This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.

• Prominent Palestinian writer Salameh Kaileh spent three weeks in detention in various Syrian prisons over suspicion that he was handing out leaflets calling for Assad’s downfall. Kaileh described the prisons as a “human slaughterhouses” and “hell on earth.”
• UN Sec’y General Ban Ki-Moon told Christiane Amanpour that there is “no Plan B” for Syria at this moment.
• The violence in Syria spilled further over the border into Lebanon, igniting clashes throughout the week.
• Rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a deal that will lead to elections and a unity government in the West Bank and Gaza.
• A huge suicide bombing in Sana’a, Yemen, on Monday, killed more than 100 and was claimed by militants connected with Al Qaeda.
• The Lockerbie bomber died in Libya on Sunday.
• Pakistani Dr. Shakil Afridi, who assisted the CIA in ascertaining bin Laden’s whereabouts, has been sentenced in Pakistan to 33 years for treason.
• It’s been another very bloody week in Karachi.
• On Tuesday, the Senate appropriations subcommittee on foreign aid voted to cut aid to Pakistan by 58% and threatened further cuts if Pakistan doesn’t reopen supply lines. 
• At the Chicago summit, NATO leaders decided on a permanent timetable in which Afghan forces will take over combat command in mid-2013 and NATO combat forces will leave by 2014. 
• US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, will be leaving his post this summer.
• Five kidnapped aid workers are apparently being held for ransom in Shahr-e Bozorg, Afghanistan. Negotiations are ongoing. 
• The State Dept. spent $1800 per student per day in 2010 for its Anti-Terrorism Training program in North Africa, the Middle East and South and Central Asia. The total money spent on programs like this since 9/11 is $1.4b. The State Dept’s Inspector General released a report on these programs for public consumption this week.
• Talks over the Iranian nuclear program resumed in Baghdad this week, hitting a snag on negotiations over sanctions.
• The military junta in Guinea-Bissau has handed over power to a civilian government.
• Dioncounda Traoré, the interim president of Mali, was beset by protesters on Monday, who stormed the presidential palace and beat him unconscious.
• A yearlong probe identified 1800 cases of fake parts in US military equipment. A suspected million such fake parts are out there, and 70% of these parts can be traced back to China.
• CNAS released a policy report outlining suggestions for reforming the structure and operation of the military.
• A 2011 Army memo obtained by Danger Room shows that the Army has had extensive concerns about the long-term health risks associated with the combat burn pit operated at Bagram Airfield. Service-members have been coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with puzzling health problems, most likely associated with exposure to these burn pits. A recent animal study also came to light showing that burn pits not only adversely affects lungs in the short term, but has serious long-term impacts on the immune system.
• Two female Army reservists have filed suit in district court to remove the restriction on combat service in the military based “solely on sex,” saying the restriction violates their 5th amendment right to due process.
• A new GAO report says that wounded service-members are now waiting an average of a year for their official disability evaluation. This is a big increase, and the wait time has been on the up for the last three years.
• Congressional investigators want an explanation within 10 days from the Defense Logistics Agency as to why the military was double-billed and excessively charged to the tune of $750m for food supplies.
• One of the owners of a firm involved in propaganda operations for the Pentagon has publicly admitted to creating a series of websites in a misinformation campaign attacking two USA Today journalists who had reported on the contracting company.
• The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the ACLU’s challenge to the 2008 FISA Amendments, the warrantless wiretapping legislation which grants the NSA the power to tap the international phone calls and emails made by US citizens. Just this Tuesday, a Senate panel voted to extend these provisions, which the White House hopes to extend beyond its year-end expiration date.

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.

• News today: In Syria on Friday, the day after bombings killed 55, Assad’s government is calling for action on terrorism and the opposition is accusing the government of having ties with al-Qaeda forces.
• On Tuesday, the UN released numbers stating that more than 80 Libyan refugees have died so far this year in their attempts to reach Europe.
• Libya quietly passed a controversial amnesty law, offering a blanket pardon to any crimes committed by pro-revolution rebels.
• Egypt seized dozens of heavy weapons bound for the Sinai peninsula at the Libyan border on Thursday.
• Panetta has promised that no troops will be deployed to Yemen.
• The story of the double agent sent by Saudi Arabia to disrupt and foil an Al-Qaeda suicide bomber plot and his successful infiltration strategy.
• Turkey will not extradite fugitive Iraqi VP Tareq al-Hashemi.
• Joost Hiltermann had a longreads piece on sectarian conflict in Bahrain up on NY Books. In Manama, protesters blocked roads with burning tires, demanding the release of female activist prisoners, some of whom have been being held for a year.
• US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter is leaving his post after not even two years on the job.
• The Red Cross is suspending its work in Pakistan pending a review after a ICRC health program manager was abducted and later killed in Balochistan.
• Pakistan has successfully tested another short-range nuclear capable missile, the Hatf III Ghaznavi, and the second such in two weeks.
• A cabinet of Pakistani officials will meet next week to consider reopening the NATO supply routes.
• Monday, the Pentagon Inspector General released a report expressing concern over the Afghan National Army’s pharmaceutical distribution.
• An AP-GfK poll puts public support in the US for the Afghan war at a record low of 27 percent.
• The US is continuing to search for a Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured by insurgents in Afghanistan in 2009.
• A rare bright news report out of A’stan: the UN is reporting that civilian deaths fell by 20 percent in the first four months of this year.
• Russia is claiming to have foiled a terrorist plot against the Sochi Winter Olympic games in 2014.
• In Honduras, days after the kidnapping and killing of journalist and gay rights activist Erick Martinez, another journalist named Alfredo Villatoro of HRN Radio was kidnapped on his way to work in the capital city of Tegucigalpa.
• The GOP members of the House Armed Services Committee voted to include a provision in the new FY2013 defense budget that would ban same-sex marriage on military bases. HASC’s draft also failed to include mention of sequestration cuts.
• Fearing Iranian nuclear capability, the GOP are pushing an East Coast missile defense shield.
• The prospect of war with Iran is dividing the Israeli defense community, with Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak leading a hawkish charge and numerous former intel chiefs publicly opposing them.
• Reporting by Noah Schachtman and Spencer Ackerman for Wired reveals that the US military held a course (now cancelled) at the Joint Forces Staff College taught officers that “total war” need to be waged on global Islam. The professor’s presentation includes quotes like: “This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.”
• On Wednesday, the FBI Chief said the recently thwarted bomb plot was a good reason to renew surveillance policies set to expire soon, extending the FBI’s abilities to spy on people abroad without a warrant.
• Here’s your new to-be Chief of Staff of the Air Force: General Mark Welsh.
• The Pentagon ceased cooperation with Marvel Studios on The Avengers because it did not treat military bureaucracy realistically (!).
• Sgt. Major Teresa King, the first female commandant of the Army’s elite drill sergeant school, has been fighting for her job amidst a mix of accusations that she set unfair standards. The Army has now said these accusations aren’t substantiated. King is asserting that her gender was a cause for mistreatment at the hands of her superiors, whom she says actively campaigned against her.

Photo: Dover Air Base, Delaware. An Army carry team transports the body of Master Sgt. Gregory L. Childs of Warren, Arkansas, killed in Afghanistan. Steve Ruark/AP.

This is the photograph for which Rémi Ochlik, the 28-year-old French photojournalist killed in Homs this morning, won first prize in the general news category of this year’s World Press Photo awards. Taken in Ras Lanuf, Libya, it shows a revolutionary fighter resting in front of the flag.

Picture of the Day. Benghazi, Libya. A little girl dressed as an angel flashes the victory sign during street celebrations to mark the one-year anniversary of the Libyan revolution’s beginnings.

The Story: Read “Libya: Archipelago of a Revolution” on Al Akhbar.

Photo Credit: GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP/Getty Images. Via here and here.

View more Picture of the Day posts. Submit a photo.

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.

• Last night, veteran foreign correspondent and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anthony Shadid of the New York Times died of an apparent asthma attack while on assignment inside Syria. The genuine outpouring of grief on social media has been a testament to how much of an inspiration and a model for journalism and reporting he has been to so many, myself included. This is a great loss. Read his work for the NYT here.
• Rolling Stone got its hands on a draft copy of LTC Daniel Davis’s report, “Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders’ Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort.”
• Civilian contractor deaths outnumbered US military deaths in Afghanistan this year. The risks to them highlight the minimal attention paid to them in casualty counts and the actions of private contracting companies toward their employees.
• The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan released its assessment report on civilians in the Afghan conflict for 2011.
• NPR interviewed former Army Sgt Kayla Williams about the status of women in the military and she had very wise things to say.
• On a similar note, I have a deconstruction of Rick Santorum’s position on women in the military up over at The Risky Shift.
• The Joint IED Defense Organization released a Counter-IED Strategic Plan, which essentially paints a grim and expensive picture of the future of the fight against these weapons.
• An NPR discussion on Syria asks if it’s time for military intervention.
• Obama’s 2013 budget request calls for defense cuts, which Lieberman called a risk to national security.
• Defense Sec’y Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dempsey testified in front of the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday and were grilled over the budget (particularly base closures and nuclear cuts). Chairman of HASC, Buck McKeon, called the Obama defense cuts a “strategy founded on hope.”
• The Tunisian defense minister looks to foster a military relationship with the US, calling for US support after a Wednesday meeting of a joint Tunisian-American military commission.
• Bahrain and Libya both marked the anniversaries of the births of their protest movements and revolutions (February 14th and February 17th, respectively).
• The Pakistani military has rejected Human Rights Watch’s criticisms of a judicial commission set up to investigate the death of journalist Saleem Shahzad, calling HRW’s statements ‘derogatory, biased and contradictory.”

Photo: Rangers from 1st Bn, 75th Ranger Regiment in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan await extraction by a CH-47. US Army Pfc. Pedro Almodovar. Via the US Army Flickr.

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.

• The big buzz has been over the not-so-secret-anymore NATO report alleging that members of Pakistan’s security services aid and abet the Afghan branch of the Taliban. Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has dismissed these allegations as “old wine in an even older bottle.” TIME’s Global Spin Blog had a Q&A with Khar.
• Russia and China have been seriously obstructing an ongoing UN Security Council deliberation over a draft resolution on international action regarding Syria. The UN has dropped elements of the resolution, like voluntary arms embargoes and sanctions, in hopes of appeasing the Russian vote. We’ll see what today brings on those decisions.
• The US Iraq reconstruction watchdog known as SIGIR (Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction) released its quarterly report to Congress, which is always chock full of information. Notable in this report was a special section on corruption and the revelation that the US cannot account for $2bn in funds.  Here is my assessment of some of the key pieces of the report.
• An excellent op-ed column by Juliet Kayyam for the Boston Globe on women moving toward combat roles: “Ladies, get your guns. And grenades.”
• 12-year army veteran Tracy Cooper-Harris is suing the VA because her same-sex marriage deny her full disability benefits.
• #Longreads: A piece in Foreign Affairs on how the NDAA makes the war on terror more difficult.
• The Philippines reported successfully killing Zulkifli Bin Hir, the leader of the regional Al Qaeda branch, Jemaah Islamiya, and two other senior movement members in a “US-backed” airstrike.
• The hazardous waste from the military presences in Iraq and Afghanistan pose a serious health risk to the populations and to the returning vets.
• Drones: Obama admitted to and defended the CIA drone program on a Google+ hangout on Monday and The White House is insisting this was not a slip-up with classified information; Joshua Foust on the “consequences of a drones first policy”; RFE/RL on who makes them and who has them; the ACLU is suing the Obama administration to release details about drone strikes in Yemen.
• The number of people on the no-fly list has more than doubled over the past year, jumping from 10,000 last year to 21,000. The list features roughly 500 Americans.
• Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak says Israel wants a military strike on Iran if the sanctions don’t achieve the desired goals.
• The NYT’s At War Blog is crowdsourcing an investigation into a mystery cluster bomb found in Libya.
• DefSec Panetta announced that the US might be ready for withdrawal from Afghanistan as early as mid-2013, ahead of the current 2014 time schedule.
• 60 Minutes interviewed Panetta last weekend and got sentimental about his “eyelid collapsing, ground shaking, belly laugh.” Which they find crinkly and adorable, and totally reassuring in the face of all the war stuff.

Two photographers take the same photograph… Time’s Lightbox has a feature of side-by-side comparisons of two different photographer’s shots of the same event. Above, on the left, John Moore of Getty’s shot of Libyan freedom fighters shooting a rocket at Gaddhafi’s army this past March is put next to the one of essentially the same moment by Yuri Kozyrev (NOOR for Time).

[via]

Breaking News: Seif al-Islam al-Gaddhafi, probably the most internationally well-known of Gaddhafi’s sons, has been reported captured in the south of Libya along with two aides while trying to smuggle himself out to Niger. He has been reportedly taken to Zintan.