Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Pakistan and the Taleban.  Sources in Pakistan suggest that peace talks between the government and the Taleban are going well and that a major breakthrough in ending the four-year insurgency can be expected within the next few months.  The Afghan Taleban has been instrumental in bringing together the Pakistani Taleban groups, and the groups have apparently agreed to avoid killing civilians and kidnapping while the talks are ongoing.  The moves towards rapprochement with the Taleban appear to have been helped by the dire state of relations between the Pakistan government and the US.  The major opposition to any agreement between the Pakistani government and the Taleban has in the past come from the US, but now the US’s influence over the government is greatly diminished.  Furthermore, the US is itself seeking dialogue between the Afghan government and the Taleban in Afghanistan.

*** North Korea’s strength.  A South Korean think tank, the Korea Economic Research Institute (KERI), said on 4 January that North Korea’s military is “stronger than ever” despite the desperate state of the economy.  The North Korean army numbers 1.02m, and the report said: “We need to remember that the North is far superior in terms of the number of troops, and especially that the North’s military is structured in its formation and deployment with the purpose of an offensive war.” 

South Korea has an army of 700,000 backed by 28,000 US troops, and its defence ministry said on 4 January that it plans to sign a joint operational plan with the US this month aimed at countering an aggression and increasing the number of joint exercises with US forces.  South Korea also increased military spending by 5% to 33 trillion won ($28.7bn) in the 2012 budget.

Wartime operational control of South Korean forces is scheduled to be transferred from Washington to Seoul in 2015.  According to South Korea’s defence ministry: “We are about halfway through in our preparation for the transfer.  This year will be the final year of our first phase, during which we will try to lay the foundation for the transfer by reorganizing our command structure.  During the second stage, we will try to attain core military capabilities such as intelligence gathering, precision strikes, and detecting ballistic weapons.”

*** Israel prepared to go back into Gaza.  In our 7 December issue we reported a threat by Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Khalid al-Batsh that the only way to bring about the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails was by “kidnapping occupation soldiers and settlers”.  On 28 December, the commander of Israel’s Gaza Division South Brigade, Col Tal Hermoni, admitted that the incentive for kidnapping had gone up since Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was swapped for a thousand Palestinian prisoners.  However, he said that Israel was increasing its intelligence efforts to prevent a further kidnapping and was prepared “if needed” to launch a large-scale operation in Gaza.