.

It seems likely then that DS Nick Bailey was really a volunteer, ‘dummy’ patient sent to the hospital by the British secret services in order to corroborate the government’s narrative of the use of a Russian chemical weapon on the streets of a sleepy English Cathedral city.

Portrayed in a British TV dramatisation

Perhaps he did receive opioids during his two weeks in hospital, used to manage the discomfort, alongside a physostigimine/DFP type combination. If he was treated with such a managed combination of mutually mitigating drugs, it would cause little harm, but would leave the required traces to support the desired narrative. Like Charlie Rowley he seemed to make a full physical recovery

He later said on TV

“… The drugs I was put on at the hospital had side effects as well and it’s quite difficult to differentiate between the Novichok and the drugs I was on. I had hallucinations and vomiting. It was terrifying.

Such symptoms could be consistent with the cholinergic effects of physostigimine.

Update November 3, 2024 – Like a dummy, I didn’t know the difference between ‘intubation’ and a ‘tracheostomy’. Thinking that Yulia’s scar was attributable to intubation. The article has been amended.

A Salisbury Hospital Doctor’s witness statement released for the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry confirmed that she needed mechanical ventilation and was intubated in the initial stages of her treatment.

Tracheostomies were performed on the Skripals much later on March 21st, according to his witness statement. A rather abrupt and drastic intervention on both of them, after the pair’s conditions had obviously been stable for some time. This happened to be just ahead of the visit of the OPCW team to collect blood samples.

Another Doctor’s statement informed that Yulia regained consciousness, during a pause in her sedation on March 8, four days after her admission and showed no obvious signs of having sustained neurological damage.

Coda

The account given here would imply that when the OPCW team visited Salisbury to take environmental samples, they were guided by British officials to ‘hot spots’ where evidence of ‘Novichok’ had been planted.

Specific criticism of this outline is welcome in the comments. I take what I have presented above to be a plausible and logically based account of what could have happened, that’s consistent with the publicly available evidence.

As against a strange tale of a delayed action rare Russian nerve agent in a perfume bottle, smeared on a door handle, by conspicuous and unprofessional seeming agents – quite a comedic sounding assassination plot.

Using an exotic, unpractical poison, the very name of which inculpates you.
Causes of the Nova Kakhovka Dam Disaster: Key takeaways

Jun 24th, 2023
Timings indicate no use of explosives to blow the dam:
- The reported seismic event said to indicate a large explosion occurred at 2:54am local time, but footage revealed the dam had already been breached by 2.46am. This indicates that the seismic signal was most probably produced by the further collapse of the dam structures – like the Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) building giving way – rather than the use of explosives.
- An earlier weak signal at 2.35am subsequently reported by NORSAR, is then likely to be the first breaching event. NORSAR later removed text from the web page.
The facility had been hit repeatedly by Ukraining shelling:
- The dam was on the frontline, with Russian forces present. Ukrainian shelling of the roadway caused marked damage to the dam close to the HPP.
Supporting columns for a road section over the barrage had collapsed five days earlier:
- Two thick concrete columns – supporting a previously shelled section of roadway close to the HPP – collapsed and were washed away between 1-2 June, according to satellite photos from the dates. Those supports formed part of the spillways for sluice gates 2,3,4, close to the HPP. The initial breach occurred on that side of the central barrage section.
Two sluice gates were damaged months earlier:
- Sluice gate 1, closest to the HPP had sustained significant damage from Ukrainian shelling months earlier. Resulting in more turbulent flows from that section.
- The damage likely dates from November 6, 2022 when a HIMARS strike was reported.
- This would match with later comments in the Washington Post: ”The Ukrainians… even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages. The test was a success…” – said Ukrainian Maj. Gen. Andriy Kovalchuk.
- “The threat from Ukrainian forces including snipers was reported, by the local Mayor in March, 2023 as preventing repair and maintenance operations.
- Update July 2023: Photos of prior damage to sluice gate 3 have also emerged
Canal blocked up:
- The lock canal was filled-in during September ’22 by the Russians to build a new road crossing, after Ukrainian HIMARS strike had destroyed the road bridge. This would then prevent the canal being used as a slipflow around the dam in the event of high water levels.
Unusually high water levels in the reservoir:
- The high levels appear to be due to heavy rain and some amount of excess discharge from the Ukrainian controlled dams upstream the Dnieper. The Kakhovka dam did still release a lot of water downstream in the weeks prior, although this was only through a few gates close to the HPP. Normal rotations and maintenance could not be carried out.
The above presents a few key takeaways from analysing the sources I collated on the ACLOS page for the Kakhovka Dam Collapse. You can find a more detailed treatment, with references and source attributions for the above there.
I particularly recommend Adam Larson’s analysis, and also this early technical overview from Mike Mihajlovic.

Update: Why did those columns collapse?

Adam Larson surmises that the concrete ‘apron’ underlying the spillways had sustained damaged from HIMARS strikes landing underwater. The high water level in the reservoir and its release through just a few (damaged) gates, generated intense flows – which would be sucked into and around any cavities and damage of this concrete shelf.

Scouring erosion of this base, underlying the thick columns supporting the roadway, then most likely accounts for their collapse. With an integral part of the structure washed away, the further main collapse event was pretty much inevitable.
‘Russian chemical weapons’ – English drug users: The work of British Intelligence

Mar 26th, 2023
The ‘Public Inquiry’ in to the death of Dawn Sturgess resumed on March 24. After preliminaries its timeline has again been set back substantially. Press commentary acknowledges this is ‘exceptional‘. The need for further delay is said to arise from the risk of ‘top secret’ information posing a threat to ‘national security’ being inadvertently disclosed in the many relevant documents.

The process clearly isn’t independent, nor is it public, nor is there much inquiry. Let’s examine some facts pertinent to the case to see why that would be.

According to reports, on the morning of Saturday 30^th June 2018 around 10.15am emergency services were called to a flat in Muggleton Road, Amesbury. A 44 year-old woman named Dawn Sturgess was taken to hospital. Later that afternoon emergency services attended once again, in greater numbers. A man was taken to hospital. According to later reports, it was her partner Charlie Rowley whose flat it was.

That evening a reporter for Salisbury based local radio station SpireFM reported on its website, that emergency services had been called to deal with a drug related incident with one person being taken to hospital.

Emergency vehicles attended a drug related medical incident on Saturday evening (June 30) – Faye Tryhorn, Spire FM, June 30, 2018 – Updated July 2 (Page grabbed here)

“Police have told us they are ‘certain there’s no risk to the public’ following the drug-related incident.“

After the high profile events surrounding the hospitalisation of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March, there had seemingly been some concern about dangerous materials. A unit from Swindon Fire attended the second incident at the flat with their decontamination equipment. Locals saw personnel in green Hazmat suits. The next morning on their twitter account Swindon Fire stated, “thankfully the incident wasn’t serious and our decontamination shower wasn’t required.”

(Source)

Two days later (2nd July) Wiltshire Police issued an urgent warning to local drug users about a batch of contaminated drugs in circulation in South Wiltshire. It said two people had been found unconscious at the flat over the weekend after using from the batch. The statement asked for information from anybody who might know anything about how the batch came into circulation. But it also assured that there was nothing to suggest any wider risk to the public.

Evidence from Police records indicated that Dawn Sturgess suffered a cardiac arrest after taking contaminated heroin. The local Criminal Investigations Department (CID) had investigated and found that the flat had been taken over (or ‘cuckoo’d’) by a group of local drug users and dealers. There had apparently been a party of sorts on the Friday night before. Conceivably, Charlie Rowley may have used from the batch later on Saturday, without fully realising the danger.

On 3^rd July Wiltshire Police issued a further warning about ‘cuckooing’ of vulnerable people’s accommodation by drug dealers.

That such information pertaining to the incident not enter the wider public domain is, it seems, now considered a matter of the ‘utmost importance’ for “national security”.

How did these tragic, but not altogether uncommon, details of a vulnerable person apparently succumbing to the ill effects of drug consumption, become something the British establishment views as ‘extremely sensitive’ and a threat to the country’s “standing” with international partners?

On the morning of the 4^thJuly London media announced that the pair had been poisoned by a ‘novichok nerve agent’. The case was now being linked, in the media worldwide, with the Government’s claims about the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March. This time the story ran against the backdrop of the Football World Cup being hosted in Russia and a summit between the Russian and US Presidents.

By the evening, ‘Counter Terrorism Police’ from the MET (Metropolitan Police) had taken over control of the incident’s management from Wiltshire Police. ‘ Counter Terrorism’ (previously ‘Special Branch’) fall under political and security agency control. Statements from the local council, Fire, and WIltshire Police referred obscurely to coordinating with ‘multi-partner agencies’. These agencies being left unnamed. Later the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at nearby Porton Down was reported as confirming the pair had been exposed to Novichok.

On the 7^th of July the Daily Mail reported:

EXCLUSIVE: Mother of Novichok victim says her ‘lost soul’ daughter is being deprived the care given to the Skripals because she’s a ‘nobody alcoholic’ who turned to drink battling post-natal depression Daily Mail, July 7, 2018 (Archived)

..She also slammed the police for ‘keeping the family in the dark’ by saying that Dawn had suffered a heart attack for several days before the truth came out.

The article also said family members were accustomed to her being treated in hospital as a result of her substance use issues. The family member interviewed also said that she “trusted people too easily”.

On 8^th July Dawn Sturgess’s life support machine was turned off. Some comments in the media from the period indicated that the family believed she had effectively died in the flat. Normally a postmortem would take place on the day following the death, but officials in London intervened to delay it and put another coroner in charge.

The motive for the opportunistic hijacking of these unfortunate events and Dawn’s medical status clearly seems to have been to bolster the government’s faltering Novichok narrative. Which had been weaponized against Russia in the international arena after the hospitalisation of the Skripals in March. Claims that a highly lethal Russian nerve agent was used in Salisbury to attack Sergei and Yulia, resulted in some perplexity and derision after none of those said to be affected died.

The delayed postmortem took place on the 17^thwhen a visiting team from the OPCW was allowed to attend. Strangely, its findings were not signed off until four months after the procedure.

…cause of death “Ia post cardiac arrest hypoxic brain injury and intracerebral haemorrhage; Ib Novichok toxicity”.

These findings became public during a previous sitting of the Coroner’s Inquest in London. Medical experts were approached for comment by John Helmer. They..

..believe the record of cardiac arrest leading to brain death is proof that Novichok toxicity was not (repeat not) the cause of Sturgess’s death. According to one of these experts, sumarising his colleagues’ assessments, “Novichok leads to low acetylcholine esterase levels, and the victim essentially drowns, i.e. lungs fill with fluid. Lung fluid would have been detected in the first PM, unless the experts at Salisbury drained the lungs as part of their treatment.” Another expert on organophosphate poisoning, who works in hospital emergency wards, says that nerve agents cause paralysis of the lungs, so asphyxia is the usually given as the cause of death. He too expresses surprise at the report of cardiac arrest.

Opioid overdoses can lead to cardiac arrest with such brain injuries, according to medical texts.

In the days after the relaunched ‘Novichok’ story went out on the wires, Police “working with with partner agencies” were said to be looking for the source of the poisoning. On Friday, July 13th the MET announced that on July 11th they had found the ‘Novichok container’. This was 12 days after Wiltshire Police had first attended the flat.

The narrative for public consumption would be that: assassins from Russian Military Intelligence had, after smearing Sergei Skripal’s front door with the military grade nerve agent, discarded the container, a Nina Ricci ‘Premier Jour’ perfume bottle, in a charity bin. Somehow Charlie Rowley found it, nearly four months later, whilst rummaging through. Three days later when Dawn tried the perfume on, she unwittingly sprayed a highly deadly Russian chemical weapon on herself. Many months later, official sources acknowledged that finding such a bottle in a regularly emptied charity bin was implausible. But this is what was depicted in the BBC’s drama “The Salisbury Poisonings”.

The Police information management procedure running ahead of the ‘public inquiry’ is coordinated by the MET’s SO15 and Thames Valley Police and is called ‘Operation Verbasco.’ Wiltshire Police play a subordinate role in adhering to its process. According to Verbasco’s submissions to the inquiry:

The nature and extent of the national security concerns which arise in the context of this Inquiry necessitate extensive and carefully developed security arrangements. These arrangements come at a significant time-cost and expense, and maintaining the security of sensitive material which is required in the environs of the OPEN hearings will not be without its challenges…

The forces have needed to recruit staff specifically to filter documents about the incident to “avoid any inadvertent disclosure of sensitive material.” A Police submission to the inquiry mentions that apparently innocuous materials may when placed together pose national security concerns. The preparation of documents for the enquiry requires:

“…liaison with each of the “equity holders” within policing, so as to ensure that the scope of the application accurately reflects the underlying sensitivities. This is necessarily a time-consuming process, requiring extensive and detailed input from senior officers across various forces and commands.”

As Helmer reported, “court papers also reveal that the official records now under review of the Novichok investigations have “emanated from the Home Office; the Cabinet Office; the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, Public Health England, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Government Office for Science.“

The legally required coroner’s proceedings; have been repeatedly delayed, had their legal format changed to enable secrecy, only to be delayed again. Aside from the considerable public expense and waste of man hours, the British State appears to have:
- Rail-roaded the work of Wiltshire Police, placing its officers and other emergency service personnel, who dealt with the initial incidents and their investigation, in an invidious position.
- Deceived Sturgess’ family and manipulated their emotions, whilst coaching them on the official story for media appearances.
- Betrayed the trust of the British public and world at large with the aim of traducing the international standing of a foreign government. The ‘Novichok’ media sensation was used to instigate a round of diplomatic measures against Russia by Western and European governments.
- Caused both alarm and inconvenience to local residents. The building on Muggleton Rd was gratuitously demolished, on the pretext it was contaminated. No one else who went in there ever required medical treatment.
- Pressured media outlets to scrub from the web earlier reports on the incident that did not fit the official narrative.
Details of a drug related incident and death clearly do not pose any threat to ‘national security’. Rather the threat to the authorities is of shame, embarrassment and loss of credibility, in the event of this rather sinister and yet poorly conceived psychological operation being widely exposed.

I don’t think the implications for the tenability of the UK’s and NATO’s accounts of other “Novichok poisonings” need be spelt out here.

^{More sources and details can found at the pages on A Closer Look on Syria}

UPDATE – October 20, 2024

One of the documents submitted to the enquiry by Wiltshire Police; a witness statement taken two days after the incident from one of Charlie Rowley’s friends who was with them that weekend, indicates that Dawn’s collapse may have been due to her taking prescribed Zopiclone tablets (sedatives used to aid sleep).

Overdose of Z-drugs will result in depression of the central nervous system. The effects of any misuse will likely be exacerbated by alcohol consumption. In any event the combination of Zopiclone and opioids is strongly advised against.

The witness statements also suggest, although sketchily, that Dawn may have been taking the antipsychotic quietiapine – as she had recently been diagnosed as ‘bipolar’. Quietiapine also has sedative effects. Moreover its use is strongly correlated with adverse cardiac events.

Dawn was found by the paramedic not breathing and without a pulse. Recent media reports that Dawn Sturgess was blue when found by the paramedic are likely due to her applying blue hair dye when she collapsed – as described in the witness statement.

The statements emphasised that Dawn was not an active heroin user, although was an ‘alcoholic’.

But the witness statements do say that Charlie Rowley did subsequently take heroin that day after Dawn was taken to hospital. Unusual symptoms that Charlie Rowley is reported as presenting with later on, were I suspect, rapid withdrawal symptoms. Which as I outlined here significantly overlap with typical symptoms indicating nerve agent exposure.
An Octopus in the Gate of Tears? – Israel and the Yemen conflict

Aug 5th, 2022
Israel’s role in wider conflict in the middle east is often overlooked. Recently, it attacked Damascus airport, a part of Syria’s civilian infrastructure. This was not an isolated incident, as the Jerusalem Post explains:

Over the years, Israel has carried out thousands of strikes in Syria and beyond its borders by land, sea and air – and also used cyberkinetic attacks, according to foreign reports – to prevent Iran from achieving regional hegemony and becoming a nuclear state. Over the 13 years of Mabam, Israel’s targets have included weapons convoys and shipments and military infrastructure, including advanced weaponry and personnel. The campaign was not limited to Syria but extended to Iraq and Yemen, according to foreign reports.

A newly announced strategy in its conflict with Iran, and what it deems as Iranian proxies, talks of attacking the head of the Iranian ‘octopus’ rather than its tentacles. The new ‘Octopus strategy’ seems to be really a continuation of the – war between the wars – ‘Mabam strategy’, intervening in conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen to strike what it identifies as Iranian aligned forces or assets. In this article, I sketch out what we might call tentacles of an ‘Israeli octopus’, largely in relation to the role it has been playing in the international struggle for control and influence over strategically located Yemen.

Yemen, of course, has resources such as oil to exploit and competition for access to those resources has obviously been a factor driving the war there (for example, France and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) stand to profit from Total’s Balhaf oil installations). More importantly though, its proximity to major world shipping routes means world powers vie to gain a hand there. After the construction of the Suez canal, the Bab-al-Mandeb (Gate of Tears) straits at the southern entrance to the Red Sea gained in geostrategic significance. It had become a potential choke point on world trade, as the Israelis were to learn in the wars with the Arabs. In 1973 Yemen closed the straits, blocking shipping through the Red Sea to Israel.

Having direct maritime access to the Red Sea from its southern port of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba and much economic interest in trade with the east, Israel’s strategic interest in the Red Sea is clear. It is known to use an Eritrean island in the Red Sea for electronic monitoring in the region. Its navy now patrol those waters south of Suez, including its most potent missile subs. Long concerned that its enemies should not control the Bab-al-Mandeb, it has pledged to join military action if the straits are closed again. The Israeli Defence Force makes no secret that it considers Yemen a threat and it deploys its military intel capabilities to monitor ‘the houthis’.

The Israeli enemy sees Yemen as a threat to it, explained the National Salvation Government Information Minister Dhaifalla Al-Shami, “especially in its strategic location, so it has worked to find a foothold in Yemen through the UAE’s role.(Middle East Monitor)

When reports of the previously planned installation by the Emiratis of a runway and military infrastructure on Yemen’s Mayyun (or Perim) island in the straits became public, pro-Iranian media sources were quick to suggest the likely involvement of Israel alongside the US and UAE. By 2019 the Red Sea had become a theatre of conflict in the shadow war between Israel and Iran, involving seizures and attacks on commercial shipping interests. A pretext Israel cites for its involvement in the area is the threat of Iranian drones or missiles being fired from Yemen. That the Yemeni armed forces have their own technical capabilities independently of Iran often seems to be condescendingly overlooked in western commentaries.

Of course, Washington, London and Paris have their own geostrategic interests in the region, working closely with their allies in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv they don’t wish to see forces in control the Yemeni coast, that maintain their independence of the centres of global capital. The Chinese also have a presence in the contested region with a base on the other side of the straits, in Djibouti.

Naval bases in the region according to Debka file

During the cold war the Port of Aden in the south of Yemen was an important centre of global commerce. After gaining independence from the British in 1967 South Yemen became loosely aligned with the Soviet bloc. The two separate states of the Islamic North (governed from Sana’a) and the Marxist South (Aden) unified to become the Republic of Yemen only in 1990. Access to the southern coast is strategically desirable, as oil from the Arabian peninsula can be shipped on routes that avoid vulnerable passage through the straits of Hormuz or the Bab-al-Mandeb. As an expansionist regional player the UAE, now advances its interests in the south, caring little for the integrity of the Yemeni state. It has been a major player in the coalition attacking Yemen from 2015.

Despite announcing a pull-out in 2019, the Emirati regime backs the Southern Transitional Council (STC) a coalition which seeks independence from the north. The STC leadership has apparently signalled their openness to future friendly relations with Tel Aviv. Some commentators see such relations as having parallels with Israeli support for the Kurds in Syria and its previous recognition of Somaliland, aspects of a wider strategy to fracture and weaken Arab states unfriendly to it.

Many undersea fibre optic cables run past Socotra (Source)

That Israel and the UAE cooperate closely on ‘security’ is in no doubt, especially since the so called ‘normalization agreement’. This can be seen in a few interesting developments:
- 2015: Reports of Colombian mercenaries fighting against the ‘houthis’ and funded by the UAE. With later reports of their involvement in the coalition’s 2018 advance on Hodeidah, after receiving Israeli training in the Negev desert. The cooperation between the security states of Israel and Colombia is long standing. Israel has shaped the training and brutal tactics used against the FARC leftist rebels over decades.
- Since 2020 allegations, based on local reports, have circulated that UAE and Israel are developing signals intelligence bases and other military infrastructure on the seized Yemeni islands of Socotra and on Perim in middle of the Bab-al-Mandeb straits.
  - Although these local reports are hard to verify, they have strong circumstantial corroboration and were accepted by Israeli open source analysts. Israel’s signals intelligence capability is known to be highly developed and aggressive. Israeli tourists now fly to see spectacular Socotra via the UAE, the only commercial aviation route that now reaches the island. The UAE had essentially seized control of Yemen’s Socotra archipelago of islands that lie off the Horn of Africa between the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. With their proxies the STC taking over control from the governor of the ‘internationally recognised’ (Western & Saudi backed) regime in June 2020. A world heritage site for its unique ecology, Socotra was historically a strategically valuable position for monitoring communications. The Soviets had a listening base there when friendly relations existed between Marxist South Yemen and the USSR.
- 2022: After Yemeni missile forces hit the UAE with drone strikes Israel offered its ‘Iron Dome’ air defence system to the Emirati princes. It is now reported that Israel has already installed radar systems in the UAE and that its air defence systems in friendly Gulf Arab states are now active.
Having traced out some traces of the game Israel has been playing in relation to conflict in Yemen, I must point out that an other state has undeniably played a far more extensive part in the war. The state-corporate interests of this country can be seen to overlap with Israeli ones. To take one example, Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms manufacturer has contracts with the British military and has set up factories in the UK to better fulfil its orders. According to the Canary:

The UK government has been working with Israel on UAV technology since 2005 in a deal worth at least £1bn. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) signed a contract with UAV Tactical Systems Ltd (U-TacS). This is a “joint venture” between UK-based Thales and Israeli arms company Elbit Systems.

The companies are reported as promoting a British version of an Elbit Hermes UAV to Saudi Arabia. Perhaps more significantly, one of Britain’s largest and politically influential industrial concerns, BAE Systems provides service personnel to maintain the Saudi’s Eurofighter Typhoon fleet for their bombing missions over Yemen. Whilst, the Saudi ‘Operations Room’ commanding their missions has included British officers, said to provide “training, supervision and evaluation”. Additionally, the Royal Navy has supported the blockade of Yemen. The blockade has resulted in ongoing starvation, epidemics and fuel shortages. It has become apparent that not only do British companies and their investors profit through the war, but even that British forces are active participants in the conflict.

Commonly acknowledged as the poorest country in the middle east and suffering the world’s worst humanitarian situation, Yemen is being held back from peace and independence not only by the House of Saud, but also in Washington, London, Paris, Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv.

Tag: Geopolitics

Jihadi Rehab: Regime change and the ‘Prince of Counterterrorism’

US grand strategy and Saudi counterterrorism: turning domestic insurgents into mercenaries

What really happened to the Salisbury “nerve agent” victims?

First things first – they did not fall ill due to poisoning with a nerve agent

So how would the Skripals have been treated? And how could the OPCW’s samples indicate exposure to a nerve agent?

Coda

Causes of the Nova Kakhovka Dam Disaster: Key takeaways

Timings indicate no use of explosives to blow the dam:

The facility had been hit repeatedly by Ukraining shelling:

Supporting columns for a road section over the barrage had collapsed five days earlier:

Two sluice gates were damaged months earlier:

Canal blocked up:

Unusually high water levels in the reservoir:

Update: Why did those columns collapse?

‘Russian chemical weapons’ – English drug users: The work of British Intelligence

An Octopus in the Gate of Tears? – Israel and the Yemen conflict