Today's Headlines and Commentary

Today marks the fourteenth anniversary of the opening of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. On Friday, another man’s long imprisonment at the facility came to an end, as the United States repatriated Faiz Mohammed Ahmed al Kandari, the last Kuwaiti man held in the prison. A 2008 detainee assessment called al Kandari an adviser and confidante to Osama bin Laden, as well as an influential religious figure for al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, but a Periodic Review Board panel in 2015 found that al Kandari was willing to “disassociate with negative influences.” There are now 104 detainees left at the facility, including 45 detainees approved for transfer.

Yesterday, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough told “Fox News Sunday” that President Barack Obama will make good on his 2008 campaign promise to close the detention facility, saying that he “feels an obligation to the next president. He will fix this so that they don’t have to be confronted with the same set of challenges.” McDonough declined to comment on whether the president would use his executive power to close the facility should Congress decline to endorse his proposal for shuttering the prison.

Reuters reports that U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones “has denied reports that the United States has been carrying out helicopter raids against Islamic State militants in northern Iraq.” The reports, which surfaced last week, suggested that more than half a dozen air raids by U.S. special forces had targeted ISIS militants in Hawija and Kirkuk. Ambassador Jones said in a statement over the weekend that “reports of these raids are untrue.”

Reuters also shares that, elsewhere in Iraq, “nine fighters from a Shiite Muslim militia battling the Islamic State were killed in northern Iraq when an Iraqi army aircraft fired at them in error.” The newswire writes that the airstrike likely came from an Iraqi drone, which fired on the militia due to mistaken coordinates. A spokesman for a coalition of Shiite militias operating alongside Iraq’s military blamed the United States for the strike, saying “the American coalition renewed its attacks on the Hashid Shaabi resistance factions.”

Three United Nations aid trucks arrived in Madaya on Monday, as part of a “large-scale U.N.-supported aid operation” designed to bring desperately needed relief to the town, which has been blockaded for months by Syrian government forces and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The town attracted notable attention in recent weeks when reports of deaths due to starvation and images of malnourished children surfaced around the Internet. According to the Associated Press, Madaya “is the latest example of both sides using hunger as a weapon.”

In the Washington Post, Michael Gordon writes that the Mosul Dam faces a new threat: “the danger that it may collapse because of insufficient maintenance.” The Post details new concerns from the U.S. State Department that in a worst-case scenario, “an estimated 500,000 people could be killed while more than a million could be rendered homeless if the dam, Iraq’s largest, were to collapse in the spring, when the Tigris is swollen by rain and melting snow.” American officials, from President Obama to General Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have called on Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi to begin warning citizens and to begin efforts to maintain the dam. The risk comes as Iraq deals with budget shortfalls and a host of security complications related to protecting workers who attempt to repair the dam. Moreover, the Islamic State now controls a critical factory in Mosul that produced grout, a material necessary to repair the dam.

Documents obtained by the Guardian suggest that the Islamic State “ran a sophisticated immigration operation through a Syrian border town with Turkey until its defeat in the area by Kurds this summer.” The Guardian writes that despite protestation from Turkish authorities regarding the difficulty of sealing the border with Syria, the documents support the assertion that “there was a period of formalized passage on the Syrian side of the border.”

The Associated Press reports that the U.S. Navy released video footage of Iranian Revolutionary Guard ships firing rockets near U.S. warships and other commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard previously denied the incident, saying the claim was part of American “psychological warfare.” Watch the grainy black-and-white video here and decide for yourself.

Another Doctors Without Borders facility was rocked by an explosion, this time, in northern Yemen. The hospital confirmed at least four dead and ten injured but could not attribute the attack’s origin. Planes were seen over the facility during the attack, causing rebels to blame the Saudi-led military coalition’s campaign.

The United States conducted a drone strike in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, allegedly killing 20 ISIS militants. Reuters informs us that U.S. military spokesman Col. Michael Lawhorn said that the U.S. carried out a “counterterrorism strike” but declined to specify a location and number of casualties. However, Afghan media reports that 19 to 20 ISIS militants were killed.

Resurrecting efforts to end 15 years of violence in Afghanistan, officials from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, and the United States held talks today in Islamabad in hopes of initiating negotiations with the Taliban. The Pakistani prime minister’s foreign affairs advisor, Sartaj Aziz, stated that the primary goal of the talks should be to convince the Taliban to come to the table and consider giving up violence. The Taliban, however, did not make the first meeting.

The Associated Press reports that the United States dispatched a B-52 bomber over the skies of South Korea this weekend, in a show of force designed to apply pressure to North Korea following its test of a nuclear weapon last week. The B-52 is capable of delivering a nuclear weapon, and was joined in the sky by South Korean F-15 and U.S. F-16 fighters, returning to its base in Guam after the flight. Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr., the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, said in a statement that the flyover “was a demonstration of the ironclad U.S. commitment to our allies in South Korea, Japan, and to the defense of the American homeland.” Reuters shares that South Korean media is awash reports that the United States is preparing to deploy B-2 bombers, nuclear-powered submarines, and F-22 stealth fighters to the country. U.S. and South Korean officials were scheduled to meet today to discuss the joint response to the DPRK’s latest nuclear provocation.

Yet as the world contemplates how to pressure Pyongyang to scale back and eventually abandon its nuclear ambitions, the AP divulges that one key obstacle is not the need for new sanctions, its that the plethora of existing sanctions have long gone unenforced. According to the AP, fewer than 40 of the 193 U.N. member states have turned in reports on sanctions implementation. Compliance has been worst in Africa, which the AP notes has become “an increasingly important market for low-cost North Korean weapon sales.”

In the Washington Post, nonproliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis writes that “North Korea is a joke. And that’s the problem.”

Following meetings between the nation’s top national security officials and executives from some of Silicon Valley’s largest tech firms on Friday, the Obama administration announced that it would create a counterterrorism task force in the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice to “coordinate the government’s domestic counter-radicalization efforts and serve as a conduit for ideas, grants and other resources to community groups across the country.” The long-criticized counter-propaganda program at the State Department will also be reformed into a new Global Engagement Center, focused less on producing its own counter-messaging materials and more on “helping allies craft more localized anti-terrorism messages.” The Washington Post has more on the changes, wherein Administration officials go to the mat to prove that the new task force is more than just a rearranging of the bureaucratic deck chairs.

According to police officials, Edward Archer, 30, told investigators that he shot Philadelphia police officer Jesse Hartnett in the name of the Islamic State. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross Jr. said that Archer told investigators that the “police defend laws that he believes are contrary to Islam.” Archer fired at least 11 times, striking Hartnett three times in the left arm. Investigators have not yet determined whether Archer had contact with ISIS fighters or whether he was self-radicalized. The New York Times has more.

The standoff between an anti-government militia who have occupied a federal wildlife office in Oregon and federal agents continues today. On Friday, militia group leaders from other parts of the country arrived to meet with the group, announcing their support for the cause if not their methods, Reuters reports. The Pacific Patriots Network announced that its members would establish a safety perimeter around the office in order to prevent a “Waco-style situation” from occurring. The decision comes as the occupying militia’s leader, Ammon Bundy, seemed to soften his position, saying that the group would take the offer of safe passage out of the county, “but not yet and we will go out of this county and out of this state as free men.” Elsewhere in the Times, Ron Nixon covers the rise in anti-government militias across the United States and the federal government’s lack of response. The movement has grown exponentially in recent years, from 42 groups in 2008 to 334 in 2011.

In the Washington Post, Joby Warrick shares that the Islamic State has been encouraged by news of the militia movement. The group has called on its supporters to assist the Oregon protestors and to suggest more targets for future takeovers on the premise that “a mass mobilization of anti-government rebels could occur,” a possibility that they hope would “degrade and destroy their corrupt, evil, and oppressive government.” The Post has a full translation of the announcement.

Ben Weiser of the New York Times reports that Minh Quang Pham pleaded guilty to providing material support to a terrorist group (AQAP), conspiring to receive military-type training, and using a firearm in furtherance of crimes of violence. Mr. Pham, a British citizen, received military training from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from Anwar al Awlaki and helped the group prepare Inspire, its online propaganda publication.

David Grannis, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Democratic staff director who stood at the center of the CIA and Committee battle of the Torture Report, has been named the the principal deputy undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence Analysis. Grannis will be tasked with “funneling threat information to law enforcement agencies, state and local governments, and large corporations across the United States.” John Hudson has the scoop at Foreign Policy.

According to Reuters, German newspapers reported Friday that Germany’s BND intelligence agency as “resumed joint internet surveillance with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) after halting collaboration with Washington last year.” According to German reports, intelligence sharing has resumed at Bad Aibling station, which is “considered central to surveillant crisis countries in the Middle East, such as Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Libya.” Resumed intelligence sharing comes as security alerts have been heightened across Europe.

Parting Shot: The Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office has released their wish list for 2016. And as Defense One writes, it reads like “the prop list for the latest Marvel Comics movie.”

ICYMI: This Weekend, on Lawfare

In this week’s Foreign Policy Essay, Ariane Tabatabai and Dina Esfandiary argue that Yemen could be used as a way to bring Saudi Arabia and Iran back to the negotiating table.

Cody shared the latest Lawfare Podcast, which features Nick Weaver on why you should sell your bitcoin.

Finally, Cody provided the Week That Was, a roundup of all the things that defined the start of the new year.

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