War & Peace: A Diary

Intelligence failures, artificial and real

Chris Johns

I write a (short) daily post for Powerscourt, a Strategic Communications company, based in London and Dublin. The original idea was to summarise the news flow around the war in Ukraine - the significant news that deserved to make headlines but did not. News that may have not attracted the attention it deserves.

We have recently renamed the post to reflect the fact that war & conflict - hot and cold wars - are now taking place in multiple parts of the world. Anyone interested in receiving the short email on a daily basis is welcome to contact Powerscourt here: insights@powerscourt-group.com.

Monday November 20th

There may not be many journalists in Gaza and those that are there have great difficulty in getting their stories out, given power and internet outages. So any assessment or description of the fighting is inevitably going to be patchy. While there undoubtedly have been some direct engagements between Israeli soldiers and Hamas, there haven’t been many reports of them. Israel has published some details about casualties but with little accompanying information about circumstances. There is a sense that Hamas and other groups are either much diminished by the air war and/or have chosen not to put up much of a fight.

The Institute for the Study of War provides some details of recent engagements. Over the weekend Israeli forces engaged Palestinian fighters in Sheikh Ijlin and Rimal neighborhoods - the only primary source for this news is the Israeli Defence Forces press office who give no sense of the scale of the engagement. Some sources suggest that ‘hit-and-run’ attacks on Israeli forces are the main tactic of choice of Palestinians. 

One armed wing of Hamas is called the Qassem Brigades and, according to the ISW, conducted a ‘complex’ attack on an Israeli combat outpost in the Nasr neighbourhood. This, apparently, amounted to a suicide bombing, where three terrorists blew themselves up. There are, according to unconfirmed reports, several ‘martyrdom’ squads.

The Washington Post is one of many media outlets saying a pause to end the hostilities is imminent. The WP says a five day deal is close to being signed by both sides, one that will include the release of women and children hostages. 

No such deal is on the horizon for Ukraine. The main constraint on military activity is now the weather - rain and winter are moving in. Most observers think that the recent surge in Russian drone and missile attacks are a foretaste of the likely pattern of the war for the next few months.

Tuesday November 21st

While the newsflow coming out of Gaza cannot be regarded as complete or wholly accurate, there is a growing impression that Hamas withdrew the bulk of its fighters and leadership ahead of Israel’s move into the territory. They are probably in the south of the strip which explains, perhaps, Israel’s decision to continue heading in that direction. There are reports of ‘hand to hand’ combat in Gaza but these do not seem to amount to major battles. 

A typical military briefing occurred yesterday, which described a combined operation by the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades and Al Quds Brigade against Israeli forces. While that might sound significant, it appears a total of three Israeli armoured vehicles were targeted with few details about what happened next.

At least one analyst has concluded that this is all very reminiscent of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, who melted away into the hills ahead of US forces post 9-11. American troops came close to Osama Bin Laden but he managed to escape to the caves in the Tora Bora mountains. The Taliban itself was routed but only temporarily.

Marc Champion, a Bloomberg columnist, warns that if Israel continue to chase Hamas, the accompanying civilian casualties will further erode its weakening international support. And even if Hamas is in some sense defeated, the military victory could mimic US experience in Afghanistan: the war might be won but the ensuing peace could be lost. Not for nothing did Joe Biden urge Israel not to repeat the US mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan. Biden himself led Washington’s drive for revenge and his warnings are borne out of bitter personal experience, including the ultimate U.S. defeat in Afghanistan.

Champion echoes other analysts who argue that Israel has fallen into a trap. Israel needs to redefine what ‘defeat’ of Hamas actually means. It must amount to much more than the killing of all its fighters. 

Wednesday November 22nd

Terrorist attacks such as the one launched by Hamas on October 7th do not come cheap. Unsurprisingly, attention is turning towards where the erstwhile rulers of Gaza get their money from. Some sources are fairly obvious: until the border was sealed, Hamas levied taxes on all the imports that came into the territory, mostly from the West Bank and Egypt. According to The Economist, these levies generated around $360 million a year. And, of course, those revenues have now stopped flowing. 

Other sources of cash are harder to estimate. Over the years, Iran and Qatar are thought to have sent billions of dollars in Hamas’ way, either in pure cash or, mostly from Tehran, via arms shipments. Iran is the biggest backer, not least with around $100 million a year in arms for various Palestinian terrorist groups. 

A lot of these flows have to evade sanctions. The usual middle-men based in Turkey and various forms of cryptocurrency are sanctions-busting tools of choice. CNN has reported an ongoing US Justice department investigation into Hamas crypto usage. 

Hamas leaders live in luxury in Doha but it’s financiers find Istanbul more congenial. Hamas’ largest source of funds is not a country but the income it gets from its investments. $500 million a year in dividends and interest is estimated to flow from a Sudanese shopping mall, mines near Khartoum and commercial property in the UAE.

As the BBC often says, claims about Hamas are tough to independently verify. But the Israeli embassy to the US has stated that Hamas’ leaders are billionaires - it has named the top three terrorists as being worth, collectively, in excess of $10 billion. Your correspondent’s guess is that this is just a different way of measuring Hamas’ investment portfolio.

A defeat of Hamas will take more than battlefield success. Dismantling its sources of funding will also be necessary. 

Thursday November 23rd

The Peace Bridge, a major border crossing point between Canada and the US was constructed just under 100 years ago. Connecting the American city of Buffalo with the Canadian town Fort Erie, the bridge was built to commemorate a century of peace between the US and Canada. It is one of busiest border crossings between the two countries, carrying over a million trucks a year. Yesterday it was closed because of an incident 75 miles further along the Niagara river, when a car exploded on another bridge, sparking fears of a terrorist incident. Contingency plans were triggered on both sides of the border. Within seconds of the fatal explosion, social and other media were alive with conspiracy theories. 

The New York Times reported the incident and connected it to the war in the Middle East, saying, “With tension across the globe running high because of the Israel-Hamas war, fear spread at the speed of the internet.” Conspiracy theories ranged from other vehicles exploding to a threat to shut down Thanksgiving celebrations in New York City, including parades. All of the road and rail bridges in the region were closed, causing chaos. 

It turns out, according to local officials, that the explosion was almost certainly an accident. The two occupants of the car died after their vehicle struck the central reservation and flipped over. 

Vladimir Putin yesterday repeated his commitment to peace, saying he is ready for talks about ending the war. Few observers take these remarks literally or seriously. Putin’s stated desire for peace is a transparent device to try and persuade gullible (as he sees them) western countries to put pressure on Ukraine to make territorial concessions. 

The prominent Yale historian Timothy Snyder is a regular and much quoted commentator on the war. Yesterday he made the claim that the only reason why Ukraine hasn’t won the war is simply because the west has not sent enough weapons. Snyder doesn’t think it is too late. Gert Wilders, the surprise winner of Dutch elections yesterday, would disagree. He was immediately congratulated by Orban, Le Pen and other far right European leaders. Wilders and his friends are implacably opposed to sending any aid to Ukraine, let alone increasing it.

Friday November 24th

One of the problems facing intelligence agencies is that their successes remain hidden, often forever, whereas failure is often all too visible. The spectacular intelligence misses associated with the Middle East are piling up. Most analysts cite the example of the total surprise sprung by Arab countries when they attacked Israel in 1973: the Yom Kippur War. Libraries are filled with books and reports about why Israeli and US intelligence behaved in the way they did. 

One of many CIA assessments of the events of 1973 suggested that ‘preconceived notions’ were partly to blame. As paul Simon once famously said, “A man hear’s what he wants to hear and disregards the rest”.

Israel’s victory in the previous 1967 war was so complete that many observers believed that Arab military inferiority was a permanent state of affairs and no rational leader, particularly Anwar Sadat of Egypt, would launch a war that they knew was unwinnable.  

Evidence is emerging to suggest that the October 7th Hamas attacks were foreseen and that another spectacular intelligence failure has occurred. The FT and Israeli media have reported, quoting unnamed sources, that Hamas rehearsals, consistent with attacks on one or more Kibbutzim, were observed by intelligence officers - mostly female and junior. Subsequent reports up the line were dismissed. Israel has promised a full investigation but only after the war with Hamas is concluded.

Buried within various CIA post-mortems of earlier Arab-Israeli conflicts are some universal truths. “What seems so clear now, did not, could not, seem so clear then.” That’s the lament of all forecasters, from intelligence officials to meteorologists to economists. Often just weasel words. 

But some assessments are truly prophetic. This from a November 1947 CIA report: “[I]n the event that partition is imposed on Palestine, the resulting conflict will seriously disturb the social, economic, and political stability of the Arab world, and US commercial and strategic interests will be dangerously jeopardised”.