WarSclerotic

In April 2017, a lumbering American MC-130 prop plane flew over a mountainous area in eastern Afghanistan. Just before 8 p.m., the plane dropped a 9,797 kg. bomb, known as a GBU-43, the largest non-nuclear explosive ever used, on a tunnel network used by Islamic State. Thirty-six ISIS members were killed in the massive explosion that followed, according to US estimates. That tunnel network was more complex than the one that Hezbollah has built in southern Lebanon. But just as the US has had to contend with terrorist tunnels, Israel and all countries facing terrorism are increasingly forced to fight an underground war.

The complex of caves and tunnels is one of many in Afghanistan used by terrorist groups. ISIS, like many terrorist groups, has become expert in tunneling. ISIS didn’t invent this on its own. The group expanded on technology that other terrorist groups have used. ISIS also used tunnels that have existed in places like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan for decades. Some of these are bunker complexes that various regimes built and were improved upon by the terrorists, or they may be terrorism tunnels built by groups such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

In Douma, Syrian rebels built a complex of tunnels which the BBC termed “quite a work of engineering.” Excavated through solid clay and stones, it was big enough to “drive a vehicle down.” It was a “subterranean life,” said the reporter said who descended into the Douma tunnels.

Four of Hezbollah’s cross-border tunnels into Israel have now been exposed since Israel began Operation Northern Shield. None of these tunnels were large enough for vehicles. To understand their origin and the kinds of difficulty in confronting them, we need to look back at the 2006 Lebanon war. Hezbollah spent decades improving its terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon. After Israel withdrew in 2000 from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah’s leaders planned an extensive network of what were labeled “nature reserves” by Israel, complexes of tunnels and bunkers designed to conceal the group’s growing arsenal. Hezbollah attempted to make them not only difficult to find but also difficult to bomb, according to a 2016 article by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

According to the report by David Daoud, it built fortified areas in 200 villages. In an article called ‘We were caught unprepared’ published by the US Army Combined Arms Center in 2008, the authors looked at Hezbollah’s tunnel expertise. According to this study, which quoted an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officer, Hezbollah had “North Korean advisers [who] had assisted Hezbollah in building tunnel infrastructure.” One tunnel was supposedly 25 km. long. This extraordinary claim, printed in the London-based daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat, may be inaccurate. The actual reports of the tunnel system by one IDF soldier after the 2006 war, quoted in a book called Back to Basics, remarked that he found a bunker near Maroun al-Ras. It was 8 meters deep and linked several rooms. It had a camera that Hezbollah used to monitor movement outside.

The US army report suggests that Hezbollah, which was founded in the 1980s, may have been inspired by the Viet Cong who used tunnels to confront the US military in Vietnam in the 1960s. The Viet Cong dug massive tunnel systems. One at Cu Chi was 250 km. in extent. Hezbollah might have sought to copy the Vietnamese, but it also wanted to exploit modern technology. Tunnels that were found in 2006 included some with hydraulic steel doors.

Considering Hezbollah’s close relationship with Iran and the Syrian regime, it should be expected that Hezbollah’s expertise in tunneling has more similarities with the kind of network a state might be able to create, and not just a terrorist organization. This means the tunnels have levels of technology, depth and ability to go through difficult terrain. However, as has been shown in the Syrian civil war context, any group that has even limited resources and devotion, can build sophisticated tunnels.

Confronting tunnels is a complex task. Militaries and law enforcement agencies which deal with drug trafficking and smuggling both have to monitor tunnels. For instance, in Gaza the tunnels built under the border with Egypt were used to smuggle people, infrastructure and weapons. Militaries can bomb tunnel networks, like the US did in Afghanistan, but only if they aren’t located in civilian areas. ISIS, for instance, festooned civilian areas with tunnels so that its fighters could pass unnoticed under houses and roads. They were able to hold out in Mosul for 9 months using these tunnels, against a 70-nation Coalition and the Iraqi army.

Armies don’t like to send men down into tunnels because naturally the enemy has the advantage in its own tunnel system allowing it to neutralize a modern army’s technological superiority. The New Yorker in 2016 noted that Israel had developed a kind of “underground Iron Dome” to confront tunnels. But Brig. Gen. (res.) Danny Gold, who helped pioneer the above ground Iron Dome, told the New Yorker that “Since the Vietnam War, it [tunnel threats] hasn’t been solved. Between Mexico and the United States, it isn’t solved. Sometimes it’s even harder than finding oil in the ground.” An Israeli system, according to this report, cost hundreds of millions of dollars, some of which was supplied by the US, to “field some 400 different ideas for the detection and destruction of tunnels.”

But for countries fighting tunnels, detection is only one issue. You can listen for the tunnel or postulate on where it might be, but you don’t want any threats coming from it or surprises when trying to unearth it. This may not be such an easy challenge to confront in an environment with containing civilians and homes. Once detected, the goal would be to stop the tunnel if it is a threat. But a country might want to monitor what the enemy is doing before interdicting the tunnel. Also a means to dig a counter-tunnel has to be developed and used without alerting the adversary that the counter-tunnel is moving toward the original. Different countries have employed different means. Egypt flooded the tunnels along the Gaza border. The most important aspect of confronting tunnels may also be mapping their point of origin to know what threats may be lurking where they begin.

Tunnels in warfare have not only been used to hide men and material, but sometimes to store explosives. Israel, by necessity, has become proficient at confronting tunnels. Hezbollah, like other terror groups and like its allied regimes, has also likely increased its skills. The subterranean war will continue to be a layer of the modern battlefield.

Iran’s cyber attacks have been more successful against the US than against Israel so far, but the threat against Israel could increase in the future, according to a new INSS report.

Gathering recent reports from multiple computer security firms and other think tanks, as well as analysis by INSS researcher Itay Haiminis, the report delves into the latest stage of Iranian cyber attacks on the US and Israel and warns of future escalation.

According to the report, Iran’s cyber influence campaign against the US “is not merely a reaction to US moves (real and imagined), but also another step towards Iran’s longstanding objective of destabilizing the United States by weakening its internal robustness.”

As the nuclear standoff and other US-Iran confrontations appear likely to be drawn out for an extended period, Tehran is fighting for Americans’ hearts and minds as a way to wear down US pressure, especially as the US position remains out of step with the EU and the UN.

“Israel, likewise a target of Iranian cyber influence efforts, would do well to monitor Iran’s development of cyber attack capabilities, along with Iran’s overt threats in conventional and non-conventional weapons,” the report said.

More specifically, the report notes that Fire-Eye Ltd., a cyber security company, has issued warnings about many fake news accounts on Facebook and Twitter that it assessed were operated by the Islamic Republic as part of its cyber influence campaign.

Tehran’s cyber influence efforts have been exposed by Twitter, which posted one million Tweets generated by fake accounts, and by Facebook, which announced it had deleted dozens of fake profiles.

Fire-Eye’s report, a report by Fortinet, another cyber security outfit, and a recent study by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies all describe Iran as an increasingly aggressive player in cyberspace, the INSS said.

In the US, Iran’s cyber influence efforts are targeted at exacerbating internal US political debates between liberals and conservatives, African-Americans and Caucasians, Trump opponents and Trump supporters and other groups.

The report describes the Islamic Republic as using its cyberspace efforts to pour fuel on contentious domestic issues including racial tensions, controversial Trump policies and police brutality.

Iranian cyber manipulation also attempts to turn US citizens against Israel and Saudi Arabia, while providing sympathetic coverage of Iranian positions on ongoing conflicts in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, said the report.

The INSS report said that, eventually, “this Iranian activity may prove to make a decisive contribution to the erosion of trust in the media among US citizens or lead to a change in political and/or social positions.”

Moreover, unlike Russia, whose cyber activities in the US are now constantly being publicly scrutinized, the report noted that “Iran has not suffered any consequences, and may even have managed to inflate the public image of its intelligence and technology capabilities.”

INSS said that, “It appears that the Iranian cyber influence threat against Israel is still limited,” citing the Islamic Republic’s past activities as merely amounting to “website destruction and false contents planted in news sites” which “resulted in little significant public impact.”

Furthermore, “Iran’s news website directed at the Israeli public, recently exposed by Clear Sky Ltd. failed to influence Israeli public discourse,” Haiminis wrote.

The report also said that, comparatively, “an examination of Iran’s cyber influence efforts against Israel… suggests that Israel is not a central target.”

However, in the future, “Iran may succeed in planting fake news items about impending Israeli attacks, to cause public panic and/or temporarily disrupt Israel’s decision-making process,” said the report.

Similarly, Iran may plant items “that could convince an enemy state or terrorist organization of an intended Israeli attack, which in turn sparks a preemptive attack against Israel.”

Impressively, Haiminis wrote that Iran succeeded in 2016 in “eliciting a Pakistani verbal response to a false report that Israel had threatened Pakistan with a nuclear attack should Pakistan send forces to Syria.”

He suggested that, as Israel “confronts Iran’s influence campaign in cyberspace,” Israel must double its defensive efforts and “should leverage the exposure and disruption of Iran’s influence tactics.”

The INSS report said that such a move could “garner political benefits by presenting” Iran’s cyber behavior “as yet another manifestation of Iran’s negative regional conduct and violations of international norms.”

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Palestinian Authority issued a joint statement Monday in which they launched a $350 million appeal to “address critical humanitarian needs of Palestinians.”

In the appeal, they called upon the international donor community to help in securing the requested funds for 2019 to provide basic food, protection, health care, shelter, water and sanitation to 1.4 million Palestinians, who have been identified as most in need of humanitarian interventions in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

The organization Palestinian Media Watch expressed outrage on Tuesday that the sum being raised by the UN and the PA is equivalent to the $355 million dollars the PA allocated in its 2018 budget to fund its payments rewarding terror. These include payments to terrorists in prison, terrorists released from prison and families of terrorists killed while carrying out attacks, including suicide bombers.

“Instead of the UN asking donor countries to contribute $350 million to provide for Palestinian ‘humanitarian needs,’ the UN should be joining the unequivocal call from many governments that the PA immediately stop squandering the $355 million dollars of its own funds on its ‘Pay for Slay’ policy that incentivizes and rewards terrorism, and instead spend that money on needy Palestinians,” said Maurice Hirsch, head of legal strategies at Palestinian Media Watch.

Hirsch said that abolishing the “Pay for Slay” policy would re-open the door for the PA to receive the approximately $215 million dollars of US aid to the PA withheld by the American Taylor Force Act. It would also avert the imminent deduction by Israel of the PA’s expenditures on salaries for terrorists and their families from the tax revenues Israel collects and transfers to the PA. He said it would also ensure the PA would not lose funding from Australia and the Netherlands.

“The so-called Palestinian humanitarian crisis is a self-imposed crisis created by the PA leaders,” Hirsch said. “The leaders of the PA have repeatedly made their moral bankruptcy crystal clear by saying that even if they only have one penny left in the bank, they will spend it on the terrorists before any other Palestinians. It is altogether unclear why the UN’s OCHA has decided that it is appropriate to assist the PA in raising the funds it needs to support its pugnacious policy of financially rewarding terrorists.”

UN officials declined to respond to Palestinian Media Watch connecting the fundraising appeal with the funding for terrorists and their families but said the funding would go to a long list of humanitarian projects. A 58-page plan available for the public to see is available on the OCHA website.

The UN said in a press release that the PA’s minister of social development, Ibrahim Al-Shaer, and the UN’s humanitarian coordinator, Jamie McGoldrick, launched the fundraising effort for 203 projects that will be implemented by 88 organizations, including 38 national, 37 international NGOs, and 13 UN agencies. About 77 percent of the requested funds target Gaza.

“The humanitarian context in the occupied Palestinian territories is still deteriorating due to the Israeli occupation violations in a time of lack of resources and declining funds because of the politicization of the humanitarian aid,” Al Shaer said. “We have a big concern on the rights and services for the poorest and most vulnerable households who are in need of humanitarian interventions.”

McGoldrick said the situation in the PA is preventing Palestinians from accessing health care, clean water, jobs and other needs.

“Humanitarian actors are facing unprecedented challenges, including record-low funding and a rise in attacks to delegitimize humanitarian action,” McGoldrick said. “This year’s plan is a new approach, reflecting what we can realistically accomplish in this highly-constrained context.  We recognize that much more assistance is needed, and indeed we can do much more, but we require increased support of the international community.”